e the changes a couple of years
had wrought in us. Coleman was the first to speak.

"Why, Frank, how you are altered!" "If you were but decently civil, you
would say 'improved' instead of 'altered,'" replied I; "but you'll
never learn manners."

"Oh, if you want compliments I'll soon get up a few, but it strikes me
they are not required. A man with such a face and figure as yours soon
finds out that he is a deucedly good-looking fellow. Why, how high do
you stand?"

"About six feet without my boots," replied I, laughing at Coleman, who
kept turning me round, and examining me from top to toe, as if I had
been some newly discovered animal.

"Well, you are a screamer, and no mistake," exclaimed he at length.
"Be merciful towards the young ladies tonight, or the floor will be so
cumbered with the heaps of slain that we shall have no room to dance."

"Never fear," rejoined I, "the female breast is not so susceptible as
you imagine; and I'll back your bright eyes and merry smile to do more
execution than my long legs and broad shoulders any day."

"No soft sawder, Master Frank, if you please; it's an article for which
I've a particular distaste: people never make pretty speeches to one's
face without laughing at one behind one's back afterwards by way of
compensation."

"Which rule of course applies to the remarks you have just been making
about me," returned I.

"You've caught me there fairly," laughed Coleman; "but come along in,
now, I want to introduce you to my mother and the governor; they are
longing to see you after all I've told them about you, though I can't
say you look much like the thin delicate youth I have described you."

Mr. Coleman, who was a short, stout, red-faced old gentleman, with a
bald head and a somewhat pompous manner, came forward and welcomed
me warmly, saying ~119~~all sorts of complimentary things to me in
extremely high-flown and grandiloquent language, and referring to my
having saved his son's life, in doing which, however, he quite won my
heart by the evident pride and affection with which he spoke of Freddy.
The lady of the house was a little, round, merry-looking woman, chiefly
remarkable (as I soon discovered) for a peculiar mental obliquity,
leading her always to think of the wrong thing at the wrong time,
whereby she was perpetually becoming involved in grievous colloquial
entanglements, and meeting with innumerable small personal accidents, at
which no one laughed so heartil