ed; "it's Mary McGuire that's the
confounded sinner this time."

"Well, what's Mary been up to now?"

"Mary McGuire's got one of her attacks of house-cleanin' on, and I
tell you it's a bad one. Drat the nuisance."

"Why Jonathan! Don't swear like that."

"Well, I be hanged if I can stand this sort of thing much longer.
Mary, she's the deuce and all, when she once gets started
house-cleanin'."

"Oh dear," Mrs. Betty sympathized. "It's a bother, isnt it? But it
doesn't take so long, and it will soon be over, won't it?"

"Well, I don't know as to that," replied Jonathan disconsolately.
"Mary McGuire seems to think that the whole house must be turned wrong
side out, and every bit of furniture I've got deposited in the front
yard. Now, Mrs. Betty, you just look over there once. There's yards
and yards of clothes-line covered with carpets and rugs and curtains
I've been ordered to clean. It's somethin' beyond words. The whole
place looks as if there was goin' to be an auction, or a rummage sale,
or as if we had moved out 'cause the house was afire. Then she falls
to with tubs of boilin' hot soap-suds, until it fills your lungs, and
drips off the ends of your nose and your fingers, and smells like
goodness knows what."

"Jonathan!" Hepsey reproved.

"Are you exaggerating just the least bit?" echoed Betty.

"No ma'am, I'm not. Words can't begin to tell the tale when Mary gets
the fever on. I thought I noticed symptoms of house-cleanin' last
week. Mary was eyein' things round the house, and givin' me less and
less to eat, and lookin' at me with that cold-storage stare of hers
that means death or house-cleanin'."

"But, Mr. Jackson," Betty pleaded, "your house has to be cleaned
sometimes, you know."

"Sure thing," Jonathan replied. "But there's altogether too much of
this house-cleanin' business goin' on to suit me. I don't see any dirt
anywheres."

"That's because you are a man," Hepsey retorted. "Men never see dirt
until they have to take a shovel to it."

Jonathan sighed hopelessly. "What's the use of bein' a widower," he
continued, "if you can't even have your own way in your own house,
I'd just like to know? I have to eat odds and ends of cold victuals
out here in the woodshed, or anywhere Mary McGuire happens to drop
'em."

"That's tough luck, Mr. Jackson. You just come over to dinner with
Donald and me and have a square meal."

"I'd like to awful well, Mrs. Maxwell, but I dasn't: if I didn't camp
out