a horse owner. Johnny was shaking his head and motioning for me
to chop, but what cared I? Estelle was saying, "He done it,"
"I seen it," and "Usen't you?" right along, but the grape stood
for everything.

Estelle's friend was talking about her piano, and how hard it
was to get good servants nowadays, and say, Jim, I've heard
knockers in my time, but Estelle is the original leader of the
anvil chorus. She just put everybody in town on the pan and
roasted them to a whisper. She could build the best battleship
Dewey ever saw with her little hammer. Estelle's friend, after
much urging, then sang a pathetic ballad entitled, "She Should
Be Scolded, but Not Turned Adrift," and I sat there with one
eye shut, so that I could see single, and kept saying, "Per'fly
beauf'ful."

About this time I commenced to forget. I remember getting an
awful rise out of Estelle by remarking that her switch didn't
match her hair. She came up like a human yeast cake. Johnny
sided with the dame, and said I might at least try to act like
a gentleman, even if I weren't one. Perhaps the grape wasn't
getting to Johnny by this time. He was nobby and boss. He was
dropping his r's like a Southerner, and you know how much of a
Southerner Johnny is--Johnstown, Pa.; and he was hollering around
about his little three-year-old, standard-bred, and registered
bay mare out of Highland Belle, by Homer Wilkes, with a mark of
twenty-one, that could out-trot any thing of her age that ever
champed a bit. Did you get that, Jim? That ever champed a bit;
and still he said at noon to-day that he had had two, possibly
three, glasses of wine, but no more. The only way that mare of