intent to brew strife.

"Well--er--to be sure, my dear fellow, not necessarily humble,--of
course--perhaps I should have said--"

"Of course, not necessarily disgraceful, as you say, Milbrey,"
interrupted Shepler, "and they often do conceal it. Why, I know a chap
in New York who was positively never east of Kansas City until he was
twenty-five or so, and yet that fellow to-day"--he lowered his voice to
the pitch of impressiveness--"has over eighty pairs of trousers and
complains of the hardship every time he has to go to Boston."

"Fancy, now!" exclaimed Mrs. Drelmer, the blonde. Mr. Milbrey looked
slightly puzzled and Uncle Peter chuckled, affirming mentally that
Rulon Shepler must be like one of those tug-boats, with most of his
lines under the surface.

"But, I say, you know, Shepler," protested one of the solemn young men,
"he must still talk like a banjo."

"And gargle all his 'r's,'" added the other, very earnestly. "They
never get over that, you know."

"Instead of losin' 'em entirely," put in Uncle Peter, who found himself
feeling what his grandson called "Westy." "Of course, he calls it 'Ne'
Yawk,' and prob'ly he don't like it in Boston because they always call
'em 'rawroystahs.'"

"Good for the old boy!" thought Percival, and then, aloud: "It _is_
hard for the West and the East to forgive each other's dialects. The