her to abide with me, and put my slippers and pipe away every day in
places where they cannot be found of evenings.

May Martha's father was a man hidden behind whiskers and spectacles. He
lived for bugs and butterflies and all insects that fly or crawl or buzz
or get down your back or in the butter. He was an etymologist, or words
to that effect. He spent his life seining the air for flying fish of
the June-bug order, and then sticking pins through 'em and calling 'em
names.

He and May Martha were the whole family. He prized her highly as a
fine specimen of the _racibus humanus_ because she saw that he had
food at times, and put his clothes on right side before, and kept
his alcohol-bottles filled. Scientists, they say, are apt to be
absent-minded.

There was another besides myself who thought May Martha Mangum one to be
desired. That was Goodloe Banks, a young man just home from college. He
had all the attainments to be found in books--Latin, Greek, philosophy,
and especially the higher branches of mathematics and logic.

If it hadn't been for his habit of pouring out this information and
learning on every one that he addressed, I'd have liked him pretty well.
But, even as it was, he and I were, you would have thought, great pals.

We got together every time we could because each of us wanted to pump
the other for whatever straws we could to find which way the wind blew
from the heart of May Martha Mangum--rather a mixed metaphor; Goodloe
Banks would never have been guilty of that. That is the way of rivals.