ell me that clergyman's wife was
conscientious. No conscientious woman would have sent an old fur tippet
all eaten with moths into another woman's house. She could not."

Sally took flying leaps across the storeroom. She flung open the window
and tossed out the mangy tippet. "This is simply awful!" she declared,
as she returned. "Edward, don't you think we are justified in having
Thomas take all these things out in the back yard and making a bonfire
of the whole lot?"

"No, my dear."

"But, Edward, nobody can tell what will come next. If Content's aunt had
died of a contagious disease, nothing could induce me to touch another
thing."

"Well, dear, you know that she died from the shock of a carriage
accident, because she had a weak heart."

"I know it, and of course there is nothing contagious about that." Sally
took up an ancient bandbox and opened it. She displayed its contents: a
very frivolous bonnet dating back in style a halfcentury, gay with
roses and lace and green strings, and another with a heavy crape veil
dependent.

"You certainly do not advise me to keep these?" asked Sally,
despondently.

Edward Patterson looked puzzled. "Use your own judgment," he said,
finally.

Sally summarily marched across the room and flung the gay bonnet and the
mournful one out of the window. Then she took out a bundle of very old
underwear which had turned a saffron yellow with age. "People are always
coming to me for old linen in case of burns," she said, succinctly.
"After these are washed I can supply an auto da fe."

Poor Sally worked all that day and several days afterward. The rector
deserted her, and she relied upon her own good sense in the disposition
of little Content's legacy. When all was over she told her husband.

"Well, Edward," said she, "there is exactly one trunk half full of
things which the child may live to use, but it is highly improbable. We
have had six bonfires, and I have given away three suits of old clothes
to Thomas's father. The clothes were very large."

"Must have belonged to Eudora's first husband. He was a stout man," said
Edward.

"And I have given two small suits of men's clothes to the Aid Society
for the next out-West barrel."

"Eudora's second husband's."

"And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her
lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a
few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool
dresses a