“Them votes is mine,” says Miss Snoover, “and I’m a-goin’ to keep ’em.”
“What for?” asked Mrs. Peterkin, mean-like. “What you calc’latin’ to do with ’em? Eh?”
Miss Snoover sort of choked and spluttered and got red in the face, and says it wasn’t anybody’s business what she was goin’ to do with ’em, even if it was to paper the inside of her hen-house—and maybe she was an old maid, but it wasn’t anybody’s business, and she didn’t need to be if she didn’t want to, and a lot better to be one than married like some she knew—and she’d carry the matter into court and hire a lawyer to defend her rights, and everybody was trying to rob a lone woman. That was all she mentioned before she drew a breath, but I thought that was pretty good. Most folks would have had to breathe a lot sooner. The minute she was through she turned and ran out of the store, still grabbing her slip of paper.
The rest of them stayed awhile and argued, but pretty soon they went, too, because they couldn’t do anything without Miss Snoover.
“Well,” says I when they were gone, “that’s a pretty mess to clean up.”
“Um!” says Mark, and he smacked his lips like he’d had something good to eat.
“What ever,” says I, “did you put two slips in that Methodist box for?”
“To start a s-s-squabble,” says he.
“Well,” says I, “you done it, all right.”
“Plunk,” says he, “excitement is the makin’ of a beauty contest. The more folks gets m-mad the more votes is cast. The more squabbles there is the more money we make—and the more advertisin’ we get. Don’t you calc’late this thing’ll be talked of more’n a simple drawin’ with no row at all would have b-been?”