"Mat Wilson and his wife ain't on the very best conjugal terms either. It seems Mat has a felon right under his thumb nail, about the worst place you can have one, he thinks. It's kept him awake nights and made him miserable, so naturally he felt entitled to a good deal of sympathy. And he got it. Everybody has sympathized so much that Clara just got mad and said that that there felon of Mat's isn't half as bad as the one that she had at the end of her thumb two years ago. She says she got hollow-eyed and consumptive looking with hers but that Mat looks about the same as usual, maybe brighter. Anyhow, they've argued and scrapped about their felons so that Clara's aunt's gone off for a visit to Ioway, and Mat says that there sure is a recompense for everything in this world, even felons and domestic misery, and Clara wants to know if he's meaning to insinuate that her aunt is a nuisance, because if he is she ain't going to send his aunt the Christmas present that she's got half done for her. But Mat won't say, just keeps showing his thumb to everybody and talking about silver linings to every cloud. There's no use talking, some men are aggravating. "Mandy Jutlins don't know whether to have the telephone put in or not. She says the Lord knows she has enough children to run all her errands and take all messages and that the two dollars a month comes in handy for a new pair of shoes. And if it's in she says more than likely she'll be wasting her time listening to a lot of silly gossip. Of course that was a foolish remark for Mandy to make, seeing all her friends have telephones. Two or three's took it personal and aren't speaking a word to Mandy but plenty about her. One of them is supposed to have said that it's a fact that Mandy doesn't need a telephone, that she talks enough without it, and that in her opinion the worst kind of a gossip is the kind that stays at home the whole enduring time, never taking pains to see how things really happen and always knowing everything. "Emmy Smith doesn't know what to do with her oldest girl, Eleanor. Eleanor just won't wash the knives and forks and spoons. She'll scrape and scald and polish the pots and pans and does the china beautiful, but she will leave the knives and forks and even hides them away dirty. Did you ever hear of such a thing? Emmy can't explain it unless it's due to the shiftless streak in all the Smiths. "Agnes Hooper's crab-apple jell is about all gone and here it's hardly cool yet. Those boys of hers just want to live on crab-apple jell and Aggie says she's got to the end of her strength and patience, that Charlie'd better pull up and move out among the Mormons where he could have a couple of more wives to help keep those boys filled up. "Jennie Burton's sauerkraut isn't going to keep and hasn't turned out well, she thinks. Fremy Stockton says it's because she forgot to put in a little mite of sugar and altogether too much salt.