trust him again. If I thought you'd come to talk about Harry, I
wouldn't have come down."

St. George lay back in his chair, shrugged his shoulders, stole a
look at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows, and said with an assumed
dignity, a smile playing about his lips:

"All right, off goes his head--exit the scoundrel. Much as I could do
to keep him out of Jones Falls this morning, but of course now it's
all over we can let Spitfire break his neck. That's the way a gentleman
should die of love--and not be fished out of a dirty stream with his
clothes all bespattered with mud."

"But he won't die for love. He doesn't know what love means or he
wouldn't behave as he does. Do you know what really happened, Uncle
George?" Her brown eyes were flashing, her cheeks aflame with her
indignation.

"Oh, I know exactly what happened. Harry told me with the tears running
down his cheeks. It was dreadful--INEXCUSABLE--BARBAROUS! I've been that
way myself--tumbled half-way down these same stairs before you were born
and had to be put to bed, which accounts for the miserable scapegrace I
am to-day." His face was in a broad smile, but his voice never wavered.

Kate looked at him and put out her hand. "You never did--I won't believe
a word of it."

"Ask your father, my dear. He helped carry me upstairs, and Ben pulled
off my boots. Oh, it was most disgraceful! I'm just beginning to live it
down," and he reached over and patted the girl's cheek, his hearty laugh
ringing through the room.

Kate was smiling now--her Uncle George was always irresistible when he
was like this.

"But Harry isn't you," she pouted.

"ISN'T ME!--why I was ten times worse! He's only twenty-one and I was
twenty-five. He's got four years the better of me in which to reform."

"He'll NEVER be like you--you never broke a promise in your life. He
gave me his word of honor he would never get--yes--I'm just going to
say it--drunk--again: yes--that's the very word--DRUNK! I don't care--I
won't have it! I won't have anything to do with anybody who breaks his
promise, and who can't keep sober. My father was never so in his life,
and Harry shall never come near me again if he--"

"Hold on!--HOLD ON! Oh, what an unforgiving minx! You Seymours are all
like tinder boxes--your mother was just like you and so was--"

"Well, not father," she bridled, with a toss of her head.

St. George smiled queerly--Prim was one of his jokes. "Your father, my
dear Kate, has the m