The Fighting Shepherdess

Toomey's brow cleared instantly.

"We can do that--I'll raffle it--the punch bowl--and get a hundred and fifty out of it easily." He discussed the details enthusiastically, finally blowing out the light and going to sleep as contentedly as though it already had been accomplished.

But in the darkness Mrs. Toomey cried quietly. Selling tickets for a raffle which was for their personal benefit seemed a kind of genteel begging. She wondered that Jap did not feel as she did about it. And what would Mrs. Pantin think? What Mrs. Abram Pantin thought had come to mean a great deal to Mrs. Toomey.

The wind had risen to a gale and she thought nervously of fringed napkins and pillow slips--the wind always gave her the "blues" anyway, and now it reminded her of winter, which was close, with its bitter cold--of snow driven across trackless wastes, of gaunt predatory animals, of cattle and horses starving in draws and gulches, and all the other things which winter meant in that barren country. She slept after a time, to find the next morning that the wind still howled and the fringe on her laundry was all she had pictured.

Toomey set forth gaily immediately after breakfast with the punch bowl wrapped in a newspaper, and Mrs. Toomey nerved herself to negotiate for the sale of the teapot to Mrs. Sudds, in the event of his being unsuccessful.

She watched for his return eagerly, but it was two o'clock before she saw him coming, leaning against the wind and clasping the punch bowl to his bosom. Her heart sank, for his face told her the result without asking.

Toomey set Uncle Jasper's wedding gift upon the dining room table with disrespectful violence.

"You must be crazy to think I could sell that in Prouty! You should have known better!"

"Didn't anybody want it, Jap?" Mrs. Toomey asked timidly.

"Want it?" angrily. "'Tinhorn' thought it was some kind of a tony cuspidor, and a round-up cook offered me a dollar and a half for it to set bread sponge in."

"Never mind," soothingly, "I'm sure Mrs. Sudds will take the teapot."

"We can't live all winter on a teapot," he answered gloomily.

"But you're sure to get into something pretty quick now."

"When I land, I'll land big--I'll land with both feet," he responded more cheerfully.

"Of course, you will--I never doubt it." Mrs. Toomey endeavored to make her tone convincing. "Let's have tea in the heirloom before we part with it," she suggested brightly. "It's never been used that I can remember."

"It's ugly enough to be valuable," Toomey observed, eyeing the teapot as she took it from the top of the bookcase.