, 1892-03-10

tive. Emmeline and Elfred, seated on
two chairs against the wall, paused in
their consumption of bread and treacle
on hearing themselves alluded as poor
lambs and Joined their lamentations to
Sister Loosha's. The tumult ragged high,
though Mrs. Hemmans preserved a calm,
even, stony demeanor. And in the mid
die of it all That There Brown knocked
at the door.
No quick change artist ever effected a
more wondrous transformation than did
Looshs in that minute. Mrs. Hemmans
had glided away to put her cap straight
and smooth her sleek parting. In the
interval between her disappearance and
her return, Loosha and Mr.. Brown had
become quite friendly. Mr.. Browns
manner was quite fatherly, and his fea-
lures shone with smiles and gin and
water. He had been screwing up his
courage with that fortifying beverage.
Loosha, a. she sent the astonished EN-
incline out for a quartern of the best
and provided the visitor with a reliable
chair, made up her mind that the doom
of That There Brown, matrimonially
speaking, was sealed. Mother, without
knowing why, felt uncomfortable when
the widowed joiner proposed taking the
entire family Qt was Loosha's day QUIT
to the Worlds fair, and Loosha warmly
responded to the overture.
They took Emmeline and Elfred and
the Islington bus, and That There
Brown and Loosha occupied a garden
chair seat together outside, mother and
the children being slowed in the interior
of the vehicle. Brown was fatherly
when they started; Portland Road found
him affectionate. BY the time they
were launched amid the giddy delights
of the fair, he was beginning to think
Deluded wretch! What matters it what
he thought 1t was deliberately lone of
Loosha, the betraying of That There
Brown. He wandered with the mother
and daughter, each on an arm, through
a fairy land of mingled fog and gas
light. They visited the birds, the beasts
and reptiles; and Loosha appealed to
him for information as to their names,
species and general habitat, and greeted
every remark of his with admiring
"Lorsl' She never seemed to notice
when he mixed up the Bactrian camel
with the water buffalo.
She went upon the circular switch
back with him, mother being too timid
to venture, and became nervous in the
middle of the airy journey, clinging to
the arm of the ravished widower with
feminine squeaks of terror. How en-
thralled she was by his performance on
the try-your-strength machine, though
the marker on the dial indicated nothing
much in the way of a record. The more
fascinating Loosha became the warmer
and more perspiring became That There
Brown. He nudged her frequently. All
the sensation of his corporal frame
seemed to have taken up its abode in the
elbow to which she hung.
Was it then that the miserable man
uttered the words which sealed his fate?
1t may nave been. All we know for
certain is that those words once uttered,
Loosha's manner became distant and
off hand. That There Brown put it
down to maiden coyness, and renewed
the siege with redoubled rashness. 1t
was when the Flying Demons were
about to take their marvellous leap
through space. and the popular atten-
tiop was uniformly diverted to the cell
ing, that Mrs. Hemmans-who was not
without a consciousness that for a sutton
trembling on the brink of acceptance
Mr.. Browns conduct was, to say the
least of it, inadequate-felt a tug at her
shawl.
1t came from the infant Emmeline.
whose watchful eye, unchildlike in its
keen appreciation of the situation, had
detected the ~joiner's arm in the act of
inclosing the figure of Loosha under the
shadow of her bead fringed mantle.
After that the widow was taken faintish,
and had to be revived with peppermint
drops ere h company returned to
Brompton. Mr.. Brown was not invited
in to tea, though he fingered long upon
the doorstep. And when he had gone
Loosha uncorked the walls of her con-
tempt, and told her parent that she had
been nursing a addick in her bosom,
but, thank God. it was unmasked at
lastl
Next morning a procession of foul
started for the cemetery. Emmeline
and Elfred walked. in front, hand in
hand and bearing votive garlands. In
the presence of the headstone on which
the virtues of her second were recorded,
Mrs. Hemmans renewed her vows of
faithful w~idowhood. On the way back
the party encountered That There
Brown.
Mother just Jung her ed, " said Loosha
afterward, land walked by him without
taking no more. notice than if he was
dirt. But he spreads ITSELF out over the
path and sezee, Don't you reckonize
your friends, Mrs. Hemmans, mum, at
this time o day, after all as has been
said between usP And then l pushes in,
an he looks up and met my eye. | give
i'm a cold stare, and you might see i'm
shrink, as if q moved what was comm.
Begging your pardon l says, but did
you mean me or my motherT Your
mother, says That There Brown, as |
think and 'ope will make a good wife to
me and mother to my nine children
Which you was of a'different opinion
yesterday 1 sharps back on i'm, when
you asst me to marry you at the Worlds
fair. Peraps you'd like to ave us both, as
the Salt Lake City Morgans amt too par
ticular in that way, and you may belong
to the English branch of the dinomaga-
lion. You've been and raised a nornick's
nest about my yeers, you catP says That
There Brown, with a scowl. Maria
and he looked implorinR like at mother.