"However in the world," said Old Man Smith, "did you get such a perfectly hideous name as Mehetabelle Euphemia?"
The Post Master's wife was madder than Scat! She wrung her hands. She snapped her thumbs! She crackled her finger-joints!
"Never—Never," she said had she been "so insulted!"
"U-m-m-m—exactly what I thought," said Old Man Smith. "Now just when—if you can remember, was the last time that you felt you'd never been so insulted before?"
"Insulted?" screamed the Post Master's Wife. "Why, I haven't been so insulted as this since two weeks ago last Saturday when I was out in my back yard under the Mulberry Tree dyeing my old white dress peach-pink! And the Druggist's Wife came along and asked me if I didn't think I was just a little bit too old to be wearing peach-pink?—Me—Too Old? Me?" screamed the Post Master's Wife.
"U-m-m," said Old Man Smith. "Pink, you say? Pink?—A little powdered Cochineal, I suppose? And a bit of Cream o' Tartar? And more than a bit of Alum? It's a pretty likely combination to make the fingers slippery.—And a lady what crackles her finger-joints so every time she's mad,—and snaps her thumbs—and?—Yes! Under the Mulberry Tree is a very Probable Place!—One dollar, please!" said Old Man Smith.
And when the Grocer's Nephew got suspended from college for sitting up too late at night and getting headaches, and came to spend a month with his Uncle and couldn't find his green plaid overcoat when it was time to go home he was perfectly positive that somebody had borrowed it from the store! Or that he'd dropped it out of the delivery wagon working over-time! Or that he'd left it at the High School Social!
But Old Man Smith found it for him just by glancing at his purple socks! And his plaid necktie. And his plush waistcoat.
"Oh, yes, of course, it's perfectly possible," said Old Man Smith, "that you dropped it from the basket of a balloon on your way to a Missionary Meeting.—But have you looked in the Young Widow Gayette's back hall? 'Bout three pegs from the door?—Where the shadows are fairly private?—One dollar, please!" said Old Man Smith.
And when the Old Preacher lost the Hymn Book that George Washington had given his grandfather, everybody started to take up the floor of the church to see if it had fallen down through a crack in the pulpit!