he made late evening calls on Mrs. Mount, oblivious of the
purpose he had in visiting her at all. Her man-like conversation, which
he took for honesty, was a refreshing change on fair lips.

"Call me Bella: I'll call you Dick," said she. And it came to be Bella
and Dick between them. No mention of Bella occurred in Richard's letters
to Lucy.

Mrs. Mount spoke quite openly of herself. "I pretend to be no better
than I am," she said, "and I know I'm no worse than many a woman who
holds her head high." To back this she told him stories of blooming
dames of good repute, and poured a little social sewerage into his ears.

Also she understood him. "What you want, my dear Dick, is something to
do. You went and got married like a--hum!--friends must be respectful.
Go into the Army. Try the turf. I can put you up to a trick or
two--friends should make themselves useful."

She told him what she liked in him. "You're the only man I was ever
alone with who don't talk to me of love and make me feel sick. I hate
men who can't speak to a woman sensibly.--Just wait a minute." She
left him and presently returned with, "Ah, Dick! old fellow! how are
you?"--arrayed like a cavalier, one arm stuck in her side, her hat
jauntily cocked, and a pretty oath on her lips to give reality to the
costume. "What do you think of me? Wasn't it a shame to make a woman of
me when I was born to be a man?"

"I don't know that," said Richard, for the contrast in her attire to
those shooting eyes and lips, aired her sex bewitchingly.

"What! you think I don't do it well?"

"Charming! but I can't forget..."

"Now that is too bad!" she pouted.

Then she proposed that they should go out into the midnight streets
arm-in-arm, and out they went and had great fits of laughter at her
impertinent manner of using her eyeglass, and outrageous affectation of
the supreme dandy.

"They take up men, Dick, for going about in women's clothes, and vice
versaw, I suppose. You'll bail me, old fellaa, if I have to make my bow
to the beak, won't you? Say it's becas I'm an honest woman and don't
care to hide the--a--unmentionables when I wear them--as the t'others
do," sprinkled with the dandy's famous invocations.

He began to conceive romance in that sort of fun.

"You're a wopper, my brave Dick! won't let any peeler take me? by Jove!"

And he with many assurances guaranteed to stand by her, while she bent
her thin fingers trying the muscle of his arm; and reposed