t gems in the eyes
of the former.

Upon these the shifting gaze of the restless listener finally fastened
itself with a fascination which he found it impossible to resist, and
the Sepoy, with all the modulated lights and shadows of ardor,
animation, lethargy, somnolence, peace, with which he complemented his
sedative phrases, began:

(_The conclusion of this interesting tale will be found on Bosom No. 1,
Dickey Series C_.)

As Dennis looked up from his reading, a pair of eyes of unclouded blue,
vivid with interest and altogether friendly, met his animated glance.

With alert intuition his sweet-faced auditor believed that she
discovered a shadow of vexation in the ingenuous countenance of the
reader.

"What is it?" she asked.

To Dennis, in his absorption, it seemed impossible that the question
could refer to anything else than the habitual disability at the end of
each chapter, and he answered promptly:

"'Tis the way the dickey ends--to be concluded in Series C--an' it's me
here an' Series C in Baxter Street, so I can't read the rest; it's too
bad, so it is."

"So it is," repeated the lady softly, with a dexterous parody of his
concluding words, but with a subtle intimation in her manner that she
did not consider the inconvenient termination such a misfortune, after
all, and that it somehow suggested an alternative that was not
displeasing.

"Do you want to hear the rest?" asked Dennis frankly.

"I do, indeed," replied his companion with an adroitly conveyed
insinuation of disappointed expectation that seemed to place the
responsibility of measuring to this agreeable emergency entirely upon
Dennis.

The same degree of sensitiveness which leaves an Irishman so open to
offense, enables him, with equal celerity, to comprehend a hint, and
Dennis, when he realized that the lady understood that the continuation
of the tale involved a subsequent reading, exclaimed, with a delicious
paraphrase of Sancho Panza: "God bless the man who first invented
'_Continued in our next!_'"

Presently the one certain that her telepathy had not miscarried, and the
other equally convinced that his reception of the message was accredited
to him, the conversation was given an abrupt direction by an apparently
alien question:

"Do you know anything about flowers?" asked his companion.

"Only the difference between a rose and a cauliflower," replied Dennis
with a twinkle in his eye, to which the lady responded with a shade of