ed and ample.

"Er--ah--oh, yes! Very kind of you, I'm sure!" said Mr. Woods.

"I never in my life saw Adele so deeply affected by _anything_," Mrs.
Haggage continued, with a certain large archness. "The sweet child
was always so fond of you, you know, Billy. Ah, I remember distinctly
hearing her speak of you many and many a time when you were in that
dear, delightful, wicked Paris, and wonder when you would come back
to your friends--not very grand and influential friends, Billy, but
sincere, I trust, for all that."

Mr. Woods said he had no doubt of it.

"So many people," she informed him, confidentially, "will pursue you
with adulation now that you are wealthy. Oh, yes, you will find that
wealth makes a great difference, Billy. But not with Adele and
me--no, dear boy, despise us if you will, but my child and I are not
mercenary. Money makes no difference with us; we shall be the same to
you that we always were--sincerely interested in your true welfare,
overjoyed at your present good fortune, prayerful as to your brilliant
future, and delighted to have you drop in any evening to dinner. We do
not consider money the chief blessing of life; no, don't tell me that
most people are different, Billy, for I know it very well, and many is
the tear that thought has cost me. We live in a very mercenary world,
my dear boy; but _our_ thoughts, at least, are set on higher things,
and I trust we can afford to despise the merely temporal blessings of
life, and I entreat you to remember that our humble dwelling is always
open to the son of my old, old friend, and that there is always a jug
of good whiskey in the cupboard."

Thus in the shadow of the Eagle babbled the woman whom--for all her
absurdities--Margaret had loved as a mother.

Billy thanked her with an angry heart.

"And this"--I give you the gist of his meditations--"this is Peggy's
dearest friend! Oh, Philanthropy, are thy protestations, then, all
void and empty, and are thy noblest sentiments--every one of 'em--so
full of sound and rhetoric, so specious, so delectable--are these,
then, but dicers' oaths!"

Aloud, "I'm rather surprised, you know," he said, slowly, "that you
take it just this way, Mrs. Haggage. I should have thought you'd have
been sorry on--on Miss Hugonin's account. It's awfully jolly of you,
of course--oh, awfully jolly, and I appreciate it at its true worth, I
assure you. But it's a bit awkward, isn't it, that the poor girl will
be practicall