ure party?' I yells again.

"'I believe she has been a wage-earner,' says Nettie. 'And dear Chester
is so grateful about that song. It was her favourite song, too, and it
seemed to bring them together, just as it opened my own soul to Wilbur.
He says she sings the song very charmingly herself, and he thought it
preferable that they be wed in Spokane before his father objected. And
oh, aunty, I do see how blind I was to my destiny, and how kind you were
to me in my blindness--you who had led the fuller life as I shall lead
it at Wilbur's side.'

"'You beat it to your room,' I orders her, very savage and disorganized.
For I had stood about all the jolts in one day that God had meant me
to. And so they was married, Chester and his bride attending the
ceremony and Oscar Teetz' five-piece orchestra playing the--" She
broke off, with a suddenly blazing glance at the disk, and seized it
from the table rather purposefully. With a hand firmly at both edges she
stared inscrutably at it a long moment.

"I hate to break the darned thing," she said musingly at last. "I guess
I'll just lock it up. Maybe some time I'll be feeling the need to hear
it again. I know I can still be had by it if all the circumstances is
right."

Still she stared at the thing curiously.

"Gee! It was hot getting them calves out to-day, and old Safety First
moaning about all over the place how he's being stuck with 'em, till
more than once I come near forgetting I was a lady--and, oh, yes"--she
brightened--"I was going to tell you. After it was all over, Wilbur, the
gallant young tone poet, comes gushing up to me and says, 'Now, aunty,
always when you are in town you must drop round and break bread with
us.' Aunty, mind you, right off the reel. 'Well,' I says, 'if I drop
round to break any bread your wife bakes I'll be sure to bring a
hammer.' I couldn't help it. He'll make a home for the girl all right,
but he does something sinful to my nerves every time he opens his face.
And then coming back here, where I looked for God's peace and quiet, and
being made to hear that darned song every time I turned round!

"I give orders plain enough, but say, it's like a brush fire--you never
know when you got it stamped out."

From the kitchen came the sound of a dropped armful of stove wood. Hard
upon this, the unctuous whining tenor of Jimmie Time:

Oh-h-h mem-o-reez thu-hat blu-hess and bu-hurn!

"You, Jimmie Time!" It is a voice meant for Greek tragedy