g, presumably, a suitor for his daughter's hand, I was timber for
his literary outpourings. I had the family tree of Israel drilled
into my head until I used to cry aloud in my sleep: "And Aminadab
begat Jay Eye See," and so forth, until he had tackled another book.
I once made a calculation that the Reverend Homer's concordance would
be worked up as far as the Seven Vials mentioned in Revelations about
the third day after they were opened.

Louis Devoe, as well as I, was a visitor and an intimate friend of the
Greenes. It was there I met him the oftenest, and a more agreeable
man or a more accomplished I have never hated in my life.

Luckily or unfortunately, I came to be accepted as a Boy. My
appearance was youthful, and I suppose I had that pleading and
homeless air that always draws the motherliness that is in women and
the cursed theories and hobbies of paterfamilias.

Chloe called me "Tommy," and made sisterly fun of my attempts to
woo her. With Devoe she was vastly more reserved. He was the man of
romance, one to stir her imagination and deepest feelings had her
fancy leaned toward him. I was closer to her, but standing in no
glamour; I had the task before me of winning her in what seems to me
the American way of fighting--with cleanness and pluck and everyday
devotion to break away the barriers of friendship that divided us, and
to take her, if I could, between sunrise and dark, abetted by neither
moonlight nor music nor foreign wiles.

Chloe gave no sign of bestowing her blithe affections upon either of
us. But one day she let out to me an inkling of what she preferred
in a man. It was tremendously interesting to me, but not illuminating
as to its application. I had been tormenting her for the dozenth time
with the statement and catalogue of my sentiments toward her.

"Tommy," said she, "I don't want a man to show his love for me by
leading an army against another country and blowing people off the
earth with cannons."

"If you mean that the opposite way," I answered, "as they say women
do, I'll see what I can do. The papers are full of this diplomatic
row in Russia. My people know some big people in Washington who are
right next to the army people, and I could get an artillery commission
and--"

"I'm not that way," interrupted Chloe. "I mean what I say. It isn't
the big things that are done in the world, Tommy, that count with a
woman. When the knights were riding abroad in their armor to slay
dragons