omise ahead for the
Scudder family.

"The niece was a nice, quiet girl. The only thing Nate had against her,
outside of the sociology craziness and her not seemin' to take a shine
to him, was her confounded pets. Nate said he never had no use for
pets--lazy critters, eatin' up the victuals and costin' money--but
Olivia was dead gone on 'em. She adopted an old reprobate of a tom-cat,
which she labeled 'Galileo,' after an Eyetalian who invented spyglasses
or somethin' similar, and a great big ugly dog that answered to the hail
of 'Phillips Brooks'; she named him that because she said the original
Phillips was a distinguished parson and a great philanthropist.

"That dog was a healthy philanthropist. When Nate kicked him the first
time, he chased him the whole length of the barn. After that they had to
keep him chained up. He was just pinin' for a chance to swaller Scudder
whole, and he showed it.

"Well, as time went on, Olivia and Augustus got chummier and chummier.
Nate give 'em all the chance possible to be together, and as for old
Professor Whiskers, all he thought of, anyway, was his blessed flyin'
machine. So things was shapin' themselves well, 'cordin' to Scudder's
notion.

"One afternoon Nate come, unexpected, to the top of a sand hill at
t'other end of the island, and there, below, set Olivia and Augustus.
He had a clove hitch 'round her waist, and they was lookin' into each
other's spectacles as if they was windows in the pearly gates. Thinks
Nate: 'They've signed articles,' and he tiptoed away, feelin' that life
wa'n't altogether an empty dream.

"They was lively hours, them that followed. To begin with, when Nate got
back to the barn he found the professor layin' on the floor, under the
flyin' stage, groanin' soulful but dismal. He'd slipped off one of the
braces of the trestles and sprained both wrists and bruised himself till
he wa'n't much more than one big lump. He hadn't bruised his tongue
none to speak of, though, and his language wa'n't sprained so that you'd
notice it. What broke him up most of all was that he'd got his aeroplane
ready to 'fly' again, and now he was knocked out so's he couldn't be
aboard when she went off the ways.

"'It is the irony of fate,' says he.

"'I got it off the blacksmith over to Wellmouth Centre,' Nate told him;
'but HE might have got it from Fate, or whoever you mean. 'Twas slippery
iron, I know that, and I warned you against steppin' on it yesterday.'

"The prof