ent in.

Just as Miss Mattie was withdrawing the meat from the oven, there
came a knock at the door.

"Goodness, gracious!" she exclaimed. "Who can that be now? Will,
will you see who that is? I can't go."

"Sure!" said Red, and went to the door. There stood two women of
that indefinite period between forty and sixty, very decently
dressed and with some agitation visible in the way they fussily
adjusted various parts of their attire.

They started at the sudden spectacle of the huge man who said
pleasantly, "Howderdo, ladies!"

"Why, how do you do?" replied the taller instantly, and in a voice
she had never heard before. "I hope you're well, sir?" A remark
which filled her with surprise.

"Thanks--I'm able to assume the perpendicular, as you can see,"
responded Red with a handsome smile of welcome. "How do you find
yourself?"

"I'm pretty well," said the flustered lady. "How do you do?"

"Durned if we ain't right back where we started from," mourned Red
to himself. "If it's one of the customs of this country saying
'howderdo' an hour at a stretch, I pass it up." Aloud, he said,
"Coming along fine--how's your father?" "Cuss me if I don't shift
the cut a little, anyhow," he added mentally.

"Why, he's very well indeed!" exclaimed the lady with fervor.
"How--" She got no further on the query, for the other woman
interrupted in a tone of scandal. "Mary Ann Demilt! How can you
talk like that! Your father's been dead this five year last
August!"

The horror of the moment was broken by the appearance of Miss
Mattie, crying hospitably on seeing the visitors, "Why, Mary and
Pauline! How do you do?"

The shorter one--Pauline--looked up and said sharply, "We're well
enough, Mattie." She was weary of the form.

"Come right in," said Miss Mattie. "You're just in time for
dinner."

There was a great protest at this. They "hadn't a moment to
spare," they were "just going down to the corner, and had stopped
to say," etc., etc.

"You've got to help me," said Miss Mattie. "Will here has invited
the boys who are working for him to stay to dinner, and it won't be
any more than Christian for you to help me out."

"Ladies!" said Red. "If you don't want to starve a man who's
deserving of a better fate, take off your fixings and come out to
dinner. No," he continued to their protests, which he observed
were growing weaker. "It's no trouble at all: there's plenty for
everybody--come one, come all, thi