ympathetically: "Better luck next time, old cock."

The fat young lady--or, maybe, the lean young lady, grown stouter,
I cannot say for certain--who feared I had forgotten her, a thing I
assured her utterly impossible, was good enough to say that, in her
opinion, I was worth all the others put together.

"And so I told her," added the fat young lady--or the lean one grown
stouter, "a dozen times if I told her once. But there!"

I murmured my obligations.

Cousin Joseph, 'whom I found no difficulty in recognising by reason of
his watery eyes, appeared not so chirpy as of yore.

"You take my tip," advised Cousin Joseph, drawing me aside, "and keep
out of it."

"You speak from experience?" I suggested.

"I'm as fond of a joke," said the watery-eyed Joseph, "as any man. But
when it comes to buckets of water--"

A reminder from the maternal Sellars that breakfast had been ordered
for eleven o'clock caused a general movement and arrested Joseph's
revelations.

"See you again, perhaps," he murmured, and pushed past me.

What Mrs. Sellars, I suppose, would have alluded to as a cold
col-la-shon had been arranged for at a restaurant near by. I walked
there in company with Uncle and Aunt Gutton; not because I particularly
desired their companionship, but because Uncle Gutton, seizing me by the
arm, left me no alternative.

"Now then, young man," commenced Uncle Gutton kindly, but boisterously
so soon as we were in the street, at some little distance behind the
others, "if you want to pitch into me, you pitch away. I shan't mind,
and maybe it'll do you good."

I informed him that nothing was further from my desire.

"Oh, all right," returned Uncle Gutton, seemingly disappointed. "If
you're willing to forgive and forget, so am I. I never liked you, as
I daresay you saw, and so I told Rosie. 'He may be cleverer than he
looks,' I says, 'or he may be a bigger fool than I think him, though
that's hardly likely. You take my advice and get a full-grown article,
then you'll know what you're doing.'"

I told him I thought his advice had been admirable.

"I'm glad you think so," he returned, somewhat puzzled; "though if you
wanted to call me names I shouldn't have blamed you. Anyhow, you've took
it like a sensible chap. You've got over it, as I always told her you
would. Young men out of story-books don't die of broken hearts, even
if for a month or two they do feel like standing on their head in the
water-butt."

"Why,