woman who had a voice like a cross-cut
saw. He said I might as well have a machine-shop with a lot of files
at work in my house as that, and he'd rather any time.

MRS. W. Phugh! I don't care what Smith says.

MR. W. And you a-talking about a new piano! Why, haven't we got
musical instruments enough in the house? There's Holofernes Montgomery
been blowing away in the garret for ten days with that old key bugle,
until he got so black in the face that he won't get his colour back
for a month, and then he only gets a spurt out of her every now and
then. He's blown enough wind in her to get up a hurricane, and I
expect nothing else but he'll get the old machine so chock full that
she'll blow back at him some day and burst his brains out, and all
along of your tomfoolery. You're a pretty mother, you are! You'd
better go and join some asylum for feeble-minded idiots, you had.

MRS. W. Wilkins! I declare you're too bad, for--

MR. W. Yes--and there's Bucephalus Alexander, he's got his head full
of your sentimental nonsense, and he thinks he's in love with a girl
round the corner, and he meanders about and tries to sigh, and won't
eat his victuals, and he's got to going down into the cellar and
trying to sing "No one to love" in the coal-bin; and he like to scared
the hired girl out of her senses, so that she went upstairs and had a
fit on the kitchen door-mat, and came near dying on my hands.

MRS. W. That's not true, Mr. Wil--

MR. W. And never came to until I put her head under the hydrant. And
then what does Bucephalus Alexander do but go round, night before
last, and try to serenade the girl, until the old man histed up the
sash and cracked away at Bucephalus Alexander with an old boot, and
hit him in the face and blacked his eye, because he thought it was two
cats a-yelping. Hang such a mother as you are! You go right to work to
ruin your offspring.

MRS. W. You're talking nonsense, Wilk--

MR. W. You're about as fit to bring up children as a tadpole is to run
a ferry boat, you are! But while I'm alive Mary Jane takes no singing
lessons. Do you understand? It's bad enough to have her battering away
at that piano like she had some grudge against it, and to have her
visitors wriggle around and fidget and look miserable, as if they had
cramp colic, while you make her play for them and have them get up and
lie, and ask what it was, and say how beautiful it is, and steep their
souls in falsehood and hypocrisy all on