respecting mule ever did such a thing as that, and no man would think
of it except with horror. There is absolutely no defence against a
creature who will rub your head with loving, gentle fingers after she
has worked you up to the point where you could kill her with
pleasure--or at least so said Mr. Blithers with rueful frequency.

Mr. and Mrs. Blithers had been discussing royalty. Up to the previous
week they had restricted themselves to the nobility, but as an event
of unexampled importance had transpired in the interim, they now felt
that it would be the rankest stupidity to consider any one short of a
Prince Royal in picking out a suitable husband--or, more properly
speaking, consort--for their only daughter, Maud Applegate Blithers,
aged twenty.

Mrs. Blithers long ago had convinced her husband that no ordinary
human being of the male persuasion was worthy of their daughter's
hand, and had set her heart on having nothing meaner than a Duke on
the family roll,--(Blithers alluded to it for a while as the pay-
roll)--, with the choice lying between England and Italy. At first,
Blithers, being an honest soul, insisted that a good American
gentleman was all that anybody could ask for in the way of a son-in-
law, and that when it came to a grandchild it would be perfectly
proper to christen him Duke--lots of people did!--and that was about
all that a title amounted to anyway. She met this with the retort
that Maud might marry a man named Jones, and how would Duke Jones
sound? He weakly suggested that they could christen him Marmaduke
and--but she reminded him of his oft-repeated boast that there was
nothing in the world too good for Maud and instituted a pictorial
campaign against his prejudices by painting in the most alluring
colours the picture of a ducal palace in which the name of Jones