hen t'other's. One
week Jonadab would be so bloated with horse pride that he couldn't find
room for his vittles, and the next he'd be out in the stable growlin'
'cause it cost so much for hay to stuff an old hide rack that wa'n't
fit to put in a museum. At last it got so that neither one could find a
better horse on the Cape, and the two they had was practically an even
match. I begun to have hopes that the foolishness was over. And then the
tin peddler's widow drifts in to upset the whole calabash.

"She made port at Orham fust, this Henrietta Bassett did, and the style
she slung killed every female Goliath in the Orham sewin' circle dead.
Seems her husband that was had been an inventor, as a sort of side line
to peddlin' tinware, and all to once he invented somethin' that worked.
He made money--nobody knew how much, though all hands had a guess--and
pretty soon afterwards he made a will and Henrietta a widow. She'd been
livin' in New York, so she said, and had come back to revisit the scenes
of her childhood. She was a mighty well-preserved woman--artificial
preservatives, I cal'late, like some kinds of tomatter ketchup--and her
comin' stirred Orham way down to the burnt places on the bottom of the
kettle."

"I guess I remember HER, too," put in Captain Bailey.

"Say!" queried Mr. Wingate snappishly, "do you want to tell about her?
If you do, why--"

"Belay, both of you!" ordered the depot master. "Heave ahead, Barzilla."

"The news of her got over to Wellmouth, and me and Jonadab heard of it.
He was some subject to widows--most widower men are, I guess--but he
didn't develop no alarmin' symptoms in this case and never even hinted
that he'd like to see his old girl. Fact is, his newest horse trade had
showed that it was afraid of automobiles, and he was beginnin' to get
rabid along that line. Then come that afternoon when him and me was out
drivin' together, and we--Well, I'll have to tell you about that.

"We was over on the long stretch of wood road between Trumet and
Denboro, nice hard macadam, the mare--her name was Celia, but Jonadab
had re-christened her Bay Queen after a boat he used to own--skimmin'
along at a smooth, easy gait, when, lo and behold you! we rounds a turn
and there ahead of us is a light, rubber-tired wagon with a man and
woman on the seat of it. I heard Jonadab give a kind of snort.

"'What's the matter?' says I.

"'Nothin',' says he, between his teeth. 'Only, if I ain't some mistaken,