"Will you be so good as to introduce me to the two young ladies near you? We have met before, but I do not know their names."
"Ah," said the Doctor, taking off his spectacles and wiping them leisurely; then raising his voice, said, "Miss Cassandra Morgeson and Miss Helen Perkins, Mr. Ben Somers, of Belem, requests me to present him to you. I add the information that he is, although a senior, suspended from Harvard College, for participating in a disgraceful fight. It is at your option to notice him."
"If he would be kind enough," said Mr. Somers, moving toward us, "to say that I won it."
"With such hands?" I asked.
"Oh, Somers," interposed the Doctor, "have you much knowledge of the
Bellevue Pickersgills' pedigree?"
"Certainly; my grandpa, Desmond Pickersgill, although he came to this country as a cabin boy, was brother to an English earl. This is our coat of arms," showing the ring he wore.
"That is a great fact," answered the Doctor.
"This lad," addressing me, "belongs to the family I spoke of to you, a member of which married one of your name."
"Is it possible? I never heard much of my father's family."
"No," said the Doctor dryly; "Somers has no coat of arms. I expected, when I asked you, to hear that the Pickergills' history was at your fingers' ends."