flirting fifty
minutes, you sinner."

"I haven't," said Mr. Hemingway, twisting his mustache and looking
roguish. "I've been discussing a little matter of business with Miss
Tennant."

"_What_ business?"

"Well, it wasn't any of yours, Frank, at the time, and I'm dinned if I
think it is now. But if you must know, she came in to complain of the
milk that your dairy has been supplying lately. She said it was the kind
of thing you'd expect in the North, but for a Southern gentleman to put
water in anything----"

"You go to Augusta," said the director (it is several degrees hotter
than Aiken). "Everybody knows that spoons stand up in the milk from my
dairy, and as for the cream----"

In the fall from grace of David Larkin there was involved no great show
of natural depravity. The difference between a young man who goes right
and a young man who goes wrong may be no more than the half of one per
cent. And I do not know why we show the vicious such contempt and the
virtuous such admiration. Larkin's was the case of a young man who tried
to do what he was not old enough, strong enough, or wise enough to "get
away with," as the saying is. Aiken did not corrupt him; he was corrupt
when he came, with a bank account of thirty-five hundred dollars
snatched from the lap of Dame Fortune, at a moment when she was minding
some other small boy. Horses running up to their form, spectacular
bridge hands (not well played), and bets upon every subject that can be
thought of had all contributed. Then Larkin caught a cold in his nose,
so that it ran all day and all night; and because the Browns had invited
him to Aiken for a fortnight whenever he cared to come, he seized upon
the excuse of his cold and boarded the first train. He was no sooner in
Aiken than Dame Fortune ceased minding the other small boy, and turned
her petulant eyes upon Larkin. Forthwith he began to lose.

Let no man who does not personally know what a run of bad luck is judge
another. What color is a lemon? Why, it is lemon-colored, to be sure.
And behold, fortune produces you a lemon black as the ace of spades.
When fortune goes against you, you cannot be right. The favorite falls
down; the great jockey uses bad judgment for the first time in his life;
the foot-ball team that ought to win is overtrained; the yacht carries
away her bowsprit; your four kings are brought face to face, after much
"hiking," with four aces; the cigarette that you try to flick into the
f