e expected me to do, I began to get desperate."

"Stashy wa'n't exactly your idea of a pippin, eh?" says I.

That was what. Accordin' to Purdy's shorthand notes, Stashy was one of
these square chinned females that ought to be doin' a weight liftin'
act with some tent show. But she wa'n't. She had too much out at
int'rest for that, and as she didn't go in for the light and frivolous
she has to have something to keep her busy. So she starts out as a
lady preventer. Gettin' up societies to prevent things was her fad.
She splurges on 'em, from the kind that wants to put mufflers on
steamboat whistles, to them that would like to button leggins on the
statues of G. Wash. For all that, though, she thinks it's her duty to
marry some man and train him, and between her and Aunt Isabella they'd
picked out Purdy for the victim.

"While you'd gone and tagged some pink and white, mink lined Daisy
May?" says I.

"I hadn't thought about getting married at all," says Purdy.

"Then you might's well quit squirmin'," says I. "If you've got two of
that kind plannin' out your future, there ain't any hope."

Then we gets down to Valentine, the half brother that has been cut
loose. Just as Purdy has given it to aunty straight that he'd rather
drop out of two clubs and have his allowance cut in half, than tie up
to any such tailor made article as Anastasia, and right in the middle
of Aunt Isabella's gettin' purple faced and puffy eyed over it, along
comes a lengthy letter from Valentine.

It ain't any hard luck wheeze, either. He's no hungry prod., Vally
ain't. He's been doin' some tall climbin', all these years that
Purdy's been collectin' pearl stick pins and gold cigarette cases, and
changin' his clothes four times a day. Vally has jumped from one job
to another, played things clear across the board and the ends against
the middle, chased the pay envelope almost off the edge of the map, and
finished somewhere on the east coast of Africa, where he bosses a
couple of hundred coloured gentlemen in the original package, and makes
easy money by bein' agent for a big firm of London iv'ry importers.
He'd been makin' a trip to headquarters with a cargo, and was on his
way back to the iv'ry fields, when the notion struck him to stop off in
New York and say howdy to Aunt Isabella and Brother Purd.

"And she hasn't talked about anything but Valentine since," says Purdy.

"It's Vally's turn to be it; eh?" says I.

"You'd think so i