e whole days since--"
But Miss Sissons escaped inside her gate and rang the bell. "Now see
here, Louise," he called after her, "when I say they're playing with
fire I mean it. That woman will make trouble in this town."

"She's not afraid," said Miss Sissons. "Don't you know enough about us
yet to know we can't be threatened?"

"You!" said the young man. "I wasn't thinking of you." And so they
separated.

Mrs. Campbell sat opposite the judge at supper, and he saw at once from
her complacent reticence that she had achieved some triumph against his
principles. She chatted about topics of the day in terms that were
ingeniously trite. Then a letter came from their son in Denver, and she
forgot her role somewhat, and read the letter aloud to the judge, and
wondered wistfully who in Denver attended to the boy's buttons and
socks; but she made no reference whatever to Siskiyou jail or those
inside it. Next morning, however, it was the judge's turn to be angry.

"Amanda," he said, over the paper again, "you had better stick to socks,
and leave criminals alone."

Amanda gazed at space with a calm smile.

"And I'll tell you one thing, my dear," her husband said, more
incisively, "it don't look well that I should represent the law while my
wife figures" (he shook the morning paper) "as a public nuisance. And
one thing more: _Look out!_ For if I know this community, and I think I
do, you may raise something you don't bargain for."

"I can take care of myself, judge," said Amanda, always smiling. These
two never were angry both at once, and to-day it was the judge that
sailed out of the house. Amanda pounced instantly upon the paper. The
article was headed "Sweet Violets." But the editorial satire only
spurred the lady to higher efforts. She proceeded to the Lyceum, and
found that "Sweet Violets" had been there before her. Every woman held a
copy, and the fourteen rocking-chairs were swooping up and down like
things in a factory. In the presence of this blizzard, Mount Shasta,
Lucretia Mott, and even Leda and the Swan looked singularly serene on
their wall, although on the other side of the wall the "Fatinitza" march
was booming brilliantly. But Amanda quieted the storm. It was her gift
to be calm when others were not, and soon the rocking-chairs were merely
rippling.

"The way my boys scolded me--" began Mrs. Day.

"For men I care not," said Mrs. Parsons. "But when my own sister
upbraids me in a public place--" The lady'