Ma Pettengill -- actually Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill -- is quite a character. Take this scene, near the front of this collection of Harry Leon Wilson"s Ma Pettengill stories. There"s a magazine on the table, and our narrator allows as how the man on the cover has "A beautiful face." Ma Pettengill takes the magazine from him and studies the dainty thing. "Yes, he"s certainly beautiful," Ma Pettengill assents. "He"s as handsome as a Greek goddess." Thus does the woman ambiguously praise that famous screen star, J. Harold Armytage. "And the money he makes! His salary is one of them you see compared with the President"s so as to make the latter seem a mere trifle. That"s a funny thing. I bet at least eighteen million grown people in this country never did know how much they was paying their president till they saw it quoted beside some movie star"s salary in a piece that tells how he"s getting about four times what we pay the man in the White House."