loveliness. Perhaps it was not quite so easy to maintain the reasoning
of beautiful ladies here on the firing-line, as in the maidenly
cloister at home.

"Why are men the unreliable sex, Mr. Canning?" said she, laughing. "Here
Willie begs us for days to visit him at his rooms--I believe he thinks
there's something rather gay and wicked about it, you know, though mamma
picked them out for him!--and assures us on his honor as a banker that
he is in every afternoon by five at the very latest. So we inconvenience
ourselves and come. And now--look!"

"At what, Miss Heth? I trust nothing serious has happened?"

"Ah, but our time is so valuable, you see. We must leave without even
saying how-do-you-do. Don't you think so, mamma?"

"So it seems," said Mrs. Heth, and sank into a chair.

Canning smiled.

"Very pleasant little diggings he has here," he observed casually--"my
first glimpse of them. I happened to be coming in town on business, and
Kerr invited me particularly to drop in to see them, at half after
five sharp."

"Really! How _very_ fortunate we are! But, oh, why didn't you come a
little earlier and charitably help us through the wait? We've had
nothing on earth to do but read and reread 'The Cynic's Book of Girls.'"

"Had I ventured to hope that you were to be here," said he, with a