out and shoot up a bear and a couple of
wild turkeys for breakfast, throttle some coin out of some nearby
business corporation, send two to five trained nurses back to the
wigwam, stay down town to lunch and then go home with a tender little
kiss for the madame who meets him fluffy and smiling at the door. That's
my idea of true connubial bliss. Applications considered in the order of
their reception. Nell, you are sweet enough to eat in that blue muslin.
I'm glad I asked you to get one just that shade!"

And the inane chorus of pleased laughs that followed Polk Hayes's
brainless disposal of the important question in hand made me ashamed of
being a woman--though it was funny. Still I bided my time and Polk saw
the biding, I could tell by the expression in the corners of his eyes
that he kept turned away from me.

And in less than a half-hour he was left to my mercies, anything but
tender. Sallie took Nell and Caroline over home to help her decide how
wide a band of white it would be decorous for her to sew in the neck of
her new black meteor crepe. I see it coming that we will all have to
unite in getting Sallie out of mourning and into the trappings of
frivolity soon and I dread it. It takes so many opinions on any given
subject to satisfy Sallie that she ought to keep a tabulated
advice-book.

"Evelina," said Polk, experimentally, after he had seen them safely
across the street, and he moved along the steps until he sat against my
skirts, "are your family subject to colic?"

"No, they have strong brains instead," I answered icily.

"Said brains subject to colic, though," he mused in an impudent
undertone.

I laughed: I couldn't help it. One of the dangerous things about Polk is
that he gets you comfortable and warm of heart whenever he gets near
you. It wouldn't matter at all to him if you should freeze later for
lack of his warmth, just so he doesn't know about it.

"Polk," I began to say in a lovely serious tone of voice, looking him
square in the eyes and determined that as we were now on the subject of
basic things, like infantile colic, I would have it out with him along
all lines, "there is an awful shock coming to you when you realize
that--"

"That in the heat of this erudite and revolutionary discussion, which an
evil fate led me to drop in on, I have forgotten to give you this
telegram that came for you while I was down at the station shipping some
lumber. Be as easy as you can with me, Evelina, a