132 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

“ Who cares?” said I.

Jill laid down the paper, and crunched a pop-corn all
up before he answered that. Then said he: “I don’t see
why father never told us. I s’pose he thought we’d be
frightened, or something. Why, s’posing the world did
come toanend? That’s what this paper says. ‘It is pre-
dicted — it is’ — yes, where’s my place? O, I see —‘ pre-
dicted by learned men that a comet will come into con —
conjunction with our plant’ — no —‘our planet this night.
Whether we shall be plunged into a wild vortex of angry
space, or suffocated with n-o-x — noxious gases, or scorched
to a helpless crisp, or blasted at once into eternal an-
ni-hi—’”’

A gust of wind grabbed the paper out of Jill’s hand just
then, and took it out the window; so I never read the rest.
I looked it up in my definitions when I got home, and I
thought that word must have been annihilation.

“Father isn’t a goose,” said I. “He didn’t think it
worth mentioning. He isn’t going to be afraid of a comet
at his time of life!’

So we did n’t think anything more about the comet till we
got to Aunt John’s. So when we got to Aunt John’s, there
was company there, after all. It wasn’t a relation, only an
old schoolmate, and her name was Miss Togy ; so she ’d come
without an invitation, and had to have the spare room because
she was a lady. That was how Jill and I came to be put
into the little chimney bedroom.