Jasperson that in comparing himself to a reptile he was slapping the
cheeks of his progenitors.

"But I do feel like a worm when Miss Birdie's around," objected the
man of acres. "It may be ondignified, but that there eye of hers does
make me wiggle."

"It's a thousand pities," said I softly, "that Miss Dutton has only
one eye."

Jasperson wouldn't agree with me. He replied, with ardour, that he
would never have dared to raise his two blue orbs to Miss Dutton's
brilliant black one, unless he had been conscious that his mistress,
like himself, had suffered mutilation.

"I'm two fingers short," he concluded, "an' she's lackin' an eye.
That, gen'lemen, makes it a stand-off. Say, shall I send her this yere
pome?"

"Most certainly not," said Ajax.

"Then for the Lord's sake, post me."

I touched Ajax with my foot, and coughed discreetly; for I knew my
brother's weakness. He is a spendthrift in the matter of giving
advice. If Jasperson had appealed to me, the elder and more
experienced, I should have begged politely, but emphatically, to be
excused from interference. I hold that a man and a maid must settle
their love affairs without help from a third party. Ajax, unhappily,
thinks otherwise.