rris, have you been putting these slights on me
by order?"

I was confused, I was frightened; I remembered the anger Mr. Gould's
presence had aroused, and this was an actual breech of orders. I
stammered: "I--oh, I just happened to be busy, you know."

I glanced anxiously about me; he replied: "Yes, you were very busy
to-night, sitting in the green-room doing nothing--yet you ran as if I
were a leper. Tell me, little woman--don't be afraid--have you been
obeying an order?"

"If you please--if you please!" was all I could say.

He looked steadily at me, lifted my hand to his lips, and said, with a
compassionate sigh: "Bread and butter comes high in New York, doesn't it,
child? There, I won't worry you any longer, but Brother Daly and I will
hold a little love-feast over this matter." And with a laugh he returned
to the green-room, where I could hear him singing "Lucy Long" to himself.

A fortnight later, finding him again surrounded by the company, he
laughingly called out to me: "Don't run away, the embargo is raised. It
won't cost you a cent to shake hands and be friendly!" And as I seated
myself in the place he made beside him, he added, low: "And no advantage
taken of it outside the theatre."

He used so many queer, old-fashioned words, such as "chipper,"
"tuckered," "I swan!" "mean tyke," etc., that I once said to him: "I'm
afraid you have washed your face in a pail by the pump ere this, Mr.
Fisk?"

He laughed, and responded: "I'm afraid I used to be sent back to do it
better, when I had first to break the ice to get to the water in the
pail, Miss Guesswell!"

And then he gave a funny imitation of a boy washing his face in icy
water, by wetting his fingers and drawing a circle about each eye and
his mouth. He called his wife Lucy. Heaven knows whether it really was
her name, but he always referred to her as Lucy. He was very fond of
her, in spite of appearances, and proud of her, too. He said to me once:
"She is no hair-lifting beauty, my Lucy, just a plump, wholesome,
big-hearted, commonplace woman, such as a man meets once in a lifetime,
say, and then gathers her into the first church he comes to, and seals
her to himself. For you see these commonplace women, like common-sense,
are apt to become valuable as time goes on!"

When anyone praised some wife, he would look up and say: "Wife--whose
wife? What wife? Bring your wives along, I ain't afraid to measure my
Lucy with 'em. For, look here, you mustn't