mad; I did not know why, nor did he: he looked
quite pale. Then his father, with tears in his voice, proposed a vote of
thanks to me, and said that he and the brave hearts of old Bulcester, his
old friends and brothers in arms, were once more united; and the people
stormed the platform and shook his hand and slapped him on the back. At
last we got out by a back way, where our cab was waiting. Young Mr.
Warren was as puzzled as myself, and his father was greatly overcome and
sobbing in a corner. We got into the house, where people kept arriving,
and at last a fine old clerical-looking bird entered with a red badge on
one arm and a very pretty girl in white on the other. She had a red
badge too.

'Young Mr. Warren, who was near me when they came in, gave a queer sort
of cry, and then _I_ understood! The girl was his Jane, and she _had_
been vaccinated, also her father, that afternoon, owing to the awful
panic the old man got into after reading the evening papers about the
smallpox. The gentleman whom Mr. Warren went to see in the study, just
after my arrival, had brought him this gratifying intelligence, and he
had sent the gentleman back to ask the Trumans to a High Tea of
reconciliation. The people at the lecture had heard of this, and that
was why they cheered so for young Warren, because his affair was as
commonly known to all Bulcester as that of Romeo and Juliet at Verona.
They are hearty people at Bulcester, and not without elements of old
English romance.

'Old Mr. Warren publicly embraced Jane Truman, and then brought her and
presented her to me as James's bride. We both cried a little, I think,
and then we all sat down to High Tea, and I am scarcely yet the woman I
used to be. It was a height! And a weight! And a length! After tea
Mr. Warren made a speech, and said that Bulcester had come back to him,
and I was afraid that he would brag dreadfully, but he did not; he was
too happy, I think. And then Mr. Truman made a speech and said that
though they felt obliged to own that they had come to the conclusion that
though Anti-vaccination was a holy thing, still (in the circumstances)
vaccination was good enough. But they yet clung to principles for which
Hampden died on the field, and Russell on the scaffold, and many of their
own citizens in bed! There must be no Coercion. Everyone who liked must
be allowed to have smallpox as much as he pleased. All other issues were
unimportant except that of