husband's relations, wholesale price, I 'd let you know." "Yir hoosban's relations can dro-oon!" the lad told her. "I want the—” "Ye 're drownding yerself, ye impident snippet! Drownding by inches. Yer face an' yer collar 's been dead sincet breakfast time, by the looks." "The watter-rent." "An' you need a hair-cut. lookin'-' Such a "I do na care to leesten t' the reest of it, young wummun. Two dollars, the chairge is, to next quarter-day, payment in odvonce." "You don't say!" Irene set her hands on her slender hips and cocked her head to one side. "An' who may you be, King o' New York? young wummun? Or fortune-tellin'?" "I'm the watter coomp'ny," spoke the Scot. He was furious enough to be perfectly calm,-especially as Irene's temper was quite beyond control. "An' if ye don't put oop the requeered soom the nicht, I'll toorn yir watter off accordin' to steepulations pervided in the contrac'." "You 're no gentleman," she raged at him. "The way you 'd behave to a lady shows it, too! Two dollars, indeed! 'Tis paid the whole year ahead, an' we've the receipt up-stairs in Pa's 'Key of Heaven.' You'll not cheat us, Mister, nor your comp'ny won't neither, there, now! Turn it off, if ye dare! An' I bet you my mother 'll have ye arrested. Try it oncet!" "Weel," said the collector, "I think pairhaps a bit lesson 'd do ye a michty lot o' gude. I wull do it." "I dare yez!" she cried, making ready to slam the door. "As good customers as we been can make you sorry! Anyhow, 't is paid, an' we 'll not pay it twicet. You hear me? We won't! There, putt that in yer pipe an' smoke it!" (Bang.) "Ye air obleeged to ha' food an' dreenk, young wummun,' moralized the collector looking at the blank door-panels. "Though of all the veecious young Jeezebels! Weel, I'll be doon by wi' the wrench. Experience is the fine teacher." He noted the house number in a pocketbook, and went into Mrs. Toole's place, next door. home; and by the time Irene had tried the "There was a party around to-day, Ma," said she, 'abusin' me for not payin' the water-rent." "Johnny Selden, was it? Mercy be to heaven! I never knew him be oncivil! He greases his tongue most too much sometimes: I been fair sickened more than oncet to hear him go on to Mrs. Toole. Would he be in liquor, maybe, that he would n't know ye?" "Dear, now, Ma, o' course not! Johnny Selden knows us better 'n to call us a bunch o' dead beats. 'T was a boy, a mere child, like, an' shabby-lookin'; an' his manners was made in the loon'tic asylum. It's my belief he 'll be arrested for a fakir to-morrow or next day. But I was too much for him. I very kindly and politely told him the rent was paid for, an' he'd get no two dollars off o' me; an' then I shut the door." "Serve him right! Well, what 'd he do?" "What could he do but go off? He'd met his match with me." "I disremember whether I paid for six months from January the first, or six months from April the first," meditated Mrs. Kinshalla over the dish-pan. But Irene was off at full speed on a new topic, and did not listen. "I'd like to seen that impident little rascal catch his dues if J. Addison Kohlmesser was there! My gracious! Jim 'ud break any fella's back that so much as looked at me cross-eyed! Why, oncet in a store, the floorwalker-" It was a rambling story, but water companies were not embraced in all its far horizons. Mrs. Kinshalla dismissed her mental question as of no account. The thirtieth of June was Wednesday. Mrs. Kinshalla flew at her work as her wont was, and did not look out of the front windows. About ten o'clock the fancy took her to carry a pail of water out to the pig. She set her bucket under the tap. The stream ran just as usual until the Mrs. Kinshalla was late in coming pail was half full. Then, as if by a mira cle, and without any one's going near the Kinshalla, addressing the universe with a "WHAT D' YE THINK YE 'RE AFTER DOIN'?'" so depriving her of the water-pressure which was her lawful right. The sour-tempered Scotch boy was just in the gateway. A plumber's wagon was outside, and a burly Italian laborer was throwing into it a spade and several pokerlike tools. The plantains just inside the fence were buried in loose clay. A threeinch iron pipe protruded from the hole which the Scotch boy and his minion had dug. "Good Lord!" cried Mrs. Kinshalla in utter stupefaction. "What d'ye think ye 're after doin'?" "I toornt off the watter," replied the Scotch boy, briefly. "An' what for?" "Ye ken very gude," the boy told her. He carried a great wrench, and proceeded before her very eyes to cover the pipe and screw the cap home. ""T is a loonytic for fair," mused Mrs. run an' ast McCormick to telephone the p'lice? Say I need thim." "Air you a reelation o' the wummun that lives here?" "I'm her meself, ye impident turnip. Why?" "Ye 've the same bad deesposeetion, I obsarve," said the collector, finishing the job and getting up from his knees as he loosened the wrench. "There! You can coom to yir senses when ye see fit, an' the coompany wull not feel the defeecit till ye do. Gude day, mom." "My soul!" said Mrs. Kinshalla, turning from red to purple. "The dhirty Orangeman! Shut off the water, has he? Oh, the sassy limb!" "Ye wull find it 's so, clavers or no clavers. Moreover, the neeghbors canna gi' ye a cupfu'. They wull be cut off the meenute they attempt such a dishonesty. I ha' spoke to them one after ither, previ "SHE... MARCHED ACROSS THE STREET TO MRS. LOUGHNEY'S HOUSE" kitchen and marched across the street to Mrs. Loughney's house. "I've come for some water, Annie," she announced. Mrs. Loughney sat on the porch peeling potatoes. Had the Paradox Washing Machine beside her been a Maxim gun, she would still have lacked courage to pull the lever, after Mrs. Kinshalla had addressed her in those masterful tones. "Was he here to you yet,-the crazy man, I mean?" the visitor continued with a noble nonchalance. Her pail was in the kitchen sink, and Mrs. Loughney heard the splash of water. "Holy Mother, I never got such talk off a man yet, in church or in politics or in liquor!" "He stopped in," the house-owner admitted. "Look out will ye get me into trouble, Mrs. Kinshalla. I would n't want no expenses an' law business this summer, Charlie losin' six months off his job so lately as he did." "Aw, get brave for the oncet, Annie! Stand up for yerself, an' don't give up to everybody that lifts a toothpick at ye! pail of water, and strode out into the street and so home. Annie Loughney looked puzzled, but she went on peeling. her potatoes. A terrible scene there was a few minutes later when Mrs. Loughney came sobbing to the Kinshalla house. The Scotch boy had looked over his shoulder and had seen his first victim returning with her stolen pailful: he had come back, and said six words, and he was even now cutting off the Loughneys' water supply. Promises and tears did not move him. Irene and Mrs. Kinshalla were sufficiently moved as they faced Annie at their front door. They outdid themselves in voicing their thoughts and feelings. But Annie slipped quietly to a chair in the front room and cried. ""T is done now,-the dhirty, sneakin' informers!" Mrs. Kinshalla called in to her after a while. "Oh, but looka, Ma,-what 's this else they 're after? They 're doin' the same to Evanses' pipe! How's that?" "T is the loonytic!" groaned the mother. "Would you expect different, Irene?" "Evanses rents off us," cried Mrs. Loughney, "an' Charlie pays for the whole three houses in the lump,-ours an' He saves 'em Evanses' an' Costello's. bother, an' he gets it out the rents, same as he does the taxes. Oh, oh! Whatever will Mrs. Costello do to me for gettin' her water took away on her? I might 'a' knowed the whole three houses was on the comp'ny books for Charlie Loughney. I won't dare show my head out in the yard again, the one o' them wimmen one side o' me an' the other on t' other!" DUCK HOLLOW was lively the last evening in June. Irene and her mother told their story to Martin Kinshalla and the four grown boys at supper-time; and previous rehearsals of the story had made them so eloquent that the men went into a splendid rage. Next, J. Addison Kohlmesser came into town unexpectedly on the 5:34 train. His feelings upon the insult offered his bride were so burning that he wrote to a schoolmate of his who was a newspaper reporter, and sent the letter off to New York by the evening train. Young Tom Kinshalla left home while. the scholarly J. Addison was employed upon this despatch, and met Charlie Loughney and Aloysius Costello down at McCormick's saloon. Certain prominent residents of the Hollow were this evening saying hard things about Irene and her mother; and in discussing the merits of the question Tom broke Costello's nose By midfor being so wilfully blind. night, therefore, the Kinshallas, Loughneys, and Costellos, hated one another singly as much as, collectively, they hated the water company. re J. Addison Kohlmesser deferred his business engagements and remained in Duck Hollow on Thursday. His chivalrous intention to protect the ladies of his family from corporate insult was warded when the evening paper came into town, with his letter prominently printed His communication on the fourth page. had been an imposing piece of English in the first place, but high-priced New York talent had touched here and refined there and added a thought yonder till the whole was perfect. It was a history to make the blood boil in any free-born reader's veins. Duck Hollow thrilled with pride and siz For a week and three days, life went sent their men into the town whenever outside news was scarce; and even the reporters knew that sons and brothers "hauled water" after dark on Sundays to fill the blacklisted Monday washtubs. On the second Monday, Irene dropped. over to see Mrs. Loughney, and stayed from ten till eleven. All the neighbors remembered the feud, and watched and were curious. If they could have looked into the kitchen, they would have seen Irene established in a patent rocker, and feeling very cool and well-dressed and friendly in her best blue muslin. Mrs. Loughney, meantime, washed the children's clothes in a nervous, jerky way, sousing them up and down when Irene talked, and holding them suspended over the suds when her The baby was playing on the floor between its mother and her visitor. turn came to answer. At eleven o'clock the stove cracked down the outside of the fire-box; the red coal showed inside. Irene gave notice of the disaster by a scream. Mrs. Loughney saw, and her first move was to throw the baby into Irene's lap. "There, you see to 'im!" she gasped. "That's all you do. I'll manage." And then, with all the coolness and bravery of Mrs. Kinshalla herself, little Mrs. Loughney emptied the coal-hod, lifted off the front lids of the stove, and with the fire-shovel began to dig out the red coals. When the hod was half full she carried it out to the ashpile and ran back for another load. In three minutes. the danger was over. mess your "My gracious, what a kitchen is in!" Irene exclaimed, as the little woman ran back panting and sat down on the door-step to recover breath. "That's a thirty-seven-fifty range, too, ain't it? Oh, but you been cheated on it! They "MRS. LOUGHNEY.. WASHED THE CHILDREN'S CLOTHES IN A NERVOUS, JERKY WAY" the visitor. "Ma 'll have dinner ready; she 's always right on time. Here's your baby." 'Could n't you stay a bit an' see to him for me, Irene? It ain't near twelve yet, an' I got to finish the washin' an' get it out. I do feel so shaky, like, I 'd take it real kind if ye would. Just the few minutes, now." "Thanks, but I could n't," responded the young lady. "I've sat here longer 'n I really could spare the time, already, jus' to show folks there ain't no hard feelin's about what happened las' week concernin' the water comp'ny. You forget, maybe, I'm a married woman now, an' rushed with the things I got to see to for me own self." "Holy Saints!" cried Mrs. Loughney, looking up at her as the visitor gathered her skirts to crowd past on the door-sill. lowe use to a dying lady-villain on the stage. "I would n't want to make you feel bad about it, o' course, because you could n't really stop to notice. But the baby ain't had his face an' han's washed yet this mornin', I should say, an' that there chicken-bone he got out the coal-pail to cut his teeth on is all dirt an' grease. It 's smeared me all up till I look like a Dago. So I must go. Good mornin'.' |