The widow carried on a dress-making establishment at her residence on the corner opposite Meeks’s drug-store, and kept a wary eye on all the young ladies from Miss Dorothy Gibbs’s Female Institute who patronized the shop for soda-water, acid-drops, and slate-pencils.  In the afternoon the widow was usually seen seated, smartly dressed, at her window upstairs, casting destructive glances across the street—­the artificial roses in her cap and her whole languishing manner saying as plainly as a label on a prescription, “To be Taken Immediately!” But Mr. Meeks didn’t take.

The lady’s fondness, and the gentleman’s blindness, were topics ably handled at every sewing-circle in the town.  It was through these two luckless individuals that we proposed to strike a blow at the common enemy.  To kill less than three birds with one stone did not suit our sanguinary purpose.  We disliked the widow not so much for her sentimentality as for being the mother of Bill Conway; we disliked Mr. Meeks, not because he was insipid, like his own syrups, but because the widow loved him.  Bill Conway we hated for himself.

Late one dark Saturday night in September we carried our plan into effect.  On the following morning, as the orderly citizens wended their way to church past the widow’s abode, their sober faces relaxed at beholding over her front door the well known gilt Mortar and Pestle which usually stood on the top of a pole on the opposite corner; while the passers on that side of the street were equally amused and scandalized at seeing a placard bearing the following announcement tacked to the druggist’s window-shutters: 

Wanted, a Sempstress!

The naughty cleverness of the joke (which I should be sorry to defend) was recognized at once.  It spread like wildfire over the town, and, though the mortar and the placard were speedily removed, our triumph was complete.  The whole community was on the broad grin, and our participation in the affair seemingly unsuspected.

It was those wicked soldiers at the fort!

Chapter Ten—­I Fight Conway

There was one person, however, who cherished a strong suspicion that the Centipedes had had a hand in the business; and that person was Conway.  His red hair seemed to change to a livelier red, and his sallow cheeks to a deeper sallow, as we glanced at him stealthily over the tops of our slates the next day in school.  He knew we were watching him, and made sundry mouths and scowled in the most threatening way over his sums.

Conway had an accomplishment peculiarly his own—­that of throwing his thumbs out of joint at will.  Sometimes while absorbed in study, or on becoming nervous at recitation, he performed the feat unconsciously.  Throughout this entire morning his thumbs were observed to be in a chronic state of dislocation, indicating great mental agitation on the part of the owner.  We fully expected an outbreak from him at recess; but the intermission passed off tranquilly, somewhat to our disappointment.