ork, nor
never has, and his scientifics gets worse and worse every year. But
while scientifics is worrying to the nerves of a fambly, and while his
labertory often makes the house smell like a sick drug store has crawled
into it and died there, they wouldn't of been no serious row on between
the perfessor and his wife, not ALL the time, if it hadn't of been fur
Miss Estelle. She has jest natcherally made herself boss of that there
house, Biddy says, and she's a she-devil. Between all them scientifics
and Miss Estelle things has got where Mrs. Booth can't stand 'em much
longer.

I didn't blame her none fur getting sore on her job, neither. You
can't expect a woman that's purty, and knows it, and ain't no more'n
thirty-two or three, and don't look it, to be serious intrusted in
mummies and pickled snakes and chemical perfusions, not ALL the time.
Mebby when Mrs. Booth would ast him if he was going to take her to the
opery that night the perfessor would look up in an absent-minded sort
of way and ast her did she know them Germans had invented a new germ? It
wouldn't of been so bad if the perfessor had picked out jest one brand
of scientifics and stuck to that reg'lar. Mrs. Booth could of got use to
any ONE kind. But mebby this week the perfessor would be took hard with
ornithography and he'd go chasing humming-birds all over the front yard,
and the next he'd be putting gastronomy into William's breakfast feed.

They was always a row on over them kids, which they hadn't been till
Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth, she said they could kill their own
selves, if they wanted to, him and Miss Estelle, but she had more
right than any one else to say what went into William's and Margery's
digestive ornaments, and she didn't want 'em brung up scientific nohow,
but jest human. But Miss Estelle's got so she runs that hull house
now, and the perfessor too, but he don't know it, Biddy says, and her
a-saying every now and then it was too bad Frederick couldn't of married
a noble woman who would of took a serious intrust in his work. The kids
don't hardly dare to kiss their ma in front of Miss Estelle no more, on
account of germs and things. And with Miss Estelle taking care of their
religious organs and their intellectuals and the things like that, and
the perfessor filling them up on new invented feeds, I guess they never
was two kids got more education to the square inch, outside and in. It
hadn't worked none on Miss Margery yet, her bei