of the book he is writing against your sex?" remarked Billy Magee.
"Not exactly that," Mrs. Quimby answered, brushing back a wisp of gray hair, "but he's discussed it in my presence, ignoring me at the time. You see, he comes down here and reads his latest chapters to Quimby o' nights, and I've caught quite a lot of it on my way between the cook-stove and the sink."
"I ain't no judge of books," remarked Mrs. Norton from a comfortable rocking-chair, "but I'll bet that one's the limit."
"You're right, ma am," Mrs. Quimby told her. "I ain't saying that some of it ain't real pretty worded, but that s just to hide the falsehood underneath. My land, the lies there is in that book! You don't need to know much about history to know that Jake Peters has made it over to fit his argument, and that he ain't made it over so well but what the old seams show here and there, and the place where the braid was is plain as daylight."
After ten more minutes of bustle, Mrs. Quim-
