of his preference for the homelier virtues of the elder sister, whose
irrepressible propensity for picturesque, up-to-date slang and
free-and-easy style put them on a more equal social footing. So began
an acquaintance which resulted in the young man becoming a frequent
and intimate visitor at the Blaine home.

Mr. James Gillie was an original in more ways than one, and it was
some time before either Mrs. Blaine or Virginia could bring themselves
to approve Fanny's liking for a young man with ways so uncouth and
vulgar and whose antecedents were obviously so plebeian. Of Irish
parentage, but American born, James Gillie was a product of the newest
America, the typical _gamin_ of New York's streets, fresh and
slangy in speech, keen to the main chance, not over scrupulous, shrewd
and calculating. Fair and slight in build, he was about twenty-six
years old and his upper lip was adorned with a few thinly scattered
hairs, which he proudly termed a moustache. Otherwise he was
unintelligent and ordinary looking, one of the many thousands of New
York young men who, graduates of the slums, have been left to shift
for themselves, and whose chief intellectual pastime has been standing
on street corners reading baseball returns. Not only had he no
education, but he was rather proud of the fact, affecting to despise
bookish people as prigs and "high-brows." Incompetent and lazy,
without any real ability, he worked only because he had to, and his
standing grievance was that he was misunderstood, unappreciated and
underpaid. The one good side to his nature, and the one which,
perhaps, appealed most to Fanny, was the unconscious possession of a
rich fund of humor. He was funny without intending to be, and this not
only made him a diverting companion but ensured him a welcome
everywhere. With the straightest of faces, he would say funny things
in so ludicrous a manner that a roomful of people would go into