asively.

"What you givin' me?" asked Joe, with fine superiority. "These here
kinds of play never hurts my feelin's none. Catch me cryin' at a show!"

But Miss Beaver was too much moved to recover herself at once. She sat
in limp dejection and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes with her moist
ball of a handkerchief.

Joe was at a loss to know how to meet the situation until his hand,
quite by chance, touched hers as it lay on the arm of her chair. He
withdrew it as quickly as if he had received an electric shock, but the
next moment, like a lodestone following a magnet, it traveled slowly
back to hers.

From that time on Joe sat staring straight ahead of him in embarrassed
ecstasy, while Miss Beaver, thus comforted, was able to pass through the
tragic finale of the last act with remarkable composure.

When the time came to say "Good night" at the Beavers' door, all Joe's
reticence and awkwardness returned. He watched her let herself in and
waited until she lit a candle. Then he found himself out on the pavement
in the dark feeling as if the curtain had gone down on the best show be
had ever seen. Suddenly a side window was raised cautiously and he heard
his name called softly. He had turned the corner, but he went back to
the fence.

"Say!" whispered the voice at the window, "I forgot to tell you--It's
Mittie."

The course of true love thus auspiciously started might have flowed on
to blissful fulfilment had it not encountered the inevitable barrier in
the formidable person of Mrs. Beaver. Not that she disapproved of Mittie
receiving attention; on the contrary, it was her oft-repeated boast that
"Mittie had been keepin' company with the boys ever since she was six,
and she 'spected she'd keep right on till she was sixty." It was not
attention in the abstract that she objected to, it was rather the
threatening of "a steady," and that steady, the big, awkward, shy Joe
Ridder. With serpentine wisdom she instituted a counter-attraction.

Under her skilful manipulation, Ben Schenk, the son of the
saloon-keeper, soon developed into a rival suitor. Ben was engaged at a
down-town pool-room, and wore collars on a weekday without any apparent
discomfort. The style of his garments, together with his easy air of
sophistication, entirely captivated Mrs. Beaver, while Ben on his part
found it increasingly pleasant to lounge in the Beavers' best parlour
chair and recount to a credulous audience the prominent part which he
was t