nything
you can't reach, speak out and we'll wait on you.' And Mis' Binney?'

"Yes," she said. She was a little mite scared, I guess. B-begun to
suspect somethin'."

"Mis' Binney," said I, "y-you can set your cup and sarcer where you've a
mind to.' O-ought to have heard the Judge laugh. Says he to his wife:
'Fanny, I told you Jethro'd get even with you some time for that sarcer
business.'"

This story, strange as it may seem, had a great success at Mr. Merrill's
table. Mr. Merrill and his daughter Susan shrieked with laughter when it
was finished, while Mrs. Merrill and Jane enjoyed themselves quite as
much in their quiet way. Even the two neat Irish maids, who were serving
the supper very much as poor Mis' Binney's had been served, were fain to
leave the dining room abruptly, and one of them disgraced herself at
sight of Jethro when she came in again, and had to go out once mare. Mrs.
Merrill insisted that Jethro should pour out his coffee in what she was
pleased to call the old-fashioned way. All of which goes to prove that
table-silver and cut glass chandeliers do not invariably make their
owners heartless and inhospitable. And Ephraim, whose plan of campaign
had been to eat nothing to speak of and have a meal when he got back to
the hotel, found that he wasn't hungry when he arose from the table.

There was much bantering of Jethro by Mr. Merrill, which the ladies did
not understand--talk of a mighty coalition of the big railroads which was
to swallow up the little railroads. Fortunately, said Mr. Merrill,
humorously, fortunately they did not want his railroad. Or unfortunately,
which was it? Jethro didn't know. He never laughed at anybody's jokes.
But Cynthia, who was listening with one ear while Susan talked into the
other, gathered that Jethro had been struggling with the railroads, and
was sooner or later to engage in a mightier struggle with them. How, she
asked herself in her innocence, was any one, even Uncle Jethro, to
struggle with a railroad? Many other people in these latter days have
asked themselves that very question.

All together the evening at Mr. Merrill's passed off so quickly and so
happily that Ephraim was dismayed when he discovered that it was ten
o'clock, and he began to make elaborate apologies to the ladies. But
Jethro and Mr. Merrill were still closeted together in the dining room:
once Mrs. Merrill had been called to that conference, and had returned
after a while to take her place q