es of waffles. The
remonstrances of the waitress were also audible, and, when the wailing
rose high, my hostess's face had a distrait expression, as of one
prepared at any moment for an irruption of infant Goths.

Mrs. Armstrong was a vivacious little woman, who, I conjectured, had
once been a village belle, with some pretensions to _espieglerie_ and
the fragile prettiness common among New England country girls. But the
bearing and rearing of a family of children, and the matronizing of a
houseful of hungry school-boys in such a way as to make ends meet, had
substituted a faded and worried look for her natural liveliness of
expression. She bore up bravely, however, against the embarrassments
of the occasion. In particular, it pleased her to take a facetious
view of college life.

"Oh, Mr. Polisson," she cried, "I am afraid that you and my husband
were very gay young men when you were at college together. Oh, don't
tell me; I know--I know. I've heard of some of your scrapes."

I protested feebly against this impeachment, but Armstrong winked at
me with the air of a sly dog, and said:

"It's no use, Polisson. You can't fool Mrs. A. Buckingham and one or
two of the fellows have been here to dinner occasionally, and I'm
afraid they've given us away."

"Yes," she affirmed, "Mr. Buckingham was one of you too, I guess,
though he _is_ the Rev. Mr. Buckingham now. Oh, he has told me."

"You remember old Buck?" put in Armstrong. "He is preaching near
here--settled over a church at Bobtown."

"Yes," I answered, "I remember there was such a man in the class, but
really I didn't know that he was--ah--such a character as you seem to
infer, Mrs. Armstrong."

"Oh, he has quieted down now, I assure you," said the lady. "He is as
prim and proper as a Methodist meeting-house. Why, he _has_ to be, you
know."

This amusing fiction of the wildness of Armstrong's youth had
evidently become a family tradition, and even, by a familiar process,
an article of belief in his own mind. It reminded me grotesquely of
_Justice Shallow's_ reminiscences with _Sir John Falstaff_: "Ha,
Cousin Silence, that thou hadst seen that, that this knight and I have
seen.... Jesu, Jesu, the mad days that I have spent!"

The resemblance became still stronger when, as we rose from the table,
the good fellow beckoned me into a closet which opened off the
dining-room, saying, in a hoarse whisper:

"Here, Polisson, come in here."

He was uncorking a large