the
foot every night. He will remonstrate. I shall tell him that he kicks
them off, and intimate that his conscience troubles him, or he would
never be so restless. He will glare. I shall promise to do better,
yet the clothes will come off worse and worse, and at last, perfectly
disheartened, he will go. I shall tell Mr. Greenwood at the
breakfast-table, what I have been longing for months to tell him, that
we can hear him snore, distinctly, through the partition. He will go.
I shall put cold milk in Mrs. Caldwell's coffee every morning. I shall
mean well, you know, but I shall forget. She will know that I mean
well, and that it is only girlish absent-mindedness, but she will not
endure it very long; she will go. And so, by the exercise of a little
ingenuity, they will depart one by one, remarking that Mrs. Oliver's
boarding-house is not what it used to be; that Pauline is growing a
little 'slack.'"

"Polly!" and Mrs. Oliver half rose from the sofa, "I will not allow you
to call this a boarding-house in that tone of voice."

"A boarding-house, as I take it," argued Polly, "is a house where the
detestable human vipers known as boarders are 'taken in and done for.'"

"But we have always prided ourselves on having it exactly like a
family," said her mother plaintively. "You know we have not omitted a
single refinement of the daintiest home-life, no matter at what cost of
labor and thought."

"Certainly, that's the point,--and there you are, a sofa-invalid, and
here am I with my disposition ruined for life; such a wreck in temper
that I could blow up the boarders with dynamite and sleep peacefully
after it."

"Now be reasonable, little daughter. Think how kind and grateful the
boarders have been (at least almost always), how appreciative of
everything we have done for them."

"Of course; it is n't every day they can secure an--an--elderly Juno
like you to carve meat for them, or a--well, just for the sake of
completing the figure of speech--a blooming Hebe like me (I 've always
wondered why it was n't _She_be!) to dispense their tea and coffee; to
say nothing of broma for Mr. Talbot, cocoa for Mr. Greenwood, cambric
tea for Mrs. Hastings, and hot water for the Darlings. I have to keep
a schedule, and refer to it three times a day. This alone shows that
boarders are n't my vocation."

A bit of conversation gives the clue to character so easily that Mrs.
Oliver and her daughter need little more descript