m a bad little suggester, eh, what? Here's Emily getting all
this free provender and Windy talking his fool head off and the house
getting all this advertising and none of us out a cent for any part of
it.'

"In about ten minutes, though, I'm struck by the fact that Emily's
original outburst of enthusiasm appears slightly on the wane. It seems
to me she ain't reaching out for the free-will offerings with quite so
much eagersomeness as she was displaying a spell back. Also I takes
notice that the wrinkles in her tum-tum are filling out so that she's
beginning to lose some of that deflated or punctured look so common
amongst bulls.

"Still, I don't have no apprehensions, but thinks to myself that any
bull which can eat half a ton of hay for breakfast certainly is
competent to take in a couple of wagon-loads of peanuts for five o'clock
tea. Even at that I figgers that it won't do no harm to coach Emily
along a little.

"'Go to it, baby mine,' I says to her. 'You ain't hardly started. Here's
a chance,' I says, 'to establish a new world's record for peanuts.'

"That remark appears to spur her up for a minute or so, but something
seems to keep on warning me that her heart ain't in the work to the
extent it has been. Windy don't see nothing out of the way, he being
congenially engaged in shooting off his face, but I'm more or less
concerned by certain mighty significant facts. For one thing, Emily
ain't eatin' sacks and all any more; she's emptying the peanuts out and
throwing the paper bags aside. Likewise her work ain't clean and smooth
like it was. Her underlip is swinging down, and she's beginning to
drool loose goobers off the lower end of it, and her low but intelligent
forehead is all furrowed up as if with deep thought.

"Observing all of which, I says to myself, I says: 'If ever Emily should
start to cramp, the world's cramping record is also in a fair way to be
busted this afternoon. I certainly do hope,' I says, 'that Emily don't
go and get herself overextended.'

"You see, I'm trusting for the best, because I realises that it wouldn't
do to call off the reception right in the middle of it on account of the
disappointment amongst the tiny tots that ain't passed in review yet and
the general ill-feeling that's sure to follow.

"I should say about two hundred tiny tots have gone by, with maybe five
hundred more still in line waiting their turn, when there halts in front
of Emily a fancy-dressed tiny tot which