e uncivil when you choose."

"Uncivil!"

"Decidedly uncivil, and even more than that."

"What do you mean! I insist on knowing what you mean by more."

"They're at it again," says Mr. Browne, at this auspicious moment,
waving his hand in an airy fashion in the direction of our two
belligerents.

Mr. Browne is a person who can always say and do what he likes for
several reasons, the principal being that nobody pays the smallest
attention to either his sayings or doings. Everybody likes Dicky, and
Dicky, as a rule, likes everybody. He has a father and a home somewhere,
but where (especially with regard to the former), is vague.

The home, certainly, is kept up for nobody except the servants, as
neither Dicky nor his father ever put in an appearance there. The latter
(who has never yet mastered the fact that he is growing old), spends all
his time in the favorite window of his Club in Pall Mall, with his nose
pressed against the pane and his attention irrevocably fixed upon the
passers-by on the other side of the way. This is his sole occupation
from morning till night; unless one can take notice of a dismal and most
diabolical tattoo that at unfortunate moments he is in the habit of
inflicting upon the window, and the nerves of the other occupants of the
room in which he may be.

Dicky puts in most of his time at Blount Hall. Indeed, it has grown to
be a matter of speculation with the Blount's whether in the event of his
marriage he will not elect to bring his bride also to stay with them for
good and all! They have even gone so far as to hope he will marry a
_nice_ girl, and one whom they can receive in the spirit of love.

"I don't think they really ever quite enjoy themselves, until they are
on the verge of bloodshed," says Sir Mark, in answer to Dicky's remark.
"They are the very oddest pair I ever met."

All this is said quite out loud, but so promising is the quarrel by this
time, that neither Dulce nor Roger hear one word of it.

"You do it on purpose," Dulce is saying in a tone in which tears and
extreme wrath fight for mastery, "You torment me from morning till
night. You are both rude and unkind to me. And now--_now_--what is it
you have just said?"

"What have I said?" asks Roger, who is plainly frightened.

"What indeed! I should be ashamed to repeat it. But I know you said I
was uncivil, and that I told lies, and any amount of things that were
even worse."

"What on earth is the matter now wit