marry me, I suppose," growled Mr. James. "You had no trouble of that kind yourself."
"Trouble? It's only your mother protects me. I was going down town in a 'bus to-day, and there I saw your mother coming out of one of those Abolition meetings of her cousin, Wendell Phillips,—I told her he'd be hanged some day,—and there opposite sat an old gentleman, older than I, sir, and he said to me, 'Married, sir? So am I, sir. Married again only last week. Been married fifty years, but this one's a great improvement on the first one, sir, I can assure you. She brushes my hair!' That's more than you can get a wife to do for you, James!"
The father and son chirruped in unison.
"Did you tell my mother of your resolve to try again, sir?"
"I did, I did, and that my next choice was no incendiary Abolitionist, either. I told her I'd asked her already, to keep her disengaged,—old Miss Virginia Pyncheon, you know; and, egad! if your mother didn't cut her to-day in the street! But what do you think of old Jamie?"
"I don't know what to think. He certainly seems very ill."
