ne hand and slamming his plug
hat on the floor with the other.

The floor-manager stepped up and asked what the matter was. The Doctor
shrieked out:

"Good ----! do I look like a man who has fits? Would you think, to look
at me, that I ever had fits?"

The floor-manager placed his hands on his shoulders, and said,
sympathetically:

"Never mind, Doctor, you are not going to have a fit. Keep cool, Doctor.
Keep perfectly quiet. You will soon get over it. Step outside into the
cool air, and you will soon get over it."

"Get over what?" said the exasperated man. "You infernal fool, what are
you talking about? Do you think I don't know enough to take care of
myself?"

About a second later I stepped into an adjoining room, and there met the
cross-eyed girl with her things on ready to leave. She said she didn't
know how she would get home, as her friends had gone and left her,
expecting the Doctor to act as her escort.

I confessed that I was only joking, and we had better fix it up and let
the Doctor take her home.

She nearly went into spasms when I suggested it, and said she wouldn't
dare ride a rod with such a man.

The Doctor's farmer friend, our host, came to me and said I had better
take the young lady home, and let the Doctor remain with them all night,
and he would take him to town the next afternoon. This was satisfactory
to the young miss, so we immediately slipped away, without consulting
the Doctor, or even bidding him good night.

On our way, I asked her if she would be willing to consent to a meeting
with the Doctor, or open a correspondence with him. She refused
emphatically to do either, despite the fact that I declared the whole
thing a joke.

She said his actions at the last were enough to convince her that it was
no joking affair. I was anxious to do something in the Doctor's behalf
to atone for the injury to his feelings that I was the cause of, but the
matter had gone too far.

I certainly had every reason to regret that things had turned out as
they had, for the seventeen miles of travel in taking the girl home and
returning to town proved too much for the old nag, and I did not reach
my hotel until after nine o'clock that morning. I was at a loss to know
how to fix things with the Doctor so as to make matters smooth, and have
him cherish no hard feelings.

I had decided that my moustache was a failure, and had concluded to
have it cut off. A plan came into my mind by which I felt certai