these Johnnies the wimmen always runs
after," gravely explained Andrew, aged sixteen.

"We cock-a-doodled and pip-pipped till you couldn't hear your ears.
Half couldn't get in, they was climbed up an' hangin' in the
windows--little girls too along with the boys. I suppose now that
they're as near got a vote as we have, they'll be poked everywhere
just the same as if they had as good a right as us," said the boy with
the despondence of one to whom all is lost.

"It's a terrible thing they can't be made stay at home out of all the
fun like boys think they ought to be. No mistake the woman having a
vote is a terrible nark to the men--almost too much for 'em to bear,"
said Dawn, whom I had thought asleep.

"I reckon I'm goin' to every meetin', they're all right fun,"
continued Andrew. "At the both committee room they're givin' out
tickets with the men's names on, an' whoever likes can get them an'
wear 'em in their hats. Me an' Jack Bray went to this Johnny Walker's
rooms and gammoned we was for him, an' got a dozen tickets, an' when
we got outside tore 'em to smithereens; that's what we'll do all the
time."

After this Andrew disappeared down the stairs, spilling grease, and
being admonished by Dawn as he went as the clumsiest creature she had
ever seen.

Silence reigned between us for some time, and in listening to the
trains I had forgotten the girl till her voice came across the room.

"I say, don't tell that Ernest anything not nice about me, will you?
I'll take care not to flirt with him, and I wouldn't like him to think
me not nice. I wouldn't care about any one else a scrap, but he's such
a great friend of yours, and as I hope to be with you a lot, it would
be awkward; and you know he has _said_ nothing, it might only be my
conceit to think he's going the way of other men. He took me to
afternoon tea to-day at such a lovely place,--he said he wanted to be
good to your friends, that's why he is nice to me. I don't suppose he
ever thinks of me at all any other way," she said with the despondence
of love.

So this had been chasing sleep from Beauty's eyes, as such trifles
have a knack of doing!

"Very likely," I said complacently, and smiled to myself. The only
thing to be discovered now was if the young athlete's emotions were at
the same ebb, and then what was there against plain sailing to the
happy port where honeymoons are spent?

Fortune favours the persevering, and next afternoon an opportunity
occu