entleman!" Litton snarled in hydrophobic frenzy.

"Well, as one lover to another, then," Teed laughed. "Do I get my
diploma?"

Litton's head was so heavy he could not nod it.

"It's my diploma in exchange for your records. Come on, Professor--be a
sport! And take it from me, it's no fun having the words you whisper in
a girl's ear in the dark shouted out loud in the open court. And mine
were repeated in a Dutch dialect! I got yours just as they came from
your lips--and hers."

That ended it. Litton surrendered, passed himself under the yoke;
pledged himself to the loathsome compact, and Teed went to fetch the
price of his degree of Bachelor of Arts.

Litton hung dejected beyond feeling for a long while. His heart was
whimpering _Ai, Ai!_ He felt himself crushed under a hundred different
crimes. He felt that he could never look up again. Then he heard a soft
tap at the door. He could not raise his eyes or his voice. He heard the
door open and supposed it was Teed bringing him the wages of his shame;
but he heard another voice--an unimaginably beautiful, tragically tender
voice--crooning:

"Oo-oo! Stookie-tookie!"

He looked up. How radiant she was! He could only sigh. She came across
to him as gracefully and lightly as Iris running down a rainbow. She was
murmuring:

"I just had to slip over and tell you something."

"Well, Martha!" he sighed.

She stopped short, as if he had struck her.

"'Martha'? What's the matter? You aren't mad at me, are you, Stookie?"

"How could I be angry with you, Marg--er--Martha?"

"Then why don't you call me Margy-wargleums?"

He stared at her. Her whimsical smile, trembling to a piteously pretty
hint of terror, overwhelmed him. He hesitated, then shoved back his
chair and, rising, caught her to him so tightly that she gasped out,
"Oo!" There it was again! He laughed like an overgrown cub as he cried:

"Why don't I call you Margy-wargleums? Well, what a darned fool I'd be
not to! Margy-wargleums!"

To such ruin does love--the blind, the lawless, the illiterate
child--bring the noblest intelligences and the loftiest principles.

THE MOUTH OF THE GIFT HORSE

I

The town of Wakefield was--is--suffering from growing pains--from
ingrowing pains, according to its rival, Gatesville.

Wakefield has long been guilty of trying to add a cubit to its stature
by taking thought. Established, like thousands of other pools left in
the prairies by that tidal wave of humanity