e said. 'It's the head, and the heart, my boy, that
triumphs.' And when I asked him where he learned all this he answered,
'from personal experience.'"

I immediately let go of Burnham. "Go and half-lick him, Harry," said I.
"And when you've done with him pass him over to me, and I'll finish him.
The supercilious ass."

That was the way Wilkins affected us.

The other men took their dose in different ways. Jenks began to drink a
little more; Lester drank a little less. Hicks didn't care much about it
one way or the other, and Wilson swore that if Wilkins came to call on
his sister again he'd kick him out of the house.

Six weeks rolled by thus, and finally Easter Sunday came. No mitigation
of the Wilkins visitation had entered into our lives. As the days wore
on the girls became more devoted to him than ever, and he became
correspondingly unbearable. The condescension with which he would treat
his fellow-men was something hardly to be tolerated, and the worst of it
was there didn't seem to be any way of bringing the girls to terms.
There wasn't anybody left for us to flirt with now that Mary Brown had
gone over to the enemy, she who had always been willing to flirt with
anybody.

"There's only one hope," said Jenks. "If he'll only marry one of 'em,
the others will come back. He can't marry 'em all, thank Heaven."

"Suppose it was Fiametta he married?" said I.

"Or Araminta!" was his preposterous retort.

"He'll never do that," said Lester. "He's in clover now, and for the
first time in his life, and the more of an ass he is the more he'll like
clover. He's paying attention to the lot. He'll never settle down to
one. It's all up with us--unless he bankrupts himself."

"He won't," observed Harry Burnham. "Conscious rectitude won't do
anything like that. I'm going to New York to call on an old flame, and I
advise the rest of you to do the same."

"Well, I don't know but what you are right," said I, "but Araminta shall
have one more chance. I'm going to church to-morrow. It's Easter Sunday,
and I'll offer to escort her home. If she says 'yes,' all right. If she
doesn't, I'm lost to her forever."

"Good scheme," quoth the others. "We're with you."

And that is what we all did. The girls were all there, resplendent in
new bonnets and toggery of other sorts, and the smirking Wilkins was
there too. He passed the plate after the sermon, and his rectitude shone
out oleaginously on every line of his face. It was as m