agitated Flowerpot returns, with quick indignation, "your arm was always
reaching out whenever you sat in a chair anywhere near me, and whenever
I sang you always kept looking straight into my mouth until it tickled
me. You know you did, you hateful thing! Besides, it wasn't you that I
preferred, at all; it was--oh, it's too ridiculous to tell!"

In her bashful confusion she is about to arise and trip shyly away from
him into the house, when he speaks again.

"Miss POTTS, is your friendship for Miss PENDRAGON and her brother such,
that their execution upon some Friday of next month would be a spectacle
to which you could give no pleased attention?"

"What do you mean, you absurd creature?"

"I mean," continues Mr. BUMSTEAD, "simply this: you know my double loss.
You know that, upon the person of the male PENDRAGON was found an apple
looking and tasting like one which my nephew once had. You know, that
when Miss PENDRAGON went from here she wore an alpaca waist which looked
as though it had been exposed more than once to the rain.--See the
point?"

FLORA gives a startled look, and says: "I don't see it."

"Suppose," he goes on--"suppose that I go to a magistrate, and say:
'Judge, I voted for you, and can influence a large foreign vote for you
again. I have lost a nephew who was very fond of apples, and a black
alpaca umbrella of great value. A young Southerner, who has not lived in
this State long enough to vote, has been found in possession of an apple
singularly like the kind generally eaten by my missing relative, and his