rcise, I find
myself with a bigger appetite, and then I'm worse off than ever." He
dismissed the problem as insoluble. "Where's Gertie? I've got a new
recitation that she'd very much like to hear. I place a certain value
on her criticism."

"I'll call her down. And, Mr. Bulpert, I want you to be as nice and
pleasant to her as you can. I had to talk rather sharply to her not
many days ago; now I'd like to make it up. I'm bound to say she took
it very well."

"You won't forget," he urged, "that I'm a man who can always get any
amount of refined society. Sought after as I am for _al fresco_
concerts and what not--"

"I know," agreed Mrs. Mills. "Only Gertie hasn't many friends, and I
want her, just now, to make the most of 'em."

She called her niece, and Gertie came, turning the page of a book,
entitled, "Hints for Gentlewomen." Gertie offered her hand to Bulpert,
and remarked that he was growing stout; he advised her, with some
vehemence, to take to glasses before her eyesight became further
impaired. Mrs. Mills went back to the shop with a waggish caution
against too much love-making. Bulpert, after shifting furniture, took
up a position on the white hearthrug, and gave a stirring adventure in
the life of a coastguardsman who saved from a wreck his wife and child.
At the end, Bulpert mopped face, readjusted collar, and waited for
congratulations.

"Did you make it up out your own head, Mr. Bulpert?"

"I did not make it up out of my own head," he said resentfully. "That
isn't my line, and well you know it. It was written by a chap your
cousin, Clarence Mills, introduced me to."

"Ask him to write it again. It seems to me a stupid piece. The wife's
been away for ten years, and the baby is eighteen months old."

"That does require a slight alteration. But what about my rendering of
it?"

"Overdone," answered Gertie. "If only you'd stand up and say them
quietly, your pieces would go a lot better."

"But I've got to convey the meaning to the ordience."

"Give 'em credit for some intelligence. When the coastguardsman is
going out to the wreck, it isn't necessary to wave your arms about like
a windmill. You say he's swimming, and that's enough. And if a
floating spar knocked him senseless before he got to the wreck, I don't
believe he could take them both in his arms and swim back to the shore."

"It says he did in the poetry," contended Bulpert with warmth. "The
whole fact of the matter i