It must be confessed that I read this article of Munchausen's with
amazement, and I awaited with much excited curiosity the coming again of
the manipulator of my type-writing machine. Surely a revelation of this
nature should create a sensation in Hades, and I was anxious to learn
how it was received. Boswell did not materialize, however, and for five
nights I fairly raged with the fever of curiosity, but on the sixth
night the familiar tinkle of the bell announced an arrival, and I flew
to the machine and breathlessly cried:

"Hullo, old chap, how did it come out?"

The reply was as great a surprise as I have yet had, for it was not
Boswell, Jim Boswell, who answered my question.

IV. A CHAT WITH XANTHIPPE

The machine stopped its clicking the moment I spoke, and the words,
"Hullo, old chap!" were no sooner uttered than my face grew red as a
carnation pink. I felt as if I had committed some dreadful faux-pas, and
instead of gazing steadfastly into the vacant chair, as I had been
wont to do in my conversation with Boswell, my eyes fell, as though
the invisible occupant of the chair were regarding me with a look of
indignant scorn.

"I beg your pardon," I said.

"I should think you might," returned the types. "Hullo, old chap! is
no way to address a woman you've never had the honor of meeting, even if
she is of the most advanced sort. No amount of newness in a woman gives
a man the right to be disrespectful to her."

"I didn't know," I explained. "Really, miss, I--"

"Madame," interrupted the machine, "not miss. I am a married woman, sir,
which makes of your rudeness an even more reprehensible act. It is well
enough to affect a good-fellowship with young unmarried females, but
when you attempt to be flippant with a married woman--"

"But I didn't know, I tell you," I appealed. "How should I? I supposed
it was Boswell I was talking to, and he and I have become very good
friends."

"Humph!" said the machine. "You're a chum of Boswell's, eh?"

"Well, not exactly a chum, but--" I began.

"But you go with him?" interrupted the lady.

"To an extent, yes," I confessed.

"And does he GO with you?" was the query. "If he does, permit me to
depart at once. I should not feel quite in my element in a house where
the editor of a Sunday newspaper was an attractive guest. If you like
that sort of thing, your tastes--"

"I do not, madame," I replied, quickly. "I prefer the opium habit to the
Sunday-newspaper h