s long as both families want the
thing brought about, and there is good reason to think that Laura will
not prove eternally immovable, I take it to be an important enough
matter, from the standpoint of dollars and cents, for the exercise of
our diplomacy."

"Well, then," said Antonia, "get the people together on some social
occasion, and we'll try."

"I've thought," said Jim, "of having a house-warming--as soon as the
weather gets so that the very name of the function won't keep folks
away. My house is practically done, you know."

"Just the thing," said Antonia. "There are cosy nooks and deep retreats
enough to make it a sort of labyrinth for the ensnaring of our victims."

"Isn't it a queer thing in language," said Jim, "that these retreats are
the places where advances are made!"

"Not when you consider," said Antonia, "that retreats follow repulses."

"We ought to have the Captain and the General here, if this military
conversation is to continue," said I. "And here comes Cecil. Stop before
he comes, or we shall never get through with the explanation of the
jokes."

This remark elicited the laughter which the puns failed to provoke; for
Cecil was color-blind in all things relating to the American joke. The
humor of _Punch_ appealed to him, and the wit of Sterne and Dean Swift;
but the funny column and the paragrapher's niche of our newspapers he
regarded as purely pathological phenomena. I sometimes feel that Cecil
was right about this. Can the mind which continues to be charmed by
these paragraphic strainings be really sound?--but this is not a
dissertation. Cecil reconciled himself to his position as the local
exemplification of the traditional Englishman whose trains of ideas run
on the freight schedule--and was one of the most popular fellows in
Lattimore. He gloried in his slavery to Antonia, and seemed to glean
hope from the most sterile circumstances.

It was easy to hope, in Lattimore, then. It was not many days after our
talk in the park before I noticed a change for the better in Giddings,
even. Just before Jim's house-warming, he came to me with something like
optimism in his appearance. I started to cheer him up, and went wrong.

"I'm glad to see by your cheerful looks," said I, "that the philosophy
of Iago--"

"Say, now!" cried he, "don't remind me of that, for Heaven's sake!"

"Why, certainly not," said I, "if you object."

"I do object," said he most earnestly; "why, that damned-fool phi