7
Birdie, whose discovery of her husband's weakness for drink
and women had turned her into a cynical, reckless and bitter

tongued butterfly, who finds poker and bridge a substutute

for home life, declares that she does not propose to make of
herself a human incubator. Babies, ghe asserts, are noisy, dirty
and kaaky. What is more they would be a nuisance in the
apartment and interfere with her darling Pip-pip ---a little
dog. V

Dickie declares that brats bore him to extinction,

' and if his loving wife should take it into her little empty

. they practice the same fraud ,the following year upon thei

head to present him with one of the infernal little music
boxes, he would have to drop it in the agreeable Hudson.

However, the $10,000. is soon dissipated, and the
two, alarmed, leave their respective passions, to come togethwe
to discuss the threatened cessation of the lucuries to which
they are accustomed. The upshot is, that the clause in their
uncle's letter in regard to the $20,000. for each child hypno-
tiaes them and smothers every inch of prinoipdd in them.

They connive to defraud the uncle, whom they believe to be
"an old antique, with oddles of money, buggy enough to live
near the North Pole“.

A telegram is therefore despatched aporizing Dayton
of the birth of a fine boy, named after him, and the unc1e,g
delighted with the news celebrates the occason in true i
ranch style on the Bar Bar B. and despatches a check for5‘
the $20,000. promised to the hilarious Dickie and Birdie. 

The money has come so easily, and is spent so speedily, that he

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