"You want to be put to the test, do you?"
"Nothing could please me better. I only hope it will be something difficult."
"Tremendous!" she answered, laughing and blushing; and raising him from his kneeling position; "nothing short of a life-test."
CHAPTER XV.
MY REVENGE AT BILLIARDS.
Enticed to Liverpool with a Burlesque Troupe— The comic Murderers—a nice Amateur—the unknown Friend— the Champion of England.
"Look here, Jack, you know Pattie Hastings?" said Horace Brown, as he entered my apartments hurriedly one morning.
"I have certainly set eyes on that young lady," I replied. "She is not here?"
"Who said she was? Why, you old hypocrite, you were mad about her last winter, and even now the recollection of these beautiful sonnets you used to send her, to say nothing of the bouquets and bracelets, makes her sigh—after a third glass of champagne!"