able, and in response
to the Colonel's last "thirty-two."

"Thirty-nine _what_, sir?" asked the Colonel, with the same sign of
intense disgust upon his face that we have sometimes seen on Harry
Placide's, when playing _Sir Harcourt Courtley_ and uttering the words:
"Good gracious! who was addressing _you_?"

"Oh, I really beg pardon," replied the young man, in a tone which meant
that he did nothing of the kind. "I thought I heard Mrs. West and
yourself speaking of the religious aspects of the country, and that you
were enumerating the articles of faith."

"Oh no, you were quite mistaken, Mr. Wallace!" said Aunt Martha, very
calmly, while Emily directed an appealing look at the scapegrace, which
might as well have been a putty pellet fired at the brown-stone
Washington in the Park, for any effect it produced.

"No sir, we were talking of nothing of the kind!" said the Colonel, with
that kind of severe dignity intended to convey: "This closes the
conversation."

"Then of course it is my duty to beg pardon once more," said the
incorrigible. "But you _might_ have been talking on that subject, you
know, without any impropriety. The religious aspects of the country are
deplorable!" throwing up his hands and eyes in no bad imitation of
_Aminadab Sleek_. "Do you not think so, Colonel?"

"Sir!" said the Colonel, still more severely, "I had not been thinking
of the subject at all!"

"Oh yes," the scapegrace went on--"deplorable! War desolating the
country--all the restraints of society removed or weakened--no Sabbath
at all--gambling and libertinism in the army and infidelity among the
officers--Colonel, I really hope you will excuse me! of course I do not
mean to make any allusion to the present company--but I repeat that the
present religious aspects of the country are deplorable."

"And _I_ repeat, sir," spoke the Colonel, with even more severity than
before, while Aunt Martha's face began to assume an expression that
might easily have deepened into a smile, and Emily had serious trouble
to keep from a broad grin--"_I_ repeat, sir, that we were not speaking
of the religious aspects of the country at all!"

"Pshaw! of course not! How stupid I am!" said the tormentor, who had by
this time dropped into a chair a little behind the Colonel's left
shoulder, where he could literally talk into his ear. "It was the number
that deceived me, as I heard it from the window. I _should_ have known
what you were saying, at once. Yo