not exceeded--if the wines WERE good. I never
exceeded in my life, God take the glory!"

But he embraced Tommy so affectionately in parting that I confess Mrs.
Carriswood had suspicions. Yet, surely, it is more likely that his brain
was--let us not say TURNED, but just a wee bit TILTED, by the joy and
triumph of the occasion rather than by Beatoun's port or champagne.

But Mrs. Carriswood's word had nothing to do with Tommy's parents,
ostensibly, though, in truth, it had everything to do. She said: "Will
you dine with us to-morrow, quite _en famille_, Thomas?"

"I ought to tell you, I suppose, that I find your house a pretty
dangerous paradise, Mrs. Carriswood," says Tommy.

"And I find you a most dangerous angel, Thomas; but--you see I ask you!"

"Thank you," answers Tommy, in a different tone; "you've always been
an angel to me. What I owe to you and Harry Lossing--well, I can't
talk about it. But see here, Mrs. Carriswood, you always have called me
Tommy; now you say Thomas; why this state?"

"I think you have won your brevet, Thomas."

He looked puzzled, and she liked him the better that he should not make
enough of his conduct to understand her; but, though she has called him
Tommy often since, he keeps the brevet in her thoughts. In fact, Mrs.
Carriswood is beginning to take the Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice and his
place in the world seriously, herself.

MOTHER EMERITUS

THE Louders lived on the second floor, at the head of the stairs, in the
Lossing Building. There is a restaurant to the right; and a new doctor,
every six months, who is every kind of a healer except "regular," keeps
the permanent boarders in gossip, to the left; two or three dressmakers,
a dentist, and a diamond merchant up-stairs, one flight; and half a
dozen families and a dozen single tenants higher--so you see the Louders
had plenty of neighbors. In fact, the multitude of the neighbors is one
cause of my story.

Tilly Louder came home from the Lossing factory (where she is a
typewriter) one February afternoon. As she turned the corner, she was
face to the river, which is not so full of shipping in winter that one
cannot see the steel-blue glint of the water. Back of her the brick
paved street climbed the hill, under a shapeless arch of trees. The
remorseless pencil of a railway has drawn black lines at the foot of
the hill; and, all day and all night, slender red bars rise and sink
in their black sockets, to the accompanimen