"Whist!" cautioned the driver. "Don't spake so loud. He'll overhear us."
"Who?"
"The hoss. Spake low. Shure Oo'm desavin' the crayture. Every toime he 'ears th' door close he thinks wan o' yez is gettin' down ter walk up th' hill, an' that sort o' raises 'is sperrits."
STILL NOT SATISFIED
Mrs. Higgins was an incurable grumbler. She grumbled at everything and everyone. But at last the vicar thought he had found something about which she could make no complaint; the old lady's crop of potatoes was certainly the finest for miles round.
"Ah, for once you must be well pleased," he said, with a beaming smile, as he met her in the village street. "Everyone's saying how splendid your potatoes are this year."
The old lady glowered at him as she answered:
"They're not so poor. But where's the bad ones for the pigs?"
A COAXER
The latest American church device for "raising the wind" is what a religious paper describes as "some collection-box." The inventor hails from Oklahoma. If a member of the congregation drops in a twenty-five cent piece or a coin of larger value, there is silence. If it is a ten-cent piece a bell rings, a five-cent piece sounds a whistle, and a cent fires a blank cartridge. If any one pretends to be asleep when the box passes, it awakens him with a watchman's rattle, and a kodak takes his portrait.