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round the back streets of Charlottetown. The cats themselves wouldn’t have brought her in. Now she puts on the airs of a queen and tries to run the church. I'll soon clip her claws. She was pretty thankful a few weeks ago to have a Murray in her stall. It was a rise in the world for her. Polly Tolliver, forsooth. What is this world coming to?”

Aunt Ruth sailed upstairs, leaving a dazed Emily looking at vanishing bogies. Aunt Ruth came down again, ready for the warpath. She had taken out her crimps, put on her best bonnet, her best black silk, and her new sealskin coat. Thus arrayed she skimmed uptown to the Tolliver residence on the hill. She remained there half an hour closeted with Mrs. Nat Tolliver. Aunt Ruth was a short, fat, little woman, looking very dowdy and old-fashioned in spite of new bonnet and sealskin coat. Mrs. Nat was the last word in fashion and elegance, with her Paris gown, her lorgnette and her beautifully marcelled hair—marcels were just coming in then and Mrs. Nat’s was the first in Shrewsbury. But the victory of the encounter did not perch on Mrs. Tolliver’s standard. Nobody knows just what was said at that notable interview. Certainly Mrs. Tolliver never told. But when Aunt Ruth left the big house Mrs. Tolliver was crushing her Paris gown and her marcel waves among the cushions of her davenport while she wept tears of rage and humiliation; and Aunt Ruth carried a note in her muff to Mrs. Tolliver’s “Dear Emily,” saying that her cousin was not going to take part in the bazaar and would “Dear Emily” be so kind as to take the stall as at first planned. Dr. Hardy was next interviewed, and again Aunt Ruth went, saw, conquered. The maid in the Hardy household heard and reported one sentence of the confab, though nobody ever believed that Aunt Ruth really said to stately, spectacled Dr. Hardy,

“I know you’re a fool, Jim Hardy, but for heaven’s sake pretend you're not for five minutes!”