rous."

"There is time," said Alice, "for that to develop yet."

Not that everything happened as we wished. Indeed, some things gave us
much anxiety. Bill Trescott, for instance, began at last to show signs
of that going up in the air which Jim had said we must keep him from.
Even Captain Tolliver complained that Bill's habits were getting bad:
and he was the last person in the world to censure excess in the vices
which he deemed gentlemanly. His own idea of morning, for instance, was
that period of the day when the bad taste in the mouth so natural to a
gentleman is removed by a stiff toddy, drunk just before prayers. He
would, no doubt, have conceded to the inventor of the alphabet a higher
place among men than that of the discoverer of the mint julep, had the
matter been presented to him in concrete form; but would have qualified
the admission by adding, with a seriousness incompatible with the
average conception of a joke: "But the question is sutt'nly one not
entiahly free from doubt, suh; not entiahly free from doubt!"

However, the Captain had his standards, and prescribed for himself
limits of time, place, and degree, to which he faithfully conformed. But
he had been for a long time doing business under a sort of partnership
arrangement with Bill, and their affairs had become very much
interwoven. So he came to us, one day, in something like a panic, on
finding that Bill had become a frequenter of one of the local
bucket-shops, and had been making maudlin boasts of the profitable deals
he had made.

"This means, gentlemen," said the Captain, "that influences entiahly
fo'eign to ouah investments hyah ah likely to bring a crash, which will
not only wipe out Mr. Trescott, but, owin' to ouah association in the
additions we have platted, cyah'y me down also! You can see that with
sev'al hundred thousand dolla's of deferred payments on what we have
sold, most of which have been rediscounted in the East by the G. B. T.,
Mr. Trescott's condition becomes something of serious conce'n fo'
you-all, as well as fo' me. Nothing else, I assuah you, gentlemen, could
fo'ce me to call attention to a mattah so puahly pussonal as a diffe'nce
between gentlemen in theiah standahds of inebriety! Nothing else,
believe me!"

By the G. B. T. the Captain meant the Grain Belt Trust Company, and
anything which affected its solvency or welfare was, as he said, a
matter of serious concern for all of us. In fact, at that very moment
there