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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Brace Of Boys
+       1867, From “Little Brother”
+
+Author: Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23170]
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BRACE OF BOYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A BRACE OF BOYS
+
+By Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+From “Little Brother,”
+
+Copyright, 1867, by Lee & Shepard
+
+
+I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody;
+but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially,
+just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race;
+and if, through untoward circumstances--which Heaven forbid--I should
+lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out
+in the “Herald” under “Situations Wanted--Males.” Thanks to a marrying
+tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise,
+all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my
+profession can attend to. I suppose you won't agree with me; but, do you
+know, sometimes I think it's better than having children of one's own?
+People tell me that I'd feel very differently if I did have any. Perhaps
+so, but then, too, I might be unwise with them; I might bother them
+into mischief by trying to keep them out. I might be avaricious
+of them--might be tempted to lock them up in my own stingy old
+nursery-chest instead of paying them out to meet the bills of humanity
+and keep the Lord's business moving. I might forget, when I had spent
+my life in fining their gold and polishing their graven-work, that
+they were still vessels for the Master's use--I only the Butler--the
+sweetness and the spirit with which they brimmed all belonging to His
+lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then, if seeking to drain another's
+wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and found it gall, or felt it
+steal into my old veins to poison the heart and paralyze the hand which
+had kept it from the Master, what further good would there be for me in
+the world? Who doesn't know, in some friend's house, a closet containing
+that worst of skeletons--the skeleton which, in becoming naked, grim and
+ghastly, tears its way through our own flesh and blood? To be an uncle
+is a different kind of thing. There you have nothing of the excitement
+of responsibility to shake your judgment That's what makes us bachelor
+uncles so much better judges of what's good for children and their
+fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame us if our nephews
+unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we give them
+five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting thanked at
+the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when they
+have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear
+people say, “See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with
+Uncle Ned's birthday present!” or, “That boy's grown an inch round the
+chest since you set him sparring!” Uncles never get stale. They don't
+come every day like parents and plain pudding; they're a sort of holiday
+relative with a plummy, Christmas flavor about them. Everybody
+hasn't got them; they are not so rare as the meteoric showers, but as
+occasional as a particularly fine day, and whenever they come to a house
+they're in the nature of a pleasant surprise.
+
+I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
+through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
+little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
+longest among the children of my sister Lu.
+
+Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune
+amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the
+mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
+Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of
+Lovegrove, Cashdown & Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a
+revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not
+looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to
+adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and
+Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good
+article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces
+and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy,
+who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in
+point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of
+this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling
+at his book of sums.
+
+“'A boy has 85 turnips and gives his sister 80'--pretty present for
+a girl, isn't it?” said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. “Could
+_you_ stand such stuff--say?”
+
+I put on my instructive face and answered: “Well, my dear Billy,
+you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an
+industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to
+lose all their property, what would become of them without a little son
+who could make money and keep accounts?”
+
+“Oh!” said Billy with surprise. “Hasn't father got enough stamps to see
+him through?”
+
+“He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
+should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more
+stamps for himself?”
+
+“You haven't thought of brother Daniel--”
+
+True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
+life.
+
+“No, Billy,” I replied; “I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
+more of a student than a business man, and--”
+
+“Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd
+have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to
+be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so
+he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?”
+
+“Forty, Billy, last August.”
+
+“Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you
+Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that,
+and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and
+wheels him around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, _I_
+bet! Well, I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick
+like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a
+piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll
+gouge a piece out of the other.”
+
+“Spend a what!” said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu,
+who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.
+
+“A toadskin, ma,” replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
+glance of contempt.
+
+“Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?”
+
+“Why, ma! don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one,” said Billy,
+drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. “And don't I wish I had
+lots of 'em!”
+
+“Oh!” sighed his mother, “to think I should have a child so addicted to
+slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!”
+
+“Well, mother,” replied Billy, “if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
+oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel
+now when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight!
+Hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog--I know his bark!”
+
+With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the table
+and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
+
+“What will become of him?” said Lu hopelessly; “he has no taste for
+anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why _isn't_
+he like Daniel?”
+
+“I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often
+possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a
+good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do
+you'll make something as good of him as Daniel; though it will be rather
+different from that model.”
+
+“Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do
+Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maids' daughters and old
+bachelors' sons. I wish you had Billy for a month--then you'd see.”
+
+“I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
+other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he
+was a new problem, not to be worked without finding the value of 'x' in
+his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more
+solve the next one than the rule of three will solve a question
+in calculus--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for
+one-two-three-four cake conduct you to a successful issue through plum
+pudding--”
+
+I excel in metaphysical discussions, and was about giving further
+elaboration of my favorite idea when the door burst open. Master Billy
+came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the trace of a few
+tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.
+
+“Oh my! my!! my!!!” exclaimed his mother.
+
+“Don't you get scared, ma!” cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of
+triumph; “I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for nothing
+_this_ while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dogfight after all?
+There was that nasty good-for-nothing Joe Casey 'n' Patsy Grogan and a
+lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little
+ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail and were trying to set Joe's dog
+on him, though he's ten times littler--”
+
+“You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see
+you playing with those ragamuffins?”
+
+“Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em--that's the play I did! Says I,
+'Put down that poor little pup! Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy
+Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way they
+always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful great
+fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog or I'll show you
+who _I_ am'; and when he held on, I let him have it. Then he dropped the
+pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the bugle.”
+
+“_Bugle!_ Oh! oh! oh!”
+
+“The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I
+was trying to give as good as I got--only a fellow can't do it well with
+only one hand, Uncle Teddy--up came a policeman and the whole crowd ran
+away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!”
+
+With that Billy set down his “ki-oodle,” bade farewell to every fear,
+and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the
+legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an
+expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his
+dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such sincere
+pride in this young Mazzini of the dog-nation that I was vexed at Lu for
+bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the
+only conservative who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under
+a bloody nose and torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished, he
+should have his recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's
+or the Hippotheatron.
+
+You already have some idea of my other nephew if you have noticed that
+none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy,
+ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call
+Billy William.
+
+He was one of those youths who never give their parents a moment's
+uneasiness; who never have to have their wills broken, and never forget
+to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended
+for a missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's
+icy mountains without catching cold, or to India's coral strand without
+getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream
+of contributing him to the world's evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove
+had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have
+stood it. They brought him up in the most careful manner, and I can not
+recollect the time when he was not president, secretary, or something in
+some society of small yet good children. He was not only an exemplar to
+whom all Lu's friends pointed their own nursery as the little boy who
+could say most hymns and sit stillest in church, but he was a reproof
+even unto his elders. One Sunday afternoon, in the Connecticut village
+where my brother-in-law used to spend his summers, when half of the
+congregation was slumbering under the combined effect of the heat, a
+lunch of cheese and apples, and the sermon, my nephew, then aged five,
+sat bolt upright in the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate
+suspected of shakiness on a “a card'nal p'int,” and mortified almost to
+death poor old Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed
+him a sprig of her “meetin'-seed” over the back of the seat, by saying,
+in a loud and stern voice: “I don't eat things in church.”
+
+I should have spanked the boy when I got home, but Lu, with tears in her
+eyes, quoted something about the mouths of babes and sucklings.
+
+Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think
+they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener
+does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and, so long as he was
+not absolutely sick, the graver he was, the better. He was a sensitive
+plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing. But when
+in his tenth year he had the measles, and was narrowly carried through,
+Lu got a scare about him. During his convalescence, reading aloud a life
+of Henry Martyn to amuse him, she found in it a picture of that young
+apostle preaching to a crowd of Hindus without any boots on. An American
+mother's association of such behavior with croup and ipecac was too
+strong to be counteracted by known climatic facts; and from that hour,
+as she never had before, Lu realized that being a missionary might
+involve going to carry the gospel to the heathen in your stocking-feet.
+
+When they had decided that such a life would not do for him, his
+training had almost entirely unfitted him for any other active calling.
+The strict propriety with which he had been brought up had resulted
+in weak lungs, poor digestion, sluggish circulation, and torpid liver.
+Moreover, he was troubled with the painfulest bashfulness which ever
+made a mother think her child too ethereal, or a dispassionate outsider
+regard him as too flimsy, for this world. These were weights enough
+to carry, even if he had not labored under that heaviest of all, a
+well-stored mind.
+
+No misnomer that last to any one who has ever frequented the Atlantic
+Docks, or seen storage in any large port of entry. How does a storehouse
+look? It's a vast, dark, cold chamber-dust an inch deep on the floor,
+cobwebs festooning the girders--and piled from floor to ceiling on the
+principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with barrels,
+boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys--merchandise of all
+description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite _choses
+de luxe_. The inmost layers are inextricable without pulling down the
+outer ones. If you want a particular case of broadcloth you must clear
+yourself an alleyway through a hundred tierces of hams, and last week's
+entry of clayed sugars is inaccessible without tumbling on your head a
+mountain of Yankee notions.
+
+In my nephew's unfortunate youth such storage as this had minds. As long
+as the crown of his brain's arch was not crushed in by some intellectual
+Furman Street diaster, those stevedores of learning, the schoolmasters,
+kept on unloading the Rome and Athens lighters into a boy's crowded
+skull, and breaking out of the hold of that colossal old junk, The
+Pure Mathematics, all the formulas which could be crowded into the
+interstices between his Latin and Greek. At the time I introduce Billy,
+both Lu and her husband were much changed. They had gained a great
+deal in width of view and liberality of judgment. They read Dickens and
+Thackeray with avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let
+Billy take a quarter at Dod-worth's; had statues in their parlor without
+any thought of shame at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of
+things which, in their early married life, they would have considered
+shocking. Part of this change was due to the great increase of travel,
+the wonderful progress in art and refinement which has enlarged this
+generation's thought and corrected its ignorant opinions; infusing
+cosmopolitanism into our manners by a revolution so gradual that its
+subjects were a new people before their combativeness became alarmed,
+yet so rapid that a man of thirty can scarcely believe his birthday, and
+questions whether he has not added his life up wrong by a century or so
+when he compares his own boy-Hood with that of the present day. But a
+good deal of the transformation resulted from the means of gratifying
+elegant tastes, the comfort, luxury, and culture which came with
+Lovegrove's retirement on a fortune. They had mellowed on the sunny
+shelves of prosperity, like every good thing which has an astringent
+skin when it is green. They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine
+in society. Of his erudition they were proud, even to worship. The young
+man never had any business, and his father never seemed to think of
+giving him any; knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough
+to “see him through.” If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed
+a professorship in some college and have given him the chair; but that
+would have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
+
+Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the
+world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting
+that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the
+small change of everyday society in the exclusive cultivation of such as
+fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness
+which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless
+reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm
+done him, when they ascribed to his delicate organization the fact that,
+at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a
+balmoral without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They
+flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness, but Daniel
+had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he
+should never marry at all.
+
+About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy,
+the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under
+his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy Spitzenbergs,
+and other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush
+and comb. He also had a whole jacket on.
+
+“Well, Billy,” said I, “what are you going to do with your dog?”
+
+“I don't know what I'm going to do. I've a great mind to be a bad,
+disobedient boy with him, and _not_ have my days long in the land which
+the Lord my God giveth me.”
+
+“O Billy!”
+
+“I can't help it. They won't be long if I don't mind ma, she says; and
+she wants me to be mean, and put Crab out in the street to have Patsy
+catch him and tie coffee-pots to his tail. I--I--I--”
+
+Here my small nephew dug his fist into his eye and looked down.
+
+I told Billy to stop where he was, and went to intercede with Lu. She
+was persuaded to entertain the angels of magnanimity and heroism in the
+disguise of a young fighting character, and to accept my surety for
+the behavior of his dog. Billy and I also obtained permission to go out
+together and be gone the entire afternoon.
+
+We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe box, and
+then strolled, hand-in-hand, across that most delightful of New York
+breathing-places, Stuyvesant Square.
+
+“Uncle Teddy!” exclaimed Billy with ardor; “I wish I could do something
+to show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't
+know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you--a
+smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?”
+
+“No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy.”
+
+“Oh, Uncle Teddy!” replied Billy decidedly, “I'm afraid I can't do it.
+I've tried so often and I always make such an awful mess of it.”
+
+“Perhaps you get discouraged too easily--”
+
+“Well, if a savings-bank won't do it, there ain't any chance for a boy.
+I got father to get me a savings-bank once and began being good just as
+hard as ever I could for three cents a day. Every night I got 'em, I
+put 'em in reg'lar, and sometimes I'd keep being good three whole days
+running. That made a sight of money, I tell you. Then I'd do something,
+ma said, to kick my pail of milk over, and those nights I didn't get
+anything. I used to put in most of my marble and candy money, too.”
+
+“What were you going to do with it?”
+
+“It was for an Objeck, Uncle Teddy. That's a kind of Indian, you know,
+that eats people and wants the gospel. That's what pa says, anyway; I
+didn't ever see one.”
+
+“Well, didn't that make you happy--to help the poor little heathen
+children?”
+
+“Oh, does it, Uncle Teddy? They never got a cent of it. One time I was
+good so long I got scared. I was afraid I'd never want to fly my kite
+on a roof again or go anywhere where I oughtn't, or have any fun. I
+couldn't see any use of going and saving my money to send out to the
+Objecks if it was going to make good boys of 'em. It was awful hard for
+me to have to be a good boy, and it must be worse for them 'cause they
+ain't used to it. So when there wasn't anybody upstairs I went and shook
+a lot of pennies out of my chimney and bought ever so much taffy and
+marbles and popcorn. Was that awful mean, Uncle Teddy?”
+
+The question involved such complications that I hesitated. Before I
+could decide what to answer Billy continued:
+
+“Ma said it was robbing the heathen, and didn't I get it? I thought if
+it was robbing I'd have a cop after me.”
+
+“What's a 'cop'?”
+
+“That's what the boys call a policeman, Uncle Teddy; and then I should
+be taken away and put in an awful black place underground, like Johnny
+Wilson when he broke Mrs. Perkins's window. I was scared, I tell you.
+But I didn't get anything worse than a whipping, and having my savings
+bank taken away from me with all that was left in it, I haven't tried to
+be good since, much.”
+
+We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
+account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts
+of Billy's which so much interested me, we amused ourselves with looking
+out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we
+were going.
+
+“Where do you guess?” said I.
+
+He cast a glance through the front window and his face became
+irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
+pleasing a child, to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the
+bluest adult devils!
+
+“We're going to Barnum's,” said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.
+
+So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down at the
+place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class largely
+represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe
+that they only come to amuse the children, or because their country
+cousins visit them; and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds
+there, and the fact of the animals smelling like anything but Jockey
+Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the hall three minutes
+they're as much interested as any of the people they come to poh-poh,
+and only put on the high-bred air when they fancy some of their own
+class are looking at them. I boldly acknowledge that I go because I like
+it. I am especially happy, to be sure, if I have a child along to
+go into ecstasies and give me a chance, by asking questions, for the
+exhibition of that fund of information which is said to be one of my
+chief charms in the social circle, and on several occasions has led
+that portion of the public immediately about the Happy Family into the
+erroneous impression that I was Mr. Barnum explaining his five hundred
+thousand curiosities. On the present occasion we found several visitors
+of the better class in the room devoted to the Aquarium. Among these was
+a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of
+black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt
+of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest
+imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the
+medium, her eyes, a soft expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair
+which exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day,
+fell in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the
+only maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy
+with health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose
+sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice musical as a
+wood-robin's, when she spoke to the little boy of six at her side, to
+whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king. Billy and
+I were flattening our noses against the abode of the balloon-fish and
+determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut burr or a ripe
+cucumber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on the child and
+lady. In a moment, to Billy the balloon-fish was as though he had not
+been.
+
+“That's a pretty little boy!” said I. And then I asked Billy one of
+those senseless routine questions which must make children look at us,
+regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
+
+“How would you like to play with him?”
+
+“Him!” replied Billy scornfully, “that's his first pair of boots; see
+him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to them! But,
+crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher!”
+
+After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned
+seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room into
+another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty
+girl and child were coming, too.
+
+Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in the astonishment at the
+Lightning Calculator--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy
+for him to do his sums by--finally thought he had discovered it, and
+resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic
+lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how
+he became so confused among the waxworks that he pinched the solemnest
+showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful
+Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about
+the way they sold girls like her in his geography.
+
+We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
+Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
+dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always
+languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready
+to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the
+head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming
+at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child
+following after--a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be
+possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at
+ten years--a little boy's first love?
+
+We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
+glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass,
+whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining,
+when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster,
+dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by
+the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play, or
+as a mere coincidence, the animal followed it. The other children about
+the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the
+side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove, not an inch
+from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented
+it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite
+surprising.
+
+“That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie? And I wish
+he'd come and play with me,” said the little fellow by the young lady's
+side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with
+his cheeks roseate with blushes.
+
+As he heard this, Billy sidled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
+then faced about and said:
+
+“P'rhaps I will some day--where do you live?”
+
+“I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there too
+now--she's my cousin: where d'you live?”
+
+“Oh, I live close by--right on that big green square where I guess
+the nurse takes you once in a while,” said Billy patronizingly. Then,
+looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, “I never saw you out
+there.”
+
+“No, Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
+I've just come to visit him.”
+
+“Say, will you come and play with me some time?” chimed in the
+inextinguishable Jimmy. “I've got a cooking stove--for real fire--and
+blocks and a ball with a string.”
+
+Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American
+game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battest among
+the I. G. B. B. C, or “Infant Giants,” smiled from that altitude upon
+Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
+
+Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room
+over Pickwick, with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of
+Daniel. I called “Come in!” and, entering with a slow dejected air,
+he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though
+occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head
+again to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke
+myself.
+
+“You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?”
+
+“I don't feel very well, uncle.”
+
+“What's the matter, my boy?”
+
+“Oh--ah--I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you.”
+
+I studied him for a few moments with kindly curiosity, then answered:
+“Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
+Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you are not harassed by
+any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want; and I
+know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are scholarly.
+This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms--listlessness,
+general dejection, and all--to three causes: Dyspepsia, religious
+conflicts, love. Now is your digestion awry?”
+
+“No, sir, good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion and--”
+
+“You don't tell me you're in love?”
+
+“Well--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy.”
+
+I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this
+unimaginable revelation, then said:
+
+“Is your feeling returned?”
+
+“I really don't know, uncle. I don't believe it is. I don't see how it
+can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to
+love! I've borne enough for her--that is, nothing that could do her any
+good--though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So, look
+at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that can
+get a woman's love.”
+
+“Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along
+with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and
+neuter!”
+
+Daniel smiled faintly.
+
+“You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you
+hit the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman
+I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the
+philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the poetry--”
+
+“Thank God they don't, Daniel!” sighed out I devoutly.
+
+“Never mind--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking about
+the grounds of difference between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women like
+the star business, they say--and I could tell her where all the
+constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about
+them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance
+would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman
+he loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her
+bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of
+Orion? I can't talk bread and butter. I can't do anything that makes a
+man even tolerable to a woman!”
+
+“I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread and butter talk is
+tolerable to a woman!”
+
+“No; but it's necessary to some extent--at any rate the ability is--in
+order to succeed in society; and it is in society men first meet
+and strike women. And Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in
+society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing
+gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack
+Mankyn, 'who don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect
+admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners--and all sorts of
+men without an idea in their heads have that--while I turn all colors
+when I speak to her, and am clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad
+at repartee--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to
+father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)--sometimes, do you
+know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all I've ever learned for the
+power to make a good appearance before her!”
+
+“Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A woman
+is not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose name I
+don't ask you because I know you'll tell me as soon as you think best),
+you must seek her companionship until you're well enough acquainted with
+her to have her regard you as something different from the men whom she
+meets merely in society, and judge your qualities by another standard
+than that she applies to them. If she's a sensible girl (and God forbid
+you should marry her otherwise!) she knows that people can't always be
+dancing, or holding fans, or running after orange ice. If she's a girl
+capable of appreciating your best points (and woe to you if you marry
+a girl who can't!), she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and once
+found they'll a hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in
+the showcase of fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes
+about, you will pop the question unconsciously, and, to adopt Milton,
+she will drop into your lap, 'gathered--not harshly plucked.'”
+
+“I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you the
+sacredest of secrets--regularly every day of my life I send her a little
+poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at Hanfts.”
+
+“Does she know who sends them?”
+
+“She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a
+word of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me, Uncle,
+for not mentioning her name yet? You see she may despise or hate me some
+day when she knows who it is that has paid her these attentions; and
+then I'd like to be able to feel that at least I've never hurt her by
+any absurd connection with myself.”
+
+“Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
+though a little counsel with your head would show you that your only
+absurdity is self-depreciation.”
+
+Daniel bade me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed,
+my mind reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the
+afternoon with me, and reversed his mother's wish, thinking: “Oh, if
+Daniel were more like Billy!”
+
+It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
+after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my
+room till St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
+
+“Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you been
+under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look over our
+spelling together, and I know a boy is going in for promotion next week.
+Have you had your breakfast and taken care of Crab?”
+
+“Yes, sir, but I didn't feel like getting up this morning.”
+
+“Are you sick?”
+
+“No-o-o--it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you.”
+
+“Indeed, I won't, Billy!”
+
+“Well”--his voice dropped to a whisper and he stole close to my side--“I
+had such a nice dream about _her_ just the last thing before the bell
+rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer--so kinder good and kinder
+bad--and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big boy, I
+believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to sleep and
+see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After all, I
+had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and only
+ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle Teddy.
+Can you keep a secret?”
+
+“Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
+upside down like a savings-bank.”
+
+“Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
+the secret, though--that girl and I are going to get married. I mean to
+ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!”
+
+“My dear Billy, shan't you wait a little while to see if you always like
+her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older.”
+
+“I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the
+Kings of France used to be when they got married--I read it in Abbott's
+history. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I shall get
+a tardy mark and perhaps she'll want to see my certificate some time.”
+
+So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast
+as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest
+neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons
+buttoning on his jacket--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and
+teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good
+boy!
+
+With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant
+of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
+distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
+overcome his bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
+only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told
+in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: “Oh,
+I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went
+by the window!” Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to
+her--because it was too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch
+him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel
+wrote his own valentine, but, despite its originality, that document
+gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of
+embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel.
+
+Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and
+got introduced to his girl.
+
+Shortly after this Lu gave what they call “a little company”--not a
+party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
+well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
+There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing;
+but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile
+usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the
+splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable
+gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to
+the _beau monde_--a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird,
+with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How
+simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt
+somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking
+leave to bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks' visit. As
+a matter of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady
+and welcome.
+
+Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited
+him to make his toilet in mine, and indeed, wanting him to create a
+favorable impression, became his valet _pro tem_., tying his cravat and
+teasing the divinity-student look out of his side hair. My little dandy
+Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to
+button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt studs “like
+a man's,” Count d'Orsay could not have felt a greater sense of his
+sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
+
+When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already
+receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old
+married couples which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like
+unriveted scissors, the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the
+ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such questions as
+severally concerned them, such as “The way gold closed” and “How the
+children were.”
+
+Besides the old married people there were several old young men, of
+distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in
+common with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band
+themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch
+pillars or appeared to be considering whether on the whole it would not
+be feasible and best to sit down on the centre-table. These subsisted
+upon such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional chance to
+throw them by rapid sorties of conversation--became galvanically active
+the moment they were punched up and fell flat the moment the punching
+was remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow,
+dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop
+into sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful with
+his sails all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into
+action with some clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu
+bethought herself of that last plank of drowning conversationalists, the
+photograph album. All the dejected young men made for it at once, some
+reaching it just as they were about to sink for the last time, but all
+getting a grip on it somehow and staying there, in company with other
+people's babies whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to
+death, until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager
+by the Fire-Place Shoals, or were rescued from the Sofa Reef by some
+gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view of taking
+salvage out of them in the German.
+
+Besides these, were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and girls
+who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him
+of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen
+of his affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small
+fry.
+
+The younger ladies and gentlemen--those who had fascinations to disport
+or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such--were
+probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that oracle
+should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
+
+Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl who
+understood Latin and had taken up Greek.
+
+Billy was taking a moment's vacation from his boys and girls, busy with
+“Old Maid” in the extension room, and whispering, with his hand in mine,
+“Oh, don't I wish _she_ were here!” when a fresh invoice of ladies, just
+unpacked from the dressing-room, in all the airy elegance of evening
+costume, floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
+
+“Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! happy to see your niece, too. How do you do, Miss
+Pilgrim?”
+
+At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of
+ladies opening about Sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of
+the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
+
+Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
+
+“Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's just
+like the fairy books!” and, rushing up to the party of new-comers, “My
+dear Lottie!” cried he, “if I had only known you were coming I'd have
+come after you!”
+
+As he caught her by the hand, I was pleased to see her soft eyes
+brighten with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked
+on, naturally with astonishment in every feature.
+
+“Why Billy!” said she, “you ought not to call a strange young lady
+'_Lottie?_ Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy--”
+
+“And you must excuse my mother, Lottie,” said Billy, affectionately
+patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, “for calling you a strange young lady.
+You are not strange at all--you're just as nice a girl as there is.”
+
+“There are no excuses necessary,” said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching
+little laugh. “Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
+Lovegrove, and I confess that when I heard the lady Aunt had been
+invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to
+infringe on etiquette this evening, by coming where I had no previous
+introduction.”
+
+“Don't you care!” said Billy encouragingly, “I'll introduce you to every
+one of our family; I know 'em if you don't.”
+
+At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and, fearing lest, in
+his enthusiasm, he might forget the canon of society which introduced
+a gentleman to a lady, not a lady to him, I ventured to suggest
+it delicately by saying, “Billy, will you grant me the favor of a
+presentation to Miss Pilgrim?”
+
+“In a minute, Uncle Teddy,” answered Billy, considerably lowering his
+voice. “The older people first;” and after this reproof I was left to
+wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing
+to the young lady his father and his mother.
+
+Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with an
+air of great dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading
+while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that
+youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss
+Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke
+of as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in
+fact, altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen
+in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which
+burned when I made my responses.
+
+In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of disappointment,
+that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a light through his
+keyhole, but the door was locked and he could get no admittance. Just
+then Lu came up to present a certain--no, an uncertain--young man of the
+fleet stranded on parlor furniture earlier in the evening. To Lu's great
+astonishment, Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It was
+granted with all the courtesy of a _preux chevalier_, on the condition,
+readily assented to, that she should dance one Lancers with him during
+the evening.
+
+“Dear me!” exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior
+being, to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries, “would
+anybody ever suppose that was our Billy?”
+
+“I should, my dear sister,” said I, with proud satisfaction; “but you
+remember I always was just to Billy.”
+
+Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked
+and a light showing through the keyhole, as Billy had said. I made no
+attempt to enter by knocking; but, going to my room and opening the
+window next his, I leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash
+with my cane and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of
+communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
+When he saw me, he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell,
+and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me
+enter by the normal mode.
+
+“Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean; are you sick?”
+
+“Uncle Edward, I am not sick, and this means that I am a fool. Even a
+little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust.
+I wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages. Oh, that I'd
+been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother
+hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my
+life into my own hands, I'd open that window and--and--sit in a draught
+this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh! Oh! Oh!”
+
+And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
+
+“Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly for a minute.
+What brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the
+first ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long
+enough to speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when
+I turned you were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What
+is there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of
+bash-fulness as this which I here behold?”
+
+“Rumbullions indeed!” said Daniel. “A hundred Rumbillions could not make
+me feel as I do; but _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her little
+finger, and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!”
+
+“What! D'you--Miss Pilgrim?”
+
+“Miss Pilgrim!”
+
+I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
+argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would bring
+up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling them
+that he invited them to look at his conchological cabinet, unless he
+instantly shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied me downstairs.
+This dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew that I would not
+scruple to fulfil it; and at the same time that it made him surrender it
+also provoked him with me to a degree which gave his eyes and cheeks
+as fine a glow as I could have wished for the purpose of a favorable
+impression. The stimulus of wrath was good for him, and there was little
+tremor in his knees when he descended the stairs. Well-a-day--so Daniel
+and Billy were rivals!
+
+The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
+
+“Oh, there you are, Daniel!” said he, cheerily. “I was just going to
+look for you and Uncle Teddy. We wanted you for the dances. We have
+had the Lancers twice and three round dances; and I danced the second
+Lancers with Lottie. Now we're going to play some games to amuse the
+children, you know,” he added loftily with the adult gesture of pointing
+his thumb over his shoulder at the extension room. “Lottie's going to
+play, too, so will you and Daniel, won't you, uncle? Oh, here comes
+Lottie now! This is my brother, Miss Pilgrim; let me introduce him to
+you. I'm sure you'll like him. There's nothing he don't know.”
+
+Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel post of the staircase, and when
+she looked into Daniel's face blushed like the red, red rose, losing her
+self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
+
+The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite
+party's falls, and Daniel made out to say, in a firm tone, that it was
+long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.
+
+“Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think,” replied Miss
+Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
+
+“Oho! so you don't want any introduction,” exclaimed Master Billy. I
+didn't know you knew each other, Lottie.”
+
+“I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join in the
+plays?”
+
+“To be sure we shall!” cried Billy. “You needn't mind; all the grown
+people are going to.”
+
+On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being
+almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of
+jolly little Mrs. Bloomingal, Sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant
+Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be
+young again and romp with the rompiest. We played Blindman's-buff till
+we tired of that--Daniel, to Lu's great delight, coming out splendidly
+as Blindman, and evincing such “cheek” in the style he hunted down and
+caught the ladies, as satisfied me that nothing but his sight stood in
+the way of his making an audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty
+little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who seemed quite a premature flirt,
+proposed “Doorkeeper”--a suggestion accepted with great _éclat_ by all
+the children, several grown people assenting.
+
+To Billy--quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
+executive faculties of his character, as host--was committed the duty
+of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There were so
+many of us that “Aina-maina-mona-mike” would not go quite around;
+but with that promptness of expedient which belongs to genius, Billy
+instantly added on “Intery-mintery-cutery-corn,” and the last word of
+the cabalistic formula fell upon me, Edward Balbus. I disappeared into
+the entry amid peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling,
+when the door opened again to ask me who I wanted, for the pretty,
+lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish
+little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me,
+on my return, send out to her “Mither Billy Lovegrove.” I obeyed her;
+my youngest nephew retired and, after a couple of seconds, during which
+Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy being
+a great favorite with the little girls, she came back pouting and
+blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss Pilgrim. The young lady
+showed no mock modesty, but arose at once and laughingly went out to her
+youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently and
+told her he loved her better than any girl in the world. As he turned
+to go back she told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile
+cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on this youthful
+Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most terrible
+passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing practical
+jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched into the
+room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded parlor
+by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove was wanted.
+
+I was standing at his side and could feel him' tremble--see him turn
+pale.
+
+“Dear me!” he whispered, in a choking voice; “can she mean me?”
+
+“Of course she does,” said I. “Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you
+can't refuse such an invitation from a lady.”
+
+“No; I suppose not,” said he, mechanically. And, amid much laughter from
+the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother
+were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room.
+Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument, described
+by Mr. Samuel Weller--a pair of patent, double-million magnifying
+microscopes of hex-tery power, to see through a deal door. Instead of
+this I had to learn what happened only by report.
+
+Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on the
+newel-post, more vividly charming than he had ever seen her before, at
+Mrs. Crajncroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled by the apparition
+of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of little Rumbullion whom she was
+expecting--she had no time to exclaim or hide her mounting color, none
+at all to explain to her own mind the mistake that had occurred, before
+his arm was clasped around her waist and his lips so closely pressed to
+hers that, through her soft, thick hair she could feel the throbbing of
+his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he
+waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter, though
+not incensed stupefaction,--to stammer, “Forgive me! do forgive me! I
+thought you were in, earnest.”
+
+“So I was,” she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice,
+“in sending for my cousin Reginald.”
+
+“Oh dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let
+me go and explain it to mother. She will tell the rest--I couldn't do
+it--I'd die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!”
+
+On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
+
+“Don't try to explain it now--it may get Billy a scolding. Are there any
+but intimate family friends here this evening?”
+
+“No--I believe--no--I'm sure,” replied Daniel, collecting his faculties.
+
+“Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've known
+each other long; but we'll arrange it by and by. They'll think the more
+of it the longer we stay out here--hear them laugh! I must run back now.
+I'll send you somebody.”
+
+A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the parlor,
+and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her quick woman's
+wit told her how to retaliate and divide the embarrassment of the
+occasion. As she passed me she said in an undertone:
+
+“Answer quick! Who is that fat lady on the sofa who laughed so loud?”
+
+“Mrs. Cromwell Craggs,” said I, quietly.
+
+Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtesy and spoke in a modest but
+distinct voice:
+
+“I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but is
+there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs--Mrs. _Cromwell_ Craggs? For, if
+so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell Craggs.”
+
+Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to
+go and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening
+Billy was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see
+Daniel in close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and
+fuchsias of the conservatory.
+
+“A regular flirtation,” said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
+which they arrived at was that after all no great harm had been done,
+and that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun.
+If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have
+suspected that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not
+unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I
+could see showed me that the ice was broken.
+
+Billy's jealousy did not outlast the party. He became more and more
+interested in “his girl,” and often went in the afternoon, after getting
+out of school, ostensibly to play with Jimmy. Daniel's calls, according
+to adult etiquette, made in the evening, did not interfere with my
+younger nephew's, and as neither knew that the other, after his fashion,
+was his most uncompromising rival, my position, as the confidant of
+both, was one of extreme delicacy. But the matter was more speedily
+settled than I expected.
+
+Billy came to me one day and told me that he intended to get married
+immediately; that he was going to speak to his Lottie that very
+afternoon. He was prepared to meet every objection. He had asked his
+father if he might, and his father said yes, if he had money enough to
+support a wife--and Billy thought he had. He'd saved up all the money
+his Uncle Jim and Aunt Jane had sent him for Christmas; and besides, if
+he were once married, his father wouldn't see him want for stamps, he
+knew. Then, too, he was going to leave school and be a merchant next
+year--and I'd help him now and then, if he got hard up, wouldn't I?
+If he were driven to it, he could be a good boy again, and save up the
+money to buy Lottie presents with, instead of giving it to nasty old
+“Objecks.” He was so much older than when he had the savings-bank that
+he ought to have at least ten cents a day now for being good; didn't
+I think that was fair? As to his age, if Lottie loved him, he didn't
+care--anyway he would be lots bigger than she was before long--and he'd
+often heard his ma say she approved of early marriages; hers and pa's
+was one. So he ran off up Livingston Place, the most undaunted lover
+that ever put an extra shine on his proposal boots, or spent half an
+hour on the bow of his popping necktie.
+
+Shortly after, Daniel went into the street. Not meaning to call upon his
+_inamorata_, but drawn by the irresistible fascination of passing her
+house, he strolled in the direction that Billy had gone. As he came to
+the Rumbullions', something suddenly bade him enter--a whim he called
+it, but not his own--one of the whims of destiny which are always
+gratified.
+
+“Yes, sir,” said the servant, “Miss Pilgrim is in, I will call her.”
+
+His step was always light. He passed noiselessly into the front parlor
+and sat down among the heavy brocatelle curtains which shadowed the
+recess of one of the windows. He supposed Miss Pilgrim to be upstairs,
+and while his heart fluttered, expecting her footfall at the particular
+door, he heard an earnest boyish voice in the inside room. Looking from
+his concealment he beheld Miss Pilgrim on a sofa in the pier and sitting
+by her side, with her hand clasped in his, his brother Billy. Before he
+could avoid it, he became aware that Billy was unconsciously but eagerly
+forestalling him.
+
+“Now, Lottie, my dear Lottie! I wish you would! I'll do everything I can
+to make you happy. If you'll only marry me, I'll be good all the
+time! Come now! Say yes! Father's got a really nice place over the
+stable--they only use it for a tool room now; we could clear it out and
+have it scrubbed and go to housekeeping right away. Ma'd let us have all
+her old set of chinai I've got a silver mug Uncle Teddy gave me and a
+napkin ring and four spoons. As soon as I make my money I'll buy a nice
+carriage and horses, any color you want 'em. Oh, my darling, darling
+Lottie, I do love you so much and we could have such a splendid time! Do
+say yes, Lottie--please, _do_ please!”
+
+Miss Pilgrim looked at the earnest little suitor with a face in
+which tender interest and compassion quite overrode any sense of
+the whimsicality of the situation which might lurk there. Daniel's
+astonishment at the sight was so great that he realized the entire state
+of the case before he could recover himself sufficiently to rise and go
+into the back room.
+
+Billy jumped up and looked defiantly at the intruder. Miss Pilgrim
+blushed violently, but turned away her head to avoid the exhibition of a
+still more convulsing emotion than embarrassment.
+
+“I must beg your pardon, Miss Pilgrim--and yours, too, Billy,” began
+Daniel in a hesitating way, hardly knowing how to treat the posture in
+which he found things, “but--you see--the fact is the servant said she'd
+go to announce me--and really when I came in, I hadn't any idea you were
+here, or Billy either.”
+
+“Then,” said Billy, moderating the defiant attitude, “you actually
+weren't dodging around and trying to find out what Lottie and I were
+about on the sly? Well, I'll believe you. I'm sure you couldn't be as
+mean as that, when I'm the only brother you have got, that always brings
+you oranges when you're sick, and never plays ball on the stairs when
+you've got a headache. Now, then, I'll trust you, I've been asking
+Lottie to marry me, and I want you to help me. Ask her if she won't,
+Daniel--see if she won't do it for you!”
+
+Miss Pilgrim had been trying to find words, but her face was too much
+for her and she was obliged to seek retirement in her handkerchief. As
+she drew it from her pocket, a well-worn piece of paper followed it and
+fell upon the floor. Billy picked it up before she noticed it, and
+was about to hand it to her, when his jealous eye fell upon a withered
+rosebud sewed to its margin. As he looked at it, with his little
+brows knit into a precocious sternness, he recognized his brother's
+handwriting immediately beneath the flower. It was one of the daily
+anonymous sonnets, of which Daniel had told me, and the bud a relic of
+the bouquet accompanying it. Still Daniel was silent. What else could he
+be?
+
+“Very well, very well, Master Daniel!” exclaimed Billy, in a voice
+trembling with grief and indignation, “there's good enough reason why
+you won't speak a word for me. You want her yourself--here it is in your
+own writing. No wonder you won't tell Lottie to be my wife, when you're
+trying to take her away from me. Oh, Lottie, dear Lottie! I love you
+just as much as he does, though I don't know everything and can't write
+you poetry like it was out of the Fifth Reader! Daniel, how could you
+go and write to my Lottie this way: 'My churner'--no, it isn't churner,
+it's charmer,--'let me call thee mine'?”
+
+Forgetting the sacredness of private MS. in that of private grief,
+he would have gone on, with a pause here and there for certainty of
+spelling, to the conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with
+her imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of
+the identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her
+pocket. It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved,
+and herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses
+and bouquets.
+
+“Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!” So exclaiming,
+she held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the
+dignity of a wounded spirit.
+
+“Mr. Lovegrove,” said Miss Pilgrim, “I don't know what to say.”
+
+“I feel very much that way myself,” said Daniel.
+
+“_I_ don't,” said Billy, now in command of his voice. “I'll tell
+you what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you,
+Lottie--and perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But whatever way
+it is, I want you to choose between us, fair and square, and no dodging.
+Come now! You can take just whichever one of us you please, and the
+other won't lay up any grudge, though I know if that's me, or like me,
+he'll feel awful. You can have till to-morrow morning to make up your
+mind between me and Daniel, and if he won't say anything about it to pa
+and ma till then, I won't. Good-by, _dear_ Lottie!”
+
+He drew her face down to his, kissed her almost affectionately and then
+marched out of the door, feeling, as he afterward told me, as if he
+had blackened his boots all for nothing. Ah me! my dear Billy, how many
+times we do that in this world! Of what followed when Daniel and Miss
+Pilgrim were left alone, I have never had full details.
+
+But I do know that the young lady obeyed Billy and made her choice. Six
+months after that both my nephews stood up in Mrs. Rumbullion's parlor
+to take their several shares in a ceremony in which Miss Pilgrim was
+the central figure when it began, and Mrs. Daniel Lovegrove when it
+concluded. Time and elasticity of boyhood had so closed the sharp but
+evanescent wound in Billy's heart that he could stand the trial of being
+groomsman where he had wanted to be groom--more especially since he
+was supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who
+promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in
+the more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to
+any objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth,
+for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them
+together as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all
+the knots in which there are heartstrings concerned, as well as white
+ribbon.
+
+Since then Lu has stopped wishing that Billy were like Daniel, for she
+says that if he had been, there would never have been any Mrs. Daniel
+Lovegrove in the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Brace Of Boys
+       1867, From "Little Brother"
+
+Author: Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23170]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BRACE OF BOYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A BRACE OF BOYS
+
+By Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+From "Little Brother,"
+
+Copyright, 1867, by Lee & Shepard
+
+
+I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody;
+but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially,
+just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race;
+and if, through untoward circumstances--which Heaven forbid--I should
+lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out
+in the "Herald" under "Situations Wanted--Males." Thanks to a marrying
+tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise,
+all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my
+profession can attend to. I suppose you won't agree with me; but, do you
+know, sometimes I think it's better than having children of one's own?
+People tell me that I'd feel very differently if I did have any. Perhaps
+so, but then, too, I might be unwise with them; I might bother them
+into mischief by trying to keep them out. I might be avaricious
+of them--might be tempted to lock them up in my own stingy old
+nursery-chest instead of paying them out to meet the bills of humanity
+and keep the Lord's business moving. I might forget, when I had spent
+my life in fining their gold and polishing their graven-work, that
+they were still vessels for the Master's use--I only the Butler--the
+sweetness and the spirit with which they brimmed all belonging to His
+lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then, if seeking to drain another's
+wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and found it gall, or felt it
+steal into my old veins to poison the heart and paralyze the hand which
+had kept it from the Master, what further good would there be for me in
+the world? Who doesn't know, in some friend's house, a closet containing
+that worst of skeletons--the skeleton which, in becoming naked, grim and
+ghastly, tears its way through our own flesh and blood? To be an uncle
+is a different kind of thing. There you have nothing of the excitement
+of responsibility to shake your judgment That's what makes us bachelor
+uncles so much better judges of what's good for children and their
+fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame us if our nephews
+unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we give them
+five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting thanked at
+the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when they
+have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear
+people say, "See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with
+Uncle Ned's birthday present!" or, "That boy's grown an inch round the
+chest since you set him sparring!" Uncles never get stale. They don't
+come every day like parents and plain pudding; they're a sort of holiday
+relative with a plummy, Christmas flavor about them. Everybody
+hasn't got them; they are not so rare as the meteoric showers, but as
+occasional as a particularly fine day, and whenever they come to a house
+they're in the nature of a pleasant surprise.
+
+I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
+through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
+little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
+longest among the children of my sister Lu.
+
+Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune
+amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the
+mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
+Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of
+Lovegrove, Cashdown & Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a
+revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not
+looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to
+adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and
+Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good
+article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces
+and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy,
+who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in
+point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of
+this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling
+at his book of sums.
+
+"'A boy has 85 turnips and gives his sister 80'--pretty present for
+a girl, isn't it?" said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. "Could
+_you_ stand such stuff--say?"
+
+I put on my instructive face and answered: "Well, my dear Billy,
+you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an
+industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to
+lose all their property, what would become of them without a little son
+who could make money and keep accounts?"
+
+"Oh!" said Billy with surprise. "Hasn't father got enough stamps to see
+him through?"
+
+"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
+should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more
+stamps for himself?"
+
+"You haven't thought of brother Daniel--"
+
+True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
+life.
+
+"No, Billy," I replied; "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
+more of a student than a business man, and--"
+
+"Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd
+have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to
+be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so
+he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"
+
+"Forty, Billy, last August."
+
+"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you
+Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that,
+and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and
+wheels him around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, _I_
+bet! Well, I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick
+like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a
+piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll
+gouge a piece out of the other."
+
+"Spend a what!" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu,
+who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.
+
+"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
+glance of contempt.
+
+"Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?"
+
+"Why, ma! don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy,
+drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I had
+lots of 'em!"
+
+"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted to
+slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"
+
+"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
+oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel
+now when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight!
+Hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog--I know his bark!"
+
+With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the table
+and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
+
+"What will become of him?" said Lu hopelessly; "he has no taste for
+anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why _isn't_
+he like Daniel?"
+
+"I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often
+possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a
+good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do
+you'll make something as good of him as Daniel; though it will be rather
+different from that model."
+
+"Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do
+Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maids' daughters and old
+bachelors' sons. I wish you had Billy for a month--then you'd see."
+
+"I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
+other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he
+was a new problem, not to be worked without finding the value of 'x' in
+his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more
+solve the next one than the rule of three will solve a question
+in calculus--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for
+one-two-three-four cake conduct you to a successful issue through plum
+pudding--"
+
+I excel in metaphysical discussions, and was about giving further
+elaboration of my favorite idea when the door burst open. Master Billy
+came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the trace of a few
+tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.
+
+"Oh my! my!! my!!!" exclaimed his mother.
+
+"Don't you get scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of
+triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for nothing
+_this_ while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dogfight after all?
+There was that nasty good-for-nothing Joe Casey 'n' Patsy Grogan and a
+lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little
+ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail and were trying to set Joe's dog
+on him, though he's ten times littler--"
+
+"You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see
+you playing with those ragamuffins?"
+
+"Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em--that's the play I did! Says I,
+'Put down that poor little pup! Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy
+Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way they
+always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful great
+fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog or I'll show you
+who _I_ am'; and when he held on, I let him have it. Then he dropped the
+pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the bugle."
+
+"_Bugle!_ Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I
+was trying to give as good as I got--only a fellow can't do it well with
+only one hand, Uncle Teddy--up came a policeman and the whole crowd ran
+away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!"
+
+With that Billy set down his "ki-oodle," bade farewell to every fear,
+and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the
+legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an
+expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his
+dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such sincere
+pride in this young Mazzini of the dog-nation that I was vexed at Lu for
+bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the
+only conservative who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under
+a bloody nose and torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished, he
+should have his recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's
+or the Hippotheatron.
+
+You already have some idea of my other nephew if you have noticed that
+none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy,
+ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call
+Billy William.
+
+He was one of those youths who never give their parents a moment's
+uneasiness; who never have to have their wills broken, and never forget
+to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended
+for a missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's
+icy mountains without catching cold, or to India's coral strand without
+getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream
+of contributing him to the world's evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove
+had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have
+stood it. They brought him up in the most careful manner, and I can not
+recollect the time when he was not president, secretary, or something in
+some society of small yet good children. He was not only an exemplar to
+whom all Lu's friends pointed their own nursery as the little boy who
+could say most hymns and sit stillest in church, but he was a reproof
+even unto his elders. One Sunday afternoon, in the Connecticut village
+where my brother-in-law used to spend his summers, when half of the
+congregation was slumbering under the combined effect of the heat, a
+lunch of cheese and apples, and the sermon, my nephew, then aged five,
+sat bolt upright in the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate
+suspected of shakiness on a "a card'nal p'int," and mortified almost to
+death poor old Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed
+him a sprig of her "meetin'-seed" over the back of the seat, by saying,
+in a loud and stern voice: "I don't eat things in church."
+
+I should have spanked the boy when I got home, but Lu, with tears in her
+eyes, quoted something about the mouths of babes and sucklings.
+
+Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think
+they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener
+does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and, so long as he was
+not absolutely sick, the graver he was, the better. He was a sensitive
+plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing. But when
+in his tenth year he had the measles, and was narrowly carried through,
+Lu got a scare about him. During his convalescence, reading aloud a life
+of Henry Martyn to amuse him, she found in it a picture of that young
+apostle preaching to a crowd of Hindus without any boots on. An American
+mother's association of such behavior with croup and ipecac was too
+strong to be counteracted by known climatic facts; and from that hour,
+as she never had before, Lu realized that being a missionary might
+involve going to carry the gospel to the heathen in your stocking-feet.
+
+When they had decided that such a life would not do for him, his
+training had almost entirely unfitted him for any other active calling.
+The strict propriety with which he had been brought up had resulted
+in weak lungs, poor digestion, sluggish circulation, and torpid liver.
+Moreover, he was troubled with the painfulest bashfulness which ever
+made a mother think her child too ethereal, or a dispassionate outsider
+regard him as too flimsy, for this world. These were weights enough
+to carry, even if he had not labored under that heaviest of all, a
+well-stored mind.
+
+No misnomer that last to any one who has ever frequented the Atlantic
+Docks, or seen storage in any large port of entry. How does a storehouse
+look? It's a vast, dark, cold chamber-dust an inch deep on the floor,
+cobwebs festooning the girders--and piled from floor to ceiling on the
+principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with barrels,
+boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys--merchandise of all
+description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite _choses
+de luxe_. The inmost layers are inextricable without pulling down the
+outer ones. If you want a particular case of broadcloth you must clear
+yourself an alleyway through a hundred tierces of hams, and last week's
+entry of clayed sugars is inaccessible without tumbling on your head a
+mountain of Yankee notions.
+
+In my nephew's unfortunate youth such storage as this had minds. As long
+as the crown of his brain's arch was not crushed in by some intellectual
+Furman Street diaster, those stevedores of learning, the schoolmasters,
+kept on unloading the Rome and Athens lighters into a boy's crowded
+skull, and breaking out of the hold of that colossal old junk, The
+Pure Mathematics, all the formulas which could be crowded into the
+interstices between his Latin and Greek. At the time I introduce Billy,
+both Lu and her husband were much changed. They had gained a great
+deal in width of view and liberality of judgment. They read Dickens and
+Thackeray with avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let
+Billy take a quarter at Dod-worth's; had statues in their parlor without
+any thought of shame at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of
+things which, in their early married life, they would have considered
+shocking. Part of this change was due to the great increase of travel,
+the wonderful progress in art and refinement which has enlarged this
+generation's thought and corrected its ignorant opinions; infusing
+cosmopolitanism into our manners by a revolution so gradual that its
+subjects were a new people before their combativeness became alarmed,
+yet so rapid that a man of thirty can scarcely believe his birthday, and
+questions whether he has not added his life up wrong by a century or so
+when he compares his own boy-Hood with that of the present day. But a
+good deal of the transformation resulted from the means of gratifying
+elegant tastes, the comfort, luxury, and culture which came with
+Lovegrove's retirement on a fortune. They had mellowed on the sunny
+shelves of prosperity, like every good thing which has an astringent
+skin when it is green. They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine
+in society. Of his erudition they were proud, even to worship. The young
+man never had any business, and his father never seemed to think of
+giving him any; knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough
+to "see him through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed
+a professorship in some college and have given him the chair; but that
+would have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
+
+Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the
+world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting
+that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the
+small change of everyday society in the exclusive cultivation of such as
+fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness
+which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless
+reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm
+done him, when they ascribed to his delicate organization the fact that,
+at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a
+balmoral without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They
+flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness, but Daniel
+had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he
+should never marry at all.
+
+About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy,
+the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under
+his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy Spitzenbergs,
+and other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush
+and comb. He also had a whole jacket on.
+
+"Well, Billy," said I, "what are you going to do with your dog?"
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. I've a great mind to be a bad,
+disobedient boy with him, and _not_ have my days long in the land which
+the Lord my God giveth me."
+
+"O Billy!"
+
+"I can't help it. They won't be long if I don't mind ma, she says; and
+she wants me to be mean, and put Crab out in the street to have Patsy
+catch him and tie coffee-pots to his tail. I--I--I--"
+
+Here my small nephew dug his fist into his eye and looked down.
+
+I told Billy to stop where he was, and went to intercede with Lu. She
+was persuaded to entertain the angels of magnanimity and heroism in the
+disguise of a young fighting character, and to accept my surety for
+the behavior of his dog. Billy and I also obtained permission to go out
+together and be gone the entire afternoon.
+
+We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe box, and
+then strolled, hand-in-hand, across that most delightful of New York
+breathing-places, Stuyvesant Square.
+
+"Uncle Teddy!" exclaimed Billy with ardor; "I wish I could do something
+to show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't
+know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you--a
+smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?"
+
+"No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy decidedly, "I'm afraid I can't do it.
+I've tried so often and I always make such an awful mess of it."
+
+"Perhaps you get discouraged too easily--"
+
+"Well, if a savings-bank won't do it, there ain't any chance for a boy.
+I got father to get me a savings-bank once and began being good just as
+hard as ever I could for three cents a day. Every night I got 'em, I
+put 'em in reg'lar, and sometimes I'd keep being good three whole days
+running. That made a sight of money, I tell you. Then I'd do something,
+ma said, to kick my pail of milk over, and those nights I didn't get
+anything. I used to put in most of my marble and candy money, too."
+
+"What were you going to do with it?"
+
+"It was for an Objeck, Uncle Teddy. That's a kind of Indian, you know,
+that eats people and wants the gospel. That's what pa says, anyway; I
+didn't ever see one."
+
+"Well, didn't that make you happy--to help the poor little heathen
+children?"
+
+"Oh, does it, Uncle Teddy? They never got a cent of it. One time I was
+good so long I got scared. I was afraid I'd never want to fly my kite
+on a roof again or go anywhere where I oughtn't, or have any fun. I
+couldn't see any use of going and saving my money to send out to the
+Objecks if it was going to make good boys of 'em. It was awful hard for
+me to have to be a good boy, and it must be worse for them 'cause they
+ain't used to it. So when there wasn't anybody upstairs I went and shook
+a lot of pennies out of my chimney and bought ever so much taffy and
+marbles and popcorn. Was that awful mean, Uncle Teddy?"
+
+The question involved such complications that I hesitated. Before I
+could decide what to answer Billy continued:
+
+"Ma said it was robbing the heathen, and didn't I get it? I thought if
+it was robbing I'd have a cop after me."
+
+"What's a 'cop'?"
+
+"That's what the boys call a policeman, Uncle Teddy; and then I should
+be taken away and put in an awful black place underground, like Johnny
+Wilson when he broke Mrs. Perkins's window. I was scared, I tell you.
+But I didn't get anything worse than a whipping, and having my savings
+bank taken away from me with all that was left in it, I haven't tried to
+be good since, much."
+
+We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
+account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts
+of Billy's which so much interested me, we amused ourselves with looking
+out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we
+were going.
+
+"Where do you guess?" said I.
+
+He cast a glance through the front window and his face became
+irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
+pleasing a child, to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the
+bluest adult devils!
+
+"We're going to Barnum's," said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.
+
+So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down at the
+place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class largely
+represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe
+that they only come to amuse the children, or because their country
+cousins visit them; and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds
+there, and the fact of the animals smelling like anything but Jockey
+Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the hall three minutes
+they're as much interested as any of the people they come to poh-poh,
+and only put on the high-bred air when they fancy some of their own
+class are looking at them. I boldly acknowledge that I go because I like
+it. I am especially happy, to be sure, if I have a child along to
+go into ecstasies and give me a chance, by asking questions, for the
+exhibition of that fund of information which is said to be one of my
+chief charms in the social circle, and on several occasions has led
+that portion of the public immediately about the Happy Family into the
+erroneous impression that I was Mr. Barnum explaining his five hundred
+thousand curiosities. On the present occasion we found several visitors
+of the better class in the room devoted to the Aquarium. Among these was
+a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of
+black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt
+of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest
+imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the
+medium, her eyes, a soft expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair
+which exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day,
+fell in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the
+only maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy
+with health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose
+sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice musical as a
+wood-robin's, when she spoke to the little boy of six at her side, to
+whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king. Billy and
+I were flattening our noses against the abode of the balloon-fish and
+determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut burr or a ripe
+cucumber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on the child and
+lady. In a moment, to Billy the balloon-fish was as though he had not
+been.
+
+"That's a pretty little boy!" said I. And then I asked Billy one of
+those senseless routine questions which must make children look at us,
+regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
+
+"How would you like to play with him?"
+
+"Him!" replied Billy scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see
+him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to them! But,
+crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher!"
+
+After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned
+seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room into
+another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty
+girl and child were coming, too.
+
+Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in the astonishment at the
+Lightning Calculator--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy
+for him to do his sums by--finally thought he had discovered it, and
+resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic
+lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how
+he became so confused among the waxworks that he pinched the solemnest
+showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful
+Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about
+the way they sold girls like her in his geography.
+
+We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
+Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
+dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always
+languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready
+to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the
+head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming
+at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child
+following after--a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be
+possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at
+ten years--a little boy's first love?
+
+We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
+glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass,
+whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining,
+when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster,
+dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by
+the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play, or
+as a mere coincidence, the animal followed it. The other children about
+the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the
+side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove, not an inch
+from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented
+it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite
+surprising.
+
+"That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie? And I wish
+he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young lady's
+side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with
+his cheeks roseate with blushes.
+
+As he heard this, Billy sidled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
+then faced about and said:
+
+"P'rhaps I will some day--where do you live?"
+
+"I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there too
+now--she's my cousin: where d'you live?"
+
+"Oh, I live close by--right on that big green square where I guess
+the nurse takes you once in a while," said Billy patronizingly. Then,
+looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out
+there."
+
+"No, Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
+I've just come to visit him."
+
+"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the
+inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking stove--for real fire--and
+blocks and a ball with a string."
+
+Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American
+game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battest among
+the I. G. B. B. C, or "Infant Giants," smiled from that altitude upon
+Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
+
+Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room
+over Pickwick, with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of
+Daniel. I called "Come in!" and, entering with a slow dejected air,
+he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though
+occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head
+again to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke
+myself.
+
+"You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?"
+
+"I don't feel very well, uncle."
+
+"What's the matter, my boy?"
+
+"Oh--ah--I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you."
+
+I studied him for a few moments with kindly curiosity, then answered:
+"Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
+Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you are not harassed by
+any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want; and I
+know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are scholarly.
+This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms--listlessness,
+general dejection, and all--to three causes: Dyspepsia, religious
+conflicts, love. Now is your digestion awry?"
+
+"No, sir, good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion and--"
+
+"You don't tell me you're in love?"
+
+"Well--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy."
+
+I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this
+unimaginable revelation, then said:
+
+"Is your feeling returned?"
+
+"I really don't know, uncle. I don't believe it is. I don't see how it
+can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to
+love! I've borne enough for her--that is, nothing that could do her any
+good--though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So, look
+at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that can
+get a woman's love."
+
+"Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along
+with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and
+neuter!"
+
+Daniel smiled faintly.
+
+"You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you
+hit the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman
+I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the
+philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the poetry--"
+
+"Thank God they don't, Daniel!" sighed out I devoutly.
+
+"Never mind--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking about
+the grounds of difference between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women like
+the star business, they say--and I could tell her where all the
+constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about
+them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance
+would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman
+he loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her
+bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of
+Orion? I can't talk bread and butter. I can't do anything that makes a
+man even tolerable to a woman!"
+
+"I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread and butter talk is
+tolerable to a woman!"
+
+"No; but it's necessary to some extent--at any rate the ability is--in
+order to succeed in society; and it is in society men first meet
+and strike women. And Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in
+society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing
+gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack
+Mankyn, 'who don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect
+admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners--and all sorts of
+men without an idea in their heads have that--while I turn all colors
+when I speak to her, and am clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad
+at repartee--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to
+father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)--sometimes, do you
+know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all I've ever learned for the
+power to make a good appearance before her!"
+
+"Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A woman
+is not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose name I
+don't ask you because I know you'll tell me as soon as you think best),
+you must seek her companionship until you're well enough acquainted with
+her to have her regard you as something different from the men whom she
+meets merely in society, and judge your qualities by another standard
+than that she applies to them. If she's a sensible girl (and God forbid
+you should marry her otherwise!) she knows that people can't always be
+dancing, or holding fans, or running after orange ice. If she's a girl
+capable of appreciating your best points (and woe to you if you marry
+a girl who can't!), she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and once
+found they'll a hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in
+the showcase of fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes
+about, you will pop the question unconsciously, and, to adopt Milton,
+she will drop into your lap, 'gathered--not harshly plucked.'"
+
+"I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you the
+sacredest of secrets--regularly every day of my life I send her a little
+poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at Hanfts."
+
+"Does she know who sends them?"
+
+"She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a
+word of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me, Uncle,
+for not mentioning her name yet? You see she may despise or hate me some
+day when she knows who it is that has paid her these attentions; and
+then I'd like to be able to feel that at least I've never hurt her by
+any absurd connection with myself."
+
+"Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
+though a little counsel with your head would show you that your only
+absurdity is self-depreciation."
+
+Daniel bade me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed,
+my mind reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the
+afternoon with me, and reversed his mother's wish, thinking: "Oh, if
+Daniel were more like Billy!"
+
+It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
+after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my
+room till St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
+
+"Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you been
+under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look over our
+spelling together, and I know a boy is going in for promotion next week.
+Have you had your breakfast and taken care of Crab?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but I didn't feel like getting up this morning."
+
+"Are you sick?"
+
+"No-o-o--it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you."
+
+"Indeed, I won't, Billy!"
+
+"Well"--his voice dropped to a whisper and he stole close to my side--"I
+had such a nice dream about _her_ just the last thing before the bell
+rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer--so kinder good and kinder
+bad--and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big boy, I
+believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to sleep and
+see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After all, I
+had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and only
+ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle Teddy.
+Can you keep a secret?"
+
+"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
+upside down like a savings-bank."
+
+"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
+the secret, though--that girl and I are going to get married. I mean to
+ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"
+
+"My dear Billy, shan't you wait a little while to see if you always like
+her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."
+
+"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the
+Kings of France used to be when they got married--I read it in Abbott's
+history. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I shall get
+a tardy mark and perhaps she'll want to see my certificate some time."
+
+So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast
+as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest
+neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons
+buttoning on his jacket--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and
+teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good
+boy!
+
+With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant
+of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
+distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
+overcome his bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
+only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told
+in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: "Oh,
+I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went
+by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to
+her--because it was too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch
+him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel
+wrote his own valentine, but, despite its originality, that document
+gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of
+embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel.
+
+Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and
+got introduced to his girl.
+
+Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company"--not a
+party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
+well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
+There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing;
+but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile
+usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the
+splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable
+gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to
+the _beau monde_--a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird,
+with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How
+simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt
+somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking
+leave to bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks' visit. As
+a matter of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady
+and welcome.
+
+Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited
+him to make his toilet in mine, and indeed, wanting him to create a
+favorable impression, became his valet _pro tem_., tying his cravat and
+teasing the divinity-student look out of his side hair. My little dandy
+Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to
+button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt studs "like
+a man's," Count d'Orsay could not have felt a greater sense of his
+sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
+
+When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already
+receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old
+married couples which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like
+unriveted scissors, the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the
+ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such questions as
+severally concerned them, such as "The way gold closed" and "How the
+children were."
+
+Besides the old married people there were several old young men, of
+distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in
+common with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band
+themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch
+pillars or appeared to be considering whether on the whole it would not
+be feasible and best to sit down on the centre-table. These subsisted
+upon such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional chance to
+throw them by rapid sorties of conversation--became galvanically active
+the moment they were punched up and fell flat the moment the punching
+was remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow,
+dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop
+into sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful with
+his sails all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into
+action with some clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu
+bethought herself of that last plank of drowning conversationalists, the
+photograph album. All the dejected young men made for it at once, some
+reaching it just as they were about to sink for the last time, but all
+getting a grip on it somehow and staying there, in company with other
+people's babies whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to
+death, until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager
+by the Fire-Place Shoals, or were rescued from the Sofa Reef by some
+gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view of taking
+salvage out of them in the German.
+
+Besides these, were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and girls
+who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him
+of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen
+of his affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small
+fry.
+
+The younger ladies and gentlemen--those who had fascinations to disport
+or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such--were
+probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that oracle
+should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
+
+Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl who
+understood Latin and had taken up Greek.
+
+Billy was taking a moment's vacation from his boys and girls, busy with
+"Old Maid" in the extension room, and whispering, with his hand in mine,
+"Oh, don't I wish _she_ were here!" when a fresh invoice of ladies, just
+unpacked from the dressing-room, in all the airy elegance of evening
+costume, floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! happy to see your niece, too. How do you do, Miss
+Pilgrim?"
+
+At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of
+ladies opening about Sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of
+the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
+
+Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
+
+"Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's just
+like the fairy books!" and, rushing up to the party of new-comers, "My
+dear Lottie!" cried he, "if I had only known you were coming I'd have
+come after you!"
+
+As he caught her by the hand, I was pleased to see her soft eyes
+brighten with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked
+on, naturally with astonishment in every feature.
+
+"Why Billy!" said she, "you ought not to call a strange young lady
+'_Lottie?_ Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy--"
+
+"And you must excuse my mother, Lottie," said Billy, affectionately
+patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, "for calling you a strange young lady.
+You are not strange at all--you're just as nice a girl as there is."
+
+"There are no excuses necessary," said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching
+little laugh. "Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
+Lovegrove, and I confess that when I heard the lady Aunt had been
+invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to
+infringe on etiquette this evening, by coming where I had no previous
+introduction."
+
+"Don't you care!" said Billy encouragingly, "I'll introduce you to every
+one of our family; I know 'em if you don't."
+
+At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and, fearing lest, in
+his enthusiasm, he might forget the canon of society which introduced
+a gentleman to a lady, not a lady to him, I ventured to suggest
+it delicately by saying, "Billy, will you grant me the favor of a
+presentation to Miss Pilgrim?"
+
+"In a minute, Uncle Teddy," answered Billy, considerably lowering his
+voice. "The older people first;" and after this reproof I was left to
+wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing
+to the young lady his father and his mother.
+
+Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with an
+air of great dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading
+while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that
+youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss
+Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke
+of as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in
+fact, altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen
+in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which
+burned when I made my responses.
+
+In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of disappointment,
+that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a light through his
+keyhole, but the door was locked and he could get no admittance. Just
+then Lu came up to present a certain--no, an uncertain--young man of the
+fleet stranded on parlor furniture earlier in the evening. To Lu's great
+astonishment, Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It was
+granted with all the courtesy of a _preux chevalier_, on the condition,
+readily assented to, that she should dance one Lancers with him during
+the evening.
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior
+being, to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries, "would
+anybody ever suppose that was our Billy?"
+
+"I should, my dear sister," said I, with proud satisfaction; "but you
+remember I always was just to Billy."
+
+Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked
+and a light showing through the keyhole, as Billy had said. I made no
+attempt to enter by knocking; but, going to my room and opening the
+window next his, I leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash
+with my cane and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of
+communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
+When he saw me, he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell,
+and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me
+enter by the normal mode.
+
+"Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean; are you sick?"
+
+"Uncle Edward, I am not sick, and this means that I am a fool. Even a
+little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust.
+I wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages. Oh, that I'd
+been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother
+hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my
+life into my own hands, I'd open that window and--and--sit in a draught
+this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
+
+And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly for a minute.
+What brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the
+first ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long
+enough to speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when
+I turned you were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What
+is there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of
+bash-fulness as this which I here behold?"
+
+"Rumbullions indeed!" said Daniel. "A hundred Rumbillions could not make
+me feel as I do; but _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her little
+finger, and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!"
+
+"What! D'you--Miss Pilgrim?"
+
+"Miss Pilgrim!"
+
+I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
+argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would bring
+up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling them
+that he invited them to look at his conchological cabinet, unless he
+instantly shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied me downstairs.
+This dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew that I would not
+scruple to fulfil it; and at the same time that it made him surrender it
+also provoked him with me to a degree which gave his eyes and cheeks
+as fine a glow as I could have wished for the purpose of a favorable
+impression. The stimulus of wrath was good for him, and there was little
+tremor in his knees when he descended the stairs. Well-a-day--so Daniel
+and Billy were rivals!
+
+The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
+
+"Oh, there you are, Daniel!" said he, cheerily. "I was just going to
+look for you and Uncle Teddy. We wanted you for the dances. We have
+had the Lancers twice and three round dances; and I danced the second
+Lancers with Lottie. Now we're going to play some games to amuse the
+children, you know," he added loftily with the adult gesture of pointing
+his thumb over his shoulder at the extension room. "Lottie's going to
+play, too, so will you and Daniel, won't you, uncle? Oh, here comes
+Lottie now! This is my brother, Miss Pilgrim; let me introduce him to
+you. I'm sure you'll like him. There's nothing he don't know."
+
+Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel post of the staircase, and when
+she looked into Daniel's face blushed like the red, red rose, losing her
+self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
+
+The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite
+party's falls, and Daniel made out to say, in a firm tone, that it was
+long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.
+
+"Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think," replied Miss
+Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
+
+"Oho! so you don't want any introduction," exclaimed Master Billy. I
+didn't know you knew each other, Lottie."
+
+"I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join in the
+plays?"
+
+"To be sure we shall!" cried Billy. "You needn't mind; all the grown
+people are going to."
+
+On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being
+almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of
+jolly little Mrs. Bloomingal, Sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant
+Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be
+young again and romp with the rompiest. We played Blindman's-buff till
+we tired of that--Daniel, to Lu's great delight, coming out splendidly
+as Blindman, and evincing such "cheek" in the style he hunted down and
+caught the ladies, as satisfied me that nothing but his sight stood in
+the way of his making an audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty
+little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who seemed quite a premature flirt,
+proposed "Doorkeeper"--a suggestion accepted with great _�clat_ by all
+the children, several grown people assenting.
+
+To Billy--quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
+executive faculties of his character, as host--was committed the duty
+of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There were so
+many of us that "Aina-maina-mona-mike" would not go quite around;
+but with that promptness of expedient which belongs to genius, Billy
+instantly added on "Intery-mintery-cutery-corn," and the last word of
+the cabalistic formula fell upon me, Edward Balbus. I disappeared into
+the entry amid peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling,
+when the door opened again to ask me who I wanted, for the pretty,
+lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish
+little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me,
+on my return, send out to her "Mither Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her;
+my youngest nephew retired and, after a couple of seconds, during which
+Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy being
+a great favorite with the little girls, she came back pouting and
+blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss Pilgrim. The young lady
+showed no mock modesty, but arose at once and laughingly went out to her
+youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently and
+told her he loved her better than any girl in the world. As he turned
+to go back she told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile
+cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on this youthful
+Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most terrible
+passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing practical
+jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched into the
+room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded parlor
+by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove was wanted.
+
+I was standing at his side and could feel him' tremble--see him turn
+pale.
+
+"Dear me!" he whispered, in a choking voice; "can she mean me?"
+
+"Of course she does," said I. "Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you
+can't refuse such an invitation from a lady."
+
+"No; I suppose not," said he, mechanically. And, amid much laughter from
+the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother
+were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room.
+Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument, described
+by Mr. Samuel Weller--a pair of patent, double-million magnifying
+microscopes of hex-tery power, to see through a deal door. Instead of
+this I had to learn what happened only by report.
+
+Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on the
+newel-post, more vividly charming than he had ever seen her before, at
+Mrs. Crajncroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled by the apparition
+of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of little Rumbullion whom she was
+expecting--she had no time to exclaim or hide her mounting color, none
+at all to explain to her own mind the mistake that had occurred, before
+his arm was clasped around her waist and his lips so closely pressed to
+hers that, through her soft, thick hair she could feel the throbbing of
+his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he
+waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter, though
+not incensed stupefaction,--to stammer, "Forgive me! do forgive me! I
+thought you were in, earnest."
+
+"So I was," she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice,
+"in sending for my cousin Reginald."
+
+"Oh dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let
+me go and explain it to mother. She will tell the rest--I couldn't do
+it--I'd die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!"
+
+On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
+
+"Don't try to explain it now--it may get Billy a scolding. Are there any
+but intimate family friends here this evening?"
+
+"No--I believe--no--I'm sure," replied Daniel, collecting his faculties.
+
+"Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've known
+each other long; but we'll arrange it by and by. They'll think the more
+of it the longer we stay out here--hear them laugh! I must run back now.
+I'll send you somebody."
+
+A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the parlor,
+and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her quick woman's
+wit told her how to retaliate and divide the embarrassment of the
+occasion. As she passed me she said in an undertone:
+
+"Answer quick! Who is that fat lady on the sofa who laughed so loud?"
+
+"Mrs. Cromwell Craggs," said I, quietly.
+
+Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtesy and spoke in a modest but
+distinct voice:
+
+"I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but is
+there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs--Mrs. _Cromwell_ Craggs? For, if
+so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell Craggs."
+
+Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to
+go and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening
+Billy was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see
+Daniel in close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and
+fuchsias of the conservatory.
+
+"A regular flirtation," said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
+which they arrived at was that after all no great harm had been done,
+and that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun.
+If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have
+suspected that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not
+unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I
+could see showed me that the ice was broken.
+
+Billy's jealousy did not outlast the party. He became more and more
+interested in "his girl," and often went in the afternoon, after getting
+out of school, ostensibly to play with Jimmy. Daniel's calls, according
+to adult etiquette, made in the evening, did not interfere with my
+younger nephew's, and as neither knew that the other, after his fashion,
+was his most uncompromising rival, my position, as the confidant of
+both, was one of extreme delicacy. But the matter was more speedily
+settled than I expected.
+
+Billy came to me one day and told me that he intended to get married
+immediately; that he was going to speak to his Lottie that very
+afternoon. He was prepared to meet every objection. He had asked his
+father if he might, and his father said yes, if he had money enough to
+support a wife--and Billy thought he had. He'd saved up all the money
+his Uncle Jim and Aunt Jane had sent him for Christmas; and besides, if
+he were once married, his father wouldn't see him want for stamps, he
+knew. Then, too, he was going to leave school and be a merchant next
+year--and I'd help him now and then, if he got hard up, wouldn't I?
+If he were driven to it, he could be a good boy again, and save up the
+money to buy Lottie presents with, instead of giving it to nasty old
+"Objecks." He was so much older than when he had the savings-bank that
+he ought to have at least ten cents a day now for being good; didn't
+I think that was fair? As to his age, if Lottie loved him, he didn't
+care--anyway he would be lots bigger than she was before long--and he'd
+often heard his ma say she approved of early marriages; hers and pa's
+was one. So he ran off up Livingston Place, the most undaunted lover
+that ever put an extra shine on his proposal boots, or spent half an
+hour on the bow of his popping necktie.
+
+Shortly after, Daniel went into the street. Not meaning to call upon his
+_inamorata_, but drawn by the irresistible fascination of passing her
+house, he strolled in the direction that Billy had gone. As he came to
+the Rumbullions', something suddenly bade him enter--a whim he called
+it, but not his own--one of the whims of destiny which are always
+gratified.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the servant, "Miss Pilgrim is in, I will call her."
+
+His step was always light. He passed noiselessly into the front parlor
+and sat down among the heavy brocatelle curtains which shadowed the
+recess of one of the windows. He supposed Miss Pilgrim to be upstairs,
+and while his heart fluttered, expecting her footfall at the particular
+door, he heard an earnest boyish voice in the inside room. Looking from
+his concealment he beheld Miss Pilgrim on a sofa in the pier and sitting
+by her side, with her hand clasped in his, his brother Billy. Before he
+could avoid it, he became aware that Billy was unconsciously but eagerly
+forestalling him.
+
+"Now, Lottie, my dear Lottie! I wish you would! I'll do everything I can
+to make you happy. If you'll only marry me, I'll be good all the
+time! Come now! Say yes! Father's got a really nice place over the
+stable--they only use it for a tool room now; we could clear it out and
+have it scrubbed and go to housekeeping right away. Ma'd let us have all
+her old set of chinai I've got a silver mug Uncle Teddy gave me and a
+napkin ring and four spoons. As soon as I make my money I'll buy a nice
+carriage and horses, any color you want 'em. Oh, my darling, darling
+Lottie, I do love you so much and we could have such a splendid time! Do
+say yes, Lottie--please, _do_ please!"
+
+Miss Pilgrim looked at the earnest little suitor with a face in
+which tender interest and compassion quite overrode any sense of
+the whimsicality of the situation which might lurk there. Daniel's
+astonishment at the sight was so great that he realized the entire state
+of the case before he could recover himself sufficiently to rise and go
+into the back room.
+
+Billy jumped up and looked defiantly at the intruder. Miss Pilgrim
+blushed violently, but turned away her head to avoid the exhibition of a
+still more convulsing emotion than embarrassment.
+
+"I must beg your pardon, Miss Pilgrim--and yours, too, Billy," began
+Daniel in a hesitating way, hardly knowing how to treat the posture in
+which he found things, "but--you see--the fact is the servant said she'd
+go to announce me--and really when I came in, I hadn't any idea you were
+here, or Billy either."
+
+"Then," said Billy, moderating the defiant attitude, "you actually
+weren't dodging around and trying to find out what Lottie and I were
+about on the sly? Well, I'll believe you. I'm sure you couldn't be as
+mean as that, when I'm the only brother you have got, that always brings
+you oranges when you're sick, and never plays ball on the stairs when
+you've got a headache. Now, then, I'll trust you, I've been asking
+Lottie to marry me, and I want you to help me. Ask her if she won't,
+Daniel--see if she won't do it for you!"
+
+Miss Pilgrim had been trying to find words, but her face was too much
+for her and she was obliged to seek retirement in her handkerchief. As
+she drew it from her pocket, a well-worn piece of paper followed it and
+fell upon the floor. Billy picked it up before she noticed it, and
+was about to hand it to her, when his jealous eye fell upon a withered
+rosebud sewed to its margin. As he looked at it, with his little
+brows knit into a precocious sternness, he recognized his brother's
+handwriting immediately beneath the flower. It was one of the daily
+anonymous sonnets, of which Daniel had told me, and the bud a relic of
+the bouquet accompanying it. Still Daniel was silent. What else could he
+be?
+
+"Very well, very well, Master Daniel!" exclaimed Billy, in a voice
+trembling with grief and indignation, "there's good enough reason why
+you won't speak a word for me. You want her yourself--here it is in your
+own writing. No wonder you won't tell Lottie to be my wife, when you're
+trying to take her away from me. Oh, Lottie, dear Lottie! I love you
+just as much as he does, though I don't know everything and can't write
+you poetry like it was out of the Fifth Reader! Daniel, how could you
+go and write to my Lottie this way: 'My churner'--no, it isn't churner,
+it's charmer,--'let me call thee mine'?"
+
+Forgetting the sacredness of private MS. in that of private grief,
+he would have gone on, with a pause here and there for certainty of
+spelling, to the conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with
+her imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of
+the identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her
+pocket. It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved,
+and herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses
+and bouquets.
+
+"Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!" So exclaiming,
+she held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the
+dignity of a wounded spirit.
+
+"Mr. Lovegrove," said Miss Pilgrim, "I don't know what to say."
+
+"I feel very much that way myself," said Daniel.
+
+"_I_ don't," said Billy, now in command of his voice. "I'll tell
+you what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you,
+Lottie--and perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But whatever way
+it is, I want you to choose between us, fair and square, and no dodging.
+Come now! You can take just whichever one of us you please, and the
+other won't lay up any grudge, though I know if that's me, or like me,
+he'll feel awful. You can have till to-morrow morning to make up your
+mind between me and Daniel, and if he won't say anything about it to pa
+and ma till then, I won't. Good-by, _dear_ Lottie!"
+
+He drew her face down to his, kissed her almost affectionately and then
+marched out of the door, feeling, as he afterward told me, as if he
+had blackened his boots all for nothing. Ah me! my dear Billy, how many
+times we do that in this world! Of what followed when Daniel and Miss
+Pilgrim were left alone, I have never had full details.
+
+But I do know that the young lady obeyed Billy and made her choice. Six
+months after that both my nephews stood up in Mrs. Rumbullion's parlor
+to take their several shares in a ceremony in which Miss Pilgrim was
+the central figure when it began, and Mrs. Daniel Lovegrove when it
+concluded. Time and elasticity of boyhood had so closed the sharp but
+evanescent wound in Billy's heart that he could stand the trial of being
+groomsman where he had wanted to be groom--more especially since he
+was supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who
+promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in
+the more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to
+any objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth,
+for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them
+together as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all
+the knots in which there are heartstrings concerned, as well as white
+ribbon.
+
+Since then Lu has stopped wishing that Billy were like Daniel, for she
+says that if he had been, there would never have been any Mrs. Daniel
+Lovegrove in the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      A Brace of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+    </title>
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+
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+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Brace Of Boys
+       1867, From "Little Brother"
+
+Author: Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23170]
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BRACE OF BOYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A BRACE OF BOYS
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      From &ldquo;Little Brother,&rdquo; <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1867, by Lee &amp; Shepard
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody; but
+      I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially, just as I
+      am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race; and if,
+      through untoward circumstances&mdash;which Heaven forbid&mdash;I should
+      lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out in
+      the &ldquo;Herald&rdquo; under &ldquo;Situations Wanted&mdash;Males.&rdquo; Thanks to a marrying
+      tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise,
+      all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my
+      profession can attend to. I suppose you won't agree with me; but, do you
+      know, sometimes I think it's better than having children of one's own?
+      People tell me that I'd feel very differently if I did have any. Perhaps
+      so, but then, too, I might be unwise with them; I might bother them into
+      mischief by trying to keep them out. I might be avaricious of them&mdash;might
+      be tempted to lock them up in my own stingy old nursery-chest instead of
+      paying them out to meet the bills of humanity and keep the Lord's business
+      moving. I might forget, when I had spent my life in fining their gold and
+      polishing their graven-work, that they were still vessels for the Master's
+      use&mdash;I only the Butler&mdash;the sweetness and the spirit with which
+      they brimmed all belonging to His lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then,
+      if seeking to drain another's wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and
+      found it gall, or felt it steal into my old veins to poison the heart and
+      paralyze the hand which had kept it from the Master, what further good
+      would there be for me in the world? Who doesn't know, in some friend's
+      house, a closet containing that worst of skeletons&mdash;the skeleton
+      which, in becoming naked, grim and ghastly, tears its way through our own
+      flesh and blood? To be an uncle is a different kind of thing. There you
+      have nothing of the excitement of responsibility to shake your judgment
+      That's what makes us bachelor uncles so much better judges of what's good
+      for children and their fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame
+      us if our nephews unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we
+      give them five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting
+      thanked at the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when
+      they have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear
+      people say, &ldquo;See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with
+      Uncle Ned's birthday present!&rdquo; or, &ldquo;That boy's grown an inch round the
+      chest since you set him sparring!&rdquo; Uncles never get stale. They don't come
+      every day like parents and plain pudding; they're a sort of holiday
+      relative with a plummy, Christmas flavor about them. Everybody hasn't got
+      them; they are not so rare as the meteoric showers, but as occasional as a
+      particularly fine day, and whenever they come to a house they're in the
+      nature of a pleasant surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
+      through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
+      little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
+      longest among the children of my sister Lu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune
+      amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the
+      mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
+      Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of
+      Lovegrove, Cashdown &amp; Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a
+      revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not
+      looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to
+      adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and
+      Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good
+      article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces and
+      nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy, who
+      are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in point of
+      years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of this fact the
+      other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling at his book of
+      sums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A boy has 85 turnips and gives his sister 80'&mdash;pretty present for a
+      girl, isn't it?&rdquo; said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. &ldquo;Could <i>you</i>
+      stand such stuff&mdash;say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put on my instructive face and answered: &ldquo;Well, my dear Billy, you know
+      that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an industrious man
+      and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to lose all their
+      property, what would become of them without a little son who could make
+      money and keep accounts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Billy with surprise. &ldquo;Hasn't father got enough stamps to see
+      him through?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
+      should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more
+      stamps for himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't thought of brother Daniel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Billy,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is more
+      of a student than a business man, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd
+      have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to
+      be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so he
+      is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forty, Billy, last August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you Daniel
+      will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that, and he
+      has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and wheels him
+      around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, <i>I</i> bet! Well,
+      I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick like Robinson
+      Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a piece out of one
+      side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll gouge a piece out of
+      the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spend a what!&rdquo; said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu, who,
+      unperceived, had slipped into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A toadskin, ma,&rdquo; replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
+      glance of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ma! don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one,&rdquo; said Billy,
+      drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. &ldquo;And don't I wish I had
+      lots of 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; sighed his mother, &ldquo;to think I should have a child so addicted to
+      slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mother,&rdquo; replied Billy, &ldquo;if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
+      oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel now
+      when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight! Hear
+      'em! It's Joe Casey's dog&mdash;I know his bark!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the table
+      and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will become of him?&rdquo; said Lu hopelessly; &ldquo;he has no taste for
+      anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why <i>isn't</i>
+      he like Daniel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often
+      possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a
+      good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do
+      you'll make something as good of him as Daniel; though it will be rather
+      different from that model.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do Billy.
+      But we all know the proverb about old maids' daughters and old bachelors'
+      sons. I wish you had Billy for a month&mdash;then you'd see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
+      other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he was
+      a new problem, not to be worked without finding the value of 'x' in his
+      particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more solve
+      the next one than the rule of three will solve a question in calculus&mdash;or,
+      to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for one-two-three-four cake
+      conduct you to a successful issue through plum pudding&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I excel in metaphysical discussions, and was about giving further
+      elaboration of my favorite idea when the door burst open. Master Billy
+      came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the trace of a few
+      tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh my! my!! my!!!&rdquo; exclaimed his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you get scared, ma!&rdquo; cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of triumph;
+      &ldquo;I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for nothing <i>this</i>
+      while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dogfight after all? There was
+      that nasty good-for-nothing Joe Casey 'n' Patsy Grogan and a lot of bad
+      boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little ki-oodle and
+      tied a tin pot to his tail and were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though
+      he's ten times littler&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see
+      you playing with those ragamuffins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I <i>played</i> 'em! I polished 'em&mdash;that's the play I did!
+      Says I, 'Put down that poor little pup! Ain't you ashamed of yourself,
+      Patsy Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way
+      they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful
+      great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog or I'll show
+      you who <i>I</i> am'; and when he held on, I let him have it. Then he
+      dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the
+      bugle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bugle!</i> Oh! oh! oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I was
+      trying to give as good as I got&mdash;only a fellow can't do it well with
+      only one hand, Uncle Teddy&mdash;up came a policeman and the whole crowd
+      ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that Billy set down his &ldquo;ki-oodle,&rdquo; bade farewell to every fear, and
+      wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the legs of
+      his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an expression
+      of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his dilapidated
+      raiment and depraved associations. I felt such sincere pride in this young
+      Mazzini of the dog-nation that I was vexed at Lu for bestowing on him
+      reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the only conservative
+      who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under a bloody nose and
+      torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished, he should have his
+      recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the
+      Hippotheatron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You already have some idea of my other nephew if you have noticed that
+      none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy, ever
+      called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call Billy
+      William.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was one of those youths who never give their parents a moment's
+      uneasiness; who never have to have their wills broken, and never forget to
+      put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended for a
+      missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's icy
+      mountains without catching cold, or to India's coral strand without
+      getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream
+      of contributing him to the world's evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove
+      had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have
+      stood it. They brought him up in the most careful manner, and I can not
+      recollect the time when he was not president, secretary, or something in
+      some society of small yet good children. He was not only an exemplar to
+      whom all Lu's friends pointed their own nursery as the little boy who
+      could say most hymns and sit stillest in church, but he was a reproof even
+      unto his elders. One Sunday afternoon, in the Connecticut village where my
+      brother-in-law used to spend his summers, when half of the congregation
+      was slumbering under the combined effect of the heat, a lunch of cheese
+      and apples, and the sermon, my nephew, then aged five, sat bolt upright in
+      the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate suspected of
+      shakiness on a &ldquo;a card'nal p'int,&rdquo; and mortified almost to death poor old
+      Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed him a sprig of
+      her &ldquo;meetin'-seed&rdquo; over the back of the seat, by saying, in a loud and
+      stern voice: &ldquo;I don't eat things in church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I should have spanked the boy when I got home, but Lu, with tears in her
+      eyes, quoted something about the mouths of babes and sucklings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think they
+      took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener does in
+      getting a nice blanch on his celery, and, so long as he was not absolutely
+      sick, the graver he was, the better. He was a sensitive plant, a violet by
+      a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing. But when in his tenth year he
+      had the measles, and was narrowly carried through, Lu got a scare about
+      him. During his convalescence, reading aloud a life of Henry Martyn to
+      amuse him, she found in it a picture of that young apostle preaching to a
+      crowd of Hindus without any boots on. An American mother's association of
+      such behavior with croup and ipecac was too strong to be counteracted by
+      known climatic facts; and from that hour, as she never had before, Lu
+      realized that being a missionary might involve going to carry the gospel
+      to the heathen in your stocking-feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had decided that such a life would not do for him, his training
+      had almost entirely unfitted him for any other active calling. The strict
+      propriety with which he had been brought up had resulted in weak lungs,
+      poor digestion, sluggish circulation, and torpid liver. Moreover, he was
+      troubled with the painfulest bashfulness which ever made a mother think
+      her child too ethereal, or a dispassionate outsider regard him as too
+      flimsy, for this world. These were weights enough to carry, even if he had
+      not labored under that heaviest of all, a well-stored mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No misnomer that last to any one who has ever frequented the Atlantic
+      Docks, or seen storage in any large port of entry. How does a storehouse
+      look? It's a vast, dark, cold chamber-dust an inch deep on the floor,
+      cobwebs festooning the girders&mdash;and piled from floor to ceiling on
+      the principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with
+      barrels, boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys&mdash;merchandise
+      of all description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite <i>choses
+      de luxe</i>. The inmost layers are inextricable without pulling down the
+      outer ones. If you want a particular case of broadcloth you must clear
+      yourself an alleyway through a hundred tierces of hams, and last week's
+      entry of clayed sugars is inaccessible without tumbling on your head a
+      mountain of Yankee notions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my nephew's unfortunate youth such storage as this had minds. As long
+      as the crown of his brain's arch was not crushed in by some intellectual
+      Furman Street diaster, those stevedores of learning, the schoolmasters,
+      kept on unloading the Rome and Athens lighters into a boy's crowded skull,
+      and breaking out of the hold of that colossal old junk, The Pure
+      Mathematics, all the formulas which could be crowded into the interstices
+      between his Latin and Greek. At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and
+      her husband were much changed. They had gained a great deal in width of
+      view and liberality of judgment. They read Dickens and Thackeray with
+      avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a
+      quarter at Dod-worth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of
+      shame at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of things which, in
+      their early married life, they would have considered shocking. Part of
+      this change was due to the great increase of travel, the wonderful
+      progress in art and refinement which has enlarged this generation's
+      thought and corrected its ignorant opinions; infusing cosmopolitanism into
+      our manners by a revolution so gradual that its subjects were a new people
+      before their combativeness became alarmed, yet so rapid that a man of
+      thirty can scarcely believe his birthday, and questions whether he has not
+      added his life up wrong by a century or so when he compares his own
+      boy-Hood with that of the present day. But a good deal of the
+      transformation resulted from the means of gratifying elegant tastes, the
+      comfort, luxury, and culture which came with Lovegrove's retirement on a
+      fortune. They had mellowed on the sunny shelves of prosperity, like every
+      good thing which has an astringent skin when it is green. They would
+      greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his erudition they
+      were proud, even to worship. The young man never had any business, and his
+      father never seemed to think of giving him any; knowing, as Billy would
+      say, that he had stamps enough to &ldquo;see him through.&rdquo; If Daniel liked, his
+      father would have endowed a professorship in some college and have given
+      him the chair; but that would have taken him away from his own room and
+      the family physician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the world,
+      and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that
+      they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small
+      change of everyday society in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him
+      for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which
+      alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless reproach,
+      his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him, when
+      they ascribed to his delicate organization the fact that, at an age when
+      love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a balmoral without
+      his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They flattered themselves
+      that he would outgrow his bashfulness, but Daniel had no such hope, and
+      frequently confided in me that he thought he should never marry at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy, the
+      defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under his
+      arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy Spitzenbergs, and
+      other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush and
+      comb. He also had a whole jacket on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Billy,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;what are you going to do with your dog?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what I'm going to do. I've a great mind to be a bad,
+      disobedient boy with him, and <i>not</i> have my days long in the land
+      which the Lord my God giveth me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help it. They won't be long if I don't mind ma, she says; and she
+      wants me to be mean, and put Crab out in the street to have Patsy catch
+      him and tie coffee-pots to his tail. I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here my small nephew dug his fist into his eye and looked down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Billy to stop where he was, and went to intercede with Lu. She was
+      persuaded to entertain the angels of magnanimity and heroism in the
+      disguise of a young fighting character, and to accept my surety for the
+      behavior of his dog. Billy and I also obtained permission to go out
+      together and be gone the entire afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe box, and then
+      strolled, hand-in-hand, across that most delightful of New York
+      breathing-places, Stuyvesant Square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Teddy!&rdquo; exclaimed Billy with ardor; &ldquo;I wish I could do something to
+      show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't know
+      how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you&mdash;a
+      smashing big hymn&mdash;six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Uncle Teddy!&rdquo; replied Billy decidedly, &ldquo;I'm afraid I can't do it.
+      I've tried so often and I always make such an awful mess of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you get discouraged too easily&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if a savings-bank won't do it, there ain't any chance for a boy. I
+      got father to get me a savings-bank once and began being good just as hard
+      as ever I could for three cents a day. Every night I got 'em, I put 'em in
+      reg'lar, and sometimes I'd keep being good three whole days running. That
+      made a sight of money, I tell you. Then I'd do something, ma said, to kick
+      my pail of milk over, and those nights I didn't get anything. I used to
+      put in most of my marble and candy money, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you going to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for an Objeck, Uncle Teddy. That's a kind of Indian, you know,
+      that eats people and wants the gospel. That's what pa says, anyway; I
+      didn't ever see one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, didn't that make you happy&mdash;to help the poor little heathen
+      children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, does it, Uncle Teddy? They never got a cent of it. One time I was
+      good so long I got scared. I was afraid I'd never want to fly my kite on a
+      roof again or go anywhere where I oughtn't, or have any fun. I couldn't
+      see any use of going and saving my money to send out to the Objecks if it
+      was going to make good boys of 'em. It was awful hard for me to have to be
+      a good boy, and it must be worse for them 'cause they ain't used to it. So
+      when there wasn't anybody upstairs I went and shook a lot of pennies out
+      of my chimney and bought ever so much taffy and marbles and popcorn. Was
+      that awful mean, Uncle Teddy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question involved such complications that I hesitated. Before I could
+      decide what to answer Billy continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ma said it was robbing the heathen, and didn't I get it? I thought if it
+      was robbing I'd have a cop after me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's a 'cop'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what the boys call a policeman, Uncle Teddy; and then I should be
+      taken away and put in an awful black place underground, like Johnny Wilson
+      when he broke Mrs. Perkins's window. I was scared, I tell you. But I
+      didn't get anything worse than a whipping, and having my savings bank
+      taken away from me with all that was left in it, I haven't tried to be
+      good since, much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on account
+      of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts of
+      Billy's which so much interested me, we amused ourselves with looking out
+      until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we were
+      going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you guess?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a glance through the front window and his face became irradiated.
+      Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of pleasing a child, to
+      create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the bluest adult devils!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're going to Barnum's,&rdquo; said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down at the
+      place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class largely
+      represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe that
+      they only come to amuse the children, or because their country cousins
+      visit them; and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds there, and
+      the fact of the animals smelling like anything but Jockey Club; yet I
+      notice that after they've been in the hall three minutes they're as much
+      interested as any of the people they come to poh-poh, and only put on the
+      high-bred air when they fancy some of their own class are looking at them.
+      I boldly acknowledge that I go because I like it. I am especially happy,
+      to be sure, if I have a child along to go into ecstasies and give me a
+      chance, by asking questions, for the exhibition of that fund of
+      information which is said to be one of my chief charms in the social
+      circle, and on several occasions has led that portion of the public
+      immediately about the Happy Family into the erroneous impression that I
+      was Mr. Barnum explaining his five hundred thousand curiosities. On the
+      present occasion we found several visitors of the better class in the room
+      devoted to the Aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about
+      nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her
+      elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a
+      pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots.
+      Her height was a trifle over the medium, her eyes, a soft expressive
+      brown, shaded by masses of hair which exactly matched their color, and, at
+      that rat-and-miceless day, fell in such graceful abandon as to show at
+      once that nature was the only maid who crimped their waves into them. Her
+      complexion was rosy with health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was
+      faultless, her nose sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her
+      voice musical as a wood-robin's, when she spoke to the little boy of six
+      at her side, to whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king.
+      Billy and I were flattening our noses against the abode of the
+      balloon-fish and determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut
+      burr or a ripe cucumber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on
+      the child and lady. In a moment, to Billy the balloon-fish was as though
+      he had not been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a pretty little boy!&rdquo; said I. And then I asked Billy one of those
+      senseless routine questions which must make children look at us, regarding
+      the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you like to play with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him!&rdquo; replied Billy scornfully, &ldquo;that's his first pair of boots; see him
+      pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to them! But, crackey!
+      isn't <i>she</i> a smasher!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned
+      seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room into
+      another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty girl
+      and child were coming, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in the astonishment at the
+      Lightning Calculator&mdash;wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for
+      him to do his sums by&mdash;finally thought he had discovered it, and
+      resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic
+      lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how he
+      became so confused among the waxworks that he pinched the solemnest
+      showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful
+      Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about the
+      way they sold girls like her in his geography.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
+      Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the dignity
+      which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always languished
+      upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready to see him
+      plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the head of the
+      stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming at all anxious to
+      go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child following after&mdash;a
+      sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be possible that Billy was
+      caught in that vortex which whirled me down at ten years&mdash;a little
+      boy's first love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
+      glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass,
+      whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when
+      the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped
+      into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the
+      hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play, or as a
+      mere coincidence, the animal followed it. The other children about the
+      tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but
+      Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove, not an inch from one of
+      his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented it to the lady
+      with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite surprising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a real nice boy&mdash;you said so, didn't you, Lottie? And I wish
+      he'd come and play with me,&rdquo; said the little fellow by the young lady's
+      side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with
+      his cheeks roseate with blushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he heard this, Billy sidled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
+      then faced about and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;P'rhaps I will some day&mdash;where do you live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa&mdash;and Lottie stays there
+      too now&mdash;she's my cousin: where d'you live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I live close by&mdash;right on that big green square where I guess
+      the nurse takes you once in a while,&rdquo; said Billy patronizingly. Then,
+      looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, &ldquo;I never saw you out
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and I've
+      just come to visit him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, will you come and play with me some time?&rdquo; chimed in the
+      inextinguishable Jimmy. &ldquo;I've got a cooking stove&mdash;for real fire&mdash;and
+      blocks and a ball with a string.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American game,
+      and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battest among the I. G.
+      B. B. C, or &ldquo;Infant Giants,&rdquo; smiled from that altitude upon Jimmy, but
+      promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room
+      over Pickwick, with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of
+      Daniel. I called &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo; and, entering with a slow dejected air, he sat
+      down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though occasionally
+      looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head again to ponder on
+      the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't feel very well, uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, my boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I studied him for a few moments with kindly curiosity, then answered:
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
+      Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you are not harassed by
+      any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want; and I
+      know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are scholarly.
+      This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms&mdash;listlessness,
+      general dejection, and all&mdash;to three causes: Dyspepsia, religious
+      conflicts, love. Now is your digestion awry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't tell me you're in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;yes&mdash;I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this unimaginable
+      revelation, then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your feeling returned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don't know, uncle. I don't believe it is. I don't see how it can
+      be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to love!
+      I've borne enough for her&mdash;that is, nothing that could do her any
+      good&mdash;though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So,
+      look at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that
+      can get a woman's love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along with
+      you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and neuter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel smiled faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you hit
+      the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman I could
+      talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the philosophy of
+      the flowers as well as they do the poetry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God they don't, Daniel!&rdquo; sighed out I devoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind&mdash;in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking
+      about the grounds of difference between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women like
+      the star business, they say&mdash;and I could tell her where all the
+      constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about
+      them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance
+      would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman he
+      loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her bouquet
+      or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of Orion? I
+      can't talk bread and butter. I can't do anything that makes a man even
+      tolerable to a woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread and butter talk is tolerable
+      to a woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but it's necessary to some extent&mdash;at any rate the ability is&mdash;in
+      order to succeed in society; and it is in society men first meet and
+      strike women. And Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in society!&mdash;such
+      a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing gracefully as a swan
+      swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack Mankyn, 'who don't know
+      twelve times,' can dance to her perfect admiration; when I see that she
+      likes ease of manners&mdash;and all sorts of men without an idea in their
+      heads have that&mdash;while I turn all colors when I speak to her, and am
+      clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad at repartee&mdash;Uncle Teddy!
+      sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have
+      spent such pains for me)&mdash;sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as
+      if I'd exchange all I've ever learned for the power to make a good
+      appearance before her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A woman is
+      not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose name I don't
+      ask you because I know you'll tell me as soon as you think best), you must
+      seek her companionship until you're well enough acquainted with her to
+      have her regard you as something different from the men whom she meets
+      merely in society, and judge your qualities by another standard than that
+      she applies to them. If she's a sensible girl (and God forbid you should
+      marry her otherwise!) she knows that people can't always be dancing, or
+      holding fans, or running after orange ice. If she's a girl capable of
+      appreciating your best points (and woe to you if you marry a girl who
+      can't!), she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and once found they'll
+      a hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in the showcase of
+      fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes about, you will
+      pop the question unconsciously, and, to adopt Milton, she will drop into
+      your lap, 'gathered&mdash;not harshly plucked.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you the
+      sacredest of secrets&mdash;regularly every day of my life I send her a
+      little poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at Hanfts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she know who sends them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a word
+      of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me, Uncle, for not
+      mentioning her name yet? You see she may despise or hate me some day when
+      she knows who it is that has paid her these attentions; and then I'd like
+      to be able to feel that at least I've never hurt her by any absurd
+      connection with myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
+      though a little counsel with your head would show you that your only
+      absurdity is self-depreciation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel bade me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed, my mind
+      reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the afternoon with
+      me, and reversed his mother's wish, thinking: &ldquo;Oh, if Daniel were more
+      like Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
+      after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my room
+      till St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you been
+      under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look over our
+      spelling together, and I know a boy is going in for promotion next week.
+      Have you had your breakfast and taken care of Crab?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, but I didn't feel like getting up this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o-o&mdash;it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I won't, Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;his voice dropped to a whisper and he stole close to my side&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      had such a nice dream about <i>her</i> just the last thing before the bell
+      rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer&mdash;so kinder good and kinder
+      bad&mdash;and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big
+      boy, I believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to
+      sleep and see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After
+      all, I had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and
+      only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle
+      Teddy. Can you keep a secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
+      upside down like a savings-bank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
+      the secret, though&mdash;that girl and I are going to get married. I mean
+      to ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Billy, shan't you wait a little while to see if you always like
+      her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the
+      Kings of France used to be when they got married&mdash;I read it in
+      Abbott's history. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I
+      shall get a tardy mark and perhaps she'll want to see my certificate some
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his
+      legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the
+      dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his
+      jacket&mdash;omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have
+      failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good boy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant of
+      both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and distrustful;
+      Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to overcome his
+      bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant only in bouquets.
+      Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told in his slangy New
+      York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: &ldquo;Oh, I'm getting on prime!
+      I got such a smile off her this morning as I went by the window!&rdquo; Another
+      day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her&mdash;because it was
+      too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch him if he left it on
+      the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel wrote his own valentine,
+      but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as
+      Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids,
+      and doggerel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and got
+      introduced to his girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after this Lu gave what they call &ldquo;a little company&rdquo;&mdash;not a
+      party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
+      well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
+      There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing;
+      but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile
+      usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the splendor
+      of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable gayety was
+      wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to the <i>beau
+      monde</i>&mdash;a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird, with a
+      soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How simple was
+      the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat
+      discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking leave to
+      bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks' visit. As a matter
+      of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady and
+      welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited
+      him to make his toilet in mine, and indeed, wanting him to create a
+      favorable impression, became his valet <i>pro tem</i>., tying his cravat
+      and teasing the divinity-student look out of his side hair. My little
+      dandy Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to
+      button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt studs &ldquo;like a
+      man's,&rdquo; Count d'Orsay could not have felt a greater sense of his
+      sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already receiving.
+      About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old married couples
+      which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like unriveted scissors,
+      the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the ladies in ma, where they
+      mildly opened and shut upon such questions as severally concerned them,
+      such as &ldquo;The way gold closed&rdquo; and &ldquo;How the children were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides the old married people there were several old young men, of
+      distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in common
+      with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band
+      themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch
+      pillars or appeared to be considering whether on the whole it would not be
+      feasible and best to sit down on the centre-table. These subsisted upon
+      such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional chance to throw them
+      by rapid sorties of conversation&mdash;became galvanically active the
+      moment they were punched up and fell flat the moment the punching was
+      remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow, dared not
+      sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop into
+      sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful with his sails
+      all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some
+      clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself
+      of that last plank of drowning conversationalists, the photograph album.
+      All the dejected young men made for it at once, some reaching it just as
+      they were about to sink for the last time, but all getting a grip on it
+      somehow and staying there, in company with other people's babies whom they
+      didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to death, until, one by one,
+      they either stranded upon a motherly dowager by the Fire-Place Shoals, or
+      were rescued from the Sofa Reef by some gallant wrecker of a strong-minded
+      young lady, with a view of taking salvage out of them in the German.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these, were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and girls who
+      had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him of the
+      fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen of his
+      affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small fry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger ladies and gentlemen&mdash;those who had fascinations to
+      disport or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such&mdash;were
+      probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that oracle
+      should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl who understood
+      Latin and had taken up Greek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was taking a moment's vacation from his boys and girls, busy with
+      &ldquo;Old Maid&rdquo; in the extension room, and whispering, with his hand in mine,
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't I wish <i>she</i> were here!&rdquo; when a fresh invoice of ladies,
+      just unpacked from the dressing-room, in all the airy elegance of evening
+      costume, floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! happy to see your niece, too. How do you do, Miss
+      Pilgrim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of
+      ladies opening about Sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of
+      the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's just
+      like the fairy books!&rdquo; and, rushing up to the party of new-comers, &ldquo;My
+      dear Lottie!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;if I had only known you were coming I'd have come
+      after you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he caught her by the hand, I was pleased to see her soft eyes brighten
+      with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked on,
+      naturally with astonishment in every feature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why Billy!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;you ought not to call a strange young lady '<i>Lottie?</i>
+      Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you must excuse my mother, Lottie,&rdquo; said Billy, affectionately
+      patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, &ldquo;for calling you a strange young lady.
+      You are not strange at all&mdash;you're just as nice a girl as there is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no excuses necessary,&rdquo; said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching
+      little laugh. &ldquo;Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
+      Lovegrove, and I confess that when I heard the lady Aunt had been invited
+      to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to infringe on
+      etiquette this evening, by coming where I had no previous introduction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you care!&rdquo; said Billy encouragingly, &ldquo;I'll introduce you to every
+      one of our family; I know 'em if you don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and, fearing lest, in
+      his enthusiasm, he might forget the canon of society which introduced a
+      gentleman to a lady, not a lady to him, I ventured to suggest it
+      delicately by saying, &ldquo;Billy, will you grant me the favor of a
+      presentation to Miss Pilgrim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a minute, Uncle Teddy,&rdquo; answered Billy, considerably lowering his
+      voice. &ldquo;The older people first;&rdquo; and after this reproof I was left to wait
+      in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing to the
+      young lady his father and his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with an
+      air of great dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading
+      while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that
+      youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss
+      Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke of
+      as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in fact,
+      altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen in New York
+      society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which burned when I
+      made my responses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of disappointment,
+      that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a light through his
+      keyhole, but the door was locked and he could get no admittance. Just then
+      Lu came up to present a certain&mdash;no, an uncertain&mdash;young man of
+      the fleet stranded on parlor furniture earlier in the evening. To Lu's
+      great astonishment, Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It
+      was granted with all the courtesy of a <i>preux chevalier</i>, on the
+      condition, readily assented to, that she should dance one Lancers with him
+      during the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior being,
+      to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries, &ldquo;would anybody
+      ever suppose that was our Billy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should, my dear sister,&rdquo; said I, with proud satisfaction; &ldquo;but you
+      remember I always was just to Billy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked and a
+      light showing through the keyhole, as Billy had said. I made no attempt to
+      enter by knocking; but, going to my room and opening the window next his,
+      I leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash with my cane and pushed
+      aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of communication could not fail
+      to bring him to the window with a rush. When he saw me, he trembled like a
+      guilty thing, his countenance fell, and, no longer able to feign absence,
+      he unlocked his door and let me enter by the normal mode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean; are you sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Edward, I am not sick, and this means that I am a fool. Even a
+      little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust. I
+      wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages. Oh, that I'd been
+      permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother hadn't
+      carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my life into
+      my own hands, I'd open that window and&mdash;and&mdash;sit in a draught
+      this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh! Oh! Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly for a minute. What
+      brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the first ten
+      minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long enough to
+      speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when I turned you
+      were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What is there in the
+      Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of bash-fulness as this
+      which I here behold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rumbullions indeed!&rdquo; said Daniel. &ldquo;A hundred Rumbillions could not make
+      me feel as I do; but <i>she</i> can shake me into a whirlwind with her
+      little finger, and <i>she</i> came with the Rumbullions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! D'you&mdash;Miss Pilgrim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Pilgrim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
+      argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would bring
+      up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling them that he
+      invited them to look at his conchological cabinet, unless he instantly
+      shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied me downstairs. This
+      dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew that I would not scruple
+      to fulfil it; and at the same time that it made him surrender it also
+      provoked him with me to a degree which gave his eyes and cheeks as fine a
+      glow as I could have wished for the purpose of a favorable impression. The
+      stimulus of wrath was good for him, and there was little tremor in his
+      knees when he descended the stairs. Well-a-day&mdash;so Daniel and Billy
+      were rivals!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there you are, Daniel!&rdquo; said he, cheerily. &ldquo;I was just going to look
+      for you and Uncle Teddy. We wanted you for the dances. We have had the
+      Lancers twice and three round dances; and I danced the second Lancers with
+      Lottie. Now we're going to play some games to amuse the children, you
+      know,&rdquo; he added loftily with the adult gesture of pointing his thumb over
+      his shoulder at the extension room. &ldquo;Lottie's going to play, too, so will
+      you and Daniel, won't you, uncle? Oh, here comes Lottie now! This is my
+      brother, Miss Pilgrim; let me introduce him to you. I'm sure you'll like
+      him. There's nothing he don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel post of the staircase, and when
+      she looked into Daniel's face blushed like the red, red rose, losing her
+      self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite
+      party's falls, and Daniel made out to say, in a firm tone, that it was
+      long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think,&rdquo; replied Miss Pilgrim,
+      her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho! so you don't want any introduction,&rdquo; exclaimed Master Billy. I
+      didn't know you knew each other, Lottie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join in the plays?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure we shall!&rdquo; cried Billy. &ldquo;You needn't mind; all the grown
+      people are going to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being almost
+      all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of jolly little
+      Mrs. Bloomingal, Sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant Christmas kind
+      of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be young again and romp
+      with the rompiest. We played Blindman's-buff till we tired of that&mdash;Daniel,
+      to Lu's great delight, coming out splendidly as Blindman, and evincing
+      such &ldquo;cheek&rdquo; in the style he hunted down and caught the ladies, as
+      satisfied me that nothing but his sight stood in the way of his making an
+      audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle,
+      who seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed &ldquo;Doorkeeper&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      suggestion accepted with great <i>éclat</i> by all the children, several
+      grown people assenting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Billy&mdash;quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
+      executive faculties of his character, as host&mdash;was committed the duty
+      of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There were so
+      many of us that &ldquo;Aina-maina-mona-mike&rdquo; would not go quite around; but with
+      that promptness of expedient which belongs to genius, Billy instantly
+      added on &ldquo;Intery-mintery-cutery-corn,&rdquo; and the last word of the cabalistic
+      formula fell upon me, Edward Balbus. I disappeared into the entry amid
+      peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door
+      opened again to ask me who I wanted, for the pretty, lisping flirt who had
+      proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss
+      and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me, on my return, send out to
+      her &ldquo;Mither Billy Lovegrove.&rdquo; I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired
+      and, after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what
+      she proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little
+      girls, she came back pouting and blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss
+      Pilgrim. The young lady showed no mock modesty, but arose at once and
+      laughingly went out to her youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned,
+      embraced her ardently and told her he loved her better than any girl in
+      the world. As he turned to go back she told him that he might send to her
+      one of her juvenile cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on
+      this youthful Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that
+      most terrible passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing
+      practical jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched
+      into the room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded
+      parlor by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove was wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was standing at his side and could feel him' tremble&mdash;see him turn
+      pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; he whispered, in a choking voice; &ldquo;can she mean me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course she does,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you can't
+      refuse such an invitation from a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I suppose not,&rdquo; said he, mechanically. And, amid much laughter from
+      the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother were
+      spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room. Never
+      in my life did I so much long for that instrument, described by Mr. Samuel
+      Weller&mdash;a pair of patent, double-million magnifying microscopes of
+      hex-tery power, to see through a deal door. Instead of this I had to learn
+      what happened only by report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on the
+      newel-post, more vividly charming than he had ever seen her before, at
+      Mrs. Crajncroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled by the apparition
+      of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of little Rumbullion whom she was
+      expecting&mdash;she had no time to exclaim or hide her mounting color,
+      none at all to explain to her own mind the mistake that had occurred,
+      before his arm was clasped around her waist and his lips so closely
+      pressed to hers that, through her soft, thick hair she could feel the
+      throbbing of his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream,
+      from which he waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter,
+      though not incensed stupefaction,&mdash;to stammer, &ldquo;Forgive me! do
+      forgive me! I thought you were in, earnest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I was,&rdquo; she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice,
+      &ldquo;in sending for my cousin Reginald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let me go
+      and explain it to mother. She will tell the rest&mdash;I couldn't do it&mdash;I'd
+      die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't try to explain it now&mdash;it may get Billy a scolding. Are there
+      any but intimate family friends here this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I believe&mdash;no&mdash;I'm sure,&rdquo; replied Daniel, collecting
+      his faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've known
+      each other long; but we'll arrange it by and by. They'll think the more of
+      it the longer we stay out here&mdash;hear them laugh! I must run back now.
+      I'll send you somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the parlor,
+      and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her quick woman's wit
+      told her how to retaliate and divide the embarrassment of the occasion. As
+      she passed me she said in an undertone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer quick! Who is that fat lady on the sofa who laughed so loud?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Cromwell Craggs,&rdquo; said I, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtesy and spoke in a modest but
+      distinct voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but is
+      there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs&mdash;Mrs. <i>Cromwell</i> Craggs?
+      For, if so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell
+      Craggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to go
+      and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening Billy
+      was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see Daniel in
+      close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuchsias of
+      the conservatory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A regular flirtation,&rdquo; said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
+      which they arrived at was that after all no great harm had been done, and
+      that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun. If I
+      had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have suspected
+      that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not unlikely to
+      be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I could see
+      showed me that the ice was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy's jealousy did not outlast the party. He became more and more
+      interested in &ldquo;his girl,&rdquo; and often went in the afternoon, after getting
+      out of school, ostensibly to play with Jimmy. Daniel's calls, according to
+      adult etiquette, made in the evening, did not interfere with my younger
+      nephew's, and as neither knew that the other, after his fashion, was his
+      most uncompromising rival, my position, as the confidant of both, was one
+      of extreme delicacy. But the matter was more speedily settled than I
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy came to me one day and told me that he intended to get married
+      immediately; that he was going to speak to his Lottie that very afternoon.
+      He was prepared to meet every objection. He had asked his father if he
+      might, and his father said yes, if he had money enough to support a wife&mdash;and
+      Billy thought he had. He'd saved up all the money his Uncle Jim and Aunt
+      Jane had sent him for Christmas; and besides, if he were once married, his
+      father wouldn't see him want for stamps, he knew. Then, too, he was going
+      to leave school and be a merchant next year&mdash;and I'd help him now and
+      then, if he got hard up, wouldn't I? If he were driven to it, he could be
+      a good boy again, and save up the money to buy Lottie presents with,
+      instead of giving it to nasty old &ldquo;Objecks.&rdquo; He was so much older than
+      when he had the savings-bank that he ought to have at least ten cents a
+      day now for being good; didn't I think that was fair? As to his age, if
+      Lottie loved him, he didn't care&mdash;anyway he would be lots bigger than
+      she was before long&mdash;and he'd often heard his ma say she approved of
+      early marriages; hers and pa's was one. So he ran off up Livingston Place,
+      the most undaunted lover that ever put an extra shine on his proposal
+      boots, or spent half an hour on the bow of his popping necktie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after, Daniel went into the street. Not meaning to call upon his
+      <i>inamorata</i>, but drawn by the irresistible fascination of passing her
+      house, he strolled in the direction that Billy had gone. As he came to the
+      Rumbullions', something suddenly bade him enter&mdash;a whim he called it,
+      but not his own&mdash;one of the whims of destiny which are always
+      gratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the servant, &ldquo;Miss Pilgrim is in, I will call her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His step was always light. He passed noiselessly into the front parlor and
+      sat down among the heavy brocatelle curtains which shadowed the recess of
+      one of the windows. He supposed Miss Pilgrim to be upstairs, and while his
+      heart fluttered, expecting her footfall at the particular door, he heard
+      an earnest boyish voice in the inside room. Looking from his concealment
+      he beheld Miss Pilgrim on a sofa in the pier and sitting by her side, with
+      her hand clasped in his, his brother Billy. Before he could avoid it, he
+      became aware that Billy was unconsciously but eagerly forestalling him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Lottie, my dear Lottie! I wish you would! I'll do everything I can
+      to make you happy. If you'll only marry me, I'll be good all the time!
+      Come now! Say yes! Father's got a really nice place over the stable&mdash;they
+      only use it for a tool room now; we could clear it out and have it
+      scrubbed and go to housekeeping right away. Ma'd let us have all her old
+      set of chinai I've got a silver mug Uncle Teddy gave me and a napkin ring
+      and four spoons. As soon as I make my money I'll buy a nice carriage and
+      horses, any color you want 'em. Oh, my darling, darling Lottie, I do love
+      you so much and we could have such a splendid time! Do say yes, Lottie&mdash;please,
+      <i>do</i> please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim looked at the earnest little suitor with a face in which
+      tender interest and compassion quite overrode any sense of the
+      whimsicality of the situation which might lurk there. Daniel's
+      astonishment at the sight was so great that he realized the entire state
+      of the case before he could recover himself sufficiently to rise and go
+      into the back room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy jumped up and looked defiantly at the intruder. Miss Pilgrim blushed
+      violently, but turned away her head to avoid the exhibition of a still
+      more convulsing emotion than embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must beg your pardon, Miss Pilgrim&mdash;and yours, too, Billy,&rdquo; began
+      Daniel in a hesitating way, hardly knowing how to treat the posture in
+      which he found things, &ldquo;but&mdash;you see&mdash;the fact is the servant
+      said she'd go to announce me&mdash;and really when I came in, I hadn't any
+      idea you were here, or Billy either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Billy, moderating the defiant attitude, &ldquo;you actually weren't
+      dodging around and trying to find out what Lottie and I were about on the
+      sly? Well, I'll believe you. I'm sure you couldn't be as mean as that,
+      when I'm the only brother you have got, that always brings you oranges
+      when you're sick, and never plays ball on the stairs when you've got a
+      headache. Now, then, I'll trust you, I've been asking Lottie to marry me,
+      and I want you to help me. Ask her if she won't, Daniel&mdash;see if she
+      won't do it for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim had been trying to find words, but her face was too much for
+      her and she was obliged to seek retirement in her handkerchief. As she
+      drew it from her pocket, a well-worn piece of paper followed it and fell
+      upon the floor. Billy picked it up before she noticed it, and was about to
+      hand it to her, when his jealous eye fell upon a withered rosebud sewed to
+      its margin. As he looked at it, with his little brows knit into a
+      precocious sternness, he recognized his brother's handwriting immediately
+      beneath the flower. It was one of the daily anonymous sonnets, of which
+      Daniel had told me, and the bud a relic of the bouquet accompanying it.
+      Still Daniel was silent. What else could he be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, very well, Master Daniel!&rdquo; exclaimed Billy, in a voice
+      trembling with grief and indignation, &ldquo;there's good enough reason why you
+      won't speak a word for me. You want her yourself&mdash;here it is in your
+      own writing. No wonder you won't tell Lottie to be my wife, when you're
+      trying to take her away from me. Oh, Lottie, dear Lottie! I love you just
+      as much as he does, though I don't know everything and can't write you
+      poetry like it was out of the Fifth Reader! Daniel, how could you go and
+      write to my Lottie this way: 'My churner'&mdash;no, it isn't churner, it's
+      charmer,&mdash;'let me call thee mine'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Forgetting the sacredness of private MS. in that of private grief, he
+      would have gone on, with a pause here and there for certainty of spelling,
+      to the conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with her
+      imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of the
+      identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her pocket.
+      It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved, and
+      herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses and
+      bouquets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!&rdquo; So exclaiming, she
+      held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the dignity of a
+      wounded spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Lovegrove,&rdquo; said Miss Pilgrim, &ldquo;I don't know what to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel very much that way myself,&rdquo; said Daniel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't,&rdquo; said Billy, now in command of his voice. &ldquo;I'll tell you
+      what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you, Lottie&mdash;and
+      perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But whatever way it is, I want
+      you to choose between us, fair and square, and no dodging. Come now! You
+      can take just whichever one of us you please, and the other won't lay up
+      any grudge, though I know if that's me, or like me, he'll feel awful. You
+      can have till to-morrow morning to make up your mind between me and
+      Daniel, and if he won't say anything about it to pa and ma till then, I
+      won't. Good-by, <i>dear</i> Lottie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew her face down to his, kissed her almost affectionately and then
+      marched out of the door, feeling, as he afterward told me, as if he had
+      blackened his boots all for nothing. Ah me! my dear Billy, how many times
+      we do that in this world! Of what followed when Daniel and Miss Pilgrim
+      were left alone, I have never had full details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I do know that the young lady obeyed Billy and made her choice. Six
+      months after that both my nephews stood up in Mrs. Rumbullion's parlor to
+      take their several shares in a ceremony in which Miss Pilgrim was the
+      central figure when it began, and Mrs. Daniel Lovegrove when it concluded.
+      Time and elasticity of boyhood had so closed the sharp but evanescent
+      wound in Billy's heart that he could stand the trial of being groomsman
+      where he had wanted to be groom&mdash;more especially since he was
+      supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who
+      promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in the
+      more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to any
+      objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth, for, as
+      they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them together
+      as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all the knots
+      in which there are heartstrings concerned, as well as white ribbon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since then Lu has stopped wishing that Billy were like Daniel, for she
+      says that if he had been, there would never have been any Mrs. Daniel
+      Lovegrove in the world.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Brace Of Boys
+       1867, From "Little Brother"
+
+Author: Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23170]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BRACE OF BOYS ***
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+Produced by David Widger
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+
+
+
+
+A BRACE OF BOYS
+
+By Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+From "Little Brother,"
+
+Copyright, 1867, by Lee & Shepard
+
+
+I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody;
+but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially,
+just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race;
+and if, through untoward circumstances--which Heaven forbid--I should
+lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out
+in the "Herald" under "Situations Wanted--Males." Thanks to a marrying
+tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise,
+all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my
+profession can attend to. I suppose you won't agree with me; but, do you
+know, sometimes I think it's better than having children of one's own?
+People tell me that I'd feel very differently if I did have any. Perhaps
+so, but then, too, I might be unwise with them; I might bother them
+into mischief by trying to keep them out. I might be avaricious
+of them--might be tempted to lock them up in my own stingy old
+nursery-chest instead of paying them out to meet the bills of humanity
+and keep the Lord's business moving. I might forget, when I had spent
+my life in fining their gold and polishing their graven-work, that
+they were still vessels for the Master's use--I only the Butler--the
+sweetness and the spirit with which they brimmed all belonging to His
+lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then, if seeking to drain another's
+wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and found it gall, or felt it
+steal into my old veins to poison the heart and paralyze the hand which
+had kept it from the Master, what further good would there be for me in
+the world? Who doesn't know, in some friend's house, a closet containing
+that worst of skeletons--the skeleton which, in becoming naked, grim and
+ghastly, tears its way through our own flesh and blood? To be an uncle
+is a different kind of thing. There you have nothing of the excitement
+of responsibility to shake your judgment That's what makes us bachelor
+uncles so much better judges of what's good for children and their
+fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame us if our nephews
+unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we give them
+five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting thanked at
+the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when they
+have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear
+people say, "See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with
+Uncle Ned's birthday present!" or, "That boy's grown an inch round the
+chest since you set him sparring!" Uncles never get stale. They don't
+come every day like parents and plain pudding; they're a sort of holiday
+relative with a plummy, Christmas flavor about them. Everybody
+hasn't got them; they are not so rare as the meteoric showers, but as
+occasional as a particularly fine day, and whenever they come to a house
+they're in the nature of a pleasant surprise.
+
+I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
+through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
+little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
+longest among the children of my sister Lu.
+
+Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune
+amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the
+mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
+Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of
+Lovegrove, Cashdown & Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a
+revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not
+looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to
+adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and
+Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good
+article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces
+and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy,
+who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in
+point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of
+this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling
+at his book of sums.
+
+"'A boy has 85 turnips and gives his sister 80'--pretty present for
+a girl, isn't it?" said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. "Could
+_you_ stand such stuff--say?"
+
+I put on my instructive face and answered: "Well, my dear Billy,
+you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an
+industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to
+lose all their property, what would become of them without a little son
+who could make money and keep accounts?"
+
+"Oh!" said Billy with surprise. "Hasn't father got enough stamps to see
+him through?"
+
+"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
+should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more
+stamps for himself?"
+
+"You haven't thought of brother Daniel--"
+
+True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
+life.
+
+"No, Billy," I replied; "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
+more of a student than a business man, and--"
+
+"Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd
+have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to
+be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so
+he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"
+
+"Forty, Billy, last August."
+
+"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you
+Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that,
+and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and
+wheels him around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, _I_
+bet! Well, I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick
+like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a
+piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll
+gouge a piece out of the other."
+
+"Spend a what!" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu,
+who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.
+
+"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
+glance of contempt.
+
+"Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?"
+
+"Why, ma! don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy,
+drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I had
+lots of 'em!"
+
+"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted to
+slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"
+
+"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
+oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel
+now when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight!
+Hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog--I know his bark!"
+
+With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the table
+and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
+
+"What will become of him?" said Lu hopelessly; "he has no taste for
+anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why _isn't_
+he like Daniel?"
+
+"I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often
+possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a
+good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do
+you'll make something as good of him as Daniel; though it will be rather
+different from that model."
+
+"Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do
+Billy. But we all know the proverb about old maids' daughters and old
+bachelors' sons. I wish you had Billy for a month--then you'd see."
+
+"I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
+other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he
+was a new problem, not to be worked without finding the value of 'x' in
+his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more
+solve the next one than the rule of three will solve a question
+in calculus--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for
+one-two-three-four cake conduct you to a successful issue through plum
+pudding--"
+
+I excel in metaphysical discussions, and was about giving further
+elaboration of my favorite idea when the door burst open. Master Billy
+came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the trace of a few
+tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.
+
+"Oh my! my!! my!!!" exclaimed his mother.
+
+"Don't you get scared, ma!" cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of
+triumph; "I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for nothing
+_this_ while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dogfight after all?
+There was that nasty good-for-nothing Joe Casey 'n' Patsy Grogan and a
+lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little
+ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail and were trying to set Joe's dog
+on him, though he's ten times littler--"
+
+"You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see
+you playing with those ragamuffins?"
+
+"Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em--that's the play I did! Says I,
+'Put down that poor little pup! Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy
+Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way they
+always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful great
+fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog or I'll show you
+who _I_ am'; and when he held on, I let him have it. Then he dropped the
+pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the bugle."
+
+"_Bugle!_ Oh! oh! oh!"
+
+"The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I
+was trying to give as good as I got--only a fellow can't do it well with
+only one hand, Uncle Teddy--up came a policeman and the whole crowd ran
+away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!"
+
+With that Billy set down his "ki-oodle," bade farewell to every fear,
+and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the
+legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an
+expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his
+dilapidated raiment and depraved associations. I felt such sincere
+pride in this young Mazzini of the dog-nation that I was vexed at Lu for
+bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the
+only conservative who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under
+a bloody nose and torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished, he
+should have his recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's
+or the Hippotheatron.
+
+You already have some idea of my other nephew if you have noticed that
+none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy,
+ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call
+Billy William.
+
+He was one of those youths who never give their parents a moment's
+uneasiness; who never have to have their wills broken, and never forget
+to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended
+for a missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's
+icy mountains without catching cold, or to India's coral strand without
+getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream
+of contributing him to the world's evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove
+had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have
+stood it. They brought him up in the most careful manner, and I can not
+recollect the time when he was not president, secretary, or something in
+some society of small yet good children. He was not only an exemplar to
+whom all Lu's friends pointed their own nursery as the little boy who
+could say most hymns and sit stillest in church, but he was a reproof
+even unto his elders. One Sunday afternoon, in the Connecticut village
+where my brother-in-law used to spend his summers, when half of the
+congregation was slumbering under the combined effect of the heat, a
+lunch of cheese and apples, and the sermon, my nephew, then aged five,
+sat bolt upright in the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate
+suspected of shakiness on a "a card'nal p'int," and mortified almost to
+death poor old Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed
+him a sprig of her "meetin'-seed" over the back of the seat, by saying,
+in a loud and stern voice: "I don't eat things in church."
+
+I should have spanked the boy when I got home, but Lu, with tears in her
+eyes, quoted something about the mouths of babes and sucklings.
+
+Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think
+they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener
+does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and, so long as he was
+not absolutely sick, the graver he was, the better. He was a sensitive
+plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing. But when
+in his tenth year he had the measles, and was narrowly carried through,
+Lu got a scare about him. During his convalescence, reading aloud a life
+of Henry Martyn to amuse him, she found in it a picture of that young
+apostle preaching to a crowd of Hindus without any boots on. An American
+mother's association of such behavior with croup and ipecac was too
+strong to be counteracted by known climatic facts; and from that hour,
+as she never had before, Lu realized that being a missionary might
+involve going to carry the gospel to the heathen in your stocking-feet.
+
+When they had decided that such a life would not do for him, his
+training had almost entirely unfitted him for any other active calling.
+The strict propriety with which he had been brought up had resulted
+in weak lungs, poor digestion, sluggish circulation, and torpid liver.
+Moreover, he was troubled with the painfulest bashfulness which ever
+made a mother think her child too ethereal, or a dispassionate outsider
+regard him as too flimsy, for this world. These were weights enough
+to carry, even if he had not labored under that heaviest of all, a
+well-stored mind.
+
+No misnomer that last to any one who has ever frequented the Atlantic
+Docks, or seen storage in any large port of entry. How does a storehouse
+look? It's a vast, dark, cold chamber-dust an inch deep on the floor,
+cobwebs festooning the girders--and piled from floor to ceiling on the
+principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with barrels,
+boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys--merchandise of all
+description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite _choses
+de luxe_. The inmost layers are inextricable without pulling down the
+outer ones. If you want a particular case of broadcloth you must clear
+yourself an alleyway through a hundred tierces of hams, and last week's
+entry of clayed sugars is inaccessible without tumbling on your head a
+mountain of Yankee notions.
+
+In my nephew's unfortunate youth such storage as this had minds. As long
+as the crown of his brain's arch was not crushed in by some intellectual
+Furman Street diaster, those stevedores of learning, the schoolmasters,
+kept on unloading the Rome and Athens lighters into a boy's crowded
+skull, and breaking out of the hold of that colossal old junk, The
+Pure Mathematics, all the formulas which could be crowded into the
+interstices between his Latin and Greek. At the time I introduce Billy,
+both Lu and her husband were much changed. They had gained a great
+deal in width of view and liberality of judgment. They read Dickens and
+Thackeray with avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let
+Billy take a quarter at Dod-worth's; had statues in their parlor without
+any thought of shame at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of
+things which, in their early married life, they would have considered
+shocking. Part of this change was due to the great increase of travel,
+the wonderful progress in art and refinement which has enlarged this
+generation's thought and corrected its ignorant opinions; infusing
+cosmopolitanism into our manners by a revolution so gradual that its
+subjects were a new people before their combativeness became alarmed,
+yet so rapid that a man of thirty can scarcely believe his birthday, and
+questions whether he has not added his life up wrong by a century or so
+when he compares his own boy-Hood with that of the present day. But a
+good deal of the transformation resulted from the means of gratifying
+elegant tastes, the comfort, luxury, and culture which came with
+Lovegrove's retirement on a fortune. They had mellowed on the sunny
+shelves of prosperity, like every good thing which has an astringent
+skin when it is green. They would greatly have liked to see Daniel shine
+in society. Of his erudition they were proud, even to worship. The young
+man never had any business, and his father never seemed to think of
+giving him any; knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough
+to "see him through." If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed
+a professorship in some college and have given him the chair; but that
+would have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
+
+Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the
+world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting
+that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the
+small change of everyday society in the exclusive cultivation of such as
+fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness
+which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless
+reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm
+done him, when they ascribed to his delicate organization the fact that,
+at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a
+balmoral without his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They
+flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness, but Daniel
+had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he
+should never marry at all.
+
+About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy,
+the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under
+his arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy Spitzenbergs,
+and other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush
+and comb. He also had a whole jacket on.
+
+"Well, Billy," said I, "what are you going to do with your dog?"
+
+"I don't know what I'm going to do. I've a great mind to be a bad,
+disobedient boy with him, and _not_ have my days long in the land which
+the Lord my God giveth me."
+
+"O Billy!"
+
+"I can't help it. They won't be long if I don't mind ma, she says; and
+she wants me to be mean, and put Crab out in the street to have Patsy
+catch him and tie coffee-pots to his tail. I--I--I--"
+
+Here my small nephew dug his fist into his eye and looked down.
+
+I told Billy to stop where he was, and went to intercede with Lu. She
+was persuaded to entertain the angels of magnanimity and heroism in the
+disguise of a young fighting character, and to accept my surety for
+the behavior of his dog. Billy and I also obtained permission to go out
+together and be gone the entire afternoon.
+
+We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe box, and
+then strolled, hand-in-hand, across that most delightful of New York
+breathing-places, Stuyvesant Square.
+
+"Uncle Teddy!" exclaimed Billy with ardor; "I wish I could do something
+to show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't
+know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you--a
+smashing big hymn--six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?"
+
+"No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy."
+
+"Oh, Uncle Teddy!" replied Billy decidedly, "I'm afraid I can't do it.
+I've tried so often and I always make such an awful mess of it."
+
+"Perhaps you get discouraged too easily--"
+
+"Well, if a savings-bank won't do it, there ain't any chance for a boy.
+I got father to get me a savings-bank once and began being good just as
+hard as ever I could for three cents a day. Every night I got 'em, I
+put 'em in reg'lar, and sometimes I'd keep being good three whole days
+running. That made a sight of money, I tell you. Then I'd do something,
+ma said, to kick my pail of milk over, and those nights I didn't get
+anything. I used to put in most of my marble and candy money, too."
+
+"What were you going to do with it?"
+
+"It was for an Objeck, Uncle Teddy. That's a kind of Indian, you know,
+that eats people and wants the gospel. That's what pa says, anyway; I
+didn't ever see one."
+
+"Well, didn't that make you happy--to help the poor little heathen
+children?"
+
+"Oh, does it, Uncle Teddy? They never got a cent of it. One time I was
+good so long I got scared. I was afraid I'd never want to fly my kite
+on a roof again or go anywhere where I oughtn't, or have any fun. I
+couldn't see any use of going and saving my money to send out to the
+Objecks if it was going to make good boys of 'em. It was awful hard for
+me to have to be a good boy, and it must be worse for them 'cause they
+ain't used to it. So when there wasn't anybody upstairs I went and shook
+a lot of pennies out of my chimney and bought ever so much taffy and
+marbles and popcorn. Was that awful mean, Uncle Teddy?"
+
+The question involved such complications that I hesitated. Before I
+could decide what to answer Billy continued:
+
+"Ma said it was robbing the heathen, and didn't I get it? I thought if
+it was robbing I'd have a cop after me."
+
+"What's a 'cop'?"
+
+"That's what the boys call a policeman, Uncle Teddy; and then I should
+be taken away and put in an awful black place underground, like Johnny
+Wilson when he broke Mrs. Perkins's window. I was scared, I tell you.
+But I didn't get anything worse than a whipping, and having my savings
+bank taken away from me with all that was left in it, I haven't tried to
+be good since, much."
+
+We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on
+account of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts
+of Billy's which so much interested me, we amused ourselves with looking
+out until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we
+were going.
+
+"Where do you guess?" said I.
+
+He cast a glance through the front window and his face became
+irradiated. Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of
+pleasing a child, to create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the
+bluest adult devils!
+
+"We're going to Barnum's," said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.
+
+So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down at the
+place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class largely
+represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe
+that they only come to amuse the children, or because their country
+cousins visit them; and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds
+there, and the fact of the animals smelling like anything but Jockey
+Club; yet I notice that after they've been in the hall three minutes
+they're as much interested as any of the people they come to poh-poh,
+and only put on the high-bred air when they fancy some of their own
+class are looking at them. I boldly acknowledge that I go because I like
+it. I am especially happy, to be sure, if I have a child along to
+go into ecstasies and give me a chance, by asking questions, for the
+exhibition of that fund of information which is said to be one of my
+chief charms in the social circle, and on several occasions has led
+that portion of the public immediately about the Happy Family into the
+erroneous impression that I was Mr. Barnum explaining his five hundred
+thousand curiosities. On the present occasion we found several visitors
+of the better class in the room devoted to the Aquarium. Among these was
+a young lady, apparently about nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of
+black velvet, which showed her elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt
+of garnet silk, looped up over a pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest
+imaginable pair of kid walking-boots. Her height was a trifle over the
+medium, her eyes, a soft expressive brown, shaded by masses of hair
+which exactly matched their color, and, at that rat-and-miceless day,
+fell in such graceful abandon as to show at once that nature was the
+only maid who crimped their waves into them. Her complexion was rosy
+with health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was faultless, her nose
+sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her voice musical as a
+wood-robin's, when she spoke to the little boy of six at her side, to
+whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king. Billy and
+I were flattening our noses against the abode of the balloon-fish and
+determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut burr or a ripe
+cucumber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on the child and
+lady. In a moment, to Billy the balloon-fish was as though he had not
+been.
+
+"That's a pretty little boy!" said I. And then I asked Billy one of
+those senseless routine questions which must make children look at us,
+regarding the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
+
+"How would you like to play with him?"
+
+"Him!" replied Billy scornfully, "that's his first pair of boots; see
+him pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to them! But,
+crackey! isn't _she_ a smasher!"
+
+After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned
+seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room into
+another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty
+girl and child were coming, too.
+
+Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in the astonishment at the
+Lightning Calculator--wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy
+for him to do his sums by--finally thought he had discovered it, and
+resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic
+lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how
+he became so confused among the waxworks that he pinched the solemnest
+showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful
+Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about
+the way they sold girls like her in his geography.
+
+We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
+Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the
+dignity which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always
+languished upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready
+to see him plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the
+head of the stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming
+at all anxious to go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child
+following after--a sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be
+possible that Billy was caught in that vortex which whirled me down at
+ten years--a little boy's first love?
+
+We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
+glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass,
+whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining,
+when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster,
+dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by
+the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play, or
+as a mere coincidence, the animal followed it. The other children about
+the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the
+side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove, not an inch
+from one of his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented
+it to the lady with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite
+surprising.
+
+"That's a real nice boy--you said so, didn't you, Lottie? And I wish
+he'd come and play with me," said the little fellow by the young lady's
+side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with
+his cheeks roseate with blushes.
+
+As he heard this, Billy sidled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
+then faced about and said:
+
+"P'rhaps I will some day--where do you live?"
+
+"I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa--and Lottie stays there too
+now--she's my cousin: where d'you live?"
+
+"Oh, I live close by--right on that big green square where I guess
+the nurse takes you once in a while," said Billy patronizingly. Then,
+looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, "I never saw you out
+there."
+
+"No, Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and
+I've just come to visit him."
+
+"Say, will you come and play with me some time?" chimed in the
+inextinguishable Jimmy. "I've got a cooking stove--for real fire--and
+blocks and a ball with a string."
+
+Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American
+game, and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battest among
+the I. G. B. B. C, or "Infant Giants," smiled from that altitude upon
+Jimmy, but promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
+
+Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room
+over Pickwick, with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of
+Daniel. I called "Come in!" and, entering with a slow dejected air,
+he sat down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though
+occasionally looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head
+again to ponder on the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke
+myself.
+
+"You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?"
+
+"I don't feel very well, uncle."
+
+"What's the matter, my boy?"
+
+"Oh--ah--I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you."
+
+I studied him for a few moments with kindly curiosity, then answered:
+"Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
+Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you are not harassed by
+any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want; and I
+know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are scholarly.
+This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms--listlessness,
+general dejection, and all--to three causes: Dyspepsia, religious
+conflicts, love. Now is your digestion awry?"
+
+"No, sir, good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion and--"
+
+"You don't tell me you're in love?"
+
+"Well--yes--I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy."
+
+I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this
+unimaginable revelation, then said:
+
+"Is your feeling returned?"
+
+"I really don't know, uncle. I don't believe it is. I don't see how it
+can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to
+love! I've borne enough for her--that is, nothing that could do her any
+good--though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So, look
+at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that can
+get a woman's love."
+
+"Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along
+with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and
+neuter!"
+
+Daniel smiled faintly.
+
+"You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you
+hit the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman
+I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the
+philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the poetry--"
+
+"Thank God they don't, Daniel!" sighed out I devoutly.
+
+"Never mind--in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking about
+the grounds of difference between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women like
+the star business, they say--and I could tell her where all the
+constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about
+them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance
+would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman
+he loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her
+bouquet or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of
+Orion? I can't talk bread and butter. I can't do anything that makes a
+man even tolerable to a woman!"
+
+"I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread and butter talk is
+tolerable to a woman!"
+
+"No; but it's necessary to some extent--at any rate the ability is--in
+order to succeed in society; and it is in society men first meet
+and strike women. And Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in
+society!--such a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing
+gracefully as a swan swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack
+Mankyn, 'who don't know twelve times,' can dance to her perfect
+admiration; when I see that she likes ease of manners--and all sorts of
+men without an idea in their heads have that--while I turn all colors
+when I speak to her, and am clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad
+at repartee--Uncle Teddy! sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to
+father and mother, who have spent such pains for me)--sometimes, do you
+know, it seems to me as if I'd exchange all I've ever learned for the
+power to make a good appearance before her!"
+
+"Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A woman
+is not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose name I
+don't ask you because I know you'll tell me as soon as you think best),
+you must seek her companionship until you're well enough acquainted with
+her to have her regard you as something different from the men whom she
+meets merely in society, and judge your qualities by another standard
+than that she applies to them. If she's a sensible girl (and God forbid
+you should marry her otherwise!) she knows that people can't always be
+dancing, or holding fans, or running after orange ice. If she's a girl
+capable of appreciating your best points (and woe to you if you marry
+a girl who can't!), she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and once
+found they'll a hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in
+the showcase of fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes
+about, you will pop the question unconsciously, and, to adopt Milton,
+she will drop into your lap, 'gathered--not harshly plucked.'"
+
+"I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you the
+sacredest of secrets--regularly every day of my life I send her a little
+poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at Hanfts."
+
+"Does she know who sends them?"
+
+"She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a
+word of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me, Uncle,
+for not mentioning her name yet? You see she may despise or hate me some
+day when she knows who it is that has paid her these attentions; and
+then I'd like to be able to feel that at least I've never hurt her by
+any absurd connection with myself."
+
+"Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
+though a little counsel with your head would show you that your only
+absurdity is self-depreciation."
+
+Daniel bade me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed,
+my mind reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the
+afternoon with me, and reversed his mother's wish, thinking: "Oh, if
+Daniel were more like Billy!"
+
+It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
+after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my
+room till St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
+
+"Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you been
+under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look over our
+spelling together, and I know a boy is going in for promotion next week.
+Have you had your breakfast and taken care of Crab?"
+
+"Yes, sir, but I didn't feel like getting up this morning."
+
+"Are you sick?"
+
+"No-o-o--it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you."
+
+"Indeed, I won't, Billy!"
+
+"Well"--his voice dropped to a whisper and he stole close to my side--"I
+had such a nice dream about _her_ just the last thing before the bell
+rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer--so kinder good and kinder
+bad--and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big boy, I
+believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to sleep and
+see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After all, I
+had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and only
+ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle Teddy.
+Can you keep a secret?"
+
+"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
+upside down like a savings-bank."
+
+"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
+the secret, though--that girl and I are going to get married. I mean to
+ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"
+
+"My dear Billy, shan't you wait a little while to see if you always like
+her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."
+
+"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the
+Kings of France used to be when they got married--I read it in Abbott's
+history. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I shall get
+a tardy mark and perhaps she'll want to see my certificate some time."
+
+So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast
+as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest
+neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons
+buttoning on his jacket--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and
+teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good
+boy!
+
+With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant
+of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and
+distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to
+overcome his bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant
+only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told
+in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: "Oh,
+I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went
+by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to
+her--because it was too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch
+him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel
+wrote his own valentine, but, despite its originality, that document
+gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of
+embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel.
+
+Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and
+got introduced to his girl.
+
+Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company"--not a
+party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
+well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
+There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing;
+but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile
+usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the
+splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable
+gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to
+the _beau monde_--a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird,
+with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How
+simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt
+somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking
+leave to bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks' visit. As
+a matter of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady
+and welcome.
+
+Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited
+him to make his toilet in mine, and indeed, wanting him to create a
+favorable impression, became his valet _pro tem_., tying his cravat and
+teasing the divinity-student look out of his side hair. My little dandy
+Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to
+button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt studs "like
+a man's," Count d'Orsay could not have felt a greater sense of his
+sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
+
+When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already
+receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old
+married couples which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like
+unriveted scissors, the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the
+ladies in ma, where they mildly opened and shut upon such questions as
+severally concerned them, such as "The way gold closed" and "How the
+children were."
+
+Besides the old married people there were several old young men, of
+distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in
+common with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band
+themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch
+pillars or appeared to be considering whether on the whole it would not
+be feasible and best to sit down on the centre-table. These subsisted
+upon such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional chance to
+throw them by rapid sorties of conversation--became galvanically active
+the moment they were punched up and fell flat the moment the punching
+was remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow,
+dared not sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop
+into sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful with
+his sails all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into
+action with some clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu
+bethought herself of that last plank of drowning conversationalists, the
+photograph album. All the dejected young men made for it at once, some
+reaching it just as they were about to sink for the last time, but all
+getting a grip on it somehow and staying there, in company with other
+people's babies whom they didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to
+death, until, one by one, they either stranded upon a motherly dowager
+by the Fire-Place Shoals, or were rescued from the Sofa Reef by some
+gallant wrecker of a strong-minded young lady, with a view of taking
+salvage out of them in the German.
+
+Besides these, were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and girls
+who had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him
+of the fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen
+of his affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small
+fry.
+
+The younger ladies and gentlemen--those who had fascinations to disport
+or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such--were
+probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that oracle
+should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
+
+Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl who
+understood Latin and had taken up Greek.
+
+Billy was taking a moment's vacation from his boys and girls, busy with
+"Old Maid" in the extension room, and whispering, with his hand in mine,
+"Oh, don't I wish _she_ were here!" when a fresh invoice of ladies, just
+unpacked from the dressing-room, in all the airy elegance of evening
+costume, floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! happy to see your niece, too. How do you do, Miss
+Pilgrim?"
+
+At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of
+ladies opening about Sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of
+the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
+
+Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
+
+"Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's just
+like the fairy books!" and, rushing up to the party of new-comers, "My
+dear Lottie!" cried he, "if I had only known you were coming I'd have
+come after you!"
+
+As he caught her by the hand, I was pleased to see her soft eyes
+brighten with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked
+on, naturally with astonishment in every feature.
+
+"Why Billy!" said she, "you ought not to call a strange young lady
+'_Lottie?_ Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy--"
+
+"And you must excuse my mother, Lottie," said Billy, affectionately
+patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, "for calling you a strange young lady.
+You are not strange at all--you're just as nice a girl as there is."
+
+"There are no excuses necessary," said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching
+little laugh. "Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
+Lovegrove, and I confess that when I heard the lady Aunt had been
+invited to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to
+infringe on etiquette this evening, by coming where I had no previous
+introduction."
+
+"Don't you care!" said Billy encouragingly, "I'll introduce you to every
+one of our family; I know 'em if you don't."
+
+At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and, fearing lest, in
+his enthusiasm, he might forget the canon of society which introduced
+a gentleman to a lady, not a lady to him, I ventured to suggest
+it delicately by saying, "Billy, will you grant me the favor of a
+presentation to Miss Pilgrim?"
+
+"In a minute, Uncle Teddy," answered Billy, considerably lowering his
+voice. "The older people first;" and after this reproof I was left to
+wait in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing
+to the young lady his father and his mother.
+
+Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with an
+air of great dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading
+while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that
+youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss
+Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke
+of as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in
+fact, altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen
+in New York society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which
+burned when I made my responses.
+
+In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of disappointment,
+that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a light through his
+keyhole, but the door was locked and he could get no admittance. Just
+then Lu came up to present a certain--no, an uncertain--young man of the
+fleet stranded on parlor furniture earlier in the evening. To Lu's great
+astonishment, Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It was
+granted with all the courtesy of a _preux chevalier_, on the condition,
+readily assented to, that she should dance one Lancers with him during
+the evening.
+
+"Dear me!" exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior
+being, to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries, "would
+anybody ever suppose that was our Billy?"
+
+"I should, my dear sister," said I, with proud satisfaction; "but you
+remember I always was just to Billy."
+
+Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked
+and a light showing through the keyhole, as Billy had said. I made no
+attempt to enter by knocking; but, going to my room and opening the
+window next his, I leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash
+with my cane and pushed aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of
+communication could not fail to bring him to the window with a rush.
+When he saw me, he trembled like a guilty thing, his countenance fell,
+and, no longer able to feign absence, he unlocked his door and let me
+enter by the normal mode.
+
+"Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean; are you sick?"
+
+"Uncle Edward, I am not sick, and this means that I am a fool. Even a
+little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust.
+I wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages. Oh, that I'd
+been permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother
+hadn't carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my
+life into my own hands, I'd open that window and--and--sit in a draught
+this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh! Oh! Oh!"
+
+And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
+
+"Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly for a minute.
+What brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the
+first ten minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long
+enough to speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when
+I turned you were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What
+is there in the Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of
+bash-fulness as this which I here behold?"
+
+"Rumbullions indeed!" said Daniel. "A hundred Rumbillions could not make
+me feel as I do; but _she_ can shake me into a whirlwind with her little
+finger, and _she_ came with the Rumbullions!"
+
+"What! D'you--Miss Pilgrim?"
+
+"Miss Pilgrim!"
+
+I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
+argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would bring
+up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling them
+that he invited them to look at his conchological cabinet, unless he
+instantly shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied me downstairs.
+This dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew that I would not
+scruple to fulfil it; and at the same time that it made him surrender it
+also provoked him with me to a degree which gave his eyes and cheeks
+as fine a glow as I could have wished for the purpose of a favorable
+impression. The stimulus of wrath was good for him, and there was little
+tremor in his knees when he descended the stairs. Well-a-day--so Daniel
+and Billy were rivals!
+
+The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
+
+"Oh, there you are, Daniel!" said he, cheerily. "I was just going to
+look for you and Uncle Teddy. We wanted you for the dances. We have
+had the Lancers twice and three round dances; and I danced the second
+Lancers with Lottie. Now we're going to play some games to amuse the
+children, you know," he added loftily with the adult gesture of pointing
+his thumb over his shoulder at the extension room. "Lottie's going to
+play, too, so will you and Daniel, won't you, uncle? Oh, here comes
+Lottie now! This is my brother, Miss Pilgrim; let me introduce him to
+you. I'm sure you'll like him. There's nothing he don't know."
+
+Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel post of the staircase, and when
+she looked into Daniel's face blushed like the red, red rose, losing her
+self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
+
+The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite
+party's falls, and Daniel made out to say, in a firm tone, that it was
+long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.
+
+"Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think," replied Miss
+Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
+
+"Oho! so you don't want any introduction," exclaimed Master Billy. I
+didn't know you knew each other, Lottie."
+
+"I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join in the
+plays?"
+
+"To be sure we shall!" cried Billy. "You needn't mind; all the grown
+people are going to."
+
+On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being
+almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of
+jolly little Mrs. Bloomingal, Sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant
+Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be
+young again and romp with the rompiest. We played Blindman's-buff till
+we tired of that--Daniel, to Lu's great delight, coming out splendidly
+as Blindman, and evincing such "cheek" in the style he hunted down and
+caught the ladies, as satisfied me that nothing but his sight stood in
+the way of his making an audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty
+little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who seemed quite a premature flirt,
+proposed "Doorkeeper"--a suggestion accepted with great _eclat_ by all
+the children, several grown people assenting.
+
+To Billy--quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
+executive faculties of his character, as host--was committed the duty
+of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There were so
+many of us that "Aina-maina-mona-mike" would not go quite around;
+but with that promptness of expedient which belongs to genius, Billy
+instantly added on "Intery-mintery-cutery-corn," and the last word of
+the cabalistic formula fell upon me, Edward Balbus. I disappeared into
+the entry amid peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling,
+when the door opened again to ask me who I wanted, for the pretty,
+lisping flirt who had proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish
+little chirrup of a kiss and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me,
+on my return, send out to her "Mither Billy Lovegrove." I obeyed her;
+my youngest nephew retired and, after a couple of seconds, during which
+Tilly undoubtedly got what she proposed the game for, Billy being
+a great favorite with the little girls, she came back pouting and
+blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss Pilgrim. The young lady
+showed no mock modesty, but arose at once and laughingly went out to her
+youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned, embraced her ardently and
+told her he loved her better than any girl in the world. As he turned
+to go back she told him that he might send to her one of her juvenile
+cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on this youthful
+Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that most terrible
+passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing practical
+jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched into the
+room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded parlor
+by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove was wanted.
+
+I was standing at his side and could feel him' tremble--see him turn
+pale.
+
+"Dear me!" he whispered, in a choking voice; "can she mean me?"
+
+"Of course she does," said I. "Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you
+can't refuse such an invitation from a lady."
+
+"No; I suppose not," said he, mechanically. And, amid much laughter from
+the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother
+were spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room.
+Never in my life did I so much long for that instrument, described
+by Mr. Samuel Weller--a pair of patent, double-million magnifying
+microscopes of hex-tery power, to see through a deal door. Instead of
+this I had to learn what happened only by report.
+
+Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on the
+newel-post, more vividly charming than he had ever seen her before, at
+Mrs. Crajncroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled by the apparition
+of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of little Rumbullion whom she was
+expecting--she had no time to exclaim or hide her mounting color, none
+at all to explain to her own mind the mistake that had occurred, before
+his arm was clasped around her waist and his lips so closely pressed to
+hers that, through her soft, thick hair she could feel the throbbing of
+his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream, from which he
+waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter, though
+not incensed stupefaction,--to stammer, "Forgive me! do forgive me! I
+thought you were in, earnest."
+
+"So I was," she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice,
+"in sending for my cousin Reginald."
+
+"Oh dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let
+me go and explain it to mother. She will tell the rest--I couldn't do
+it--I'd die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!"
+
+On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
+
+"Don't try to explain it now--it may get Billy a scolding. Are there any
+but intimate family friends here this evening?"
+
+"No--I believe--no--I'm sure," replied Daniel, collecting his faculties.
+
+"Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've known
+each other long; but we'll arrange it by and by. They'll think the more
+of it the longer we stay out here--hear them laugh! I must run back now.
+I'll send you somebody."
+
+A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the parlor,
+and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her quick woman's
+wit told her how to retaliate and divide the embarrassment of the
+occasion. As she passed me she said in an undertone:
+
+"Answer quick! Who is that fat lady on the sofa who laughed so loud?"
+
+"Mrs. Cromwell Craggs," said I, quietly.
+
+Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtesy and spoke in a modest but
+distinct voice:
+
+"I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but is
+there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs--Mrs. _Cromwell_ Craggs? For, if
+so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell Craggs."
+
+Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to
+go and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening
+Billy was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see
+Daniel in close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and
+fuchsias of the conservatory.
+
+"A regular flirtation," said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
+which they arrived at was that after all no great harm had been done,
+and that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun.
+If I had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have
+suspected that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not
+unlikely to be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I
+could see showed me that the ice was broken.
+
+Billy's jealousy did not outlast the party. He became more and more
+interested in "his girl," and often went in the afternoon, after getting
+out of school, ostensibly to play with Jimmy. Daniel's calls, according
+to adult etiquette, made in the evening, did not interfere with my
+younger nephew's, and as neither knew that the other, after his fashion,
+was his most uncompromising rival, my position, as the confidant of
+both, was one of extreme delicacy. But the matter was more speedily
+settled than I expected.
+
+Billy came to me one day and told me that he intended to get married
+immediately; that he was going to speak to his Lottie that very
+afternoon. He was prepared to meet every objection. He had asked his
+father if he might, and his father said yes, if he had money enough to
+support a wife--and Billy thought he had. He'd saved up all the money
+his Uncle Jim and Aunt Jane had sent him for Christmas; and besides, if
+he were once married, his father wouldn't see him want for stamps, he
+knew. Then, too, he was going to leave school and be a merchant next
+year--and I'd help him now and then, if he got hard up, wouldn't I?
+If he were driven to it, he could be a good boy again, and save up the
+money to buy Lottie presents with, instead of giving it to nasty old
+"Objecks." He was so much older than when he had the savings-bank that
+he ought to have at least ten cents a day now for being good; didn't
+I think that was fair? As to his age, if Lottie loved him, he didn't
+care--anyway he would be lots bigger than she was before long--and he'd
+often heard his ma say she approved of early marriages; hers and pa's
+was one. So he ran off up Livingston Place, the most undaunted lover
+that ever put an extra shine on his proposal boots, or spent half an
+hour on the bow of his popping necktie.
+
+Shortly after, Daniel went into the street. Not meaning to call upon his
+_inamorata_, but drawn by the irresistible fascination of passing her
+house, he strolled in the direction that Billy had gone. As he came to
+the Rumbullions', something suddenly bade him enter--a whim he called
+it, but not his own--one of the whims of destiny which are always
+gratified.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the servant, "Miss Pilgrim is in, I will call her."
+
+His step was always light. He passed noiselessly into the front parlor
+and sat down among the heavy brocatelle curtains which shadowed the
+recess of one of the windows. He supposed Miss Pilgrim to be upstairs,
+and while his heart fluttered, expecting her footfall at the particular
+door, he heard an earnest boyish voice in the inside room. Looking from
+his concealment he beheld Miss Pilgrim on a sofa in the pier and sitting
+by her side, with her hand clasped in his, his brother Billy. Before he
+could avoid it, he became aware that Billy was unconsciously but eagerly
+forestalling him.
+
+"Now, Lottie, my dear Lottie! I wish you would! I'll do everything I can
+to make you happy. If you'll only marry me, I'll be good all the
+time! Come now! Say yes! Father's got a really nice place over the
+stable--they only use it for a tool room now; we could clear it out and
+have it scrubbed and go to housekeeping right away. Ma'd let us have all
+her old set of chinai I've got a silver mug Uncle Teddy gave me and a
+napkin ring and four spoons. As soon as I make my money I'll buy a nice
+carriage and horses, any color you want 'em. Oh, my darling, darling
+Lottie, I do love you so much and we could have such a splendid time! Do
+say yes, Lottie--please, _do_ please!"
+
+Miss Pilgrim looked at the earnest little suitor with a face in
+which tender interest and compassion quite overrode any sense of
+the whimsicality of the situation which might lurk there. Daniel's
+astonishment at the sight was so great that he realized the entire state
+of the case before he could recover himself sufficiently to rise and go
+into the back room.
+
+Billy jumped up and looked defiantly at the intruder. Miss Pilgrim
+blushed violently, but turned away her head to avoid the exhibition of a
+still more convulsing emotion than embarrassment.
+
+"I must beg your pardon, Miss Pilgrim--and yours, too, Billy," began
+Daniel in a hesitating way, hardly knowing how to treat the posture in
+which he found things, "but--you see--the fact is the servant said she'd
+go to announce me--and really when I came in, I hadn't any idea you were
+here, or Billy either."
+
+"Then," said Billy, moderating the defiant attitude, "you actually
+weren't dodging around and trying to find out what Lottie and I were
+about on the sly? Well, I'll believe you. I'm sure you couldn't be as
+mean as that, when I'm the only brother you have got, that always brings
+you oranges when you're sick, and never plays ball on the stairs when
+you've got a headache. Now, then, I'll trust you, I've been asking
+Lottie to marry me, and I want you to help me. Ask her if she won't,
+Daniel--see if she won't do it for you!"
+
+Miss Pilgrim had been trying to find words, but her face was too much
+for her and she was obliged to seek retirement in her handkerchief. As
+she drew it from her pocket, a well-worn piece of paper followed it and
+fell upon the floor. Billy picked it up before she noticed it, and
+was about to hand it to her, when his jealous eye fell upon a withered
+rosebud sewed to its margin. As he looked at it, with his little
+brows knit into a precocious sternness, he recognized his brother's
+handwriting immediately beneath the flower. It was one of the daily
+anonymous sonnets, of which Daniel had told me, and the bud a relic of
+the bouquet accompanying it. Still Daniel was silent. What else could he
+be?
+
+"Very well, very well, Master Daniel!" exclaimed Billy, in a voice
+trembling with grief and indignation, "there's good enough reason why
+you won't speak a word for me. You want her yourself--here it is in your
+own writing. No wonder you won't tell Lottie to be my wife, when you're
+trying to take her away from me. Oh, Lottie, dear Lottie! I love you
+just as much as he does, though I don't know everything and can't write
+you poetry like it was out of the Fifth Reader! Daniel, how could you
+go and write to my Lottie this way: 'My churner'--no, it isn't churner,
+it's charmer,--'let me call thee mine'?"
+
+Forgetting the sacredness of private MS. in that of private grief,
+he would have gone on, with a pause here and there for certainty of
+spelling, to the conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with
+her imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of
+the identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her
+pocket. It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved,
+and herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses
+and bouquets.
+
+"Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!" So exclaiming,
+she held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the
+dignity of a wounded spirit.
+
+"Mr. Lovegrove," said Miss Pilgrim, "I don't know what to say."
+
+"I feel very much that way myself," said Daniel.
+
+"_I_ don't," said Billy, now in command of his voice. "I'll tell
+you what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you,
+Lottie--and perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But whatever way
+it is, I want you to choose between us, fair and square, and no dodging.
+Come now! You can take just whichever one of us you please, and the
+other won't lay up any grudge, though I know if that's me, or like me,
+he'll feel awful. You can have till to-morrow morning to make up your
+mind between me and Daniel, and if he won't say anything about it to pa
+and ma till then, I won't. Good-by, _dear_ Lottie!"
+
+He drew her face down to his, kissed her almost affectionately and then
+marched out of the door, feeling, as he afterward told me, as if he
+had blackened his boots all for nothing. Ah me! my dear Billy, how many
+times we do that in this world! Of what followed when Daniel and Miss
+Pilgrim were left alone, I have never had full details.
+
+But I do know that the young lady obeyed Billy and made her choice. Six
+months after that both my nephews stood up in Mrs. Rumbullion's parlor
+to take their several shares in a ceremony in which Miss Pilgrim was
+the central figure when it began, and Mrs. Daniel Lovegrove when it
+concluded. Time and elasticity of boyhood had so closed the sharp but
+evanescent wound in Billy's heart that he could stand the trial of being
+groomsman where he had wanted to be groom--more especially since he
+was supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who
+promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in
+the more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to
+any objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth,
+for, as they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them
+together as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all
+the knots in which there are heartstrings concerned, as well as white
+ribbon.
+
+Since then Lu has stopped wishing that Billy were like Daniel, for she
+says that if he had been, there would never have been any Mrs. Daniel
+Lovegrove in the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
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+    <title>
+      A Brace of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+    </title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Brace Of Boys, by Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Brace Of Boys
+       1867, From "Little Brother"
+
+Author: Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23170]
+Last Updated: March 16, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BRACE OF BOYS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      A BRACE OF BOYS
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Fitz Hugh Ludlow
+    </h2>
+    <h4>
+      From &ldquo;Little Brother,&rdquo; <br /> <br /> Copyright, 1867, by Lee &amp; Shepard
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody; but
+      I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially, just as I
+      am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race; and if,
+      through untoward circumstances&mdash;which Heaven forbid&mdash;I should
+      lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out in
+      the &ldquo;Herald&rdquo; under &ldquo;Situations Wanted&mdash;Males.&rdquo; Thanks to a marrying
+      tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise,
+      all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my
+      profession can attend to. I suppose you won't agree with me; but, do you
+      know, sometimes I think it's better than having children of one's own?
+      People tell me that I'd feel very differently if I did have any. Perhaps
+      so, but then, too, I might be unwise with them; I might bother them into
+      mischief by trying to keep them out. I might be avaricious of them&mdash;might
+      be tempted to lock them up in my own stingy old nursery-chest instead of
+      paying them out to meet the bills of humanity and keep the Lord's business
+      moving. I might forget, when I had spent my life in fining their gold and
+      polishing their graven-work, that they were still vessels for the Master's
+      use&mdash;I only the Butler&mdash;the sweetness and the spirit with which
+      they brimmed all belonging to His lips who tasted bitterness for me. Then,
+      if seeking to drain another's wine, I raised the chalice to my lips and
+      found it gall, or felt it steal into my old veins to poison the heart and
+      paralyze the hand which had kept it from the Master, what further good
+      would there be for me in the world? Who doesn't know, in some friend's
+      house, a closet containing that worst of skeletons&mdash;the skeleton
+      which, in becoming naked, grim and ghastly, tears its way through our own
+      flesh and blood? To be an uncle is a different kind of thing. There you
+      have nothing of the excitement of responsibility to shake your judgment
+      That's what makes us bachelor uncles so much better judges of what's good
+      for children and their fathers and mothers. We know that nobody will blame
+      us if our nephews unjoint their knuckles or cut their fingers off; so we
+      give them five-bladed knives and boxing gloves. This involves getting
+      thanked at the time, which is pleasant; and if no catastrophe occurs, when
+      they have grown stout and ingenious, with what calm satisfaction we hear
+      people say, &ldquo;See what a pretty windmill the child's whittled out with
+      Uncle Ned's birthday present!&rdquo; or, &ldquo;That boy's grown an inch round the
+      chest since you set him sparring!&rdquo; Uncles never get stale. They don't come
+      every day like parents and plain pudding; they're a sort of holiday
+      relative with a plummy, Christmas flavor about them. Everybody hasn't got
+      them; they are not so rare as the meteoric showers, but as occasional as a
+      particularly fine day, and whenever they come to a house they're in the
+      nature of a pleasant surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
+      through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
+      little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
+      longest among the children of my sister Lu.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired, with a fortune
+      amassed by the old-fashioned slow process of trade, and regards the
+      mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
+      Christianly baptized. For the ten years elapsing since he sold out of
+      Lovegrove, Cashdown &amp; Co., he has devoted himself to his family and a
+      revival of letters, taking up again the Latin and Greek which he had not
+      looked at since his college days, until he dismissed teas and silks to
+      adorn a suburban villa with a spectacle of a prime Christian parent and
+      Pagan scholar. Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an unusually good
+      article of brother-in-law; and I can not say that any of my nieces and
+      nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and Billy, who
+      are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart in point of
+      years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of this fact the
+      other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling at his book of
+      sums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'A boy has 85 turnips and gives his sister 80'&mdash;pretty present for a
+      girl, isn't it?&rdquo; said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. &ldquo;Could <i>you</i>
+      stand such stuff&mdash;say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I put on my instructive face and answered: &ldquo;Well, my dear Billy, you know
+      that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an industrious man
+      and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to lose all their
+      property, what would become of them without a little son who could make
+      money and keep accounts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Billy with surprise. &ldquo;Hasn't father got enough stamps to see
+      him through?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
+      should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more
+      stamps for himself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haven't thought of brother Daniel&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
+      life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Billy,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is more
+      of a student than a business man, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd
+      have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to
+      be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so he
+      is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forty, Billy, last August.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you Daniel
+      will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that, and he
+      has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and wheels him
+      around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, <i>I</i> bet! Well,
+      I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick like Robinson
+      Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a piece out of one
+      side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll gouge a piece out of
+      the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spend a what!&rdquo; said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu, who,
+      unperceived, had slipped into the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A toadskin, ma,&rdquo; replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
+      glance of contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, ma! don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one,&rdquo; said Billy,
+      drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. &ldquo;And don't I wish I had
+      lots of 'em!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; sighed his mother, &ldquo;to think I should have a child so addicted to
+      slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, mother,&rdquo; replied Billy, &ldquo;if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
+      oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel now
+      when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight! Hear
+      'em! It's Joe Casey's dog&mdash;I know his bark!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words my nephew snatched his Glengarry bonnet from the table
+      and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What will become of him?&rdquo; said Lu hopelessly; &ldquo;he has no taste for
+      anything but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why <i>isn't</i>
+      he like Daniel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often
+      possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a
+      good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do
+      you'll make something as good of him as Daniel; though it will be rather
+      different from that model.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do Billy.
+      But we all know the proverb about old maids' daughters and old bachelors'
+      sons. I wish you had Billy for a month&mdash;then you'd see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in
+      other directions. But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he was
+      a new problem, not to be worked without finding the value of 'x' in his
+      particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more solve
+      the next one than the rule of three will solve a question in calculus&mdash;or,
+      to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for one-two-three-four cake
+      conduct you to a successful issue through plum pudding&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I excel in metaphysical discussions, and was about giving further
+      elaboration of my favorite idea when the door burst open. Master Billy
+      came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a bloody nose, the trace of a few
+      tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh my! my!! my!!!&rdquo; exclaimed his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you get scared, ma!&rdquo; cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of triumph;
+      &ldquo;I smashed the nose off him! He won't sass me again for nothing <i>this</i>
+      while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dogfight after all? There was
+      that nasty good-for-nothing Joe Casey 'n' Patsy Grogan and a lot of bad
+      boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little ki-oodle and
+      tied a tin pot to his tail and were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though
+      he's ten times littler&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see
+      you playing with those ragamuffins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I <i>played</i> 'em! I polished 'em&mdash;that's the play I did!
+      Says I, 'Put down that poor little pup! Ain't you ashamed of yourself,
+      Patsy Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way
+      they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful
+      great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog or I'll show
+      you who <i>I</i> am'; and when he held on, I let him have it. Then he
+      dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the
+      bugle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>Bugle!</i> Oh! oh! oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I was
+      trying to give as good as I got&mdash;only a fellow can't do it well with
+      only one hand, Uncle Teddy&mdash;up came a policeman and the whole crowd
+      ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that Billy set down his &ldquo;ki-oodle,&rdquo; bade farewell to every fear, and
+      wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the legs of
+      his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an expression
+      of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his dilapidated
+      raiment and depraved associations. I felt such sincere pride in this young
+      Mazzini of the dog-nation that I was vexed at Lu for bestowing on him
+      reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the only conservative
+      who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under a bloody nose and
+      torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished, he should have his
+      recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the
+      Hippotheatron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You already have some idea of my other nephew if you have noticed that
+      none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy, ever
+      called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call Billy
+      William.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was one of those youths who never give their parents a moment's
+      uneasiness; who never have to have their wills broken, and never forget to
+      put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended for a
+      missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's icy
+      mountains without catching cold, or to India's coral strand without
+      getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream
+      of contributing him to the world's evangelization. Lu and Mr. Lovegrove
+      had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have
+      stood it. They brought him up in the most careful manner, and I can not
+      recollect the time when he was not president, secretary, or something in
+      some society of small yet good children. He was not only an exemplar to
+      whom all Lu's friends pointed their own nursery as the little boy who
+      could say most hymns and sit stillest in church, but he was a reproof even
+      unto his elders. One Sunday afternoon, in the Connecticut village where my
+      brother-in-law used to spend his summers, when half of the congregation
+      was slumbering under the combined effect of the heat, a lunch of cheese
+      and apples, and the sermon, my nephew, then aged five, sat bolt upright in
+      the pew, winkless as a demon hearing a new candidate suspected of
+      shakiness on a &ldquo;a card'nal p'int,&rdquo; and mortified almost to death poor old
+      Mrs. Pringle, who, compassionating his years, had handed him a sprig of
+      her &ldquo;meetin'-seed&rdquo; over the back of the seat, by saying, in a loud and
+      stern voice: &ldquo;I don't eat things in church.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I should have spanked the boy when I got home, but Lu, with tears in her
+      eyes, quoted something about the mouths of babes and sucklings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think they
+      took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener does in
+      getting a nice blanch on his celery, and, so long as he was not absolutely
+      sick, the graver he was, the better. He was a sensitive plant, a violet by
+      a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing. But when in his tenth year he
+      had the measles, and was narrowly carried through, Lu got a scare about
+      him. During his convalescence, reading aloud a life of Henry Martyn to
+      amuse him, she found in it a picture of that young apostle preaching to a
+      crowd of Hindus without any boots on. An American mother's association of
+      such behavior with croup and ipecac was too strong to be counteracted by
+      known climatic facts; and from that hour, as she never had before, Lu
+      realized that being a missionary might involve going to carry the gospel
+      to the heathen in your stocking-feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they had decided that such a life would not do for him, his training
+      had almost entirely unfitted him for any other active calling. The strict
+      propriety with which he had been brought up had resulted in weak lungs,
+      poor digestion, sluggish circulation, and torpid liver. Moreover, he was
+      troubled with the painfulest bashfulness which ever made a mother think
+      her child too ethereal, or a dispassionate outsider regard him as too
+      flimsy, for this world. These were weights enough to carry, even if he had
+      not labored under that heaviest of all, a well-stored mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No misnomer that last to any one who has ever frequented the Atlantic
+      Docks, or seen storage in any large port of entry. How does a storehouse
+      look? It's a vast, dark, cold chamber-dust an inch deep on the floor,
+      cobwebs festooning the girders&mdash;and piled from floor to ceiling on
+      the principle of getting the largest bulk into the least room, with
+      barrels, boxes, bales, baskets, chests, crates, and carboys&mdash;merchandise
+      of all description, from the rough, raw material to the most exquisite <i>choses
+      de luxe</i>. The inmost layers are inextricable without pulling down the
+      outer ones. If you want a particular case of broadcloth you must clear
+      yourself an alleyway through a hundred tierces of hams, and last week's
+      entry of clayed sugars is inaccessible without tumbling on your head a
+      mountain of Yankee notions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my nephew's unfortunate youth such storage as this had minds. As long
+      as the crown of his brain's arch was not crushed in by some intellectual
+      Furman Street diaster, those stevedores of learning, the schoolmasters,
+      kept on unloading the Rome and Athens lighters into a boy's crowded skull,
+      and breaking out of the hold of that colossal old junk, The Pure
+      Mathematics, all the formulas which could be crowded into the interstices
+      between his Latin and Greek. At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and
+      her husband were much changed. They had gained a great deal in width of
+      view and liberality of judgment. They read Dickens and Thackeray with
+      avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a
+      quarter at Dod-worth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of
+      shame at their lack of petticoats, and did multitudes of things which, in
+      their early married life, they would have considered shocking. Part of
+      this change was due to the great increase of travel, the wonderful
+      progress in art and refinement which has enlarged this generation's
+      thought and corrected its ignorant opinions; infusing cosmopolitanism into
+      our manners by a revolution so gradual that its subjects were a new people
+      before their combativeness became alarmed, yet so rapid that a man of
+      thirty can scarcely believe his birthday, and questions whether he has not
+      added his life up wrong by a century or so when he compares his own
+      boy-Hood with that of the present day. But a good deal of the
+      transformation resulted from the means of gratifying elegant tastes, the
+      comfort, luxury, and culture which came with Lovegrove's retirement on a
+      fortune. They had mellowed on the sunny shelves of prosperity, like every
+      good thing which has an astringent skin when it is green. They would
+      greatly have liked to see Daniel shine in society. Of his erudition they
+      were proud, even to worship. The young man never had any business, and his
+      father never seemed to think of giving him any; knowing, as Billy would
+      say, that he had stamps enough to &ldquo;see him through.&rdquo; If Daniel liked, his
+      father would have endowed a professorship in some college and have given
+      him the chair; but that would have taken him away from his own room and
+      the family physician.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the world,
+      and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that
+      they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small
+      change of everyday society in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him
+      for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which
+      alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless reproach,
+      his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him, when
+      they ascribed to his delicate organization the fact that, at an age when
+      love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a balmoral without
+      his cheeks rivaling the most vivid stripe in it. They flattered themselves
+      that he would outgrow his bashfulness, but Daniel had no such hope, and
+      frequently confided in me that he thought he should never marry at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy, the
+      defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under his
+      arm. His cheeks shone with washing like a pair of waxy Spitzenbergs, and
+      other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush and
+      comb. He also had a whole jacket on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Billy,&rdquo; said I, &ldquo;what are you going to do with your dog?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know what I'm going to do. I've a great mind to be a bad,
+      disobedient boy with him, and <i>not</i> have my days long in the land
+      which the Lord my God giveth me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;O Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help it. They won't be long if I don't mind ma, she says; and she
+      wants me to be mean, and put Crab out in the street to have Patsy catch
+      him and tie coffee-pots to his tail. I&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here my small nephew dug his fist into his eye and looked down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I told Billy to stop where he was, and went to intercede with Lu. She was
+      persuaded to entertain the angels of magnanimity and heroism in the
+      disguise of a young fighting character, and to accept my surety for the
+      behavior of his dog. Billy and I also obtained permission to go out
+      together and be gone the entire afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe box, and then
+      strolled, hand-in-hand, across that most delightful of New York
+      breathing-places, Stuyvesant Square.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Teddy!&rdquo; exclaimed Billy with ardor; &ldquo;I wish I could do something to
+      show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't know
+      how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you&mdash;a
+      smashing big hymn&mdash;six verses, long metre, and no grumbling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Billy; you make me happy enough just by being a good boy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Uncle Teddy!&rdquo; replied Billy decidedly, &ldquo;I'm afraid I can't do it.
+      I've tried so often and I always make such an awful mess of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you get discouraged too easily&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if a savings-bank won't do it, there ain't any chance for a boy. I
+      got father to get me a savings-bank once and began being good just as hard
+      as ever I could for three cents a day. Every night I got 'em, I put 'em in
+      reg'lar, and sometimes I'd keep being good three whole days running. That
+      made a sight of money, I tell you. Then I'd do something, ma said, to kick
+      my pail of milk over, and those nights I didn't get anything. I used to
+      put in most of my marble and candy money, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What were you going to do with it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was for an Objeck, Uncle Teddy. That's a kind of Indian, you know,
+      that eats people and wants the gospel. That's what pa says, anyway; I
+      didn't ever see one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, didn't that make you happy&mdash;to help the poor little heathen
+      children?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, does it, Uncle Teddy? They never got a cent of it. One time I was
+      good so long I got scared. I was afraid I'd never want to fly my kite on a
+      roof again or go anywhere where I oughtn't, or have any fun. I couldn't
+      see any use of going and saving my money to send out to the Objecks if it
+      was going to make good boys of 'em. It was awful hard for me to have to be
+      a good boy, and it must be worse for them 'cause they ain't used to it. So
+      when there wasn't anybody upstairs I went and shook a lot of pennies out
+      of my chimney and bought ever so much taffy and marbles and popcorn. Was
+      that awful mean, Uncle Teddy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The question involved such complications that I hesitated. Before I could
+      decide what to answer Billy continued:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ma said it was robbing the heathen, and didn't I get it? I thought if it
+      was robbing I'd have a cop after me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's a 'cop'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what the boys call a policeman, Uncle Teddy; and then I should be
+      taken away and put in an awful black place underground, like Johnny Wilson
+      when he broke Mrs. Perkins's window. I was scared, I tell you. But I
+      didn't get anything worse than a whipping, and having my savings bank
+      taken away from me with all that was left in it, I haven't tried to be
+      good since, much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      We now got into a Broadway stage going down, and being unable, on account
+      of the noise, to converse further upon those spiritual conflicts of
+      Billy's which so much interested me, we amused ourselves with looking out
+      until just as we reached the Astor House, when he asked me where we were
+      going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you guess?&rdquo; said I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He cast a glance through the front window and his face became irradiated.
+      Oh, there's nothing like the simple, cheap luxury of pleasing a child, to
+      create sunshine enough for the chasing away of the bluest adult devils!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're going to Barnum's,&rdquo; said Billy, involuntarily clapping his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we were; and, much as stuck-up people pretend to look down at the
+      place, I frequently am. Not only so, but I always see that class largely
+      represented there when I do go. To be sure, they always make believe that
+      they only come to amuse the children, or because their country cousins
+      visit them; and never fail to refer to the vulgar set one finds there, and
+      the fact of the animals smelling like anything but Jockey Club; yet I
+      notice that after they've been in the hall three minutes they're as much
+      interested as any of the people they come to poh-poh, and only put on the
+      high-bred air when they fancy some of their own class are looking at them.
+      I boldly acknowledge that I go because I like it. I am especially happy,
+      to be sure, if I have a child along to go into ecstasies and give me a
+      chance, by asking questions, for the exhibition of that fund of
+      information which is said to be one of my chief charms in the social
+      circle, and on several occasions has led that portion of the public
+      immediately about the Happy Family into the erroneous impression that I
+      was Mr. Barnum explaining his five hundred thousand curiosities. On the
+      present occasion we found several visitors of the better class in the room
+      devoted to the Aquarium. Among these was a young lady, apparently about
+      nineteen, in a tight-fitting basque of black velvet, which showed her
+      elegant figure to fine advantage, a skirt of garnet silk, looped up over a
+      pretty Balmoral, and the daintiest imaginable pair of kid walking-boots.
+      Her height was a trifle over the medium, her eyes, a soft expressive
+      brown, shaded by masses of hair which exactly matched their color, and, at
+      that rat-and-miceless day, fell in such graceful abandon as to show at
+      once that nature was the only maid who crimped their waves into them. Her
+      complexion was rosy with health and sympathetic enjoyment; her mouth was
+      faultless, her nose sensitive, her manners full of refinement, and her
+      voice musical as a wood-robin's, when she spoke to the little boy of six
+      at her side, to whom she was revealing the palace of the great show-king.
+      Billy and I were flattening our noses against the abode of the
+      balloon-fish and determining whether he looked most like a horse-chestnut
+      burr or a ripe cucumber, when his eyes and my own simultaneously fell on
+      the child and lady. In a moment, to Billy the balloon-fish was as though
+      he had not been.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a pretty little boy!&rdquo; said I. And then I asked Billy one of those
+      senseless routine questions which must make children look at us, regarding
+      the scope of our intellects very much as we look at Bushmen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you like to play with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Him!&rdquo; replied Billy scornfully, &ldquo;that's his first pair of boots; see him
+      pull up his little breeches to show the red tops to them! But, crackey!
+      isn't <i>she</i> a smasher!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After that we visited the wax figures and the sleepy snakes, the learned
+      seal, and the glass-blowers. Whenever we passed from one room into
+      another, Billy could be caught looking anxiously to see if the pretty girl
+      and child were coming, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time fails me to describe how Billy was lost in the astonishment at the
+      Lightning Calculator&mdash;wanted me to beg the secret of that prodigy for
+      him to do his sums by&mdash;finally thought he had discovered it, and
+      resolved to keep his arm whirling all the time he studied his arithmetic
+      lesson the next morning. Equally inadequate is it to relate in full how he
+      became so confused among the waxworks that he pinched the solemnest
+      showman's legs to see if he was real, and perplexed the beautiful
+      Circassian to the verge of idiocy by telling her he had read all about the
+      way they sold girls like her in his geography.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We had reached the stairs to that subterranean chamber in which the
+      Behemoth of Holy Writ was wallowing about without a thought of the dignity
+      which one expects from a canonical character. Billy had always languished
+      upon his memories of this diverting beast, and I stood ready to see him
+      plunge headlong the moment that he read the signboard at the head of the
+      stairs. When he paused and hesitated there, not seeming at all anxious to
+      go down till he saw the pretty girl and the child following after&mdash;a
+      sudden intuition flashed across me. Could it be possible that Billy was
+      caught in that vortex which whirled me down at ten years&mdash;a little
+      boy's first love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We were lingering about the elliptical basin, and catching occasional
+      glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass,
+      whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when
+      the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped
+      into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the
+      hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play, or as a
+      mere coincidence, the animal followed it. The other children about the
+      tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but
+      Billy manfully bent down and grabbed the glove, not an inch from one of
+      his big tusks, then marched around the tank and presented it to the lady
+      with a chivalry of manner in one of his years quite surprising.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's a real nice boy&mdash;you said so, didn't you, Lottie? And I wish
+      he'd come and play with me,&rdquo; said the little fellow by the young lady's
+      side, as Billy turned away, gracefully thanked, to come back to me with
+      his cheeks roseate with blushes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he heard this, Billy sidled along the edge of the tank for a moment,
+      then faced about and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;P'rhaps I will some day&mdash;where do you live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I live on East Seventeenth Street with papa&mdash;and Lottie stays there
+      too now&mdash;she's my cousin: where d'you live?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I live close by&mdash;right on that big green square where I guess
+      the nurse takes you once in a while,&rdquo; said Billy patronizingly. Then,
+      looking up pluckily at the young lady, he added, &ldquo;I never saw you out
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Jimmy's papa has only been in his new house a little while, and I've
+      just come to visit him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, will you come and play with me some time?&rdquo; chimed in the
+      inextinguishable Jimmy. &ldquo;I've got a cooking stove&mdash;for real fire&mdash;and
+      blocks and a ball with a string.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy, who belonged to a club for the practice of the great American game,
+      and was what A. Ward would call the most superior battest among the I. G.
+      B. B. C, or &ldquo;Infant Giants,&rdquo; smiled from that altitude upon Jimmy, but
+      promised to go and play with him the next Saturday afternoon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Late that evening, after we had got home and dined, as I sat in my room
+      over Pickwick, with a sedative cigar, a gentle knock at the door told of
+      Daniel. I called &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo; and, entering with a slow dejected air, he sat
+      down by my fire. For ten minutes he remained silent, though occasionally
+      looking up as if about to speak, then dropping his head again to ponder on
+      the coals. Finally I laid down Dickens, and spoke myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't seem well to-night, Daniel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't feel very well, uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter, my boy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;I don't know. That is, I wish I knew how to tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I studied him for a few moments with kindly curiosity, then answered:
+      &ldquo;Perhaps I can save you the trouble by cross-examining it out of you.
+      Let's try the method of elimination. I know that you are not harassed by
+      any economical considerations, for you've all the money you want; and I
+      know that ambition doesn't trouble you, for your tastes are scholarly.
+      This narrows down the investigation of your symptoms&mdash;listlessness,
+      general dejection, and all&mdash;to three causes: Dyspepsia, religious
+      conflicts, love. Now is your digestion awry?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, sir, good as usual. I'm not melancholy on religion and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't tell me you're in love?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&mdash;yes&mdash;I suppose that's about it, Uncle Teddy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this unimaginable
+      revelation, then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is your feeling returned?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really don't know, uncle. I don't believe it is. I don't see how it can
+      be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to love!
+      I've borne enough for her&mdash;that is, nothing that could do her any
+      good&mdash;though I've endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So,
+      look at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that
+      can get a woman's love.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along with
+      you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and neuter!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel smiled faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've no idea, Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you hit
+      the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman I could
+      talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the philosophy of
+      the flowers as well as they do the poetry&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God they don't, Daniel!&rdquo; sighed out I devoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind&mdash;in that case I could entrance her for hours, talking
+      about the grounds of difference between Linnaeus and Jussieu. Women like
+      the star business, they say&mdash;and I could tell her where all the
+      constellations are; but sure as I tried to get off any sentiment about
+      them, I'd break down and make myself ridiculous. But what earthly chance
+      would the greatest philosopher that ever lived have with the woman he
+      loved, if he depended for her favor on his ability to analyze her bouquet
+      or tell her when she might look out for the next occultation of Orion? I
+      can't talk bread and butter. I can't do anything that makes a man even
+      tolerable to a woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you don't mean that nothing but bread and butter talk is tolerable
+      to a woman!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; but it's necessary to some extent&mdash;at any rate the ability is&mdash;in
+      order to succeed in society; and it is in society men first meet and
+      strike women. And Uncle Teddy! I'm such a fish out of water in society!&mdash;such
+      a dreadful floundering fish! When I see her dancing gracefully as a swan
+      swims, and feel that fellows, like little Jack Mankyn, 'who don't know
+      twelve times,' can dance to her perfect admiration; when I see that she
+      likes ease of manners&mdash;and all sorts of men without an idea in their
+      heads have that&mdash;while I turn all colors when I speak to her, and am
+      clumsy; and abrupt, and abstracted, and bad at repartee&mdash;Uncle Teddy!
+      sometimes (though it seems so ungrateful to father and mother, who have
+      spent such pains for me)&mdash;sometimes, do you know, it seems to me as
+      if I'd exchange all I've ever learned for the power to make a good
+      appearance before her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Daniel, my boy, it's too much a matter of reflection with you! A woman is
+      not to be taken by laying plans. If you love the lady (whose name I don't
+      ask you because I know you'll tell me as soon as you think best), you must
+      seek her companionship until you're well enough acquainted with her to
+      have her regard you as something different from the men whom she meets
+      merely in society, and judge your qualities by another standard than that
+      she applies to them. If she's a sensible girl (and God forbid you should
+      marry her otherwise!) she knows that people can't always be dancing, or
+      holding fans, or running after orange ice. If she's a girl capable of
+      appreciating your best points (and woe to you if you marry a girl who
+      can't!), she'll find them out upon closer intimacy, and once found they'll
+      a hundred times outweigh all brilliant advantages kept in the showcase of
+      fellows who have nothing on the shelves. When this comes about, you will
+      pop the question unconsciously, and, to adopt Milton, she will drop into
+      your lap, 'gathered&mdash;not harshly plucked.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know that's sensible, Uncle Teddy, and I'll try. Let me tell you the
+      sacredest of secrets&mdash;regularly every day of my life I send her a
+      little poem fastened round the prettiest bouquet I can get at Hanfts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does she know who sends them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She can't have any idea. The German boy that takes them knows not a word
+      of English except her name and address. You'll forgive me, Uncle, for not
+      mentioning her name yet? You see she may despise or hate me some day when
+      she knows who it is that has paid her these attentions; and then I'd like
+      to be able to feel that at least I've never hurt her by any absurd
+      connection with myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forgive you? Nonsense! The feeling does your heart infinite credit,
+      though a little counsel with your head would show you that your only
+      absurdity is self-depreciation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel bade me good-night. As I put out my cigar and went to bed, my mind
+      reverted to the dauntless little Hotspur who had spent the afternoon with
+      me, and reversed his mother's wish, thinking: &ldquo;Oh, if Daniel were more
+      like Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was always Billy's habit to come and sit with me while I smoked my
+      after-breakfast cigar, but the next morning did not see him enter my room
+      till St. George's hands pointed to a quarter of nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Billy Boy Blue, come blow your horn; what haystack have you been
+      under till this time of day? We shan't have a minute to look over our
+      spelling together, and I know a boy is going in for promotion next week.
+      Have you had your breakfast and taken care of Crab?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir, but I didn't feel like getting up this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No-o-o&mdash;it isn't that; but you'll laugh at me if I tell you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, I won't, Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well&rdquo;&mdash;his voice dropped to a whisper and he stole close to my side&mdash;&ldquo;I
+      had such a nice dream about <i>her</i> just the last thing before the bell
+      rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer&mdash;so kinder good and kinder
+      bad&mdash;and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big
+      boy, I believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to
+      sleep and see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After
+      all, I had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and
+      only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle
+      Teddy. Can you keep a secret?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me
+      upside down like a savings-bank.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you
+      the secret, though&mdash;that girl and I are going to get married. I mean
+      to ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Billy, shan't you wait a little while to see if you always like
+      her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the
+      Kings of France used to be when they got married&mdash;I read it in
+      Abbott's history. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I
+      shall get a tardy mark and perhaps she'll want to see my certificate some
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his
+      legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the
+      dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his
+      jacket&mdash;omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have
+      failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good boy!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant of
+      both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and distrustful;
+      Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to overcome his
+      bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant only in bouquets.
+      Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told in his slangy New
+      York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: &ldquo;Oh, I'm getting on prime!
+      I got such a smile off her this morning as I went by the window!&rdquo; Another
+      day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her&mdash;because it was
+      too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch him if he left it on
+      the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel wrote his own valentine,
+      but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as
+      Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids,
+      and doggerel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and got
+      introduced to his girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after this Lu gave what they call &ldquo;a little company&rdquo;&mdash;not a
+      party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were
+      well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood.
+      There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing;
+      but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile
+      usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the splendor
+      of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable gayety was
+      wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to the <i>beau
+      monde</i>&mdash;a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird, with a
+      soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How simple was
+      the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat
+      discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking leave to
+      bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks' visit. As a matter
+      of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady and
+      welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited
+      him to make his toilet in mine, and indeed, wanting him to create a
+      favorable impression, became his valet <i>pro tem</i>., tying his cravat
+      and teasing the divinity-student look out of his side hair. My little
+      dandy Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to
+      button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt studs &ldquo;like a
+      man's,&rdquo; Count d'Orsay could not have felt a greater sense of his
+      sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already receiving.
+      About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old married couples
+      which, after paying their devoirs, fell in two like unriveted scissors,
+      the gentlemen finding a new pivot in pa and the ladies in ma, where they
+      mildly opened and shut upon such questions as severally concerned them,
+      such as &ldquo;The way gold closed&rdquo; and &ldquo;How the children were.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides the old married people there were several old young men, of
+      distinctly hopeless and unmarried aspect, who, having nothing in common
+      with the other class, nor sufficient energy of character to band
+      themselves for mutual protection, hovered dejectedly about the arch
+      pillars or appeared to be considering whether on the whole it would not be
+      feasible and best to sit down on the centre-table. These subsisted upon
+      such crumbs of comfort as Lu could get an occasional chance to throw them
+      by rapid sorties of conversation&mdash;became galvanically active the
+      moment they were punched up and fell flat the moment the punching was
+      remitted. I did all I could for them, but, having Daniel in tow, dared not
+      sail too near the edge of the Doldrums, lest he should drop into
+      sympathetic stagnation and be taken preternaturally bashful with his sails
+      all aback, just as I wanted to carry him gallantly into action with some
+      clipper-built cruiser of a nice young lady. Finally, Lu bethought herself
+      of that last plank of drowning conversationalists, the photograph album.
+      All the dejected young men made for it at once, some reaching it just as
+      they were about to sink for the last time, but all getting a grip on it
+      somehow and staying there, in company with other people's babies whom they
+      didn't know, and celebrities whom they knew to death, until, one by one,
+      they either stranded upon a motherly dowager by the Fire-Place Shoals, or
+      were rescued from the Sofa Reef by some gallant wrecker of a strong-minded
+      young lady, with a view of taking salvage out of them in the German.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Besides these, were already arrived a dozen nice little boys and girls who
+      had been invited to make it pleasant for Billy. I had to remind him of the
+      fact that they were his guests, for, in comparison with the queen of his
+      affections, they were in danger of being despised by him as small fry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The younger ladies and gentlemen&mdash;those who had fascinations to
+      disport or were in the habit of disporting what they considered such&mdash;were
+      probably still at home consulting the looking-glass until that oracle
+      should announce the auspicious moment for their setting forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Daniel was in conversation with a perfect godsend of a girl who understood
+      Latin and had taken up Greek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy was taking a moment's vacation from his boys and girls, busy with
+      &ldquo;Old Maid&rdquo; in the extension room, and whispering, with his hand in mine,
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't I wish <i>she</i> were here!&rdquo; when a fresh invoice of ladies,
+      just unpacked from the dressing-room, in all the airy elegance of evening
+      costume, floated through the door. I heard Lu say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mrs. Rumbullion! happy to see your niece, too. How do you do, Miss
+      Pilgrim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this last word Billy jumped as if he had been shot, and the bevy of
+      ladies opening about Sister Lu disclosed the charming face and figure of
+      the pretty girl we had met at Barnum's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy's countenance rapidly changed from astonishment to joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't that splendid, Uncle Teddy? Just as I was wishing it! It's just
+      like the fairy books!&rdquo; and, rushing up to the party of new-comers, &ldquo;My
+      dear Lottie!&rdquo; cried he, &ldquo;if I had only known you were coming I'd have come
+      after you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he caught her by the hand, I was pleased to see her soft eyes brighten
+      with gratification at his enthusiasm, but my sister Lu looked on,
+      naturally with astonishment in every feature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why Billy!&rdquo; said she, &ldquo;you ought not to call a strange young lady '<i>Lottie?</i>
+      Miss Pilgrim, you must excuse my wild boy&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you must excuse my mother, Lottie,&rdquo; said Billy, affectionately
+      patting Miss Pilgrim's rose kid, &ldquo;for calling you a strange young lady.
+      You are not strange at all&mdash;you're just as nice a girl as there is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There are no excuses necessary,&rdquo; said Miss Pilgrim, with a bewitching
+      little laugh. &ldquo;Billy and I know each other intimately well, Mrs.
+      Lovegrove, and I confess that when I heard the lady Aunt had been invited
+      to visit was his mother, I felt all the more willing to infringe on
+      etiquette this evening, by coming where I had no previous introduction.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you care!&rdquo; said Billy encouragingly, &ldquo;I'll introduce you to every
+      one of our family; I know 'em if you don't.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this moment I came up as Billy's reinforcement, and, fearing lest, in
+      his enthusiasm, he might forget the canon of society which introduced a
+      gentleman to a lady, not a lady to him, I ventured to suggest it
+      delicately by saying, &ldquo;Billy, will you grant me the favor of a
+      presentation to Miss Pilgrim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a minute, Uncle Teddy,&rdquo; answered Billy, considerably lowering his
+      voice. &ldquo;The older people first;&rdquo; and after this reproof I was left to wait
+      in the cold until he had gone through the ceremony of introducing to the
+      young lady his father and his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy, who had now assumed entire guardianship of Miss Pilgrim, with an
+      air of great dignity intrusted her to my care, and left us promenading
+      while he went in search of Daniel. I, myself, looked in vain for that
+      youth, whom I had not seen since the entrance of the last comers. Miss
+      Pilgrim and I found a congenial common ground in Billy, whom she spoke of
+      as one of the most delightfully original boys she had ever met; in fact,
+      altogether the most fascinating young gentleman she had seen in New York
+      society. You may be sure it wasn't Billy's left ear which burned when I
+      made my responses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In five minutes he reappeared to announce, in a tone of disappointment,
+      that he could find Daniel nowhere. He could see a light through his
+      keyhole, but the door was locked and he could get no admittance. Just then
+      Lu came up to present a certain&mdash;no, an uncertain&mdash;young man of
+      the fleet stranded on parlor furniture earlier in the evening. To Lu's
+      great astonishment, Miss Pilgrim asked Billy's permission to leave him. It
+      was granted with all the courtesy of a <i>preux chevalier</i>, on the
+      condition, readily assented to, that she should dance one Lancers with him
+      during the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; exclaimed Lu, after Billy had gone back like a superior being,
+      to assist at the childish amusement of his contemporaries, &ldquo;would anybody
+      ever suppose that was our Billy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should, my dear sister,&rdquo; said I, with proud satisfaction; &ldquo;but you
+      remember I always was just to Billy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Left free, I went myself to hunt up Daniel. I found his door locked and a
+      light showing through the keyhole, as Billy had said. I made no attempt to
+      enter by knocking; but, going to my room and opening the window next his,
+      I leaned out as far as I could, shoved up his sash with my cane and pushed
+      aside his curtain. Such an unusual method of communication could not fail
+      to bring him to the window with a rush. When he saw me, he trembled like a
+      guilty thing, his countenance fell, and, no longer able to feign absence,
+      he unlocked his door and let me enter by the normal mode.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Daniel Lovegrove, my nephew, what does this mean; are you sick?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle Edward, I am not sick, and this means that I am a fool. Even a
+      little boy like Billy puts me to shame. I feel humbled to the very dust. I
+      wish I'd been a missionary and got massacred by savages. Oh, that I'd been
+      permitted to wear damp stockings in childhood, or that my mother hadn't
+      carried me through the measles! If it weren't wrong to take my life into
+      my own hands, I'd open that window and&mdash;and&mdash;sit in a draught
+      this very evening! Oh, yes! I'm just that bitter! Oh! Oh! Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Daniel paced the floor with strides of frenzy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, my dear fellow, let's look at the matter calmly for a minute. What
+      brought on this sudden attack? You seemed doing well enough the first ten
+      minutes after we came down. I was only out of your sight long enough to
+      speak to the Rumbullion party who had just come in, and when I turned you
+      were gone. Now you are in this fearful condition. What is there in the
+      Rumbullions to start you off on such a bender of bash-fulness as this
+      which I here behold?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rumbullions indeed!&rdquo; said Daniel. &ldquo;A hundred Rumbillions could not make
+      me feel as I do; but <i>she</i> can shake me into a whirlwind with her
+      little finger, and <i>she</i> came with the Rumbullions!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! D'you&mdash;Miss Pilgrim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Pilgrim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and
+      argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would bring
+      up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling them that he
+      invited them to look at his conchological cabinet, unless he instantly
+      shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied me downstairs. This
+      dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew that I would not scruple
+      to fulfil it; and at the same time that it made him surrender it also
+      provoked him with me to a degree which gave his eyes and cheeks as fine a
+      glow as I could have wished for the purpose of a favorable impression. The
+      stimulus of wrath was good for him, and there was little tremor in his
+      knees when he descended the stairs. Well-a-day&mdash;so Daniel and Billy
+      were rivals!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there you are, Daniel!&rdquo; said he, cheerily. &ldquo;I was just going to look
+      for you and Uncle Teddy. We wanted you for the dances. We have had the
+      Lancers twice and three round dances; and I danced the second Lancers with
+      Lottie. Now we're going to play some games to amuse the children, you
+      know,&rdquo; he added loftily with the adult gesture of pointing his thumb over
+      his shoulder at the extension room. &ldquo;Lottie's going to play, too, so will
+      you and Daniel, won't you, uncle? Oh, here comes Lottie now! This is my
+      brother, Miss Pilgrim; let me introduce him to you. I'm sure you'll like
+      him. There's nothing he don't know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel post of the staircase, and when
+      she looked into Daniel's face blushed like the red, red rose, losing her
+      self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite
+      party's falls, and Daniel made out to say, in a firm tone, that it was
+      long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think,&rdquo; replied Miss Pilgrim,
+      her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oho! so you don't want any introduction,&rdquo; exclaimed Master Billy. I
+      didn't know you knew each other, Lottie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join in the plays?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To be sure we shall!&rdquo; cried Billy. &ldquo;You needn't mind; all the grown
+      people are going to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being almost
+      all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of jolly little
+      Mrs. Bloomingal, Sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant Christmas kind
+      of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be young again and romp
+      with the rompiest. We played Blindman's-buff till we tired of that&mdash;Daniel,
+      to Lu's great delight, coming out splendidly as Blindman, and evincing
+      such &ldquo;cheek&rdquo; in the style he hunted down and caught the ladies, as
+      satisfied me that nothing but his sight stood in the way of his making an
+      audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle,
+      who seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed &ldquo;Doorkeeper&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      suggestion accepted with great <i>éclat</i> by all the children, several
+      grown people assenting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Billy&mdash;quite as much on account of his shining prominence in the
+      executive faculties of his character, as host&mdash;was committed the duty
+      of counting out the first person to be sent into the hall. There were so
+      many of us that &ldquo;Aina-maina-mona-mike&rdquo; would not go quite around; but with
+      that promptness of expedient which belongs to genius, Billy instantly
+      added on &ldquo;Intery-mintery-cutery-corn,&rdquo; and the last word of the cabalistic
+      formula fell upon me, Edward Balbus. I disappeared into the entry amid
+      peals of happy laughter from both old and young, calling, when the door
+      opened again to ask me who I wanted, for the pretty, lisping flirt who had
+      proposed the game. After giving me a coquettish little chirrup of a kiss
+      and telling me my beard scratched, she bade me, on my return, send out to
+      her &ldquo;Mither Billy Lovegrove.&rdquo; I obeyed her; my youngest nephew retired
+      and, after a couple of seconds, during which Tilly undoubtedly got what
+      she proposed the game for, Billy being a great favorite with the little
+      girls, she came back pouting and blushing, to announce that he wanted Miss
+      Pilgrim. The young lady showed no mock modesty, but arose at once and
+      laughingly went out to her youthful admirer, who, as I afterward learned,
+      embraced her ardently and told her he loved her better than any girl in
+      the world. As he turned to go back she told him that he might send to her
+      one of her juvenile cousins, Reginald Rumbullion. Now, whether because on
+      this youthful Rumbullion's account Billy had suffered the pangs of that
+      most terrible passion, jealousy, or from his natural enjoyment of playing
+      practical jokes destructive of all dignity in his elders, Billy marched
+      into the room, and, having shut the door behind him, paralyzed the crowded
+      parlor by an announcement that Mr. Daniel Lovegrove was wanted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was standing at his side and could feel him' tremble&mdash;see him turn
+      pale.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; he whispered, in a choking voice; &ldquo;can she mean me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course she does,&rdquo; said I. &ldquo;Who else? Do you hesitate? Surely you can't
+      refuse such an invitation from a lady.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; I suppose not,&rdquo; said he, mechanically. And, amid much laughter from
+      the disinterested, while the faces of Mrs. Rumbullion and his mother were
+      spectacles of crimson astonishment, he made his exit from the room. Never
+      in my life did I so much long for that instrument, described by Mr. Samuel
+      Weller&mdash;a pair of patent, double-million magnifying microscopes of
+      hex-tery power, to see through a deal door. Instead of this I had to learn
+      what happened only by report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lottie Pilgrim was standing under the hall burners with her elbow on the
+      newel-post, more vividly charming than he had ever seen her before, at
+      Mrs. Crajncroud's sociable or elsewhere. When startled by the apparition
+      of Mr. Daniel Lovegrove instead of little Rumbullion whom she was
+      expecting&mdash;she had no time to exclaim or hide her mounting color,
+      none at all to explain to her own mind the mistake that had occurred,
+      before his arm was clasped around her waist and his lips so closely
+      pressed to hers that, through her soft, thick hair she could feel the
+      throbbing of his temples. As for Daniel, he seemed in a walking dream,
+      from which he waked to see Miss Pilgrim looking into his eyes with utter,
+      though not incensed stupefaction,&mdash;to stammer, &ldquo;Forgive me! do
+      forgive me! I thought you were in, earnest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I was,&rdquo; she said tremulously, as soon as she could catch her voice,
+      &ldquo;in sending for my cousin Reginald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh dear, what shall I do! Believe me, I was told you wanted me. Let me go
+      and explain it to mother. She will tell the rest&mdash;I couldn't do it&mdash;I'd
+      die of mortification. Oh, that wretched boy Billy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On the principle already mentioned, his agitation reassured her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't try to explain it now&mdash;it may get Billy a scolding. Are there
+      any but intimate family friends here this evening?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;I believe&mdash;no&mdash;I'm sure,&rdquo; replied Daniel, collecting
+      his faculties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I don't mind what they think. Perhaps they'll suppose we've known
+      each other long; but we'll arrange it by and by. They'll think the more of
+      it the longer we stay out here&mdash;hear them laugh! I must run back now.
+      I'll send you somebody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A round of juvenile applause greeted her as she hurried into the parlor,
+      and a number of grown people smiled quite musically. Her quick woman's wit
+      told her how to retaliate and divide the embarrassment of the occasion. As
+      she passed me she said in an undertone:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Answer quick! Who is that fat lady on the sofa who laughed so loud?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mrs. Cromwell Craggs,&rdquo; said I, quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim made a satirically low courtesy and spoke in a modest but
+      distinct voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I really must be excused for asking. I'm a stranger, you know; but is
+      there such a lady here as Mrs. Craggs&mdash;Mrs. <i>Cromwell</i> Craggs?
+      For, if so, the present doorkeeper would like to see Mrs. Cromwell
+      Craggs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to go
+      and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening Billy
+      was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see Daniel in
+      close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuchsias of
+      the conservatory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A regular flirtation,&rdquo; said Billy, somewhat indignantly. The conclusion
+      which they arrived at was that after all no great harm had been done, and
+      that the dear little fellow ought not to be peached on for his fun. If I
+      had known at the time how easily they forgave him, I should have suspected
+      that the offence Billy had led Daniel into committing was not unlikely to
+      be repeated on the offender's own account; but so much as I could see
+      showed me that the ice was broken.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy's jealousy did not outlast the party. He became more and more
+      interested in &ldquo;his girl,&rdquo; and often went in the afternoon, after getting
+      out of school, ostensibly to play with Jimmy. Daniel's calls, according to
+      adult etiquette, made in the evening, did not interfere with my younger
+      nephew's, and as neither knew that the other, after his fashion, was his
+      most uncompromising rival, my position, as the confidant of both, was one
+      of extreme delicacy. But the matter was more speedily settled than I
+      expected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy came to me one day and told me that he intended to get married
+      immediately; that he was going to speak to his Lottie that very afternoon.
+      He was prepared to meet every objection. He had asked his father if he
+      might, and his father said yes, if he had money enough to support a wife&mdash;and
+      Billy thought he had. He'd saved up all the money his Uncle Jim and Aunt
+      Jane had sent him for Christmas; and besides, if he were once married, his
+      father wouldn't see him want for stamps, he knew. Then, too, he was going
+      to leave school and be a merchant next year&mdash;and I'd help him now and
+      then, if he got hard up, wouldn't I? If he were driven to it, he could be
+      a good boy again, and save up the money to buy Lottie presents with,
+      instead of giving it to nasty old &ldquo;Objecks.&rdquo; He was so much older than
+      when he had the savings-bank that he ought to have at least ten cents a
+      day now for being good; didn't I think that was fair? As to his age, if
+      Lottie loved him, he didn't care&mdash;anyway he would be lots bigger than
+      she was before long&mdash;and he'd often heard his ma say she approved of
+      early marriages; hers and pa's was one. So he ran off up Livingston Place,
+      the most undaunted lover that ever put an extra shine on his proposal
+      boots, or spent half an hour on the bow of his popping necktie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after, Daniel went into the street. Not meaning to call upon his
+      <i>inamorata</i>, but drawn by the irresistible fascination of passing her
+      house, he strolled in the direction that Billy had gone. As he came to the
+      Rumbullions', something suddenly bade him enter&mdash;a whim he called it,
+      but not his own&mdash;one of the whims of destiny which are always
+      gratified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, sir,&rdquo; said the servant, &ldquo;Miss Pilgrim is in, I will call her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His step was always light. He passed noiselessly into the front parlor and
+      sat down among the heavy brocatelle curtains which shadowed the recess of
+      one of the windows. He supposed Miss Pilgrim to be upstairs, and while his
+      heart fluttered, expecting her footfall at the particular door, he heard
+      an earnest boyish voice in the inside room. Looking from his concealment
+      he beheld Miss Pilgrim on a sofa in the pier and sitting by her side, with
+      her hand clasped in his, his brother Billy. Before he could avoid it, he
+      became aware that Billy was unconsciously but eagerly forestalling him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Lottie, my dear Lottie! I wish you would! I'll do everything I can
+      to make you happy. If you'll only marry me, I'll be good all the time!
+      Come now! Say yes! Father's got a really nice place over the stable&mdash;they
+      only use it for a tool room now; we could clear it out and have it
+      scrubbed and go to housekeeping right away. Ma'd let us have all her old
+      set of chinai I've got a silver mug Uncle Teddy gave me and a napkin ring
+      and four spoons. As soon as I make my money I'll buy a nice carriage and
+      horses, any color you want 'em. Oh, my darling, darling Lottie, I do love
+      you so much and we could have such a splendid time! Do say yes, Lottie&mdash;please,
+      <i>do</i> please!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim looked at the earnest little suitor with a face in which
+      tender interest and compassion quite overrode any sense of the
+      whimsicality of the situation which might lurk there. Daniel's
+      astonishment at the sight was so great that he realized the entire state
+      of the case before he could recover himself sufficiently to rise and go
+      into the back room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Billy jumped up and looked defiantly at the intruder. Miss Pilgrim blushed
+      violently, but turned away her head to avoid the exhibition of a still
+      more convulsing emotion than embarrassment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must beg your pardon, Miss Pilgrim&mdash;and yours, too, Billy,&rdquo; began
+      Daniel in a hesitating way, hardly knowing how to treat the posture in
+      which he found things, &ldquo;but&mdash;you see&mdash;the fact is the servant
+      said she'd go to announce me&mdash;and really when I came in, I hadn't any
+      idea you were here, or Billy either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said Billy, moderating the defiant attitude, &ldquo;you actually weren't
+      dodging around and trying to find out what Lottie and I were about on the
+      sly? Well, I'll believe you. I'm sure you couldn't be as mean as that,
+      when I'm the only brother you have got, that always brings you oranges
+      when you're sick, and never plays ball on the stairs when you've got a
+      headache. Now, then, I'll trust you, I've been asking Lottie to marry me,
+      and I want you to help me. Ask her if she won't, Daniel&mdash;see if she
+      won't do it for you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Pilgrim had been trying to find words, but her face was too much for
+      her and she was obliged to seek retirement in her handkerchief. As she
+      drew it from her pocket, a well-worn piece of paper followed it and fell
+      upon the floor. Billy picked it up before she noticed it, and was about to
+      hand it to her, when his jealous eye fell upon a withered rosebud sewed to
+      its margin. As he looked at it, with his little brows knit into a
+      precocious sternness, he recognized his brother's handwriting immediately
+      beneath the flower. It was one of the daily anonymous sonnets, of which
+      Daniel had told me, and the bud a relic of the bouquet accompanying it.
+      Still Daniel was silent. What else could he be?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, very well, Master Daniel!&rdquo; exclaimed Billy, in a voice
+      trembling with grief and indignation, &ldquo;there's good enough reason why you
+      won't speak a word for me. You want her yourself&mdash;here it is in your
+      own writing. No wonder you won't tell Lottie to be my wife, when you're
+      trying to take her away from me. Oh, Lottie, dear Lottie! I love you just
+      as much as he does, though I don't know everything and can't write you
+      poetry like it was out of the Fifth Reader! Daniel, how could you go and
+      write to my Lottie this way: 'My churner'&mdash;no, it isn't churner, it's
+      charmer,&mdash;'let me call thee mine'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Forgetting the sacredness of private MS. in that of private grief, he
+      would have gone on, with a pause here and there for certainty of spelling,
+      to the conclusion of the poem, had not Lottie sprung up, with her
+      imploring face suffused by her discovery, for the first time, of the
+      identity of her secret lover and the escape of his sonnet from her pocket.
+      It was too late! There he stood before her unmistakably proved, and
+      herself unmistakably proving in what estimation she held his verses and
+      bouquets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh Billy, dear Billy! If you do love me, don't do so!&rdquo; So exclaiming, she
+      held out her hand, and Billy put the MS. into it with all the dignity of a
+      wounded spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Lovegrove,&rdquo; said Miss Pilgrim, &ldquo;I don't know what to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel very much that way myself,&rdquo; said Daniel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I</i> don't,&rdquo; said Billy, now in command of his voice. &ldquo;I'll tell you
+      what it is: perhaps Daniel didn't know how much I wanted you, Lottie&mdash;and
+      perhaps he wants you 'most as bad as I do. But whatever way it is, I want
+      you to choose between us, fair and square, and no dodging. Come now! You
+      can take just whichever one of us you please, and the other won't lay up
+      any grudge, though I know if that's me, or like me, he'll feel awful. You
+      can have till to-morrow morning to make up your mind between me and
+      Daniel, and if he won't say anything about it to pa and ma till then, I
+      won't. Good-by, <i>dear</i> Lottie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He drew her face down to his, kissed her almost affectionately and then
+      marched out of the door, feeling, as he afterward told me, as if he had
+      blackened his boots all for nothing. Ah me! my dear Billy, how many times
+      we do that in this world! Of what followed when Daniel and Miss Pilgrim
+      were left alone, I have never had full details.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I do know that the young lady obeyed Billy and made her choice. Six
+      months after that both my nephews stood up in Mrs. Rumbullion's parlor to
+      take their several shares in a ceremony in which Miss Pilgrim was the
+      central figure when it began, and Mrs. Daniel Lovegrove when it concluded.
+      Time and elasticity of boyhood had so closed the sharp but evanescent
+      wound in Billy's heart that he could stand the trial of being groomsman
+      where he had wanted to be groom&mdash;more especially since he was
+      supported through the emergency by a little sister of Lottie's who
+      promised to be wondrously like her by the time Billy could stand up in the
+      more enviable capacity. Neither Daniel nor Lottie would listen to any
+      objection to such a groomsman on the score of his extreme youth, for, as
+      they said, Billy had been quite as instrumental in bringing them together
+      as any agent, save the Divinity shaping the ends and tying all the knots
+      in which there are heartstrings concerned, as well as white ribbon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since then Lu has stopped wishing that Billy were like Daniel, for she
+      says that if he had been, there would never have been any Mrs. Daniel
+      Lovegrove in the world.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
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