go to work, and pay your debts, and gravitate back
into Sunday-school, where you can make love to
the preacher's daughter under the guise of religion,
and desecrate the sanctity of the innermost pale of
the church by confessions at Class of your 'thorough
conversion'! Oh, you're going to--"

"No, but I'm going to do nothing of the sort,"
interrupted Bert resentfully. "What I mean--if
you'll let me finish--is, I'm getting too old to be
eternally undignifying myself with this 'singing of
midnight strains under Bonnybell's window-panes,'
and too old to be keeping myself in constant
humiliation and expense by the borrowing and stringing
up of old guitars, together with the breakage of the
same, and the general wear-and-tear on a constitution
that is slowly being sapped to its foundations
by exposure in the night-air and the dew."

"And while you receive no further compensation
in return," said John, "than, perhaps, the coy turning
up of a lamp at an upper casement where the
jasmine climbs; or an exasperating patter of
invisible palms; or a huge dank wedge of fruit-cake
shoved at you by the old man, through a crack in
the door."

"Yes, and I'm going to have my just reward, is
what I mean," said Bert, "and exchange the lover's
life for the benedict's. Going to hunt out a good