COMMUTER'S WIFE 161 



Enter Mrs. Mullins, a one-time cook, but now 

 a portly Irish matron, owner of a smooth tongue, 

 that lies comfortably and coaxes successfully, a 

 cow, two pigs, numerous fowls, and an onion field, 

 in addition to a husband and five daughters. In 

 spite of being a perfectly healthy woman, she had 

 come to father at diverse times with the symptoms 

 of all the ordinary diseases at her tongue's end, of 

 which same troubles she was miraculously cured by 

 chalk powders and brown dough pills, so I went 

 directly for her chief foible. 



" Well, Mrs. Mullins, what is amiss with you to- 

 day ? Is the pain in your head or your heels ? for 

 you are too thrifty to leave home before dinner- 

 time merely to make a call." 



"And yer right and yer wrong, Miss Barbara, 

 darlint; God forgive me, for Mrs. it is! I'm never 

 the one for gallivantin' in the mornin' widout cause ; 

 but, all the same, the trouble's not mine, but an- 

 other's, and as it's well-nigh noon, I'll make short 

 words of it. It's Dalia. Your Dalia that has shook 

 off her match and has asked me, she bein' ashamed 

 to face it and expectin' reproaches, if you'll kape 

 her on in her place, for she's entoirely out of the 

 notion of marriage." 



" Delia not going to be married ! and her wedding 



