in helpless dismay. "Mercies upon us! I thought you surely had dogs enough of your own."
"Why, honey," the colonel expostulated, "you 've let the niggers chunk my dogs till they are no manner account."
"Well, I do hate hound-dogs!" exclaimed Miss Lou; "sneaking around, sticking their noses in the pots and pans, and squalling like they 're killed if you lift your hand. Why, the foxes come right up in the yard and take off the geese and ducks, where your dogs could see them if they were n't too lazy to open their eyes."
"Those are just the foxes we 're going to catch, honey," remarked the colonel soothingly.
"Well, I 'd rather feed the foxes a whole year than to have forty or fifty hound-dogs quartered on this place three or four days."
The colonel made no reply, and after a while his wife remarked, pleasantly, if not cheerfully, "Well, I guess I 'll have bigger troubles than that before I die. If I don't, it will be a mercy."
"If you don't, honey, you 'll live and die a happy woman," responded the colonel.
