tably on the box as I met her
glance of patient scorn. She had now finished her dish-washing, and
seated herself upon the edge of the box, which brother Mason had already
appropriated with his large, clumsy bulk.

"Come now, you do care, ye know you care!" he said gruffly, as he threw
an arm carelessly across the girl's shoulder and patted her kindly; the
scowl immediately left her face and her head dropped upon his brawny,
red-shirted breast and snugly settled itself there, much to my
embarrassment. Then, between long-drawn whiffs of the rank-smelling
pipe, brother Mason descanted upon himself and his achievements,
religious, social, financial, and political, with no interruption save
frequent fits of choking on the part of poor Henrietta, whom even the
clouds of rank smoke could not drive from her position of vantage.

Brother Mason, so he informed me, was not only an Irishman and a
Methodist, but a member of Tammany Hall and a not unimportant personage
in the warehouses of the wholesale grocers for whom he drove the
delivery wagon, and from whom, I now haven't a doubt in the world, he
had stolen for the benefit of his lady-love many such an offering of
sweet perfume and savory spice as he had carried her that Easter Eve. I
found his talk eminently entertaining, with the charm that often goes
with the talk of an unlettered person who knows much of life and of men.
He was densely ignorant from the schoolmaster's point of view, and
openly confessed to an inability to write his name; but his ignorance
was refreshing, as the ignorance of man is always refreshing when
compared with the ignorance of woman; which fact, it has often appeared
to me, is the strongest argument in favor of the general superiority of
the male sex. For hidden somewhere within brother Mason's thick, bullet
head there seemed to be that primary germ of intelligence which was
apparently lacking in the fair head snuggled on his breast. It was
therefore with a mingled feeling of relief and regret that, after a
couple of hours of conversation, I saw him gently push Henrietta away
and announce his departure,--relief from the embarrassment which this
open love-making had caused me, and regret that I was once more to be
left alone with Henrietta in that dark, cavernous house. It was then
after midnight, and Henrietta suggested, as brother Mason drew on his
overcoat, that she accompany him as far as the corner saloon, where she
wanted to buy a quarter-pint o