s at fun
and frolic with songs and chorus--Riley Hardin has a magnificent bass
voice at times and Mac Gordon and Charlie Dickman and Roth Hyde wouldn't
be so bad if they'd let these Turkish cigarettes alone--and the boys got
together and sung some of their good old business-college songs, with
the girls coming in while they murdered Hetty with their beautiful eyes.
But Hetty and Mr. D. sort of withdrew from the noisy enjoyment and
talked about the serious aspects of life and how one could get along
almost any place if only they had their favourite authors. And Mr. D.
says doesn't she sing at all, and she says, Oh! in a way; that her voice
has a certain parlour charm, she has been told, and she sings at--you
can't really call it singing--two or three of the old Scotch songs of
homely sentiment like the Scotch seem to get into their songs as no
other nation can, or doesn't he think so, and he does, indeed. And he's
reading a wonderful new novel in which there is much of Nature with its
lessons for each of us, but in which love conquers all at the end, and
the girl in it reminds him strongly of her, and perhaps she'll be good
enough to sing for him--just for him alone in the dusk--if he brings
this book up to-morrow night so he can show her some good places in it.

"At first she is sure she has a horrid old engagement for to-morrow
night and is so sorry, but another time, perhaps--Ain't it a marvel the
crooked tricks that girl had learned in one day! And then she remembers
that her engagement is for Tuesday night--what could she have been
thinking of!--and come by all means--only too charmed--and how rarely
nowadays does one meet one on one's own level of culture, or perhaps
that is too awful a word to use--so hackneyed--but anyway he knows what
she means, or doesn't he? He does.

"Pretty soon she gets up and goes over to her horse, picking her way
daintily in the silly little tan pumps, and seems to be offering the
beast something. The stricken man follows her the second he can without
being too raw about it, and there is the adorably feminine thing with a
big dill pickle, two deviled eggs, and a half of one of these Camelbert
cheeses for her horse. Mr. D. has a good masterly laugh at her idea of
horse fodder and calls her 'But, my dear child!' and she looks prettily
offended and offers this chuck to the horse and he gulps it all down and
noses round for more of the same. It was an old horse named Croppy that
she'd known