aim to these here bets she'd won in her mind, and
if this wasn't the magic time to get the little home or bungalow on the
new lot she'd won by finding out from the Chicago professor how to mould
her destiny.

Then I lose track of the two for a minute, because Judge Ballard comes
in escorting his sister from South Carolina, that's visiting them, and
invites every one to take something in her honour. She was a frail
little old lady, very old-fashioned indeed, with white hair built up in
a waterfall and curls over both ears, and a flowered silk dress that I
bet was made in Civil War times, and black lace mitts. Say! She looked
like one of the ladies that would of been setting in the front of a box
at Ford's Theatre the night President Lincoln was shot up!

She seemed a mite rattled when she found herself in a common barroom,
having failed to read Cousin Egbert's undeniably quaint signs; but the
Judge introduced her to some that hadn't met her yet, and when he asked
her what her refreshment would be she said in a very brazen way that she
would take a drop of anisette cordial. Louis Meyer says they ain't
keeping that, and she says, Oh, dear! she's too old-fashioned! So Cousin
Egbert says, why, then she should take an old-fashioned cocktail, which
she does and sips it with no sign of relish. Then she says she will
help the cause by wagering a coin on yonder game of chance.

The Judge paws out a place for her and I go along to watch. She pries
open a bead reticule that my mother had one like and gets out a knitted
silk purse, and takes a five-dollar gold piece into her little bony
white fingers and drops it on a number, and says: "Now that is well
over!" But it wasn't over. There was excitement right off, because,
outside of some silver dollars I'd lost myself, I hadn't seen anything
bigger than a two-bit piece played there that night. Right over my
shoulder I heard heavy breathing and I didn't have to turn round to know
it was Cora Wales. When the ball slowed up she quit breathing entirely
till it settled.

It must of been a horrible strain on her, for the man was raking in all
the little bets and leaving the five-dollar one that win. Say! That
woman gripped an arm of mine till I thought it was caught in machinery
of some kind! And Mrs. Doc Martingale, that she gripped on the other
side, let out a yell of agony. But that wasn't the worst of Cora Wales'
torture. No, sir! She had to stand there and watch this little
old-fas