A SHORT HORSE SOON CURRIED Sylvia sat beside Bassett at dinner that night, and it was on the whole a cheerful party.

Mrs.Bassett was restored to tranquillity, and before her aunt she always strove to hide her ills, from a feeling that that lady, who enjoyed perfect health, and carried on the most prodigious undertakings, had little patience with her less fortunate sisters whom the doctors never fully discharge.

Mrs.Owen had returned so late that Bassett was unable to dispose of the lawsuit before dinner; she had greeted her niece's husband with her usual cordiality.

She always called him Morton, and she was Aunt Sally to him as to many hundreds of her fellow citizens.

She discussed crops, markets, rumors of foreign wars, prospective changes in the President's Cabinet, the price of ice, and the automobile invasion.