"Perhaps it may all turn out for the best," she said, "and you may be elected, and that would be splendid. But it would be an awfully funny thing for a dog-fight to make you a vestry-man." I could not talk on this subject. "Go on, Pomona," I said, trying to feel resigned to my shame, "and tell us about that poster on the fence." "I'll be to that almost right away," she said. "It was two or three days after the dog-fight that I was down at the barn, and happenin' to look over to old John's, I saw that tree-man there. He was a-showin' his book to John, and him and his wife and all the young ones was a-standin' there, drinkin' down them big peaches and pears as if they was all real. I know'd he'd come here ag'in, for them fellers never gives you up; and I didn't know how to keep him away, for I didn't want to let the dogs loose on a man what, after all, didn't want to do no more harm than to talk the life out of you. So I just happened to notice, as I came to the house, how kind of desolate everything looked, and I thought perhaps I might make it look worse, and he wouldn't care to deal here. So I thought of putting up a poster like that, for nobody whose place was a-goin' to be sold for taxes would be likely to want trees. So I run in the house, and wrote it quick and put it up. And sure enough, the man he come along soon, and when he looked at that paper an' tried the gate, an' looked over the fence an' saw the house all shut up an' not a livin' soul about--for I had both the dogs in the house with me--he shook his head an' walked off, as much as to say, 'If that man had fixed his place up proper with my trees he wouldn't a-come to this!' An' then, as I found the poster worked so good, I thought it might keep other people from comin' a-botherin' around, and so I left it up; but I was a-goin' to be sure and take it down before you came." As it was now pretty late in the afternoon, I proposed that Pomona should postpone the rest of her narrative until evening. She said that there was nothing else to tell that was very particular; and I did not feel as if I could stand anything more just now, even if it was very particular. When we were alone, I said to Euphemia: "If we ever have to go away from this place again----" "But we won't go away," she interrupted, looking up to me with as bright a face as she ever had; "at least, not for a long, long, long time to come. "And I'm so glad you're to be a vestry-man." By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons * * * * * "What was it the aeronaut said when he fell out of his balloon and struck the earth with his usual dull thud?" "He remarked that it was a hard world." JOHN TOWNSEND TROWBRIDGE FRED TROVER'S LITTLE IRON-CLAD Did I never tell you the story? Is it possible? Draw up your chair. Stick of wood, Harry. Smoke?