nuthin' to dew with the letters. Sue 'tends to everything. The
folks as we'se a-workin' for said we must be plaguey keerful about
the deetecters. I'll bet nun on 'em can't play it on my wife tho'.
If they dew, they'll have to git up arly in the mornin'."

With that he thrust his head out of the window, and yelled: "Sue,
Sue!"

As the sound died away, a tall, raw-boned female, from whose cheeks
the bloom of youth had faded a number of years before, emerged from
the side door of a two-story cottage, about eighty rods distant,
and walked briskly to the switch-house, where she was introduced to
the stranger as "my wife."

After a little preliminary skirmishing, she invited the agent to go
over to the cottage. Having been duly ushered into the "best
room," he embellished for her benefit the story already told to the
husband.

"I think I kin 'commodate yeou," she broke forth, "but yeou'll have
to pay putty well for't. Laws me, I'm told--and I've ways o'
heerin' 'bout these things--that the deetecters are jest as likely
as not to come a-swoopin' deown enny minnit. Yeou know, if they
feound it out, we'd be smash'd."

Her terms were ten dollars a week. Highfalutin & Co. paid six, but
she understood the business a great deal better now than when she
made the bargain with them. The agent thought the price rather
high, but finally consented to contract at that figure.