sugar, but enough butter and eggs to make good her loss, and throw in a neck-tie to compensate her for waste of time. Before she got away, in came the mother of the little girl to whom you had given a slab of molasses candy for bar-soap, and said that the child had brought nothing home but some streaks of molasses on her face. Just as I was coming out to dinner the other boy brought back the porcelain eggs you had given him with word that 'Ma had biled 'em an hour, and she couldn't even budge the shells.' So you see, my son, that in a miscellaneous store you are quite out of your element."

[76]

"It was that flirt of a Belle Marigold that upset him," said mother, laughing so that she spilled the gravy on the table-cloth. "He'll be all right when she is once Mrs. Hencoop."

That very evening Fred came in the store to ask me to be his groomsman.

"We're going to be married the first of June," he told me, grinning like an idiot.

"Does Belle know that you invite me to be groomsman?" I responded, gloomily.

"Yes; she suggested that you be asked. Rose Ellis is to be bridesmaid."

"Very well; I accept."

"All right, old fellow. Thank you," slapping me on the back.

As I lay tossing restlessly on my bed that night—after an hour spent in a vain attempt to[77] take the butter out of my lavenders with French chalk—I made a new and firm resolution. I would make Belle sorry that she had given her preference to Fred. I would so bear myself—during our previous meetings and consultations, and during the day of the ceremony—that she should bitterly repent not having given me an opportunity to conquer my diffidence before taking up with Frederick Hencoop. The opportunity was given me to redeem myself. I would prove that, although modest, I was a gentleman; that the blushing era of inexperience could be succeeded by one of calm grandeur. Chesterfield could never have been more quietly self-possessed; Beau Brummell more imperturbable. I would get by heart all the little formalities of the occasion, and, when the time came, I would execute them with consummate ease.

[77]

These resolutions comforted me—supported me under the weight of despair I had to endure. Ha! yes. I would show some people that some things could be done as well as others.

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