“I suppose they’ll want to keep you in for life, now,” she said with patient resignation.  “And I had so hoped—­”

She did not finish.  He looked at her quizzically for a little while and her expression touched him.

“I was intendin’ to string the agony out and keep you on tenter-hooks a little spell, Louada Murilla,” he went on.  “But I hain’t got the heart to do it.  All is, they wouldn’t accept that resignation, just as I’ve told you.  It makes a man feel pretty good to be as popular as that in his own town.  Of course it wasn’t all love and abidin’ affection—­I had to go out last night and temper it up with politics a little—­but you’ve got to take things in this world just as they’re handed to you.  I stood up and made a speech and I thanked ’em—­and it was a pretty good speech.”

He paused and narrowed his eyes and dwelt fondly for a moment on the memory of the triumph.

“But when you’re popular in a town and propose to spend your last days in that town and want to stay popular and happy and contented there’s nothin’ like clinchin’ the thing.  So here’s what I done there and then, Louada Murilla:  I praised up the voters of Smyrna as bein’ the best people on earth and then I told ’em that, havin’ an interest in the old town and wantin’ to see her sail on full and by and all muslin drawin’ and no barnacles of debt on the bottom, I’d donate out of my pocket enough to pay up all them prizes and purses contracted for in the celebration—­and then I resigned again as first selectman.  And I made ’em understand that I meant it, too!”

“Did they let you resign?” she gasped.

“Sure—­after a tussle!  But you see I’d made myself so popular by that time that they’d do anything I told ’em to do, even to lettin’ me resign!  And there’s goin’ to be a serenade to me to-night, Hiram Look’s fife and drum corps and the Smyrna Ancients leadin’ the parade.  Last thing I done down-town was order the treat.”

He nested his head in his interlocked fingers and leaned back.

“Louada Murilla, you and me is goin’ to take solid comfort from now on—­and there’s nothin’ like bein’ popular in the place where you live.”  He glanced sideways at the little blank-book.

“We’ve been kind of neglectin’ that, hain’t we, wife?  But we’re goin’ to have a good, long, cozy, chatty time together now!  Make a note of this:  One time when I was eleven days out from Boston with a cargo of woodenware bound to Australia, we run acrost a—­”

THE END