with great, innocent interest.

"Yes," continued this lost soul, "my father, who is a State senator,
sent him to boarding school and tried to do everything for him, but he
drifted back into the old life just as soon as he could. It gets a hold
on them, you know."

"Yes, I know," said the old lady, sadly, "my cook had a son that went
the same way."

"He isn't really vicious, though," added my false friend with feigned
loyalty--"merely reckless."

"Well, my poor boy," put in the old gentleman with cheery
consideration, "I am sure you must find that navy life does you a
world of good--regular hours, temperate living and all that."

"Right you are, sport," says I bitterly, assuming my enforced role, "I
haven't slit a Greaser's throat since I enlisted."

"We must all make sacrifices these days," sighed the old lady.

"And perhaps you will be able to exercise your--er--er rather robust
inclinations on the Germans when you meet them on the high seas,"
remarked the old man, who evidently thought to comfort me.

"If I can only keep him out of the brig," said this low-down friend of
mine, "I think they might make a first-rate mess hand out of him," at
which remark both of the girls, who up to this moment had been
studying me silently, exploded into loud peals of mirth and then I