"Exactly!" continued the "wife's mother." "Now inoculate at once, say I,
before the child's short-coated."

Agamemnon rose from his seat, and advancing deliberately and solemnly to
the table at which his wife and his wife's mother were seated, he slowly
raised his dexter arm above his head, and then, having converted his hand
into a fist, he dashed his contracted digitals upon the rosewood as though
he dared not trust himself with more than one word, and that one
was--"Vaccination!"

Mrs. Waddledot's first impulse was to jump out of her turban, in which she
would have succeeded had not the mystic rolls of gauze which constituted
that elaborate head-dress been securely attached to the chestnut "front"
with which she had sought for some years to cheat the world into a
forgetfulness of her nativity.

"I was warned of this! I was warned of this!" exclaimed the disarranged
woman, as soon as she obtained breath enough for utterance. "But I
wouldn't believe it. I was told that the member for Puddingbury had driven
one wife to her grave and the other to drinking.--I was told that it would
run in the family, and that Mr. _A.C._ Applebite would be no better than
Mr. I. Applebite!"

"Oh! Mama--you really wrong Aggy," exclaimed Theresa.

"It's lucky for you that you think so, my dear. If ever there was an
ill-used woman, you are that unhappy individual. Oh, that ever--I--should
live--to see a child of mine--have a child of hers vaccinated against her
wish!" and here Mrs. Waddledot (as it is emphatically styled) burst into
tears; not that we mean to imply that she was converted into an explosive