so brazen about it! I don't know what to think."

Gammon knitted his brows and gazed round the kitchen.

"I think Polly's straight," he observed at length. "I don't seem to
notice anything wrong with her except her cheek and temper. She'll
have to be taken down a peg one of these days, but I don't envy the
man that'll have the job. It won't be me, for certain," he added
with a laugh.

Moggie came into the room, bringing a telegram.

"For me?" said Gammon. "Just what I expected." Reading, he broadened
his visage into a grin of infinite satisfaction. "'Please explain
absence. Hope nothing wrong.' How kind of them, ain't it! Yesterday
they chucked me; now they're polite. Reply-paid too; very
considerate. They shall have their reply."

He laid the blank form on the table and wrote upon it in pencil,
every letter beautifully shaped in a first-rate commercial hand:

"Go to Bath and get your heads shaved." "You ain't a-goin' to send
that!" exclaimed Mrs. Bubb, when he had held the message to her for
perusal.

"It'll do them good. They're like Polly--want taking down a peg."

Moggie ran off with the paper to the waiting boy, and Mr. Gammon
laughed for five minutes uproariously.