"You don't mean to say your aunt objects to your marrying old Tintype," exclaimed Charlie.
"Not at all," replied Angie, somewhat tartly.
"You see, it's this way," volunteered Mr. Pollock. "Miss Angie is the sole support of a venerable and venerated aunt who lives in Frankfort. That is a thing to be considered. Her duty to her father's sister—"
Courtney interrupted, chuckling. "It's too much to ask of any woman. I suppose it must take nearly all you earn, Miss Miller, to support your aged relative, so naturally you do not feel like taking on Mr. Hatch immediately."
There was a moment's silence around the table.
"I see by the Chicago Tribune," said Mr. Pollock, after a hurried gulp of coffee, "that there's likely to be a strike of the street-car men up there."
"You don't say so," said Doc Simpson, looking so concerned that one might have been led to suspect that he was dismayed over the prospect of getting to his office the next day.
"What's the world coming to?" sighed Maude Baggs Pollock nervously. "Strikes, strikes everywhere. Murder, bloodshed, robbery, revolution—"
"Next thing we know," put in Charlie Webster, without looking up from his plate, "God will strike, and when He does there'll be hell to pay, begging your pardon, ladies, for using a word that sounds worse than it tastes."
"I use it every day of my life," said Miss Flora Grady. "It's a grand word, Charlie," she added, a little defiantly.