dBooks desire

''
Mrs. Belloc laughed. Mildred was too astonished
to laugh, and too interested--and too startled or
shocked.
``But I was telling you how _I_ got down here,''
continued the landlady. ``Up in my town there was an
old man--about seventy-five--close as the bark on
a tree, and ugly and mean.'' She paused to draw a
long breath and to shake her head angrily yet
triumphantly at some figure her fancy conjured up.
``Oh, he WAS a pup!--and is! Well, anyhow, I
decided that I'd marry him. So I wrote home for fifty
dollars. I borrowed another fifty here and there. I
had seventy-five saved up against sickness. I went up
to Boston and laid it all out in underclothes and house
things--not showy but fine and good to look at. Then
one day, when the weather was fine and I knew the old
man would be out in his buggy driving round--I
dressed myself up to beat the band. I took hours to
it--scrubbing, powdering, sacheting, perfuming,
fixing the hair, fixing my finger-nails, fixing up my feet,
polishing every nail and making them look better than
most hands.


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