y
Jack Robinson."

"I suppose if I hadn't been worried about the vase I would have thought
of it," said Mrs. Carraway, meekly. "It worries me to see a $150 vase
used for a purpose that a fifty-cent calico bag would serve quite as
well."

Carraway glanced searchingly at his wife.

"Well--ah--hem!" he said. "Quite right, my dear, quite right. I think,
on the whole, you would better get the calico bag."

For a few days after this little discussion Carraway was very reticent
about his utilitarian ideas. The more he thought of his wife's retort
the less secure he felt in his own position, and he was very sorry he
had spoken about boomerangs and solar-plexus retorts. But with time he
recovered his equanimity, and early in December returned to his old
ways.

"I've just been up in the attic," he said to his wife one Sunday
afternoon, when he appeared on the scene rather dusty of aspect.
"There's a whole lot of useful stuff up there going to waste. I found
four old beaver hats, any one of which would make a very good
waste-basket for the spare bedroom if it was suitably trimmed; and I
don't see why you don't take these straw hats of mine and make
work-baskets of them." Here he held out two relics of bygone fashions
to his wife. Mrs. Carraway took them silently. She was so filled with
suppressed laughter over her husband's suggestions that she hardly dared
to speak lest she should give way to her mirth, and a man does not
generally appreciate mirth at his own expense after he has been
rummaging in an attic for an hour or more, filling his lungs and
covering his clothes and hands with dust.

However, after a moment she managed to blurt out, "Perhaps I can make
one of them dainty enough to send to your mother for her Christmas
present."

"I was about to suggest that very same thing," said Carraway, brushing
the dust from his sleeve. "Either you could send it or Mollie"--Mollie
was Mr. Carraway's small daughter. "I think Mollie's grandmother would
be more pleased with a gift of that kind than with one of the useless
little fallals that children give their grandparents on Christmas Day.
What did she give her last year?"

The question was opportune, for it gave Mrs. Carraway a chance to laugh
outright with some other ostensible object than her husband. She availed
herself of the chance, threw her head back, and shook convulsively.

"She sent her a ball of shaving-paper," Mrs. Carraway said.

A faint smile flitted over Ca