n't mention it!" begged Jerome. He began to laugh again. For some
reason the whole thing was excessively amusing to Jerome.

"But I _will_ mention it," persisted Rube. "I'll thank you for it to
my dying day. It was so self-sacrificing on your part, considering
everything."

"Oh, was it?" exclaimed his companion, choking down his risibles.
"Well--ah--I don't exactly feel it that way. A mere trifle."

"Not to me," declared Rube.

"Perhaps not to me, either," conceded Jerome, looking on the subject
more seriously. "For Clara--"

"You can patch up Clara," Rube suggested, soothingly.

"Do you think so? It's a rankling _casus belli_ at present, I can tell
you! But how about your rustic beauty, eh, Rube? Is she pleased? Does
she like it?"

"Pleased? Like it? You bet she does! She's delighted!"

"No one has introduced me yet," Jerome next remarked, quite
incidentally. "And I am sure if her Gracious Majesty smiles upon any
of her loyal subjects it ought to be me."

"That's so! So come right along now." They reached her side.

"Mell, here's the very best fellow in the world," said Rube, out of
the fullness of his heart, forgetting the prescribed forms of
etiquette in the absorption of warm feeling.

Mell had noted their approach. She was not taken unawares. She bent
her head slightly to the newcomer, she looked him over for a whole
minute, it seemed, before she opened her lips and said:

"How do you do, Mr. Very-Best-Fellow-in-the-World?"

Those near enough to hear roared with laughter, for the young queen's
manner made the whole thing so absurdly funny; and perhaps there is
nothing a crowd so much enjoys as the taking down of a person whom
they regard in the light of one much needing to be taken down.

"His name is Devonhough," Rube hastened to explain, not relishing the
laugh against his friend at this particular time by his particular
fault. "Mr. Devonhough, Miss Creecy. He is my very best friend, Mell.
Shake hands with him."

Mell did so; but without the faintest glimmering of a smile, and with
such glacial dignity as fairly charged the atmosphere with iciness.
Not content with this, she met all his subsequent efforts to cultivate
her acquaintance with the briefest and chilliest repulses.

Rube was much concerned. He saw dimly that his best friend had not,
somehow, made a favorable impression upon his future wife; but he
could not tell the why or wherefore. While he wondered within him what
he could do to