hopes of her relative, “jist wait till I drawr up the blinds.”

The Wopp parlor was seldom entered, except on very special occasions or when Mrs. Wopp with formality and no undue haste dusted the furniture. The room had an air of solemnity and gloom, absent in the cheerful dining-room where the family usually sat. A homemade rag carpet covered the floor. Six slippery, horsehair chairs, one of them a rocker, and a horsehair couch, which did not invite confidence, were ranged stiffly around the sides of the room. In one corner was an ancient organ, wheezy and querulous with neglect, and in another stood a lofty what-not, on whose numerous shelves were deposited the family treasures. Here, was a woolly lamb at one time beloved of Moses; there his tin savings bank. Stiffly upright stood Betty’s wax doll Hannah, seldom played with and then only for a few minutes at a time. Mrs. Wopp was represented by a few shell boxes and a match box of china flanked by a sleek china cat.

In the very centre of the room stood a small table swathed in a hand-painted felt drape. On this reposed the huge family Bible in which was chronicled the marriages, births and deaths of the Wopp family during the last three generations.

On the wall hung a gilt-framed portrait, which rumor said represented Ebenezer Wopp, a wreath of carefully made wax flowers, a silver coffin-plate framed and bearing the name and date of demise of Mr. Wopp’s mother, and two or three colored chromos.

“Betty, play us a toon,” requested Mr. Wopp who was very fond of music.

Without further urging the child began to pick out with one finger a complicated melody which Mrs. Wopp assured the audience was “Dare to be a Daniel.”

“Aint that wonderful Miss Gordon? An’ Betty never had a lesson in her life. She jist naterly takes to music,” said Mrs. Wopp complacently.

“It certainly is wonderful,” agreed Nell with perfect truth.

“Do you know that piece of music called ‘The Rose of Larst Summer’?” inquired the musical connoisseur.

Nell confessed she had heard of it.

“Will you please play it fer us then, it is so touchin’. You will find the music on the organ.”

While the strains of this enlivening classic were issuing from the asthmatic instrument, Moses and Betty in the more secular atmosphere of the hall were trying to fit the time to “Old Dan Tucker” their favorite dance.

“Now ef you would jist play ‘Home Sweet Home’ with variations, my dear, we’ll arterwards hev a game of crokinole. Crokinole is sich an amusin’ game.”

Miss Gordon complied, then followed the old favorite with a two-step played in as sprightly a manner as the organ would allow.

The young dancers in the hall found the change of music decidedly exhilarating, as an occasional whoop testified.

“Bully fer you, ’s Gordon,” shouted the excited Moses leaping furiously. “Keep her goin’. Ole Dan Tucker jist fits that toon.”

“Shame on you Moses, rampagin’ an’ bellerin’ there like a gang of coyotes,” remonstrated his mother.

The strains of “Red Wing” having died away, Mrs. Wopp busied herself setting up the crokinole board. “Me and Par won’t play, jist the young folks,” she announced.

“Hurry Betty and set opposite me so’s we kin play together,” said Moses, unwittingly giving Cupid his innings.

“You’re a brilliant youth Moses,” smiled Howard approvingly, “and sure to get on in life. You don’t appreciate your own cleverness half as much as I do.”

Moses stared, wondering at this unusual compliment.

In the meantime Mr. Wopp sitting precariously on the edge of the sofa was examining for at least the two-hundredth time the red plush album which contained the records of the Wopp family, past and present, in picture form. He looked long and earnestly at a tin-type representing a plump, velvet-coated, mop-haired boy of twelve. He sighed deeply.

“I must of looked like that Lize or the picter couldn’t of been took.” Ruefully he rubbed his bald crown.

“The fleetin’ of youth is most sartin,” answered his wife, coining this epigram on the shortness of life’s spring-time, and sighing as she spoke. The good lady herself was looking through a stereoscope at some views and finding one of Niagara Falls she endeavored to cheer her despondent husband.

“Do you remember when we went to Niagary Falls on our weddin’ tower, Ebenezer? We seen this here whirlpool an’ Goat Island an’ the hull show. Them was the happy days.”

Mrs. Wopp rose from her chair and seating herself on the sofa beside her husband took his thin hand in her substantial one, squeezing it openly.

Out of the tail of her eye Betty noted this little touch of sentiment and was much impressed.

“Be keerful how you shoot that checker Betty or we’re goin’ to git beat,” admonished Moses. He found himself opposed to no mean antagonists.

Awakened to the fact of her son’s existence and perhaps as an antidote to her unusual display of sentiment, Mrs. Wopp spoke rather sharply. “Moses, time you an’ Betty was in bed. You won’t want to git up in the mornin’ an’ milk the cows.” Later left alone in the lower part of the house she stood arms akimbo in the middle of the kitchen gazing at the door through which Nell Gordon had just departed. Shaking her head she said mysteriously, “I kalkerlate as how things is a-settin’ in that way.”