are going on. While they keep
brisk we keep young, and when they get off the boil, so to speak, we
grow old. Well now, what's to hinder one stirring them up to boil faster
and faster, instead of slower and slower? And if they once did that, of
course you'd begin to grow young instead of going on getting old.
Andrew, it's happened to me."

Andrew started.

"What has?"

"I'm growing young again!"

His junior partner looked at him for half a minute in dead silence. Then
he decided that this statement had better be answered humorously.

"Is this story a sample?" he inquired.

"You don't believe me?"

Andrew's cheeks bulged in a faint smile.

"Am I expected to?"

"Look at my waistcoat--when did you ever see it as loose as that, and me
healthier than I've been for years, and eating more? Look at my
face--where are the wrinkles gone? Look at my head--how long is it since
you've seen a patch of brown hair there?"

To complete this overwhelming series of proofs, he leapt up, and with
an agile jump on one foot whirled the other leg clean over the back of
his chair.

"It's twenty years and more since I last did that!"

Andrew was fairly startled out of his skepticism now. He had the eyes of
a goldfish, and his upper lip and swelling cheeks twitched nervously.

"What an awful thing to happen!" he murmured.

"It has happened, though," said his father.

"But surely--oh, it must just be temporary. You don't think it will
last, do you?"

"I think nothing," replied Mr. Walkingshaw, with conviction. "I have no
settled opinions left. I am a mass of cells in active eruption."

He began to chuckle.

"I'm like a dashed volcano, Andrew!"

His son looked at him piteously. To suffer this sea change was bad
enough, but to laugh about it was diabolical. Mr. Walkingshaw could not
but sober down under such an eye. He gathered his countenance into an
aspect as portentously solemn as his dwindled wrinkles could achieve.
His son grieved afresh to see how their passing diminished the once
overpowering respectability of his parent.

"It's an awful predicament," said Mr. Walkingshaw, shaking his bronzing
head.

"Awful--just awful! What will people say?"

"That's just what I've been wondering. How am I going to break it to
them?"

"You're not going to tell people!"

"But they'll notice for themselves."

Andrew gazed at him gloomily.

"It may pass off,"--his face cleared a little,--"in fact, it's certain
to."

"It doe