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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the
PUNCHINELLO PUBLISHING COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of
Congress at Washington.

* * * * *

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD,

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR

CHAPTER XXVI.

FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE.

Miss CARROWTHERS having gone out with Mrs. SKAMMERHORN to skirmish with
the world of dry-goods clerks for one of those alarming sacrifices in
feminine apparel which woman unselfishly, yet never needlessly, is
always making, FLORA sat alone in her new home, working the latest
beaded pin-cushion of her useful life. Frequently experiencing the truth
of the adage, that as you sew so shall you rip, the fair young thing was
passing half her valuable time in ripping out the mistaken stitches she
had made in the other half; and the severe moral discipline thus
endured, made her mad, as equivalent vexation would have made a man the
reverse of that word. Flippant social satirists cannot dwell with
sufficient sarcasm upon the difference between the invincible amiability
affected by artless girls in society and their occasional bitterness of
aspect in the privacy of home; never stopping to reflect that there are
sore private trials for these industrious young crochet creatures in
which the thread of the most equable female existence is necessarily
worsted. Miss POTTS, then, although looking up from her trying worsted
occupation at the servant who entered with a rather snappish expression
of countenance, was guilty of no particularly hypocritical assumption in
at once suffering her features to relax into a sweetly pensive smile
upon learning that there was a gentleman to see her in the parlor.

"'MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON,'" she softly read from the card presented. "Is
he alone, BRIDGET, dear?"

"Sorra any wan with him but his cane, Miss; and that he axed me wud I
sthand it behind the dure for him."

There was a look of desperate purpose about this. When a sentimental
young man seeks a private interview with a marriageable young woman, and
recklessly refuses at the outset to retain at least his cane for the
solution of the intricate conversational problem of what to do with his
hands, it is an infallible sign that some madly rash intention has
temporarily overpowered his usual sheepish imbecility, and that he may
be expected to speak and act with almost human