cer now," said Mr. Blyth, beginning cautiously with a spoonful of
the squaw's mixture at a time.

Mat's spirits seemed to rise immensely at this announcement. He lit
his pipe, and took up his glass of grog; nodded to Valentine and young
Thorpe, just as he had nodded to the northwest point of the compass a
minute or two before; muttered gruffly, "Here's all our good healths;"
and finished half his liquor at a draught.

"All our good healths!" repeated Mr. Blyth, gallantly attacking the
squaw's mixture this time without any intermediate assistance from the
spoon.

"All our good healths!" chimed in Zack, draining his glass to the
bottom. "Really, Mat, it's quite bewildering to see how your dormant
social qualities are waking up, now you're plunged into the vortex of
society. What do you say to giving a ball here next? You're just the
man to get on with the ladies, if you could only be prevailed on to wear
your coat, and give up airing your tawny old arms in public."

"Don't, my dear sir! I particularly beg you won't," cried Valentine, as
Mat, apparently awakened to a sense of polite propriety by Zack's last
hint, began to unroll one of his tightly-tucked-up shirt-sleeves. "Pray
consult your own comfort, and keep your sleeves as they were--pray do!
As an artist, I have been admiring your arms from the professional point
of view ever since we first sat down to table. I never remember, in all
my long experience of the living model, having met with such a splendid
muscular development as yours."

Saying those words, Mr. Blyth waved his hand several times before his
host's arms, regarding them with his eyes partially closed, and his
head very much on one side, just as he was accustomed to look at
his pictures. Mat stared, smoked vehemently, folded the objects of
Valentine's admiration over his breast, and, modestly scratching his
elbows, looked at young Thorpe with an expression of utter bewilderment.
"Yes! decidedly the most magnificent muscular development I ever
remember studying," reiterated Mr. Blyth, drumming with his fingers on
the table, and concentrating the whole of his critical acumen in one eye
by totally closing the other.

"Hang it, Blyth!" remonstrated Zack, "don't keep on looking at his arms
as if they were a couple of bits of prize beef! You may talk about
his muscular development as much as you please, but you can't have the
smallest notion of what it's really equal to till you try it. I say, old
Rough-