He said to-day that he was an _old wreck_!" "Of course he meant you to contradict him!" says Bobby, cackling, "and, from the little I know of you, I am morally certain that you did not--_did_ you, now ?" "Well, no!" reply I, rather crestfallen; "I certainly did not.

I would, though, in a minute, if I had thought that he wanted it." "I wish," says Barbara, shutting the caddy with a snap, "that Providence had willed to send the dear old fellow into the world twenty years later than it did.

In that case I should not at all have minded trying to be a comfort to him." "He must have been very good-looking, must not he ?" say I, pensively, staring at the red fire-caverns.

"Very--before his hair turned gray.

I wonder what color it was ?" Visions of gold yellow, of sunshiny brown, of warm chestnut locks, travel in succession before my mind's eye, and try in turn to adjust themselves to the good and goodly weather-worn face, and wide blue eyes of my new old friend.
"It is so nice and curly even now," I go on, "twice as curly as Algy's." "Tongs," replies Algy, with short contempt, looking up from his list of prohibitions.
"_Very_ good-looking!" repeat I, dogmatically, entirely ignoring the last suggestion.
"Perhaps when this planet was young!" retorts he, with the superb impertinence of twenty.
"You talk as if he were eighty years old," cry I, with an unaccountably _personal_ feeling of annoyance.