IT was all about a wash-tub. Mrs. Villiers had loaned Mrs. Ransom her wash-tub. This was two weeks ago last Monday. When Mrs. Villiers saw it again, which was the next morning, it stood on her backstoop, minus a hoop. Mrs. Villiers sent over to Mrs. Ransom’s a request for the hoop, couched in language calculated to impugn Mrs. Ransom’s reputation for carefulness. Mrs. Ransom lost no time in sending back word that the tub was all right when it was sent back; and delicately intimated that Mrs. Villiers had better sweep before her own door first, whatever that might mean. Each having discharged a Christian duty to each other, further communication was immediately cut off; and the affair was briskly discussed by the neighbours, who entered into the merits and demerits of the affair with unselfish zeal. Heaven bless them! Mrs. Ransom clearly explained her connection with the tub by charging Mr. Villiers with coming home drunk as a fiddler the night before Christmas. This bold statement threatened to carry the neighbours over in a body to Mrs. Ransom’s view, until Mrs. Villiers remembered, and promptly chronicled the fact, that the Ransoms were obliged to move away from their last place because of non-payment of rent. Here the matter rested among the neighbours, leaving them as undecided as before. But between the two families immediately concerned the fire burned as luridly as when first kindled. It was a constant skirmish between the two women, from early morning until late at night. Mrs. Ransom would glare through her blinds when Mrs. Villiers was in the yard, and murmur between her clenched teeth— “Oh, you hussy!” And, with that wonderful instinct which characterises the human above the brute animal, Mrs. Villiers understood that Mrs. Ransom was thus engaged, and, lifting her nose at the highest angle compatible with the safety of her spinal cord, would sail around the yard as triumphantly as if escorted by a brigade of genuine princes. And then would come Mrs. Villiers’s turn at the window with Mrs. Ransom in the yard, with a like satisfactory and edifying result. When company called on Mrs. Villiers, Mrs. Ransom would peer from behind her curtains and audibly exclaim— “Who’s that fright, I wonder?” And when Mrs. Ransom was favoured with a call, it was Mrs. Villiers’s blessed privilege to be at the window and audibly observe— “Where was that clod dug up from?”