old thing she just sat down and cried. She cried till she was too
tired to care and then went to Jessup's for some stove polish. On the
way she met Judy Parks who told her that Dick had a new kind of polish
that gave a beautiful shine without hardly any work. So Mary got that
and it proved to be all Judy said it was and in no time at all Mary
turned that old stove of hers into a shining glory. And just as she
was standing back admiring her work in comes Cissie, wringing her
hands. The baby had poked out every last one of those isinglass
windows while Cissie was in the kitchen warming up his milk. And there
you are. And there's people that say there is no God and no justice in
this world.

"Josephine Rand's starting in on her rugs and begging rags from friends
and enemies. She's going a little easy though since last week. She
cut up what Ted says was a perfectly good pair of his pants. He had
them hanging up in the basement and was hoping Josephine would wash and
press them some day. He kept them down in the basement because he knew
that if he left them in his closet she'd give them away to a hobo on
account of her always feeling so sorry for tramps and believing
everything they tell her. Ted says he always liked these particular
pants on account of them making him look slim and being made of the
same kind of cloth as his first long pair of pants that he got as a
boy. So he was cherishing them and Josephine goes and cuts them into
tatters. He's so mad, she says she don't dare leave a rag rug in his
sight.

"Mat Wilson and his wife ain't on the very best conjugal terms either.
It seems Mat has a felon right under his thumb nail, about the worst
place you can have one, he thinks. It's kept him awake nights and made
him miserable, so naturally he felt entitled to a good deal of
sympathy. And he got it. Everybody has sympathized so much that Clara
just got mad and said that that there felon of Mat's isn't half as bad
as the one that she had at the end of her thumb two years ago. She
says she got hollow-eyed and consumptive looking with hers but that Mat
looks about the same as usual, maybe brighter. Anyhow, they've argued
and scrapped about their felons so that Clara's aunt's gone off for a
visit to Ioway, and Mat says that there sure is a recompense for
everything in this world, even felons and domestic misery, and Clara
wants to know if he's meaning to insinuate that her aunt is a nuisance,
because if