"I say are you married?"
"I—I—married did you say? Oh yes. I've been married for ten years."
"Very well, then; good-morning;" and Miss Mooney withdrew.
"Thunder!" exclaimed the colonel as he shut the door. "If I'd've been single, I believe she'd've proposed on the spot."
It is not considered likely that the Mooney anti-widow bill will be pushed very hard in the Legislature next session.
CHAPTER XII.
A NEW MRS. TOODLES.—POTTS' ADVENTURES.
One evening I met Mr. Potts out upon the turnpike, taking a walk; and I joined him. As we proceeded he became rather confidential. The subject of the mania for collecting bric-a-brac came up; and after an expression of opinion from me respecting the matter, Mr. Potts told the story of his wife's fondness for that kind of thing. He said,
"My wife is the most infatuated bric-a-brac hunter I ever heard of. She's an uncommonly fine woman about most things; loves her children; makes splendid pies; don't fool with any of those fan-dangling ways women have of fixing their hair; and she's an angel for temper. But she beats Mrs. Toodles for going to auctions. She's filled my house with the wildest mess of bric-a-brac and such stuff you ever came across outside of a museum of natural curiosities. She's spent more money for wrecks that wouldn't be allowed in the cellar of a poor-house than'd keep a family in comfort for years.
"You know Scudmore, who sold out the other day? She was there, bidding away like a millionaire. Came home with a wagon-load of things—four albata tea-pots without lids or handles; two posts of a bedstead and three slats; a couple of churns and fourteen second-hand sun-bonnets, and more mournful refuse like that. Said she didn't intend to buy, but she bid on them to run them up to help Mrs. Scudmore, and the auctioneer knocked them down quicker'n a wink. Said it was 'Lot 47,' and she had to take it all. And she said maybe she could make up the sun-bonnets into bibs for the baby and use the tea-pots for preserves. She thought she might make a pretty fair bedstead out of the posts by propping the other ends on a chair; and she said it was a lucky thing she was so forehanded about those churns, because she might have a cow knocked down to her, and then she would be all ready for butter-making. More'n likely she'll buy some old steer and bring him home while she's rummaging around for bric-a-brac.