Peters has a pyramid of old tomato cans and bric-a-brac of that sort
piled up in his back yard. Now, you see if that woman don't bid on
those cans until she runs them up to a dollar apiece, and then come
lugging them around to our house with some extraordinary idea about
loading them up with gunpowder and selling them to the government
during the next war for bombshells. If she does, that winds the thing
up. I'm a good-natured man, but no woman shall bring home three
hundred tomato cans to my house and retain a claim upon my affections.
I'll resign first."

My feeling was that he was a little mixed in his notions about
bric-a-brac, but that he really had a grievance.

* * * * *

Potts told me, also, that he came home very late one night recently,
and when he went up stairs his wife and children were in bed asleep.
He undressed as softly as he could, and then, as he felt thirsty, he
thought he would get a drink of water. Fortunately, he saw a gobletful
standing on the washstand, placed there for him, evidently, by Mrs.
Potts. He seized it and drank the liquid in two or three huge gulps,
but just as he was draining the goblet he gagged, dropped the glass to
the floor, where it was shivered to atoms, while he ejected something
from his mouth. He was certain that a live animal of some kind had
been in the water, and that he had nearly swallowed it. This theory
was confirmed when he saw the object which he spat out go bounding
over the floor. He pursued it, kicking a couple of chairs over while
doing so, and at last he put his foot on it and held it. Of course
Mrs. Potts was wide awake by this time and scared nearly to death, and
the baby was screaming at the top of its lungs. Mrs. Potts got out of