"'Not the manicure party?' I yells again.
"'I believe she has been a wage-earner,' says Nettie. 'And dear Chester is so grateful about that song. It was her favourite song, too, and it seemed to bring them together, just as it opened my own soul to Wilbur. He says she sings the song very charmingly herself, and he thought it preferable that they be wed in Spokane before his father objected. And oh, aunty, I do see how blind I was to my destiny, and how kind you were to me in my blindness—you who had led the fuller life as I shall lead it at Wilbur's side.'
"'You beat it to your room,' I orders her, very savage and disorganized. For I had stood about all the jolts in one day that God had meant me to. And so they was married, Chester and his bride attending the ceremony and Oscar Teetz' five-piece orchestra playing the—" She broke off, with a suddenly blazing glance at the disk, and seized it from the table rather purposefully. With a hand firmly at both edges she stared inscrutably at it a long moment.
"I hate to break the darned thing," she said musingly at last. "I guess I'll just lock it up. Maybe some time I'll be feeling the need to hear it again. I know I can still be had by it if all the circumstances is right."
Still she stared at the thing curiously.
"Gee! It was hot getting them calves out to-day, and old Safety First moaning about all over the place how he's being stuck with 'em, till more than once I come near forgetting I was a lady—and, oh, yes"—she brightened—"I was going to tell you. After it was all over, Wilbur, the gallant young tone poet, comes gushing up to me and says, 'Now, aunty, always when you are in town you must drop round and break bread with us.' Aunty, mind you, right off the reel. 'Well,' I says, 'if I drop round to break any bread your wife bakes I'll be sure to bring a hammer.' I couldn't help it. He'll make a home for the girl all right, but he does something sinful to my nerves every time he opens his face. And then coming back here, where I looked for God's peace and quiet, and being made to hear that darned song every time I turned round!
"I give orders plain enough, but say, it's like a brush fire—you never know when you got it stamped out."
From the kitchen came the sound of a dropped armful of stove wood. Hard upon this, the unctuous whining tenor of Jimmie Time:
Oh-h-h mem-o-reez thu-hat blu-hess and bu-hurn!
"You, Jimmie Time!" It is a voice meant for Greek tragedy and a theatre open to the heavens. I could feel the terror of the aged vassal.