Melinda looked at her relative's concave profile in sick suspicion. Was the trail of the serpent over them all? But no, Uncle Joe was beaming mildly with the satisfaction of having shown that although the literary hemisphere was the unknown land, he had heard of a mountain and a minor elevation or two; he was, as she had always believed, incapable of satire. For once Melinda was speechless. But Uncle Joe was likely to be fluent when he got started. He cleared his throat and turned mild, suffused, half-shamed blue eyes on his shrinking niece. "Yes, your piece has come out in the paper, Melinda, and your folks are all-fired pleased with you. I told Lucy this morning I wisht your poor Pap could come back to earth for just this one day." "Ah-h!" Melinda took a firm grip on the side of the buggy. "But I guess you'll have to write another right off. There is some jealousy amongst them that aren't in it," Uncle Joe went on. "I told 'em you couldn't put the whole connection in or it would read like a list of 'them present' at a surprise party. Your Aunt Lucy, she's just as tickled as a hen with three chickens." The old man chuckled. "There it is all down in black and white just like it happened, only different, about her spasm of economy when she was cleanin' away Mary Emmeline's medicine bottles and couldn't bear to throw away what was left over, but up and took it all herself in one powerful mixed dose to save it, and had to have the doctor with a stomach-pump to cure her of spasms, what wasn't so economical after all. It's her picture tickles her most." "Oh!" said Melinda. "Yes, you know the picture is as slim as a girl in her first pair o' cossets a-standin' on a chair a-reachin' bottles off a top shelf, and your Aunt Lucy's that hefty she hain't stood on a chair for ten years for fear 'twould break down, and she's had to trust the top shelf to the hired girl. I guess when she goes to Heaven she'll want to stop on the way up and fix that top shelf to suit her. So she just sits and looks at that picture and smiles and smiles. She likes my whiskers, too. Yes, she's always wanted me to wear whiskers ever since we was married, but we never was a whiskery fambly and they wouldn't seem to grow thicker than your Uncle Josh's corn when he planted it one grain to the hill. But there I am in the picture in the paper with real biblical whiskers reachin' to the bottom o' my vest."