The widow sniffed again. "'Pears to me," said she, "you've got nothin' new." The man wheeled in his chair to a neighboring safe and took a tape-bound document from a pigeon-hole. "Shall we begin?" he asked. "Yes--if you're so rushed," she returned, and composed her features to fitting solemnity. As the lawyer slowly read the instrument, which he could have rattled off from memory, Mrs. Weatherwax punctuated the pious phrases of its exordium with approving wags. "'Frail and transitory,'" she interpolated; "that's jest what life is. I might be took any minute." At the reference to the payment of her lawful debts she recovered her spirits sufficiently to put in that she did not owe a "red cent," as everybody knew. Finally she called a halt. "Needn't go any farther," she directed. "The first part's what I like to hear best. Exceptin' one thing, all the rest about my green rep sofy a-goin' to Cousin Phoebe, the pickle-caster to Brother Henry, the old dishes what can't be sold to my beloved nephew, Jason Weatherwax, and my best tablecloths and sheets and pillow-slips to his little Ann Eliza when she gets a husband what's a good provider, is fixed jest as it hed ought to be. What I want now is a postscript." "Another codicil? Very well." He made note of her wishes concerning a cherished feather bed which it had struck her was too good for that "shiftless coot," Cousin Phoebe's husband, to lie upon, and, bidding her bring her witnesses on the morrow, bustled the will into his safe and fell upon his papers after the manner of all lawyer kind since Chaucer's sergeant of the law who "semed besier than he was." The widow eyed his movements placidly. "In a stew to hev me go?" she asked. "Of course not," Shelby protested. "What put that in your head?" "Your squirmin' round. Seein' I'm entirely welcome, I'll set a piece." Shelby restrained the delight he said he felt and returned to his papers under her relentless scrutiny. "Telegraphs of congratulashun, I s'pose," the visitor presently observed. "Yes; my friends are rejoicing with me." "Everybody tickled?" "All but the common enemy, I trust." "I ain't hed a chance to go about much and ask," said the widow, with a preliminary sniff; "but I've met some as wa'n't tickled or enemies neither." "No? Well, after all, this isn't paradise, but New York politics." "At Tompkins's--I alluz go to him for my Oolong--I heard that Doc Crandall won't vote for you after your dead set at the place. He's one of your party, isn't he?" "Yes. The doctor is one of us. Good fellow, too." "And at Brady's, where I get my corn meal, I heard somebody say you've got the Irish down on you." "Oh, I hope not," returned the candidate, cheerfully. "They're a most respectable and industrious factor in our town's life. I like the Irish." "I s'pose." He searched her face and concluded that her irony was unconscious; she undeceived him.