nt still higher--then to
come face to face with a creature so elegant, so visibly "dressed," that
no gambler in town could outshine him. By sheer good luck, to have been
introduced to this dandy in one's capacity of teacher of the mixed
primary that very morning, when he had been given permission by Mr.
Garvan to make an announcement at the school concerning special
privileges granted school-children at the "high-class minstrel
performance" given at Lally's Opera House. To be unhampered now by the
timidities of office, and ready to pick up the gage of coquetry his
saucy glance threw down. And so, after the smallest second's
hesitation,--the woman in one stifling both the child's and the
substitute's hesitation,--to allow the gaudy stranger to walk beside one
the length of C Street. And though the sidewalk was crowded, for stocks
were up, and one had to wriggle one's way through the people packed
tight in front of the brokers' offices, yet, in the very teeth of the
townsfolk, to joy shamelessly in flirtation with this gorgeous, shining,
flattering stranger--a social outlaw, as well as a bird of passage, the
very disrepute of whose profession made temptation more subtly sweet!

* * * * *

"Split," whispered Sissy, her voice muffled with shame,--it was a week
later,--"Kate walked with a minstrel! What shall we do?"

"Did she? Who told on her--Mrs. Ramrod? Well," added Split, out of the
depths of experience, "it must have been that day she substituted."

OLD MOTHER GIBSON

Imprisoned in skirts, Jack Cody was awaiting his mother and relief, when
there came a knock at the door, and a voice distinctly not Jane Cody's
said:

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure, but your town's so jolly dark, I believe
I've lost my way. I'm looking for--My word, what's that!"

A parabola of light had suddenly shot out athwart the soft black night.
It seemed to come from the hill to the left, and it was accompanied by
the tinkle of shattered glass.

"It's the Madigans." Jack's voice was wistful and his gaze was turned
longingly upward.

"Madigans!" exclaimed the stranger, looking in amazement from the boyish
face surmounting a shapeless woman's gown to the thing it watched so
yearningly--a light flaring brightly on the hill, a lot of small dancing
figures silhouetted blackly against it, the smell of coal-oil, and the
shrill excited laughter of children.

"Upon my soul, yours is a strange country," the m