with it at once: otherwise you will be blurting it out to
somebody else. You promise?"

"I swear, by all my hopes of your royal favor. Anything else? I mean,
has your majesty any further commands? You'll have to give me audience
about three times a day, you know, to keep me in mind of all these
rules, or I'll be safe to forget some of them."

"You had better try to remember. I'll keep an eye on you. And now do you
want any more, or have you learnt your lesson?"

"I'll trust so. Henceforth I shall not call my soul my own. The humblest
of your slaves craves permission to kiss the royal hand. I say, Clarice,
you won't be rough on poor Hartman, will you? He's had hard lines: you
could easily break him to pieces, what is left of him."

"If there is so little left of him, there would be small credit in
breaking him to pieces, as you elegantly express it. I shall probably
let him alone."

"Scarcely. There is a good deal left of him yet: he is as handsome a
fellow, and as fine a fellow, as you'd be apt to find. You're tired of
the regulation article, dancing man and such, that you meet every night:
I don't wonder. This is something out of the common. He needs a little
looking after, too. I wish now I had let you get at him in May, as you
proposed."

"Robert, if you fling that odious and vulgar figment of your debased
imagination at me again, I will go away and never come back. You make me
sick of the man's name. If you ever breathe a hint of this disgusting
slander to him I will never forgive either of you, nor speak to you."

"God forbid, Princess dear. Don't you know that your good name is as
sacred to me as Mabel's? Wasn't I to come to you with notions that I
couldn't put in words to anybody else?"

"Let them have some shadow of reason and decency about them, then.
Cannot a girl plan a rural excursion, in company with your sister and
under your escort, without being accused of designs on a strange man who
chances to be in the neighborhood? You try my patience sorely, Robert. I
wonder how Mabel can endure you."

"Well, he that is down can't fall any lower, as it says in Pilgrim's
Progress. Walk over me some more, and then maybe you'll feel better.
What the d--There, I'm at it again. Clarice, it might improve me if you
would mix a little kindness with your corrections; handle me as if you
loved me, like the old fisherman with his worms, you know. It
discourages a fellow to get all kicks and no kisses."

"Robert, lo