"This," said Cassandra, and she began a narration of future events which I
must defer to the next chapter. Meanwhile his associates were endeavoring
to restore the evaporated portions of the prostrated Kidd's spirit anatomy
by the use of a steam-atomizer, but with indifferent success. Kidd's
training had not fitted him for an intellectual combat with superior
women, and he suffered accordingly.
[Illustration: KIDD'S COMPANIONS ENDEAVORING TO RESTORE EVAPORATED
PORTIONS OF HIS ANATOMY WITH A STEAM-ATOMIZER]
X
A WARNING ACCEPTED
"It is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,"
said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, "that I
rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hope
she will spare a grandmother's feelings, if anything in the story she is
about to tell is improper to be placed before the young. I have been so
shocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that have been
published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while there is
yet time if there is a line in Cassandra's story which ought to be
withheld from the public; a protest based upon my affection for posterity,
and in the interests of morality everywhere."
"You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah," said the
prophetess. "What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even to
the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration
of man's perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a little
tale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of New
England character.
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