f all conventions, but
neither jocose James Macauley nor fastidious Arthur Chester, observing
him, could find any fault with their friend in this new role. As the
stream of their townspeople passed by, each with a carefully prepared
word of greeting, Burns was ready with a quick-wittedly amiable
rejoinder. And whenever it became his duty to present to his wife those
who did not know her, he made of the act a little ceremony which seemed
to set her apart as his own in a way which roused no little envy of her,
if he had but known it, in the breasts of certain of the feminine portion
of the company.

"You're doing nobly. Keep it up an hour longer and you shall be let off,"
said Macauley to Burns, at a moment when both were free.

"Oh, I'm having the time of my life," Burns assured him grimly, mopping
a warm brow and thrusting his chin forward with that peculiar masculine
movement which suggests momentary relief from an encompassing collar.
"Why should anybody want to be released from such a soul-refreshing
diversion as this? I've lost all track of time or sense,--I just go on
grinning and assenting to everything anybody says to me. I couldn't
discuss the simplest subject with any intelligence whatever--I've none
left."

"You don't need any. Decent manners and the grin will do. Had anything to
eat yet?"

"What's got to be eaten?" Burns demanded, unhappily.

"Punch, and ices--and little cakes, I believe. Cheer up, man, you don't
have to eat 'em, if you don't want to."

"Thanks for that. I'll remember it of you when greater favours have been
forgotten. Martha has her eye on me--I must go. I'll get even with Martha
for this, some time." And the guest of honour, stuffing his handkerchief
out of sight and thrusting his coppery, thick locks back from his
martyred brow, obeyed the summons.

The next time Macauley caught sight of him, he was assiduously supplying
a row of elderly ladies with ices and little cakes, and smiling at them
most engagingly. They were looking up at him with that grateful
expression which many elderly ladies unconsciously assume when a handsome
and robust young man devotes himself to them. Burns found this task least
trying of all his duties during that long evening, for one of the row
reminded him of his own mother, to whom he was a devoted son, and for her
sake he would give all aging women of his best. Something about this
little group of unattended guests, all living more or less lonely lives,