er extravagantly comparing her to ambrosia-bearing Hebe, at the same
time thinking that in Vagabondia these tilings were better done than
elsewhere.

The most _outre_ of Phil's hirsute and carelessly garbed
fellow-Bohemians somehow or other seemed neither vulgar nor ill at ease.
They evidently felt at home, and admired faithfully and with complete
unison the feminine members of their friend's family; and their
readiness to catch at the bright or grotesque side of any situation
evinced itself in a manner worthy of imitation. Then, too, there was
Tod, taking excursionary rambles about the carpet, and, far from being
in the way, rendering himself an innocent centre of attraction. Brown
cracked jokes with him, Jones bribed him with cake to the performance of
before-unheard-of. feats, and one muscular, fiercely mus-tached and
bearded young man, whose artistic forte \yas battle-pieces of the most
sanguinary description, appropriated him bodily and set him on his
shoulder, greatly to the detriment of his paper collar.

"The spirit of Vagabondia is strong in Tod," said Dolly, who at the time
was standing near Gowan upon the hearth-rug, with her own coffee-cup in
hand; "its manifestation being his readiness to accommodate himself to
circumstances."

Through the whole of the evening Mollie and the camellias shone forth
with resplendence. Those of Phil's masculine friends who had known her
since her babyhood felt instinctively that to-night the Rubicon had
been passed. Unconscious as she was of herself, she was imposing in the
maroon silk, and these free-and-easy, good-natured fellows were the very
men to be keenly alive to any subtle power of womanhood. So when they
addressed her their manner was a trifle subdued, and their deportment
toward her had a faint savor of delicate reverence.

Dolly was in her element. Her songs, her little supper, and her plans
of entertainment were a perfect success. Such jokes as she made and such
laughter as she managed to elicit through the medium of the smallest
of them, and such aptness and tact as she displayed in keeping up
the general fusillade of _bon-mots_ and repartee. It would have been
impossible for a witticism to fall short of its mark under her active
superintendence, even if witticisms had been prone to fall short in
Vagabondia, which they decidedly were not. She kept Griffith busy, too,
from first to last, perhaps because she felt it to be the safest plan;
at any rate, she held h