“Well,” he said, “I supposed I was goin’ to set down same as I would at home, where we put the vittles on the table.  W-wondered what I was goin’ to eat—­wahn’t nothin’ but a piece of bread on the table.  S-sat there and watched ’em—­nobody ate anything.  Presently I found out that Binney’s wife ran her house same as they run hotels.  Pretty soon a couple of girls come in and put down some food and took it away again before you had a chance.  A-after a while we had coffee, and when I set my cup on the table, I noticed Mis’ Binney looked kind of cross and began whisperin’ to the girls.  One of ’em fetched a small plate and took my cup and set it on the plate.  That was all right.  I used the plate.

“Well, along about next summer Binney had to come to Coniston to see me on a little matter and fetched his wife.  Listy, my wife, was alive then.  I’d made up my mind that if I could ever get Mis’ Binney to eat at my place I would, so I asked ’em to stay to dinner.  When we set down, I said:  ‘Now, Mis’ Binney, you and the Judge take right hold, and anything you can’t reach, speak out and we’ll wait on you.’  And Mis’ Binney?’

“Yes,” she said.  She was a little mite scared, I guess.  B-begun to suspect somethin’.”

“Mis’ Binney,” said I, “y-you can set your cup and sarcer where you’ve a mind to.’  O-ought to have heard the Judge laugh.  Says he to his wife:  ’Fanny, I told you Jethro’d get even with you some time for that sarcer business.’”

This story, strange as it may seem, had a great success at Mr. Merrill’s table.  Mr. Merrill and his daughter Susan shrieked with laughter when it was finished, while Mrs. Merrill and Jane enjoyed themselves quite as much in their quiet way.  Even the two neat Irish maids, who were serving the supper very much as poor Mis’ Binney’s had been served, were fain to leave the dining room abruptly, and one of them disgraced herself at sight of Jethro when she came in again, and had to go out once mare.  Mrs. Merrill insisted that Jethro should pour out his coffee in what she was pleased to call the old-fashioned way.  All of which goes to prove that table-silver and cut glass chandeliers do not invariably make their owners heartless and inhospitable.  And Ephraim, whose plan of campaign had been to eat nothing to speak of and have a meal when he got back to the hotel, found that he wasn’t hungry when he arose from the table.

There was much bantering of Jethro by Mr. Merrill, which the ladies did not understand—­talk of a mighty coalition of the big railroads which was to swallow up the little railroads.  Fortunately, said Mr. Merrill, humorously, fortunately they did not want his railroad.  Or unfortunately, which was it?  Jethro didn’t know.  He never laughed at anybody’s jokes.  But Cynthia, who was listening with one ear while Susan talked into the other, gathered that Jethro had been struggling with the railroads, and was sooner or later to engage in a mightier struggle with them.  How, she asked herself in her innocence, was any one, even Uncle Jethro, to struggle with a railroad?  Many other people in these latter days have asked themselves that very question.