eckly ridic'lous; do you at all realize what you're doin'?"

"I won't," Mrs. Tutts spoke with full knowledge of the deadly insult; "I
won't until I git a few handfuls of your _red_ hair!"

Mrs. Jackson stopped in her tracks and fear fell from her. Her roving
eye searched the room for a weapon and her glance fell upon the potted
geranium. Mrs. Tutts already had possessed herself of the scissors.

"My hair may be red, Mis' Tutts," her shrill voice whistled through the
space left by her missing teeth, as she stood with the geranium poised
aloft, "but it's _my own_!"

Mrs. Tutts staggered under the crash of pottery and the thud of packed
dirt upon her head. She sank to the floor, but rose again, dazed and
blinking, her warlike spirit temporarily crushed.

"There's the door, Mis' Tutts." Mrs. Jackson drew herself up with regal
hauteur and pointed. "Now get the hell out of here!"

X

ESSIE TISDALE'S ENFORCED ABNEGATION

There was one place at least where the popularity of the little belle of
Crowheart showed no signs of diminution and this was in the menagerie of
domestic animals which occupied quarters in the rear of the large
backyard of the hotel. The phlegmatic black omnibus and dray horses
neighed for sugar at her coming, the calf she had weaned from the wild
range cow bawled at sight of her, while various useless dogs leaped
about her in ecstasy, and a mere glimpse of her skirt through the
kitchen doorway was sufficient to start such a duet from the two
excessively vital and omniverous mammals whom Essie had ironically named
Alphonse and Gaston that Van Lennop, who had the full benefit of this
chorus, often wished the time had arrived for Alphonse and Gaston to
fulfil their destiny. Yet he found diversion, too, in her efforts to
instil into their minds the importance of politeness and unselfishness
and frequently he laughed aloud at the fragments of conversation which
reached him when he heard her laboring with them in the interest of
their manners.

A loud and persistent squealing caused Van Lennop to raise his eyes from
his book and look out upon the pole corral wherein the vociferous
Alphonse and Gaston were confined. Essie Tisdale was perched upon the
top pole, seemingly deaf to their shrill importunities; depression was
in every line of her slim figure, despondency in the droop of her head.
Her attitude held his attention and set him wondering, for he thought
of her always as the embodiment of lau