t a boy after some more beer. Joe found it a very jolly
evening, but Kit's and the mother's hearts were heavy as they went up to
bed.

"Say," said Mr. Thomas when they had gone, "that little girl 's a peach,
you bet; a little green, I guess, but she 'll ripen in the sun."

VIII

AN EVENING OUT

Fannie Hamilton, tired as she was, sat long into the night with her
little family discussing New York,--its advantages and disadvantages,
its beauty and its ugliness, its morality and immorality. She had
somewhat receded from her first position, that it was better being here
in the great strange city than being at home where the very streets
shamed them. She had not liked the way that their fellow lodger looked
at Kitty. It was bold, to say the least. She was not pleased, either,
with their new acquaintance's familiarity. And yet, he had said no more
than some stranger, if there could be such a stranger, would have said
down home. There was a difference, however, which she recognised. Thomas
was not the provincial who puts every one on a par with himself, nor was
he the metropolitan who complacently patronises the whole world. He was
trained out of the one and not up to the other. The intermediate only
succeeded in being offensive. Mrs. Jones' assurance as to her guest's
fine qualities did not do all that might have been expected to reassure
Mrs. Hamilton in the face of the difficulties of the gentleman's manner.

She could not, however, lay her finger on any particular point that
would give her the reason for rejecting his friendly advances. She got
ready the next evening to go to the theatre with the rest. Mr. Thomas at
once possessed himself of Kitty and walked on ahead, leaving Joe to
accompany his mother and Mrs. Jones,--an arrangement, by the way, not
altogether to that young gentleman's taste. A good many men bowed to
Thomas in the street, and they turned to look enviously after him. At
the door of the theatre they had to run the gantlet of a dozen pairs of
eyes. Here, too, the party's guide seemed to be well known, for some one
said, before they passed out of hearing, "I wonder who that little light
girl is that Thomas is with to-night? He 's a hot one for you."

Mrs. Hamilton had been in a theatre but once before in her life, and Joe
and Kit but a few times oftener. On those occasions they had sat far up
in the peanut gallery in the place reserved for people of colour. This
was not a pleasant, cleanly, nor