nin' for him if he ain't a chalk-walker for one while now."

Joshua laughed.

But, as a matter of fact, Jack's situation was suddenly become extremely
precarious.

"There ain't no sense in it," said Aunt Mary to herself, with an emphasis
that screwed her face up until she looked quite like Lucinda; "that life
those young men lead on their little vacations is to blame for everything.
Cities are wells of iniquity; they're full of all kinds of doin's that
respectable people wouldn't be seen at, and I'm proud to say that I
haven't been in one myself for twenty-five years. I'm a great believer in
keepin' out of trouble, an' if Jack'd just stuck to college an' let towns
go, he'd never have met the cabman and the Kalamazoo girl, an' I'd have
overlooked the cook an' the cat. As it is, my patience is done. If he goes
into one more scrape he'll be done too. I mean what I say. So my young man
had better take warnin'. Probably--most likely--pretty certainly."

CHAPTER THREE - INTRODUCING JACK

It has been previously stated that Aunt Mary's nephew, Jack, was a
scapegrace, and as delightful as scapegraces generally are. It goes
without saying that he was good-looking; and of course he must have been
jolly and pleasant or he wouldn't have been so popular. As a matter of
fact, Jack was very good-looking, unusually jolly, and uncommonly popular.
He was one of the best liked men in each of the colleges which he had
attended. There was something so winning about his smile and his eternal
good humor that no one ever tried to dislike him; and if anyone ever had
tried he or she would not have succeeded for very long. It is probably
very unfortunate that the world is so full of this type of young man, but
that which should cause us all to have infinite patience with them is the
reflection of how much more unfortunate it would be if they were suddenly
eliminated from the general scheme of things.

Like all college boys, Jack had a chum. The chum was Robert Burnett,
another charming young fellow of one-and-twenty, whose education had been
so cosmopolitan in design and so patriotic in practice that he always said
"Sacre bleu" and "Donnerwetter" when he thought of it, and "Great Scott"
when he didn't. He and Jack were as congenial a pair as ever existed, and
they had just about as much in common as the aunt of the one and the
father of the other had had to pay for.

In the February of the year of which I write, Washington, celebra