insulting manner, "no: the fact is, my mind is just now preoccupied in
wondering if the gas is leaking anywhere, and if anything is ever served
over this bar except elegant conversation. When the gentleman who mixes
drinks comes back, perhaps you'll be good enough to tell him to send a
whisky sour to Mr. Jack Hamlin in the parlor. Meantime, you can turn off
your soda fountain: I don't want any fizz in mine."

Having thus quite recovered himself, Mr. Hamlin lounged gracefully
across the hall into the parlor. As he did so, a darkish young man, with
a slim boyish figure, a thin face, and a discontented expression,
rose from an armchair, held out his hand, and, with a saturnine smile,
said:--

"Jack!"

"Fred!"

The two men remained gazing at each other with a half-amused,
half-guarded expression. Mr. Hamlin was first to begin. "I didn't think
YOU'D be such a fool as to try on this kind of thing, Fred," he said,
half seriously.

"Yes, but it was to keep you from being a much bigger one that I hunted
you up," said the editor, mischievously. "Read that. I got it an hour
after you left." And he placed a little triumphantly in Jack's hand the
letter he had received from White Violet.

Mr. Hamlin read it with an unmoved face, and then laid his two hands
on the editor's shoulders. "Yes, my young friend, and you sat down and
wrote her a pretty letter and sent her twenty dollars--which, permit me