"Here,
Fido," when he came into the room.

Still I believe he must have been pretty popular with the ladies,
because I can't think of him to this day without wanting to punch his
head. At the church sociables he used to hop around among them, chipping
and chirping like a dicky-bird picking up seed; and he was a great hand
to play the piano, and sing saddish, sweetish songs to them. Always said
the smooth thing and said it easy. Never had to choke and swallow to
fetch it up. Never stepped through his partner's dress when he began to
dance, or got flustered when he brought her refreshments and poured the
coffee in her lap to cool instead of in the saucer. We boys who
couldn't walk across the floor without feeling that our pants had hiked
up till they showed our feet to the knees, and that we were carrying a
couple of canvased hams where our hands ought to be, didn't like him;
but the girls did. You can trust a woman's taste on everything except
men; and it's mighty lucky that she slips up there or we'd pretty nigh
all be bachelors. I might add that you can't trust a man's taste on
women, either, and that's pretty lucky, too, because there are a good
many old maids in the world as it is.

One time or another Chauncey lolled in the best room of every house in
our town, and we used to wonder how he managed to browse up and down the
streets that way without getting into the pound. I never found out till
after I married your Ma, and she told me Chauncey's heart secrets. It
really wasn't violating any confidence, because he'd told them to every
girl in town.

Seems he used to get terribly sad as soon as he was left alone with a
girl and began to hint about a tragedy in his past--something that had
blighted his whole life and left him without the power to love
again--and lots more slop from the same pail.

Of course, every girl in that town had known Chauncey since he wore
short pants, and ought to have known that the nearest to a tragedy he
had ever been was when he sat in the top gallery of a Chicago theatre
and saw a lot of barnstormers play Othello. But some people, and
especially very young people, don't think anything's worth believing
unless it's hard to believe.

Chauncey worked along these lines until he was twenty-four, and then he
made a mistake. Most of the girls that he had grown up with had married
off, and while he was waiting for a new lot to come along, he began to
shine up to the widow Sharpless, a powerf