CHAPTER VI. TO THE RESCUE.
We studied hard in our styles,
Chipped each at a crust like Hindoos,
For air, looked out on the tiles,
For fun, watched each other's windows.
R. Browning.
"Mr. Frederick Devonshire, I positively refuse to minister any longer to such gross egotism! You've been cabinetted, vignetted, and carte de visited. You've been taken in a snowstorm; you've been taken looking out of window, drinking afternoon tea, and doing I don't know what else. If your vanity still remains unsatisfied, you must get another firm to gorge it for you."
"You're a nice woman of business, you are! Turning money away from the doors like this," chuckled Fred. Lucy's simple badinage appealed to him as the raciest witticisms would probably have failed to do; it seemed to him almost on a par with the brilliant verbal coruscations of his cherished Sporting Times.
"Our business," answered Lucy demurely, "is conducted on the strictest principles. We always let a gentleman know when he has had as much as is good for him."
"Oh, I say!" Fred appeared to be completely bowled over by what he would have denominated as this "side-splitter," and gave vent to an unearthly howl of merriment.