d wipe my fingers
with a handkerchief that had been in one of his pockets?"

"It wasn't the one that had the giminy billibus, was it?"

"No, but goodness only knows what had been in this one,--an alligator,
maybe, or a snake. He's very fond of snakes. He says some of them are
so useful. I try to be charitable, Fairy, and I believe I would give
even Satan credit for any good there was in him,--but it is too much to
ask me to be fond of a man who is fond of snakes. But that is not the
worst. He put the giminy thing in his pocket,--his left pocket! Then
he came on walking with me, on my right side. On my right side, Fairy,
do you understand what that means? It means that the giminy billibus,
as you call it--oh, I wouldn't swear to the name, Fairy, I do not claim
to be smart, but I know how it looked! Well, anyhow, name and all, it
was on the side next to me. I stopped to look at a little stick, and
switched around on the other side. Then he stooped to look at a bunch
of dirt, and got on the wrong side again. Then I stopped, and then he
did, and so we kept zig-zagging down the road. A body would have
thought we were drunk, I suppose. Four times that man stopped to pick
up some wriggling little animal, and four times he deposited his
treasure in one of his various pockets. Don't ask why it is impossible
for me to be friends with such a being,--spare me that humiliation!"

But the fair daughter of the parsonage proved irresistibly attractive
to the unfortunate professor, and he was not to be lightly shunted
aside. He forsook the Presbyterian church, of which he was a member,
and attended the Methodist meetings with commendable assiduity. After
each service, he accompanied Prudence home, and never failed to accept
her invitations, feebly given, to "come in a minute." He called as
often during the week as Propriety, in the voice of Prudence, deemed
fitting. It was wholly unnatural for Prudence to cater to Propriety,
but Professor Rayburn did not know this. Weeks passed, a month slipped
away, and another. Professor Rayburn was considered a fixture in the
parsonage household by all except Prudence herself, who chafed under
her bondage.

"I can't just blurt out that I think he's a nuisance," she mourned to
Fairy. "Oh, if he'd just do something disgusting so I could fire him
off,--Pop! Just like that. Wouldn't it be glorious?"

But the professor did not indulge in disgusting things, and Prudence
continu