with a large dash of indignation.

"Well, yes, a race between a widow and a girl for a man is about like
one between a young duck and a spring chicken, across a mill-pond--girl
and chicken lose--hey? But let Sallie have him, since you don't need
him. I've got to go home and listen to Augusta talk about my business,
that she knows nothing in the world about, or I won't be ready for town
meeting this afternoon. Women are all fools,--hey?"

"Will you come again, Uncle Peter?" I asked eagerly. I had set out to
offer Uncle Peter a cup of niecely affection, and I had got a good,
stiff bracer to arouse me in return.

"I will, whenever I can escape Augusta," he answered, and there was such
a kindly crackle in his voice that I felt that he had wanted and needed
what I had offered him. "I'll drop in often and analyze the annals of
the town with you. Glad to have you home, child, good young blood to
stir me up--hey?"

And as I sat and watched the Mayor go saunteringly down the street, with
his crustiness carried like a child on his shoulder, which it delighted
him to have knocked off, so that he could philosophize in the restoring
of it to its position, suddenly a realization of the relation of
Glendale to the world in general was forced upon me--and I quailed.

Glendale is like a dozen other small towns in the Harpeth Valley; they
are all drowsy princesses who have just waked up enough to be wondering
what did it. The tentative kiss has not yet disclosed the presence of
the Prince of Revolution, and they are likely to doze for another
century or two. I think I had better go back into the wide world and let