ight
in. I expect it was the last thing in the world Martha was lookin' for;
for she sits there gazin' at him sort of stupid until he's done the
trick. Uh-huh! No halfway business about it, either. He just naturally
takes her chubby old face between his two hands, tilts up her chin, and
plants a reg'lar final curtain smack where I'll bet it's been forty
years since the lips of man had trod before.

First off Martha flops her arms and squeals. Then, when she finds it's
all over and ain't goin' to be any continuous performance, she quiets
down and stares at the two of 'em, who are chucklin' away merry.

"Please, Sister Martha," says Ballard, "try to overlook that old affair
of mine when I tried to cut out the Rev. Preble. I was rather
irresponsible then, I'll own; but I have steadied down a lot, although
for the last week or so--well, you know how giddy Zenobia is. But you
will help us. We can't either of us spare you, you see."

Maybe it was the jollyin' speech, or maybe it was the unexpected smack,
but inside of five minutes Martha has shed her bonnet and we're all
sittin' around the table as friendly and jolly as you please.

I suppose it was by way of makin' Martha feel comf'table and as if she
was really part of the game that they got to reminiscin' about old times
and the folks they used to know. I wa'n't followin' it very close until
Martha gets to askin' Ballard about some of his people, and he starts in
on this story about his nephew.

"Poor Dick!" says he, pushin' back his demitasse and lightin' up a big
perfecto. "Now if he'd been my boy, things might have turned out
differently. But my respected brother--well, you knew Richard, Martha.
Not at all like me,--eminently respectable, a bit solemn, and
tremendously stiff-necked on occasion. The way he took on about that
red-headed Irish girl, for instance. Irene, you know. Why, you might
have thought, to have heard him storm around, that she was a veritable
sorceress, or something of the kind; when, as a matter of fact, she was
just a nice, wholesome, keen-witted young woman. Pretty as a picture,
she was, and as true as gold too,--a lot too good for young Dick
Ballard, even if she was merely a girl in his father's office. You
couldn't blame her for liking Dick, though. Everyone did--the
scatter-brained scamp! And when my brother went through all that
melodramatic folly of cutting him off with a thousand a year--well, we
had our big row over that. That was when