face silently permitted me to salute
four limp fingers. His eyes swept me with chill disapproval. My hat
clapped on a deal faster than it had come off, for you must know we
unhatted in those days with a grand, slow bow.

"Thy Aunt Ruth," says Tibbie, nudging me; for had I stood from that day
to this, I was bound that cold man should speak first.

To my aunt the beaver came off in its grandest flourish. The pressure
of a dutiful kiss touched my forehead, and I minded the passion kisses
of a dead mother.

Those errant curls blew out in the wind.

"Ramsay Stanhope," begins my uncle sourly, "what do you with uncropped
hair and the foolish trappings of vanity?"

As I live, those were the first words he uttered to me.

"I perceive silken garters," says he, clearing his throat and lowering
his glance down my person. "Many a good man hath exchanged silk for
hemp, my fine gentleman!"

"An the hemp hold like silk, 'twere a fair exchange, sir," I returned;
though I knew very well he referred to those men who had died for the
cause.

"Ramsay," says he, pointing one lank fore-finger at me, "Ramsay, draw
your neck out of that collar; for the vanities of the wicked are a yoke
leading captive the foolish!"

Now, my collar was _point-de-vice_ of prime quality over black velvet.
My uncle's welcome was more than a vain lad could stomach; and what
youth of his first teens hath not a vanity hidden about him somewhere?

"Thou shalt not put the horse and the ass under the same yoke, sir,"
said I, drawing myself up far as ever high heels would lift.

He looked dazed for a minute. Then he told me that he spake concerning
my spiritual blindness, his compassions being moved to show me the
error of my way.

At that, old nurse must needs take fire.

"Lord save a lad from the likes o' sich compassions! Sure, sir, an the
good Lord makes pretty hair grow, 'twere casting pearls before swine to
shave his head like a cannon-ball"--this with a look at my uncle's
crown--"or to dress a proper little gentleman like a ragged
flibbergibbet."

"Tibbie, hold your tongue!" I order.

"Silence were fitter for fools and children," says Eli Kirke loftily.

There comes a time when every life must choose whether to laugh or weep
over trivial pains, and when a cut may be broken on the foil of that
glancing mirth which the good Creator gave mankind to keep our race
from going mad. It came to me on the night of my arrival on the
wharves of Bos