referee gives the fight to you; here's the gate receipts!"

With this I handed her a ten-spot which she looked at suspiciously
and said, "If ever I get that ould potato pounder over in New York
it's exercise I'll give him! Sure, I'll run him from th' Bat'hry
to Harlem widout a shtop for meals, bad cess to him!"

Having delivered this parting knock at Uncle Peter, the queen of
the kitchen flounced out of the house, followed by the younger one
who had played only a thinking part in the strenuous scene.

Aunt Martha still sat motionless in the chair, quite on the verge
of tears, when Clara J. went over to her and said, "Why didn't you
tell me you were going after servants, Auntie?"

"I wanted to surprise you," the old lady replied, plaintively.
"They were to be my contribution to the household."

"You handed us a surprise, all right; didn't she, Uncle Peter?" I
chirped in with a view to laughing off the whole affair, but just
then a series of startling shrieks caused us all to rush for the
piazza.

At the gate we beheld a kicking, struggling mass of lingerie and
bad dialect, which presently resolved itself into the forms of my
temporary relatives who were now busily engaged in macadamizing the
roadway with their heads.

Then Tacks came yelling on the scene: "I thought maybe they was
female burglars so I stretched a wire acrost the gate and they was