“All them different cruelties,” they commented—“fly-paper to track them ignorant ants onto, and that there trap for cats.... Well, you got more spots onto your soul than soap can take off. ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ it says. Why”—this burst of feeling from Mrs. Tyarck—“why, it’s all I can do to set foot on a spider!” “And look at me with wasps!” exclaimed Mrs. Capron. “How many wasps I’ve let go for their enjoyment of life, even though, for all I know, next thing they might sting me or one of mine.” Mrs. Capron, getting warm and virtuous, sat down in the kitchen doorway. Opening the netted catchall, she took out therefrom a bundle of tracts. This lady was the important local officer of many humanitarian societies and lost no opportunity to improve the morale of her community. The tract she selected for Miss Frenzy was of an impressive blue with the title, “Deal Tenderly with the Humble Animals that Cannot Speak.” “Now think of them ants,” exhorted Mrs. Capron. She looked hard at Miss Frenzy Giddings. “Think of them thoughtless ants runnin’ onto that fly-paper and not able to call out to the others what’s happened to ’em!” “You’re like me,” said Mrs. Tyarck. Taking her handkerchief, she wet it in the rain-barrel and obsequiously attempted to rub off a slight fly-paper stickiness still on the mohair of her friend. “You’re like me. I’m that tender-hearted I can’t even boil a lobster. I was so from a child. Come time the kettle boils it’s Tyarck always has to put the lobster in—me all of a tremble!” “And flies,” suggested Mrs. Capron—“there’s a many thinks that flies has got souls (though not the Board of Health). But even flies—look at me! I keep sugar and molasses for ’em in their own saucer, and if they come to their last end that way, why, they must die likin’ it, and it’s what they chose for theirselves.” Mrs. Capron drew the string of her netted catchall tight. She hawked, drew her upper lip down over the lower, and buttoned up the tight-fitting coat of mohair. “Them cruelties of yourn will haunt you, Frenzy,” summed up both ladies; “there’s verses in the Bible for just such things,” exclaimed the visitors together; then they all went in, the two friends turning their attention to Miss Giddings’s household arrangements, offering her advice and counsel as to her clothes and the management of her kitchen range. There were no more words about the cruelties except that that night in the long, wandering prayer in which Mrs. Capron, as leader of the meeting, had ample opportunity to score against any one whom she fancied delinquent, or against whom she had a private grudge, she inserted into her petition: