and a kick, you say, Miss Brown? I am such a duffer I can't get the kick."

"You do the one and two make one, and leave the kick to Miss Bijou," said
Mr. Ketchum suggestively. "Why aren't you gambolling like the playful
antelope, Heathcote?"

"I don't often gamble. I leave that to Ramsay, who is an all-fired
jewhillikens scratch at it, as you say over here," replied Mr.
Heathcote.

"You gamble a little differently, that is all. You have dropped a good
deal on loo first and last, for all your wisdom," retorted Mr. Ramsay
between his steps.

"Get out your 'Hand-Book of American Slang,' my boy,--two dollars a volume,
--and you will retrieve all your losses, I'll engage," said Mr. Ketchum
laughingly, as he walked away.

The dancing had been interrupted, however, and Bijou and Mr. Ramsay
retired to the bow-window to talk. "Odd that I can't get it, isn't it?"
said he. "I never was much of a dancin' man; and I ought to be, you know.
I am not a readin' man; and a man that is not a readin' man is nearly
always a dancin' man. The governor is a readin' man, and took a
double-first; but I am like my poor mother, who was dull." Thus launched,
he gave her a full account of his relatives and home with all his own
frankness, and she, listening with her heart as well as her ears, did not
know whether to smile or sigh: the phraseology of the recital and its
completeness amused her, but she also divined the loneliness of such a
boyhood. To her great embarrassment, the tears rose in her eyes in quick
sympathy when she came to hear of the way he was treated in his childish