‘As we were walking home, Jack said, “Lord, Frank! I’ve had such fun with the little lady in blue. I told her you wrote to me every Saturday, telling me the events of the week. She took it all in.” He stopped to laugh; for he bubbled and chuckled so that he could not laugh and walk. “And I told her you were deeply in love” (another laugh); “and that I could not get you to tell me the name of the lady, but that she had light brown hair — in short, I drew from life, and gave her an exact description of herself; and that I was most anxious to see her, and implore her to be merciful to you, for that you were a most timid, faint-hearted fellow with women.” He laughed till I thought he would have fallen down. “I begged her, if she could guess who it was from my description — I’ll answer for it she did — I took care of that; for I said you described a mole on the left cheek, in the most poetical way, saying Venus had pinched it out of envy at seeing any one more lovely — oh, hold me up, or I shall fall — laughing and hunger make me so weak; — well, I say, I begged her, if she knew who your fair one could be, to implore her to save you. I said I knew one of your lungs had gone after a former love-affair, and that I could not answer for the other if the lady here were cruel. She spoke of a respirator; but I told her that might do very well for the odd lung; but would it minister to a heart diseased? I really did talk fine. I have found out the secret of eloquence — it’s believing what you’ve got to say; and I worked myself well up with fancying you married to the little lady in blue.”

‘I got to laughing at last, angry as I had been; his impudence was irresistible. Mrs. Rose had come home in the sedan, and gone to bed; and he and I sat up over the round of beef and brandy-and-water till two o’clock in the morning.

‘He told me I had got quite into the professional way of mousing about a room, and mewing and purring according as my patients were ill or well. He mimicked me, and made me laugh a............