"These gentlemen had an eccentric elder brother who had money to burn, as the saying is, and what should each of these younger brothers do but name their sons after the wealthy old Royal Ainsley, if you please, each hoping that his son would be the old uncle's heir.
"A pretty mess these two belligerent gentlemen made of the affair, I assure you. Two Royal Ainsleys, each resembling the other to an unpleasantly startling degree, of almost the same age, being born scarcely a week apart.
"We were constantly getting into all manner of scrapes, a case of being continually taken for the fellow that looks like me, as the song goes. Each disputed with the other the right to bear the name, and neither would put a handle to it or do anything to cause it to differ in any way from the cognomen of the famous old uncle, who was certainly quite as bewildered as any one else.
"As we two lads grew older, I took to books, my cousin to sports and the pretty faces of girls. When his folks died and he was left to follow the bent of his own inclination, in spite of my earnest admonition and my uncle's combined, he jumped the traces of home restraint altogether, and started out to see life on his own hook. The last I heard of him he was with some distant relative, clerking in a New York importing house.
"Now for my side of the story. From the hour he defied uncle and shook off his restraint, old Royal Ainsley's hatred of him grew so bitter we dared not mention my wayward cousin, Royal Ainsley, in his presence. My uncle actually forced me to change my name through legislative enactment to make it legal. He insisted upon naming me Eugene Mallard, declaring that my cousin would be sure to disgrace the name of Royal Ainsley through the length and breadth of the land before he stopped in his mad downward career.
"Well, to make a long story short, my uncle sent me to Europe on business for him, and his sudden death brought me hurriedly home this week, to find that he has left me his entire fortune, with the proviso that not one dollar shall ever go to my cousin, who, in all probability, does not yet know of his sad plight.
"Now, last but by no means least, on the steamer coming back from London I met a beautiful young girl, Miss Hildegarde Cramer. It was a case of love at first sight between us. You know I'm a very impulsive fellow. I proposed, and she accepted me on the spot; but mind, she knows me as Eugene Mallard, and so she shall know me to the end of her sweet life, bless her.
"Now you know the whole story. Mind, I'm not Royal Ainsley, but, instead, Eugene Mallard, at your service.
"Hildegarde is visiting in Yonkers, so I ran up to see my sweetheart. Sounds like a romance or a comedy, doesn't it?"
"I hope there will be no tinge of tragedy in it," laughed his friend, thoughtlessly.