"Don't care a measly nickel with a hole in it," protested Mr. Spoopendyke, thoroughly impatient. "Here's one that's going to open his mouth, or the resurrection will find him still wrestling with the ostensible head of this family. Ow!" and Mr. Spoopendyke, having rammed the knife into the palm of his hand, slammed the oyster against the chimney-piece, where it was shattered, and danced around the room wriggling with wrath and agony.
"Never mind the oysters, dear," cried Mrs. Spoopendyke, following him around, and trying to disengage his wounded hand from his armpit.
"Who's minding 'em?" roared Mr. Spoopendyke, standing on one leg, and bending up double. "I tell ye that when I start to inflict discipline on a narrow-minded oyster that won't either accept an invitation or send regrets, he's going to mind me! Where's the oyster? Show me the oyster! Arraign the oyster!"
"Upon my word, you've opened him," giggled Mrs. Spoopendyke, picking up the smashed bivalve between the tips of her thumb and forefinger.
"Won't have him," sniffed Mr. Spoopendyke, eying the broken shell, and firing his defeated enemy into the grate. "If I can't go in the front-door of an oyster, I'm not going down the scuttle. That all comes of laying 'em on the flat shell," he continued, suddenly recollecting that his wife was to blame for the whole business. "Now you take the rest of 'em down, and lay 'em as I told you to."
"Yes, dear."
"And another time you want any oysters, you sit around in the cellar, and when they open their mouths you put sticks in. You hear?"
"Yes, dear."
And Mrs. Spoopendyke took the bivalves back, resolving that the next time they were in demand they would crawl out of their shells, and walk up-stairs arm in arm, before she would have any hand in the mutilation of her poor, dear, suffering husband by bringing them up herself.