ted typewriter for a steady
diet--to a man like Morris! Imagine her when her hair dye started to
give out--green streaks in that pompadour! So, knowin' my man, I'd take
courage an' I'd think, 'Seein' me cut off, he'll soon be wantin' me more
than ever'--an' so he does. It's got so now that, glance up at that
hotel any time I will, I can generally find him on the lookout, an'
many's the time I've stole in an' put on a favoryte apron o' his with
blue bows on it, when we'd be alone an' nobody to remark about me
breakin' my mournin'. Dear me, how full o' b'oyancy he was--a regular
boy at thirty-five, when he passed away!"

Was it any wonder that her friends exchanged glances while Mrs. Morris
entertained them in so droll a way? Still, as time passed and she not
only brightened in the light of her delusion, but proceeded to meet the
conditions of her own life by opening a small shop in her home, and when
she exhibited a wholesome sense of profit and loss, her neighbors were
quite ready to accept her on terms of mental responsibility.

With occupation and a modest success, emotional disturbance was surely
giving place to an even calm, when, one day, something happened.

Mrs. Morris sat behind her counter, sorting notions, puss asleep beside
her, when she heard the swish of thin silk, with a breath of familiar
perfume, and, looking up, whom did she see but the blond lady of her
troubled dreams striding bodily up to the counter, smiling as she
swished.

At the sight the good woman first rose to her feet, and then as suddenly
dropped--flopped--breathless and white--backward--and had to be revived,
so that for the space of some minutes things happened very fast--that
is, if we may believe the flurried testimony of the blonde, who, in
going over it, two hours later, had more than once to stop for breath.

"Well, say!" she panted. "Did you ever! _Such_ a turn as took her! I
hadn't no more 'n stepped in the door when she succumbed, green as the
Ganges, into her own egg-basket--an' it full! An' she was on the eve o'
floppin' back into the prunin' scizzor points up, when I scrambled over
the counter, breakin' my straight-front in two, which she's welcome to,
poor thing! Then I loaned her my smellin'-salts, which she held her
breath against until it got to be a case of smell or die, an' she
smelt! Then it was a case of temporary spasms for a minute, the salts
spillin' out over her face, but when the accident evaporated, an' she
op