one, and it's dying to hear of her darlin' blessed in town, and of who
cuts her hair, and where she gets her gownds, and whose pills--"

The farmer interrupted her irritably.

"Divide a couple o' hundred thousand and more by forty-five and a half,"
he said. "Do wait, mother; all in good time. Forty-five and a-half,
brother Tony; that was your sum--ah!--you mentioned it some time back--
half of what? Is that half a fraction, as they call it? I haven't
forgot fractions, and logareems, and practice, and so on to algebrae,
where it always seems to me to blow hard, for, whizz goes my head in a
jiffy, as soon as I've mounted the ladder to look into that country. How
'bout that forty-five and a half, brother Tony, if you don't mind
condescending to explain?"

"Forty-five and a half?" muttered Anthony, mystified.

"Oh, never mind, you know, if you don't like to say, brother Tony." The
farmer touched him up with his pipe-stem.

"Five and a half," Anthony speculated. "That's a fraction you got hold
of, brother William John,--I remember the parson calling out those names
at your wedding: 'I, William John, take thee, Susan;' yes, that's a
fraction, but what's the good of it?"

"What I mean is, it ain't forty-five and half of forty-five. Half of
one, eh? That's identical with a fraction. One--a stroke--and two under
it."

"You've got it correct," Anthony assented.