prepared with arguments after time for reflection. Miss Pettus had flared up like gunpowder, then as always, when least expected, so that Sidney had hardly known at the moment what to say. And for all her reliance upon her own strength and tact, she had none too fully realized the necessity for prompt action. It was lucky, indeed, that she was early; for, early as she set out, she met Miss Pettus coming down the big road "hotfoot," as Sidney said afterward, already on the way to see Kitty Mills. It was not of the slightest use, Miss Pettus cried,--beginning as soon as she came within speaking distance of the peacemaker,--not of the least use in the world for Sidney to begin again arguing about Kitty Mills's never meaning to cheat anybody. She, Miss Pettus, was sick and tired of having things smoothed over, and of being told and told that she was mistaken. She was not mistaken. The facts stood for themselves: Kitty Mills had said when she swapped the dorminica for the yellow-legged pullet and a bit to boot, that the dorminica laid big eggs. Let Kitty Mills deny that if she dared! Then let Sidney, or the whole of Oldfield, come and look at the little eggs that that dorminica did lay. It was bad enough to be so cheated in a hen trade, without having it thrown up to you almost every day of your life, in some silly joke. What did Kitty Mills mean, except insult, by sending her word that she couldn't expect a fat hen to lay the same up hill and down dale. And then, as if that were not enough, what did Kitty Mills do, but send back that same yellow-legged pullet, and even the very same bit, offering to swap again. All this Miss Pettus demanded breathlessly in unabated excitement. "I give you, and anybody else, my solemn word, as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, that that was the tenth time that the identical yellow-legged pullet and the identical bit have been toted up this hill and toted down again. Kitty Mills offers to swap back every time she thinks of it, just to be aggravating. No, you needn't talk to me, Sidney. Kitty Mills means to show me that she believes it's the pullet and the bit that I care about, not the principle of the thing." Plainly it was now become a case for diplomacy, not for further argument. Sidney, therefore, said simply, like a wise woman, that she would go at once and try to make Kitty Mills see how foolish she had been.