a number o' sizes too
small for ye."

"They're number tens, I tell ye!" roared Grandpa nettled outrageously by
this cutting taunt.

"Wall, thar', now, pa," said Grandma, soothingly; "if I had sech feet as
that, I wouldn't go to spreadin' it all over town, if I was you--but it's
time we stopped bickerin' now, husband, and got ready for meetin'; so set
down and let me wash yer head."

"I've washed once this mornin'. It's clean enough," Grandpa protested,
but in vain. He was planted in a chair, and Grandma Keeler, with rag and
soap and a basin of water, attacked the old gentleman vigorously, much as
I have seen cruel mothers wash the faces of their earth-begrimed infants.
He only gave expression to such groans as:--

"Thar', ma! don't tear my ears to pieces! Come, ma! you've got my eyes so
full o' soap now, ma, that I can't see nothin'. Phew! Lordy! ain't ye
most through with this, ma?"

Then came the dyeing process, which Grandma Keeler assured me, aside,
made Grandpa "look like a man o' thirty;" but to me, after it he looked
neither old nor young, human nor inhuman, nor like anything that I had
ever seen before under the sun.

"There's the lotion, the potion, the dye-er, and the setter," said
Grandma, pointing to four bottles on the table. "Now whar's the
directions, Madeline?"

These having been produced from between the leaves of the family Bible,
Madeline read, while Grandma made a vigorous practical application of the
various mixtures.

"This admirable lotion"--in soft ecstatic tones Madeline rehearsed the
flowery language of the recipe--"though not so instantaneously startling
in its effect as our inestimable dyer and setter, yet forms a most
essential part of the whole process, opening, as it does, the dry and
lifeless pores of the scalp, imparting to them new life and beauty, and
rendering them more easily susceptible to the applications which follow.
But we must go deeper than this; a tone must be given to the whole system
by means of the cleansing and rejuvenating of the very centre of our
beings, and, for this purpose, we have prepared our wonderful potion."
Here Grandpa, with a wry face, was made to swallow a spoonful of the
mixture. "Our unparalleled dyer," Madeline continued, "restores black
hair to a more than original gloss and brilliancy, and gives to the faded
golden tress the sunny flashes of youth." Grandpa was dyed. "Our
world-renowned setter completes and perfects the whole process by addi