endann would give for a negative of me?" asked a
splendid fellow leaning on an ax, the rapid strokes of which he stilled
at my approach--"Not a half bad thing for a fancy ball, eh?" Charles
street had no nattier man than the speaker in days gone; and the
tailors had found him their pearl beyond price. But Hilberg's best was
now replaced by a flannel shirt with many a rent, army pants and a
jacket that had been gray, before mud and smoke had brought it near the
unity of Joseph's best garment.

"I'd show well at the club--portrait of a gentleman?" he added lightly.

"Pshaw! Look at _me_! There's a boot for a junior assembly! Wouldn't
that make a show on a waxed floor?" and little Charley H. grinned all
the way across his fresh, fair face, as he extended a foot protruding
from what had been a boot.

"D----l take your dress! Peel those onions, Charley!" cried a baldheaded
man from the fire--"Don't your heart rise at the scent of this _olla_,
my boy? Don't it bring back our dinners at the Spanish legation? Stay
and dine with us--if Charley ever has those onions done--and you'll
feast like a lord-mayor! By the way, last letters from home tell me
that Miss Belle's engaged to John Smith. You remember her that night at
Mrs. R.'s fancy ball?"

"Wouldn't mind having a bottle of Mrs. R.'s sherry now to tone up these
onions," Charley said ruefully. "It _would_ go well with that stew, taken
out of a tin cup--eh, cookey?"

"We had lots better at the club," the cook said, thoughtfully stirring
the mess on the fire--"It was laid in before you were born, Charley.
Those were days, boys--but we'll drink many a bottle of it yet under
the stars and bars!"

"That we will, old man! and I'll carry these boots to a junior assembly
yet. But I _would_ like a bottle of old Mrs. R.'s to drink now, _faute
de mieux_, to the health of the Baltimore girls--God bless 'em!"

"That I would, too," said the sergeant. "But that's the hard part of
it!"--and he stuck his needle viciously through the pants--"I always
get savage when I think of our dear women left unpro----"

"No particular one, sergeant? You don't mean Miss Mamie on Charles
street, do you? Insatiate archer!" cried Charley.

"Do your cooking, you imp! I mean my dear old mother and my sick
sister. D----n this smoke! It will get in a fellow's eyes!"

When Miss Todd gave her picnic in the valley of Jehoshaphat and talked
London gossip under the olives, it was an odd picture; it is strange