COMMUTER'S WIFE 189 



" First we must buy it, Bab the impetuous,' 1 

 laughed father, " and some one may realize its beauty 

 and easily outbid us, for we have been a week in 

 town, this is the fourth day of the sale, and my purse 

 is pretty thoroughly purged." 



But we bought it, there being only two other 

 ' competitors, one a man of the buy-anything-cheap 

 type, and the other a real lady collecting ancestors, 

 who would doubtless have outbid us if her daughter 

 had not checked her audibly by saying, " Don't, ma ; 

 you know we agreed to stick to the military line," 

 and so Linnaeus, was knocked down to us for the 

 small sum of twenty dollars, when, as the auc- 

 tioneer patronizingly assured us, " The frame alone 

 is quite worth the money, being hand-carved Dutch 

 oak ! " 



Now " Linnaeus " has fitly come to preside over 

 our garden of books, and I still believe that he is 

 all my fancy imagined, and that one day he will 

 be proved his real self, and it will be explained 

 how he came to be travelling incog, as the "Gen- 

 tleman with the White Wig." 



Toward four o'clock the storm lightened, but it 

 was too late for road breaking. Then the wind 



