For a moment he hesitated; then opening his mouth slowly, he gave voice to the single witticism of his life. "That was befo' I married you, dearie," he said. "Well, how am I to know," demanded the female, "that you haven't got a parcel of others hidden away?" "Thar's one, the littlest, put out to nurse next do', an' another, the biggest, gone to work in the West," he returned in his amiable, childish manner. After my unfortunate introduction, however, the addition of a greater and a lesser appeared to impress her but little. She looked scornfully about the disorderly room, took off her big, florid bonnet, and began arranging her hair before the three-cornered mottled mirror on the wall. Then wheeling round in a temper, her eyes fell on Samuel, sitting dejectedly on his tail by my mother's old blue and white gingham apron. "What is that?" she fired straight into my father's face. "That," he responded, offering his unnecessary information as if it were a piece of flattery, "air the dawg, Sukey." "Whose dawg?" Goaded into defiance by this attack on my only friend, I spoke in a shrill voice from the corner into which I had retreated. "Mine," I said. "Wall, I'll tell you what!" exclaimed the female, charging suddenly upon me, "if I've got to put up with a chance o' kids, I don't reckon I've got to be plagued with critters, too. Shoo, suh! get out!" Seizing my mother's broom, she advanced resolutely to the attack, and an instant later, to my loud distress and to Samuel's unspeakable horror, she had whisked him across the kitchen and through the back door out into the yard. "Steady, Sukey, steady," remarked my father caressingly, much as he might have spoken to a favourite but unruly heifer. For an instant he looked a little crestfallen, I saw with pleasure, but as soon as Samuel was outside and the door had closed, he resumed immediately his usual expression of foolish good humour. It was impossible, I think, for him to retain an idea in his mind after the object of it had been removed from his sight. While I was still drying my eyes on my frayed coat sleeve, I watched him with resentment begin a series of playful lunges at the neck of the female, which she received with a sulky and forbidding air. Stealing away the next minute, I softly opened the back door and joined the outcast Samuel, where he sat whining upon the step.