[Illustration:  Miss Bella Mason. (of the Inner Sisterhood.)]

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III

       A Wild Fantasy
       In Garrulous Red.

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The Buzz-Saw Girl

I just must talk!  I must talk all the time!  Of course I talk entirely too much—­no one knows that any better than I do—­yet I can not help it!  I know that my continual cackling is dreadful, and I know just exactly when it begins to bore people, but somehow I can’t stop myself, but go right on and on in spite of myself.

Aunt Patsey says I am simply fearful, and just like a girl she used to know, who lived down-East, a Miss Polly Blanton, who talked all the time; told every thing, every thing she knew, every thing she had ever heard; and then when she could think of nothing else, boldly began on the family secrets.  Well, I believe I am just like that girl—­because I am constantly telling things about our domestic life which is by no means pleasant.  Pa and ma lead an awful kind of an existence—­live just like cats and dogs.  Now I ought never to tell that, yet somehow it will slip out in spite of myself!

My pa says I really do act as if I did not have good sense, and I am, for the world, just like ma.  And ma, she says I am without delicacy, manners, or any of the other new touches that most girls have.  As for Aunt Patsey, she is always after me!  She is “Old Propriety” itself!  She goes in heavy for good form.  “Not good form, my dear, not good form!” is what I hear from morning until night.  I do get so tired of it!  They are all real hard on me!  No body ever gives me encouragement, and yet every body is ready with heavy doses of admonition!  Now ma is a powerful big talker herself, although she won’t acknowledge it; but she always seems to know just what not to say!  I call that real talking-luck!  I am so unlucky talking.

But the big power in our house is Aunt Patsey Wing!  There is always bound to be such a person in every well-furnished house!  They seem to be just as necessary as the sofas and easy-chairs—­but not quite so comfortable to have around.  We are all deathly afraid of her!  She is rich, stingy, and says that she has made a will, leaving every dollar to the “Widows and Orphans’ Home”—­a nice way to do her relations!  So of course we are on the strain; on our best behavior to effect a change in our favor.  Ma says she will never, in this world, change it—­and changes made in any other world won’t do us any good.  But pa says he knows how to break it!  Mr. Meggley, her lawyer, who drew up the will, has made an agreement to sell pa the flaw—­for of course there is one in it, for all wills have flaws—­then he will employ another lawyer and break it without any trouble.  My, it will be so exciting!  I suppose we will have to prove that Aunt Patsey was