butcher; and when Miss Briggs was sellin' lung-testers
she wasn't a lady, she was in business. Business is one thing an' bein'
pleasant is another. I've got to look after my money or I soon won't
have any."

When the two men went out Mrs. Smith could hear them begin to wrangle
even before they quitted the yard, but she was more interested in what
might happen to Miss Sally through the vindictiveness of the butcher.
She was surprised to hear that T. J. Jones had even thought of such a
thing as bringing Miss Sally's name into the matter as a conspirator,
and she did not know enough about Iowa laws to know whether the butcher
could take any summary action or not. The most satisfactory way to
straighten things out would be to pay the butcher, but it must be done
at once. She pleaded with Miss Sally to remember someone of whom she
could borrow sixty dollars, but Miss Sally confessed that she knew no
one who would be apt to lend so much. She even expressed her doubt that
her father would ever release the money she had given him. The two women
sat in the darkened parlor, Miss Sally weeping softly and Mrs. Smith
thinking hard. The authoress was ashamed that she could devise no way to
aid her friend, and there they sat, exchanging a brief word from time
to time, and the gloom deepening every minute. Presently, when the
atmosphere was so charged with sadness that it was almost too thick to
breathe, Mrs. Smith called to Susan, and the girl came in.

"Sue," said Mrs. Smith, "will you run down to the TIMES office and see
Mr. Jones? And--let me see--and tell him I very much want to see him
before he begins to print his extra. You won't mind, will you?"

"Oh, no," said Susan cheerfully, and she went, a fairy in filmy white,
while the two women relapsed into gloom again.

So softly did the next comer mount the porch stairs that the two women
did not hear him until a gentle tap on the door frame, followed by an
apologetic cough, announced the return of Eliph' Hewlitt.

CHAPTER XVII. According to Jarby's

When Eliph' Hewlitt, sad at heart, departed from his disastrous
interview with Miss Sally, he felt, for the first time in his life, a
doubt as to the infallibility of Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge
and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art. Here was a book he had
praised, sold and believed, and it had failed him. Here was a book that
was proclaimed, in the "Advice to Agents," to be so simply written and
so easy of und