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d up with a sponge if Pet hadn't run in bubbling over like a lovely, white, linen-clad glass of Rhine wine and seltzer. Happiness has a habit of not even acknowledging the presence of grief and Pet didn't seem to see our red noses, crushed draperies and generally damp atmosphere. "Molly," she said with a deliciously young giggle, "Tom says for you to send him ten dollars to spend getting the brass band half drunk before the six o'clock train, on which your Mr. Bennett comes. He has spent five dollars paying the negroes to polish up their instruments and clean up the uniforms and it cost him twenty-five to bail the cornettist out of jail for roost robbing, and it takes a whole gallon of whisky to get any spirit into the drummer. He says tell you that as this is your shindig you ought at least to pay the piper. Hurry up, he's waiting for me, and here's the kiss he told me to put on your left ear!" "I suppose you delivered that kiss straight from where he gave it to you, Pettie, dear," I had the spirit to say as I went over to the desk for my pocket-book. "Why, Molly, you know me better than that!" she exclaimed from behind a perfect rose cloud of blushes. "I know Tom better than I do you," I answered as she fled with the ten in her hand. I looked at Ruth Chester and we both laughed. It is true that a broader sympathy is one of the by-products of sorrow, and a week ago I might have resented Pet to a marked degree instead of giving her the ten dollars and a blessing. "I'm going quick, Molly, with that laugh between us," Ruth said as she rose and took me into her arms again for just half a second, and before I could stop her, she was gone. She met Billy toiling up the front step with a long piece of rusty iron gas-pipe, which took off an inch of paint as it bumped against the edge of the porch. She bent down and kissed the back of his neck, which theft was almost more than I could stand, and apparently more than Billy was prepared to accept. "Go way, girl," he said in his rudest manner; "don't you see I'm busy?" I met him in the front hall just in time to prevent a hopeless scar on my hardwood floor. He was hot, perspiring and panting, but full of triumph. "I found it, Molly, I found it!" he exclaimed as he let the heavy pipe drop almost on the bare pink toes. "You can git a hammer and pound the end sharp and bend it so no whale we ketch can git away for nothing. You and Doc kin put it in your trunk 'caus
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