he was not, apparently, wanted to carry any one else. Here the
purchase received a very disagreeable cut on the neck that interrupted
her speculations as to the nature of the shadows of telegraph-posts. To
have bought two useless horses in four months was pretty average bad
luck. It was also pretty bad luck to have been born a fool. Reflection
here became merged in the shapeless and futile fumings of a man badly in
love and preposterously jealous.

Known only to the elect among entertainment promoters are the methods
employed by Mrs. Carteret to float the company of The Green Coons. The
fact remains that on the appointed night the chosen troupe,
approximately word-perfect, and with spirits something chastened by
stage fright, were assembled in the clerk's room of the Enniscar Town
Hall, round a large basin filled horribly with a compound of burnt cork
and water.

"It's not as bad as it looks!" said Mrs. Carteret, plunging in her hands
and heroically smearing her face with a mass of black oozy matter
believed to be a sponge. "It's quite becoming if you do it thoroughly.
Mind, all of you, get it well into your ears and the roots of your
hair!"

The Hamiltons, giggling wildly, submitted themselves to the
ministrations of Freddy Alexander, and Mrs. Carteret, appallingly
transformed into a little West Indian coolie woman, applied the sponge
to the shrinking Fanny Fitz.

"Will you do Mr. Gunning, Fanny?" she whispered into one of the ears
that she had conscientiously blackened. "I think he'd bear it better
from you!"

"I shall do nothing of the kind!" replied Fanny, with a dignity somewhat
impaired by her ebon countenance and monstrous green turban.

"Why not?"

Mrs. Carteret's small neat features seemed unnaturally sharpened, and
her eyes and teeth glittered in her excitement.

"For goodness' sake, take your awful little black face away, Mabel!"
exclaimed Fanny hysterically. "It quite frightens me! I'm _very_ angry
with Mr. Gunning! I'll tell you why some other time."

"Well, don't forget you've got to say 'Buck up, Sambo!' to him after
he's sung his song, and you may fight with him as much as you like
afterwards," said Mrs. Carteret, hurrying off to paint glaring
vermilion mouths upon the loudly protesting Hamiltons.

During these vicissitudes, Rupert Gunning, arrayed in a green
swallow-tailed calico coat, short white cotton trousers, and a skimpy
nigger wig, presented a pitiful example of the humiliations whic