“Good house-keepers don’t wait for company to come before they get to their work,” rebukefully commented the fat lady.

Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill grace of old residents.  Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the towel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they were not the fruits of the sculptor’s chisel.

“Where’s your wife?” sternly demanded the fat lady.

“Oh, my Lord!  I presume she’s dancin’ a whole lot over to Ervay.  She packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago, p’inting that way.  A locomotive couldn’t stop her none if she got a chance to go cycloning round a dance.”

In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they were de trop, continued to doze.

“Come, girls, get up,” coaxed Johnnie, persuasively.  “Maude, I don’t know when I see you so lazy.  Run on, honey—­run on with Ethel.”  For Ethel, the piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.

Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogs happened to have such unusual names.

“To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife.  When I finds myself a discard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that’s going to inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner—­to which end—­viz., namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my wife that they’re named after lady friends in the East.  Them lady friends might be the daughters of Ananias and Sapphira, for all they ever happened, but they answers the purpose of riling her same as if they were eating their three squares daily.  I have hopes, everything else failing, that she may yet quit dancing and settle down to the sanctity of the home out of pure jealousy of them two proxy hawgs.”

“I can just tell you this,” interrupted the fat lady:  “I don’t enjoy occupying premises after hawgs, no matter how fashionable you name ’em.  A hawg’s a hawg, with manners according, if it’s named after the President of the United States or the King of England.”

“That’s just what I used to think, marm, of all critters before I enjoyed that degree of friendliness that I’m now proud to own.  Take Jerry now, that old white horse—­why, me and him is just like brothers.  When I have to leave the kid to his lonesome infant reflections and go off to chop wood, I just call Jerry in, and he assoomes the responsibility of nurse like he was going to draw wages for it.”

“I reckon there’s faults on both sides,” said the fat lady, impartially.  “No natural woman would leave her baby to a horse to mind while she went off dancing.  And no natural man would fill his house full of critters, and them with highfalutin names.  Take my advice, turn ’em out.”