silenced for the second time.

I think I have said enough to show that Johnnyboy was hopelessly
worshiped by an impressible and illogical sex. I say HOPELESSLY, for
he slipped equally from the proudest silken lap and the humblest one
of calico, and carried his eyelashes and small aches elsewhere. I think
that a secret fear of his alarming frankness, and his steady rejection
of the various tempting cates they offered him, had much to do with
their passion. "It won't hurt you, dear," said Miss Circe, "and it's so
awfully nice. See!" she continued, putting one of the delicacies in
her own pretty mouth with every assumption of delight. "It's SO good!"
Johnnyboy rested his elbows on her knees, and watched her with a grieved
and commiserating superiority. "Bimeby, you'll have pains in youse
tommick, and you'll be tookt to bed," he said sadly, "and then
you'll--have to dit up and"--But as it was found necessary here to
repress further details, he escaped other temptation.

Two hours later, as Miss Circe was seated in the drawing-room with her
usual circle of enthusiastic admirers around her, Johnnyboy--who was
issued from his room for circulation, two or three times a day, as a
genteel advertisement of his parents--floated into the apartment in a
new dress and a serious demeanor. Sidling up to Miss Circe he laid a
phial--evidently his own pet medicine--on her lap, said, "For youse
tommikake to-night," and vanished. Yet I have reason to believe that
this slight evidence of unusual remembrance on Johnnyboy's part more
than compensated for its publicity, and for a few days Miss Circe was
quite "set up" by it.

It was through some sympathy of this kind that I first gained
Johnnyboy's good graces. I had been presented with a small pocket case