66 TROTTY'S WEDDING TOUR.

“ ‘Yes, and womanly and lady-like, and all that.”

“¢ She would never make a cent, you know.”

“ Mrs. Jasper should n’t indulge that girl so.”

- And to crown all, “‘ What a pity she could n’t wait till
Poppet was large enough to support her!”

But Jem showed a firm little freckled face to everybody,
and stoutly said, “I understand the furniture business. I
don’t understand anything else. I am just as well able to
support the family as if I weren’t a girl, and I mean to do
it. It would please father, and it pleases me. Just let me
alone and see.”

* * * * *

A story is a story, however large. And this is the rest of
it; and no more wonderful, after all, than truth is apt to be.

One day, some years after those five stars overhead, the
editor of the Wednesday Evening Early Visitor, travelling
at the West with her friend the principal, stepped into a
furniture store in a brisk little town in Illinois, to buy a
bracket.

The ladies were waited upon by rather a small boy, who
stood behind the counter with a ceremonious and important
air. He looked so small, so ceremonious, and so important
that the ladies hesitated, and asked, “‘ Can we see one of the
firm?”

“The firm is busy in the counting-room just now,” said
the boy, grandly. ‘She has let the clerk off on a holiday,
and I tend after school to-day. What would you like,
ma’am ?”