“The woman that gits him will be lucky,” she declared, “basket and all.” Nothing more would she tell. Then into the private room went the seventh old lady. She immediately demanded of Samuel an explanation of the woman and the basket; whereupon Samuel said that he refused to be questioned by any woman and he knew that they could not get along well together. She came out sniffing contemptuously, and vowed that in her opinion there was something very mysterious about this man. Number Eight went in even more eagerly, on tip-toe. She had read romances all her life. She loved mysteries and she was so sensitive about living in an Old Ladies’ Home partly on charity that she would have married any man that asked her. Almost any man—but not quite. She and Samuel Jessup talked together for a long time. “I am sure we would git along,” said Samuel at last, his heart stirred to sympathy for one who hated a Home of this sort with the same proud hatred that he had borne. “But,” he went on, “before I let you decide, I be agoin’ to take you into the dining-room and show you the basket. What belongs in the basket belongs with me an’s agoin’ with me. I ain’t much ter git, but come an’ see the basket!” Her romantic old heart beating high with excitement, Miss Ruby tip-toed ahead of him, across a tiny, dark back hall into the dining-room. On the very threshold she paused, her eyes popping out of her head as she looked within; then she uttered a faint scream and went scuttling into a corner among the shadows of the dim passage. “Good-bye, Mr. Jessup!” she called tragically. “Good-bye!” and there ended Samuel Jessup’s affair with Miss Ruby. A humorous light twinkled in the old man’s eye as he went back into Jessica’s office and waited for the ninth candidate. She was a woman famous in the Home for always managing to find some one to wait upon her, and she wanted a house of her own with several servants, an unobtrusive husband, and stained glass windows in the parlor. “I kinder fancied stained glass winders myself,” said Samuel. “But you can’t be keepin’ a hull passel o’ servants. One servant gal—that’s all I agree to, ma’am.” She thought that one servant might do if they put out the washing. Samuel looked dubious for a moment, seeing himself a henpecked husband, and then that twinkle came again into his wholesome eye. “Before we decide, m’am, I want ter show you what I got in that there basket. Me an’ the basket be inseparable.” She preceded him into the dining-room, her shoulders high and her nose uplifted. She stood for some moments staring at the contents of the basket, the basket’s owner, and the basket’s guardian staring at her. Slowly her face grew rigid. She shook her head once. She strove to speak, swallowed hard and then gasped; “How dast you presume, Samuel Jessup!”