hear more?
Twenty-five! Did you say thirty?" and he looked at Jack, who half
nodded, and the bids, raised five cents at a time, rolled on between
Jack and Howard and another young man, who cared nothing for the gown,
but liked the fun. Fifty cents was reached at last, and there the
bidding ceased and Mr. Bills was ringing the changes on half a dollar,
half a dollar, for a _robe de chambre_;--he called it that sometimes,
and sometimes a tea gown, and once a _robe de nu-it_, which brought
peals of laughter from those who understood the term, as he certainly
did not. In the dining-room Mrs. Biggs was busy washing dishes, but kept
her ears open to the sounds in the next room, knowing Mr. Bills was
there and anxious to get in and see the fun. When the last shouts
reached her she dropped her dish towel, saying to her companion, "I
can't stand it any longer. I've got to go and see what Bills is up to!"

Elbowing her way in she caught sight of her gown held aloft by Mr.
Bills, and heard his voluble "Going, going, at fifty cents."

She had thought it low at a dollar, and here it was as good as gone for
fifty cents,--to whom she did not know or care,--probably the scrub
woman who had looked at it earlier in the evening and offered sixty. Her
blood was up, and making her way to Mr. Bills she snatched at her gown,
exclaiming, "It's mine, and shall never go for fifty cents, I tell you!"

Here was a diversion, and Mr. Bills met it beautifully.

"Jess so, Miss Biggs," he said, bowing low to her. "I admire your taste
and judgment. I've told 'em time and time over it was worth more than
fifty. The fact is they don't know what is what, but you and I do. Shall
we double right up and shame 'em by sayin' a dollar? A dollar! A dollar!
and going!"

Mrs. Biggs did not know that she assented, she was so excited, and
afterwards declared she didn't: but the final Going was said, with
"Gone! to Mrs. Biggs, for one dollar. Cheap at that!"

At this juncture, when the hilarity was at its height and Mrs. Biggs was
marching off with her property, which she said she should never pay
for, Tim appeared, hatless and coatless, but with the box in his hand.
When Jack locked the door he pushed the key further under the mat than
was usual, and failing to find it at once, and being in a hurry, Tim
made his entrance into the house through the pantry window, upsetting
the pan of milk and a bowl of something, he did not stop to see what, in
his haste to find