aning of domestic economy was intensely literal.
Also she would have to pay her own railroad fare to Boggs City, no
matter whence she came, the same to be refunded in case she proved
acceptable. He described himself as a widower of means, young in spirit
though somewhat past middle age, of attractive personality and an
experienced husband.

The present Mrs. Loop was the result of this spirit of enterprise on his
part. She came from Hoboken, New Jersey, and her name was Anna Petersen
before it was altered to Loop. She more than fulfilled the requirements.
As Mr. Loop himself proclaimed, there wasn't "a robuster woman in
Bramble County;" she was exceedingly sound of lung, and equally sound of
limb. What pleased him more than anything else, she was a Swede. He had
always heard that the Swedish women were the most frugal, the most
industrious, and a shade more amenable to male authority than any
others.

Anna was a towering, rather overdeveloped female. She revealed such
astonishing propensities for work that she had been a bride but little
more than a week when Eliphalet decided that he could dispense with the
services of a hired man. A little later he discovered, much to his
surprise, that there really wasn't quite enough work about the house to
keep her occupied all the time, and so he allowed her to take over some
of the chores he had been in the habit of performing, such as feeding
the horses and pigs, and ultimately to chop and carry in the firewood,
wash the buckboard, milk the cows, and--in spare moments--to weed the
garden. He began to regard himself as the most fortunate man alive. Anna
appeared to thrive where her predecessors had withered and wasted away.
True, she ate considerably more than any of them, but he was willing to
put up with that, provided she didn't go so far to eat as much as _all_
of them. There were times, however, when he experienced a great deal of
uneasiness on that score.

The fly avoided his ointment for something like three months. Then it
came and settled and bade fair to remain and thrive upon the fat of his
land. Anna's mother came to live with them. He now realized that he had
been extremely shortsighted. He should have stipulated in his
advertisement that none except motherless young women need apply.

Mrs. Petersen was his fifth mother-in-law, and he dolefully found
himself contending with the paraphrase: like mother, like daughter. His
latest mother-in-law proved to be a voracio