Part 28

“I've come here to put an advertisement in your paper.”

The editor heaved a sigh of relief, as once before. “Certainly,” he said briskly. “But that's another department of the paper, and the printers have gone home. Come to-morrow morning early.”

“To-morrow morning I shall be miles away,” she said decisively, “and what I want done has got to be done NOW! I don't want to see no printers; I don't want ANYBODY to know I've been here but you. That's why I kem here at night, and rode all the way from Sawyer's Station, and wouldn't take the stage-coach. And when we've settled about the advertisement, I'm going to mount my horse, out thar in the bushes, and scoot outer the settlement.”

“Very good,” said the editor resignedly. “Of course I can deliver your instructions to the foreman. And now--let me see--I suppose you wish to intimate in a personal notice to your husband that you've returned.”

“Nothin' o' the kind!” said Mrs. Dimmidge coolly. “I want to placard him as he did me. I've got it all written out here. Sabe?”

She took from her pocket a folded paper, and spreading it out on the editor's desk, with a certain pride of authorship read as follows:--

“Whereas my husband, Micah J. Dimmidge, having given out that I have left his bed and board,--the same being a bunk in a log cabin and pork and molasses three times a day,--and having advertised that he'd pay no debts of MY contractin',--which, as thar ain't any, might be easier collected than debts of his own contractin',--this is to certify that unless he returns from Elktown Hill to his only home in Sonora in one week from date, payin' the cost of this advertisement, I'll know the reason why.--Eliza Jane Dimmidge.”

“Thar,” she added, drawing a long breath, “put that in a column of the 'Clarion,' same size as the last, and let it work, and that's all I want of you.”

“A column?” repeated the editor. “Do you know the cost is very expensive, and I COULD put it in a single paragraph?”

“I reckon I kin pay the same as Mr. Dimmidge did for HIS,” said the lady complacently. “I didn't see your paper myself, but the paper as copied it--one of them big New York dailies--said that it took up a whole column.”

The editor breathed more freely; she had not seen the infamous woodcut which her husband had selected. At the same moment he was struck with a sense of retribution, justice, and compensation.

“Would you,” he asked hesitatingly,--“would you like it illustrated--by a cut?”

“With which?”

“Wait a moment; I'll show you.”

He went into the dark composing-room, lit a candle, and rummaging in a drawer sacred to weather-beaten, old-fashioned electrotyped advertising symbols of various trades, finally selected one and brought it to Mrs. Dimmidge. It represented a bare and exceedingly stalwart arm wielding a large hammer.

“Your husband being a miner,--a quartz miner,--would that do?” he asked. (It had been previously used to advertise a blacksmith, a gold-beater, and a stone-mason.)

The lady examined it critically.

“It does look a little like Micah's arm,” she said meditatively. “Well--you kin put it in.”

The editor was so well pleased with his success that he must needs make another suggestion. “I suppose,” he said ingenuously, “that you don't want to answer the 'Personal'?”

“'Personal'?” she repeated quickly, “what's that? I ain't seen no 'Personal.'” The editor saw his blunder. She, of course, had never seen Mr. Dimmidge's artful “Personal;” THAT the big dailies naturally had not noticed nor copied. But it was too late to withdraw now. He brought out a file of the “Clarion,” and snipping out the paragraph with his scissors, laid it before the lady.

She stared at it with wrinkled brows and a darkening face.

“And THIS was in the same paper?--put in by Mr. Dimmidge?” she asked breathlessly.

The editor, somewhat alarmed, stammered “Yes.” But the next moment he was reassured. The wrinkles disappeared, a dozen dimples broke out where they had been, and the determined, matter-of-fact Mrs. Dimmidge burst into a fit of rosy merriment. Again and again she laughed, shaking the building, startling the sedate, melancholy woods beyond, until the editor himself laughed in sheer vacant sympathy.

“Lordy!” she said at last, gasping, and wiping the laughter from her wet eyes. “I never thought of THAT.”

“No,” explained the editor smilingly; “of course you didn't. Don't you see, the papers that copied the big advertisement never saw that little paragraph, or if they did, they never connected the two together.”

“Oh, it ain't that,” said Mrs. Dimmidge, trying to regain her composure and holding her sides. “It's that blessed DEAR old dunderhead of a Dimmidge I'm thinking of. That gets me. I see it all now. Only, sakes alive! I never thought THAT of him. Oh, it's just too much!” and she again relapsed behind her handkerchief.

“Then I suppose you don't want to reply to it,” said the editor.

Her laughter instantly ceased. “Don't I?” she said, wiping her face into its previous complacent determination. “Well, young man, I reckon that's just what I WANT to do! Now, wait a moment; let's see what he said,” she went on, taking up and reperusing the “Personal” paragraph. “Well, then,” she went on, after a moment's silent composition with moving lips, “you just put these lines in.”