“Lemme see yourn!” said Miss Sibby.
Mrs. Anglesea stood up and took a folded paper from under one of the silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece and handed it to her visitor.
A haystack, dressed in Mrs. Anglesea’s style and crowned with her head, and not a very violent caricature of her face. Evidently, like Miss Sibby’s valentine, the work of some waggish amateur.
“It’s the truth of the thing that gets me. I am getting to be a haystack,” said Mrs. Anglesea.
“Well, what do you do it for?” inquired Miss Sibby.
“How can I help it?” demanded her companion.
“Reggerlate your habits. Do by yourself as you do by the animyles, sez I!”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Well, I’ll try to ’splain. When we want to fatten fowl, we shut ’em up in coops so they can’t move round much; and we feed ’em full, don’t we?”
“Yes.”