gale off Hatteras. "Lost at sea," says the chubby marble
slab in the Old South Burying-Ground, "aetat 18." Perhaps that is why
no blue-jacket, sober or drunk, was ever repulsed from the door of the
Bilkins mansion.

Of course Mrs. Bilkins had her taste in the matter, and preferred them
sober. But as this could not always be, she tempered her wind, so to
speak, to the shorn lamb. The flushed, prematurely old face that now
looked up at her moved the good lady's pity.

"What do you want?" she asked kindly.

"Me wife."

"There 's no wife for you here," said Mrs. Bilkins, somewhat taken
aback. "His wife!" she thought; "it's a mother the poor boy stands in
need of."

"Me wife," repeated Mr. O'Rourke, "for betther or for worse."

"You had better go away," said Mrs. Bilkins, bridling up, "or it will be
the worse for you."

"To have and to howld," continued Mr. O'Rourke, wandering
retrospectively in the mazes of the marriage service, "to have and to
howld, till death--bad luck to him!--takes one or the ither of us."

"You 're a blasphemous creature," said Mrs. Bilkins, severely.

"Thim 's the words his riverince spake this mornin', standin' foreninst
us," explained Mr. O'Rourke. "I stood here, see, and me jew'l stood
there, and the howly chaplain beyont."

And Mr. O'Rourke with a wavering forefinger drew a diagram of the
interesting situation on the door-step.

"Well," returned Mrs. Bilkins, "if you 're a married man, all I have to
say is, there's a pair of fools instead of one. You had better be off;
the person you want does n't live here."

"Bedad, thin, but she does."

"Lives here?"

"Sorra a place else."

"The man's crazy," said Mrs. Bilkins to herself.

While she thought him simply drunk she was not in the least afraid; but
the idea that she was conversing with a madman sent a chill over her.
She reached back her hand preparatory to shutting the door, when
Mr. O'Rourke, with an agility that might have been expected from his
previous gymnastics, set one foot on the threshold and frustrated the
design.

"I want me wife," he said sternly.

Unfortunately, Mr. Bilkins had gone up town, and there was no one in the
house except Margaret, whose pluck was not to be depended on. The case
was urgent. With the energy of despair Mrs. Bilkins suddenly placed
the toe of her boot against Mr. O'Rourke's invading foot, and pushed it
away. The effect of this attack was to cause Mr. O'Rourke to describe a
complete circ