ers that girl gets from young
men. So mad she always gets at me if she knows I talk about them."

"Mrs. Shongut, you'll laugh when I tell you; but already in the school
my Jeannie gets little notes what the little boys write to her. Mad it
makes me like anything; but what can you do when you got a pretty girl?"

"A young man in Peoria, Mrs. Lissman, such beautiful letters he writes
Renie, never in my life did I read. Such language, Mrs. Lissman; just
like out of a song-book! Not a time my Renie goes out that I don't go
right to her desk to read 'em--that's how beautiful he writes. In Green
Springs she met him."

"Ain't it a pleasure, Mrs. Shongut, to have grand letters like that?
Even with my little Jeannie, though it makes me so mad, still I--"

"But do you think my Renie will have any of them? 'Not,' she says, 'if
they was lined in gold.'"

"I guess she got plenty beaus. Say, I ain't so blind that I don't see
Sollie Spitz on your porch every--"

"Sollie Spitz! Ach, Mrs. Lissman, believe me, there's nothing to that!
My Renie since a little child likes reading and writing like he does.
I tell her papa we made a mistake not to keep her in school like she
wanted."

"My Jeannie--"

"She loves learning, that girl. Under her pillow yesterday I found a
book of verses about flowers. Where she gets such a mind, Mrs. Lissman,
I don't know. But Sollie Spitz! Say, we don't want no poets in the
family."

"I should say not! But I guess she gets all the good chances she wants."

"And more. A young man from Cincinnati--if I tell you his name, right
away you know him--twice her papa brought him out to supper after they
had business down-town together--only twice; and now every week he sends
her five pounds--"

"Just think!"

"And such roses, Mrs. Lissman! You seen for yourself when I sent you one
the other day. Right in his own hothouse he grows 'em, Mrs. Lissman."

"Just think!"

"If I tell you his name, Mrs. Lissman, right away you know his firm. In
Cincinnati they say he's got the finest house up on the hill--musical
chairs, that play when you sit on 'em. Twice every week he sends her--"

"Grand!"

"'I tell you,' I says to her papa, 'her cousins over in Kingston Place
got tickets to take the young men to theaters with and automobiles to
ride them round in; but, if I say so myself, not one of them has better
chances than my Renie, right here in our little flat.'"

Mrs. Lissman folded her arms in a shelf across h