"But I was telling you how _I_ got down here," continued the landlady. "Up in my town there was an old man--about seventy-five--close as the bark on a tree, and ugly and mean." She paused to draw a long breath and to shake her head angrily yet triumphantly at some figure her fancy conjured up. "Oh, he WAS a pup!--and is! Well, anyhow, I decided that I'd marry him. So I wrote home for fifty dollars. I borrowed another fifty here and there. I had seventy-five saved up against sickness. I went up to Boston and laid it all out in underclothes and house things--not showy but fine and good to look at. Then one day, when the weather was fine and I knew the old man would be out in his buggy driving round--I dressed myself up to beat the band. I took hours to it--scrubbing, powdering, sacheting, perfuming, fixing the hair, fixing my finger-nails, fixing up my feet, polishing every nail and making them look better than most hands." Mildred was so interested that she was excited. What strange freak was coming? "You never could guess," pursued Mrs. Belloc, complacently. "I took my sunshade and went out, all got up to kill. And I walked along the road until I saw the old man's buggy coming with him in it. Then I gave my ankle a frightful wrench. My! How it hurt!" "What a pity!" said Mildred sympathetically. "What a shame!" "A pity? A shame?" cried Mrs. Belloc, laughing. "Why, my dear, I did it a-purpose." "On purpose!" exclaimed Mildred. "Certainly. That was my game. I screamed out with pain--and the scream was no fake, I can tell you. And I fell down by the roadside on a nice grassy spot where no dust would get on me. Well, up comes the old skinflint in his buggy. He climbed down and helped me get off my slipper and stocking. I knew I had him the minute I saw his old face looking at that foot I had fixed up so beautifully." "How DID you ever think of it?" exclaimed Mildred. "Go and teach school for ten years in a dull little town, my dear--and look in the glass every day and see your youth fading away--and you'll think of most anything. Well, to make a long story short, the old man took me in the buggy to his house where he lived with his deaf, half-blind old widowed daughter. I had to stay there three weeks. I married him the fourth week. And just two months to a day from the afternoon I sprained my ankle, he gave me fifty dollars a week--all signed and sealed by a lawyer--to go away and leave him alone. I might have stood out for more, but I was too anxious to get to New York. And here I am!" She gazed about the well-furnished room, typical of that almost luxurious house, with an air of triumphant satisfaction. Said she: "I've no patience with a woman who says she can't get on. Where's her brains?"