“‘Yes,’ says Hannah; ’if you please.  Oh! and, Mr. Badger, please don’t tell anyone I bought ’em.  Please don’t, to oblige me.’

“So Chris trotted out the cigars—­ten cents straight, they was—­and said nothin’ to nobody, which is a faculty he has when it pays to have it.

“When Kenelm came home that night he was knocked pretty nigh off his pins to find his sister waitin’ for him.  He commenced a long rigmarole about where he’d been, but Hannah didn’t ask no questions.  She said that Washington was mighty fine, but home and Kenelm was good enough for her.  Said the thoughts of him alone had been with her every minute, and she just had to cut the trip short.  Kenelm wa’n’t any too enthusiastic to hear it.

“Breakfast next mornin’ was a dream.  Hannah had been up since five o’clock gettin’ it ready.  There was everything on that table that Kenelm liked ’special.  And it all tasted fine, and he ate enough for four.  When ’twas over Hannah went to the closet and brought out a bundle.

“‘Kenelm,’ she says, ‘here’s somethin’ I brought you that’ll surprise you.  I’ve noticed since I’ve been away that about everybody smokes—­senators and judges, and even Smithsonian Institute folks.  And when I see how much comfort they get out of it, my conscience hurt me to think that I’d deprived my brother of what he got such a sight of pleasure from.  Kenelm, you can begin smokin’ again right off.  Here’s a box of cigars I bought on purpose for you; they’re the kind the President smokes.’

“Which wa’n’t a bad yarn for a church member that hadn’t had any more practice than Hannah had.

“Well, Kenelm was paralyzed, but he lit up one of the cigars and found ’twas better than Abbie’s brand.  He asked Hannah what she thought the church folks would say, but she said she didn’t care what they said; her travels had broadened her mind and she couldn’t cramp herself to the ideas of a little narrow place like East Wellmouth.

“Dinner that day was a bigger meal than breakfast, and two of the cigars went fine after it.  Kenelm hemmed and hawed and fin’lly said that he wouldn’t be home to supper; said he’d got to go downtown and would get a bite at the Trav’lers’ Rest or somewheres.  It surprised him to find that Hannah didn’t raise objections, but she didn’t, not a one.  Just smiled and said, ‘All right,’ and told him to have a good time.  And Abbie’s supper didn’t seem so good to him that night, and her cigars—­bein’ five centers—­wa’n’t in it with that Washington box.

“Hannah didn’t have dinner the next day until two o’clock, but ’twas worth waitin’ for.  Turkey was twenty-three cents a pound, but she had one, and plum puddin’, too.  She kept pressin’ Kenelm to have a little more, so ’twas after three when they got up from the table.

“’Twas a rainy, drizzly afternoon and the stove felt mighty homey and cozy.  So did the big rocker that Hannah transplanted from the parlor to the settin’-room.  That chair had been a kind of sacred throne afore, and to set in it had been sort of sacrilegious, but there ’twas, and Kenelm didn’t object.  And those President cigars certainly filled the bill.