striped muslin. Mrs. Daggett conscientiously wore stripes at all
seasons of the year: she had read somewhere that stripes impart to
the most rotund of figures an appearance of slimness totally at
variance with the facts. As for blue and white, her favorite
combination of stripes, any fabric in those colors looked cool and
clean; and there was a vague strain of poetry in Mrs. Daggett's
nature which made her lift her eyes to a blue sky filled with
floating white clouds with a sense of rapturous satisfaction wholly
unrelated to the state of the weather.

"G'long, Dolly!" she bade the reluctant animal, with a gentle slap of
leathern reins over a rotund back. "Git-ap!"

"Dolly," who might have been called Cæsar, both by reason of his sex
and a stubbornly dominant nature, now fortunately subdued by years of
chastening experience, strode slowly forward, his eyes rolling, his
large hoofs stirring up heavy clouds of dust. There were
sweet-smelling meadows stacked with newly-cured hay on either side of
the road, and tufts of red clover blossoms exhaling delicious odors
of honey almost under his saturnine nose; but he trotted ponderously
on, sullenly aware of the gentle hand on the reins and the mild,
persistent voice which bade him "Git-ap, Dolly!"

Miss Lois Daggett, carrying a black silk bag, which contained a
prospectus of the invaluable work which she was striving to introduce
to an unappreciative public, halted the vehicle before it had reached
the outskirts of the village.

"Where you going, Abby?" she demanded, in the privileged tone of
authority a wife should expect from her husband's female relatives.