I thu-thank you fu-for your polite invu-invu-invutation; and I
ac----" Thus far she progressed when emotion overcame her again.
She beat frantically upon the sofa with fists and heels. "Oh, I did
want it to be Georgie Bassett!"

"No, no, no!" said the governess, and whispered urgently, whereupon
Miss Rennsdale was able to complete her acceptance.

"And I ac-accept wu-with pu-pleasure!" she moaned, and immediately,
uttering a loud yell, flung herself face downward upon the sofa,
clutching her governess convulsively.

Somewhat disconcerted, Penrod bowed again.

"I thank you for your polite acceptance," he murmured hurriedly;
"and I trust--I trust--I forget. Oh, yes--I trust we shall have a
most enjoyable occasion. Pray present my compliments to your
parents; and I must now wish you a very good afternoon."

Concluding these courtly demonstrations with another bow he
withdrew in fair order, though thrown into partial confusion in the
hall by a final wail from his crushed hostess:

"Oh! Why couldn't it be anybody but him!"

Dickens would not have done the scene quite this way; he could not have
so conceived it, and he might have overdone it, but Booth Tarkington
gets it just right. He has created boy characters which will live
because they are alive. One of the most detestable books, after Mark
Twain's "Yankee at the Court of King Arthur," is Dickens's "Child's
History of England." The two books have various gross faults in common
and these faults are due to colossal ignorance. Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
says that one of Dickens's is due to

the application of a plain rule of right and wrong to all
circumstances to which it was applied. It is not that they wrongly
enforce the fixed principle that life should be saved; it is that
they take a fire-engine to a shipwreck and a life-boat to a house
on fire. The business of a good man in Dickens's time was to bring
justice up to date. The business of a good man in Dunstan's time
was to toil to ensure the survival of any justice at all.

It seems to me that if all the works of Dickens were lost we might do
very well with the "Pickwick Papers" and "Nicholas Nickleby." To these,
one is tempted to add "Our Mutual Friend."

When I was young enough to assist at meetings of Literary Societies,
where papers on Dickens were read, I was invariably informed that
"Cha