ed
girls on this continent."

"Nine?"

"Is that too many? Three, then. That's one in ten millions. The exact
proportion of Poets, Painters, Oratory, Statesmen, and all other Great
Artists. Well,--three or nine,--Mary Damer is one of them. She never saw
fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle
word or an ungraceful act in herself. Her atmosphere does not tolerate
flirtation. You must find out for yourself how much genius she has and
has not. But I will say this,--that I think of puns two a minute faster
when I'm with her. Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first
charm in a woman."

Wade laughed.

"You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter. But talking of this
heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except _apropos_
of punning."

"Come up and dine, and we'll fire away personal histories, broadside
for broadside! I've been looking in vain for a worthy hero to set
_vis-a-vis_ to my fair kinswoman. But stop! perhaps you have a Christmas
turkey at home, with a wife opposite, and a brace of boys waiting for
drumsticks."

"No,--my boys, like cherubs, await their own drumsticks. They're not
born, and I'm not married."

"I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal. Well, I will show you a
model wife,--and here she comes!"

Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies
floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael's Hours, or a
Pompeian Bacchante. For want of classic vase or _patera_, Miss Damer
brandished Peter Skerrett's pocket-pistol.

Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, and looked a little
anxiously at his pale face.

"Now, M.D.," says Peter, "you have been surgeon, you shall be doctor and
dose our patient. Now, then,--

"'Hebe, pour free!
Quicken his eyes with mountain-dew,
That Styx, the detested,
No more he may view.'"

"Thanks, Hebe!"

Wade said, continuing the quotation,--

"I quaff it!
Io Paean, I cry!
The whiskey of the Immortals
Forbids me to die."

"We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken
heads," said Fanny. "But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident,
Mr. Wade, as an adventure."

Miss Damer certainly did seem gay and exhilarated.

"I enjoy it," said Wade. "I perceive that I fell on my feet, when I fell
on my crown. I tumbled among old friends, and I hope among new ones."

"I have been waiting to claim my place am