good. When you need a coffin plate you need it awful bad. While your pa
was rampin' around, he said he wouldn't have been surprised to see me
comin' home with a second-hand coffin in the back of the buggy. Who ever
heard of a second-hand coffin? I've always thought his mind was
unsettled by so much readin'.

"I ain't a-sayin' but what some readin' is all right. Some folks has
just moved over to the Ridge and the postmaster's wife was a-showin' me
some papers they get, every week. One is _The Metropolitan Weekly_, and
the other _The Housewife's Companion_. I must say, the stories in those
papers is certainly beautiful.

"Once, when they come after their mail, they was as mad as anything
because the papers hadn't come, but the postmaster's wife was readin'
one of the stories and settin' up nights to do it, so she wa'n't to
blame for not lettin' 'em go until she got through with 'em. They slip
out of the covers just as easy, and nobody ever knows the difference.

[Sidenote: The Doctor's Darling]

"She was tellin' me about one of the stories. It's named _Lovely Lulu,
or the Doctor's Darling_. Lovely Lulu is a little orphant who has to do
most of the housework for a family of eight, and the way they abuse that
child is something awful. The young ladies are forever puttin' ruffled
white skirts into her wash, and makin' her darn the lace on their blue
silk mornin' dresses.

"There's a rich doctor that they're all after and one day little Lulu
happens to open the front-door for him, and he gets a good look at her
for the first time. As she goes upstairs, Arthur Montmorency--that's his