arter" here and
"dear Mr. Carter" there, with the women knitting him neckties and the
men coming up to be bullied and asking for more.

And he kept the upper hand, too, once he got it. It was that day, I
think, that he sent Senator Biggs up to make his bed again, and nobody
in the place will ever forget how he made old Mr. Jennings hang his
gymnasium suit up three times before it was done properly. The old man
was mad enough at the time, but inside of twenty minutes he was offering
Mr. Pierce the cigar he'd won in the wood-chopping contest.

But if Mr. Pierce was making a hit with the guests, he wasn't so popular
with the Van Alstynes or the Carters. The night the cigar stand was
closed Mr. Sam came to me and leaned over the counter.

"Put the key in a drawer," he said. "I can slip down here after the
lights are out and get a smoke."

"Can't do it, Mr. Van Alstyne," I said. "Got positive orders."

"That doesn't include me." He was still perfectly good-humored.

"Sorry," I said. "Have to have a written order from Mr. Pierce."

He put a silver dollar on the desk between us and looked at me over it.

"Will that open the case?" he asked. But I shook my head.

"Well, I'll be hanged! What the devil sort of order did he give you?"

"He said," I repeated, "that I'd be coaxed and probably bribed to open
the cigar case, and that you'd probably be the first one to do it, but
I was to stick firm; you've been smoking too much, and your nerves are
going."

"Insolent young puppy!" he exclaimed angrily, and stamped away.

So that I was not surprised when on that night, Friday, I was told to be
at the shelter-house at ten o'clock for a protest meeting. Mrs. Sam told
me.

"Something has to be done," she said. "I don't intend to stand much
more. Nobody has the right to say when I shall eat or what. If I want to
eat fried shoe leather, that's my affair."

We met at ten o'clock at the shelter-house, everybody having gone to
bed--Miss Patty, the Van Alstynes and myself. The Dickys were on good
terms again, for a wonder, and when we went in they were in front of the
fire, she on a box and he at her feet, with his head buried in her lap.
He didn't even look up when we entered.

"They're here, Dicky," she said.

"All right!" he answered in a smothered voice. "How many of 'em?"

"Four," she said, and kissed the tip of his ear.

"For goodness sake, Dick!" Mrs. Sam snapped in a disgusted tone, "stop
that spooning and get us so