making molasses candy!"

"It strikes me," I said, trying hard to be calm, "that after making
the candy he decided to make a monkey of me. Darn the blame thing,
it won't let go! I suppose I've got to be a perpetual furniture
mover the rest of my life!"

Just then Uncle Peter came bubbling into the kitchen, talking in
short explosions like a bottle of vichy, and I collaborated with
the chair in a hasty squatty-vous!

"Two women on the piazza," he fizzed; "been talking to them an hour
and all I could get out of them was 'yes' and 'no.' Not bad
looking, but profoundly dumb."

"Hush!" said Clara J., glancing uneasily at me and then back at
Uncle Peter, as she raised a warning finger to her lips.

"Oh, they can't hear me," the old gentleman went on; "John, you
better go out and see them. They have a card with your name
written on it. I'm no lady's man, anyhow."

"Do they look like queens?" Clara J. asked, uneasily.

"Well, they aren't exactly Cleopatras, but not bad, not bad!" he
gurgled.

"Is one older than the other?" Clara J. cross-questioned.

"Might be mother and daughter," Uncle Peter fancied.