smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid
with colic.

"Hello, Andy," says Mack, out of his face. "Glad to see you back.
Things have happened since you went away."

"I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made
you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this
presumptuous kind of ribaldry?"

"Why, Andy," says he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since
you left."

I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the
peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.

Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of
half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and
bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.

"No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at
your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather
shoes! All this in two little short months!"

"I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says
Mack, in a kind of flutter.

"I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away
quick.