“‘“Yes,” he says, kind of hurried. “That’s it. That lady’s run for mayor of this town twice without anybody asking her, or saying anything about it. She’s elected herself twice, only casting one vote. We keep the City Hall doors locked all the time. I meant to tell you that the town wasn’t really run. She is, you might say, a determined character,” and, he says, in a greater hurry yet, “Good-by.” “‘The barkeeper had took down cellar, so I says “Good-by” to my reflection in the lookin’-glass and skipped out the back way, behind barns and sheds and barrels, so that lady couldn’t see me, and hid in an empty coal-bin at the station until it come time for my train, and here I be,’ says John. ‘Here I be, Scraggsy, old man; and, while I ain’t in no way convinced but what domestic felicity is the one thing on earth, yet I wish I hadn’t been so biggoty, and had asked you a few facts concerning the female species before I started to put my notions into practice.’ “‘Goin’ to stay quiet on the ranch now?’ I asked him. “He rolled a cigareet with determination, and he answers, ‘Mebbe,’ and the only other words I heard from him was when he stepped on a shoe in his bare feet and come down on some place that was sore from the kind attentions of his lady friend, and he strangled for three minutes, gritting his teeth so I could hear ’em squeak in the darkness, and then he says: “‘Blessed be the peacemakers!’” THE END Transcriber’s Notes Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained. Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed. Spelling of dialect words not changed. Page 1: Transcriber added chapter number (“I”) to the heading, for consistency with the rest of the book, and deleted the redundant hemi-title. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Trolley Folly, by Henry Wallace Phillips