"Certainly, half-a-dozen if you wish. How do you imagine she
quieted the unruly beasts?"

"Oh, I suppose she got around them through the child--somewhat as
she won over my wife this afternoon by means of our cross baby.
It's teething, you know--and yet how should you young chaps know
anything about babies! No matter, your time will come. This
promenading the piazza with lovely creatures who have been half the
afternoon at their toilets is all very nice; but wait till you have
weathered innumerable squalls in the dead of night--then you'll
learn that teething-time in a household is like going around Cape
Horn. Well, to return from your future to my present. When so
good-natured a man as I am gets into a sympathetic mood with old
King Herod, you can imagine what a state the mother's nerves must be
in who has to stand it night and day. But as Miss Burton had been
commended to my care, I felt that I was in duty bound to introduce
her to my wife and show her some attention. So I said to my wife,
this afternoon, 'I'm going to bring a young lady in to see you.'
'Do you think I'm in a condition to entertain company?' she asked,
with a faint suggestion of hard cider in her tone. 'Well, my
dear,' I expostulated, 'it was just the same yesterday, and will
be a little more so to-morrow, and I feel that I shall be remiss
if I delay any longer.' 'Oh, very well,' she said, as if it were
a tooth that must come out sooner or later, 'since the matter must
be attended to, let us have it over at once.' But bless you, it
wasn't over till supper-time. As I brought the young lady in, the
baby waked out of a five-minutes' nap that had cost about an hour's
rocking, and I thought the roof would come off. My wife looked
cross and worried--well, it was prose, gentlemen, prose--not the