d covered some three blocks of their journey--the
too-democratic Genesis chatting companionably and William burning with
mortification--when the former broke into loud laughter.

"What I tell you?" he cried, pointing ahead. "Look ayonnuh! NO, suh,
Pres'dent United States hisse'f ain' go tell 'at dog stay home!"

And there, at the corner before them, waited Clematis, roguishly lying
in a mud-puddle in the gutter. He had run through alleys parallel to
their course--and in the face of such demoniac cunning the wretched
William despaired of evading his society. Indeed, there was nothing to
do but to give up, and so the trio proceeded, with William unable to
decide which contaminated him more, Genesis or the loyal Clematis. To
his way of thinking, he was part of a dreadful pageant, and he winced
pitiably whenever the eye of a respectable passer-by fell upon him.
Everybody seemed to stare--nay, to leer! And he felt that the whole
world would know his shame by nightfall.

Nobody, he reflected, seeing him in such company, could believe that he
belonged to "one of the oldest and best families in town." Nobody would
understand that he was not walking with Genesis for the pleasure of his
companionship--until they got the tubs and the wash-boiler, when his
social condition must be thought even more degraded. And nobody, he was
shudderingly positive, could see that Clematis was not his dog (Clematis
kept himself humbly a little in the rear, but how was any observer to
know that he belonged to Genesis and not to William?)

And how frightful that THIS should befall him on such a day, the very
day that his soul had been split asunder by the turquoise shafts of
Milady's eyes and he had learned to know the Real Thing at last!

"Milady! Oh, Milady!"

For in the elder teens adolescence may be completed, but not by
experience, and these years know their own tragedies. It is the time of
life when one finds it unendurable not to seem perfect in all outward
matters: in worldly position, in the equipments of wealth, in family,
and in the grace, elegance, and dignity of all appearances in
public. And yet the youth is continually betrayed by the child still
intermittently insistent within him, and by the child which undiplomatic
people too often assume him to be. Thus with William's attire: he could
ill have borne any suggestion that it was not of the mode, but taking
care of it was a different matter. Also, when it came to his appetite,
he