But that punch--it's hypocritical.

It steals into your brain as a little child steals its rosebud hand into yours, beguiling you with prattle; but afterwards--well, if I had the choice, I'd rather be chloroformed and struck sharply with an axe.

I'd be my old self again sooner." Whereupon he would have written a guarded piece for the paper about this had I not dissuaded him.

But I saw that I must at once have with Miss Caroline what in a later day came to be called "a heart-to-heart talk"; and I forthwith summoned what valor I could for the ordeal.
"I never dreamed--I never suspected--how _should_ I ?" she murmured pathetically, after my opening speech of a few simple but telling phrases.

She listened in genuine horror while I gave the reasons why she might justly regard the call of our minister and her entertainment of the Club as nothing short of adventures--adventures which she had survived scathless not but by the favor of an indulgent Providence.
"So _that_ is what those little white satin bows mean ?" she asked, and I said that it most emphatically was.
"I suspected it might be some kind of mourning for babies--a local custom, you know, though it did seem queer.