Mr. Ducker did so with great cheerfulness, rather out of keeping with the nature of his visit.  He felt that his way was growing brighter.  When he reached the old lady’s home he was received with all courtesy by her slow-spoken son.  Mr. Ducker bristled with importance as he made known his errand, in a neat speech, in which official dignity and sympathy were artistically blended.  “The young may die, but the old must die,” he reminded Mr. Williamson as he produced his pencil and tablet.  Mr. Williamson gave a detailed account of his mother’s early life, marriages first and second, and located all her children with painstaking accuracy.  “Left to mourn her loss,” Mr. Ducker wrote.

“And the cause of her death?” Mr. Ducker inquired gently, “general breaking down of the system, I suppose?” with his pencil poised in the air.

Mr. Williamson knit his shaggy brows.

“Well, I wouldn’t say too much about mother’s death if I were you.  Stick to her birth, and the date she joined the church, and her marriages—­they’re sure.  But mother’s death is a little uncertain, just yet.”

A toothless chuckle came from the adjoining room.  Mrs. Williamson had been an interested listener to the conversation.

“Order my coffin, Ducker, on your way down, but never mind the flowers, they might not keep,” she shrilled after him as he beat a hasty retreat.

When Mr. Ducker, crestfallen and humiliated, re-entered the Mercury office a few moments later, he was watched by two twinkling Irish eyes, that danced with unholy merriment at that good man’s discomfiture.  They belonged to Ignatius Benedicto McSorley, the editor of the other paper.

But Mrs. Ducker was hopeful.  A friend of hers in Winnipeg had already a house in view for them, and Mrs. Ducker had decided the church they would attend when the session opened, and what day she would have, and many other important things that it is well to have one’s mind made up on and not leave to the last.  Maudie Ducker had been taken into the secret, and began to feel sorry for the other little girls whose papas were contented to let them live always in such a pokey little place as Millford.  Maudie also began to dream dreams of sweeping in upon the Millford people in flowing robes and waving plumes and sparkling diamonds, in a gorgeous red automobile.  Wilford Ducker only of the Ducker family was not taken into the secret.  He was too young, his mother said, to understand the change.

The nomination day was drawing near, which had something to do with the date of Maudie Ducker’s party.  Mrs. Ducker told Maudie they must invite the czar and Pearl Watson, though, of course, she did not say the czar.  She said Algernon Evans and that little Watson girl.  Maudie, being a perfect little lady objected to Pearl Watson on account of her scanty wardrobe, and to the czar’s moist little hands; but Mrs. Ducker, knowing that the czar’s father was their long suit, stood firm.