Maud. My dear girl, I intend to have considerable more to do with him before I’m through.  He’s under vow for me now, anyway, and I don’t mean he should forget it, either.  He’s my monkey, and he’s got to jump around pretty lively, at the end of a tolerable short chain, too.  And I guess, if it comes to renouncing, all the magnanimity’s going to be on my side this time!

IN AN AVENUE.

Culch. (to himself, as he walks hurriedly on).  I only saved myself in time.  I don’t think MAUD noticed anything—­she couldn’t nave been so innocent and indifferent if she had....  And HYPATIA won’t enlighten her any further now—­after what she knows.  It’s rather a relief that she does know....  She took it very well, poor girl—­very well.  I expect she is really beginning to put up with PODBURY—­I’m sure I hope so, sincerely!

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

[Illustration]

“I dearly love reading a ghost-story,” quoth the Baron, “when, as the song says, ’The lights are low, And the flickering shadows, Softly come and go.’  And I did hope that Cecilia de Noel was going to be just the very sort of book for a winter’s fireside.  Disappointed.  There is a ghost in it, and there’s Cecilia de Noel (good Christmassy name, isn’t it?) who instructs the ghost in his neglected Catechism; for the ghost is as much an Atheist as the unbelieving Sadducee in this same story, who, after all, is not converted.  ’Alas!  Poor Ghost!’ Very poor ghost!  Bring me another ghost!” cries the Baron.  No other ghost is forthcoming to the invocation, but a book is placed in his hands entitled Fourteen to One.  The Baron was about to dismiss it as a betting book—­judging by its title—­when his eye caught the name of ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS as authoress.  So he read many of the short stories therein.  She has in many places the touch of DICKENS.  All are good; but for pathos, keen observation, and dramatic surprise, “give me,” says the Baron, emphatically, “the short story of The Madonna of the Tubs.”  Admirable!  Those who take and act upon the Baron’s tip, will do well to ask for Fourteen to One, and see that they get it.

What are the Baron’s sentiments as to Christmas things?  He refused to have anything to say to games and cards.  Cards—­well, we all know whose books some puritanical party said they were.  But these comic and artistic Christmas Cards of RAPHAEL TUCK do not come into that category; and same is to be said of Messrs. HILDESHEIMER’s, so there’s an end on’t.  Henceforth, says the Baron, “No Cards.”