This unexpected and surprising slang from so grave and dignified a man set everybody to laughing. Miss Nebeker bowed in smiling acknowledgement of what appeared to her to be a flattering anticipation of her humor, and taking her manuscript from some hiding-place in her drapery, made a grimace and began to read. Mrs. Philpot's cat, in the absence of its mistress, had taken up with the elocutionist and now came to rub and purr around her feet while she recited. This was a small matter, but in school or church or lecture-hall, small matters attract attention. The fact that the cat now and again mewed plaintively set some of the audience to smiling and even to laughing. Such apparent approval of her new rendition thrilled Miss Nebeker to her heart's core. Her voice deepened, her intonations caught the spirit of her mood, and she read wildly well. Every one who has even a smattering of the _patois_ current in New Jersey, will understand how effective it might be made in the larynx of a cunning elocutionist; and then whoever has had the delicious experience of hearing a genuine Jerseyman play on the jewsharp will naturally jump to a correct conclusion concerning the pathos of the subject which Miss Nebeker had in hand. She felt its influence and threw all her power into it. Heavy as she was, she arose on her tip-toes at the turning point of the story and gesticulated vehemently. The cat, taken by surprise, leaped aside a pace or two and glared in a half-frightened way, with each separate hair on its tail set stiffly. Of course there was more laughter which the reader took as applause. "A brace of cats!" exclaimed the historian. "A brace of cats!" Nobody knew what he meant, but the laughing increased, simply for the reason that there was nothing to laugh at. Discovering pretty soon that Miss Nebeker really meant no harm by her manoeuvres, the cat went back to rub and purr at her feet. Then Miss Nebeker let down her heel on the cat's tail, at the same time beginning with the pathetic part of _The Jerseyman's Jewsharp_. The unearthly squall that poor puss gave forth was wholly lost on the excited elocutionist, but it quite upset the audience, who, not wishing to appear rude, used their handkerchiefs freely. Miss Nebeker paused to give full effect to a touching line. The cat writhed and rolled and clawed the air and wailed like a lost spirit in its vain endeavor to free its tail; but Miss Nebeker, all unconscious of the situation, and seeing her hearers convulsed and wiping tears from their faces, redoubled her elocutionary artifices and poured incomparable feeling into her voice. Suddenly the tortured and writhing animal uttered a scream of blood-curdling agony and lunged at Miss Nebeker's ankles with tooth and claw. She was in the midst of the passage where the dying Jerseyman lifts himself on his elbow and calls for his trusty Jewsharp: