I
just said so."

"Is it always different?" Alma asked, lifting her head and her hand from
her drawing, and staring at it absently.

Fulkerson pushed both his hands through his whiskers. "Look here! Look
here!" he said. "Won't somebody start some other subject? We haven't had
the weather up yet, have we? Or the opera? What is the matter with a few
remarks about politics?"

"Why, Ah thoat you lahked to toak about the staff of yo' magazine," said
Miss Woodburn.

"Oh, I do!" said Fulkerson. "But not always about the same member of
it. He gets monotonous, when he doesn't get complicated. I've just come
round from the Marches'," he added, to Mrs. Leighton.

"I suppose they've got thoroughly settled in their apartment by this
time." Mrs. Leighton said something like this whenever the Marches were
mentioned. At the bottom of her heart she had not forgiven them for not
taking her rooms; she had liked their looks so much; and she was always
hoping that they were uncomfortable or dissatisfied; she could not help
wanting them punished a little.

"Well, yes; as much as they ever will be," Fulkerson answered. "The
Boston style is pretty different, you know; and the Marches are
old-fashioned folks, and I reckon they never went in much for
bric-a-brac They've put away nine or ten barrels of dragon candlesticks,
but they keep finding new ones."

"Their landlady has just joined our class," said Alma. "Isn't her name
Green? She happened to see my copy of 'Every Other Week', and said she
knew the editor; and told me."

"Well, it's a little world," said Fulkerson. "You seem to be touching
elbows with everybody. Just think of your having had our head translator
for a model."

"Ah think that your whole publication revolves aroand the Leighton
family," said Miss Woodburn.

"That's pretty much so," Fulkerson admitted. "Anyhow, the publisher
seems disposed to do so."

"Are you the publisher? I thought it was Mr. Dryfoos," said Alma.

"It is."

"Oh!"

The tone and the word gave Fulkerson a discomfort which he promptly
confessed. "Missed again."

The girls laughed, and he regained something of his lost spirits, and
smiled upon their gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for
it.

Miss Woodburn asked, "And is Mr. Dryfoos senio' anything like ouah Mr.
Dryfoos?"

"Not the least."

"But he's jost as exemplary?"

"Yes; in his way."

"Well, Ah wish Ah could see all those pinks of puffection togethah,
once."

"