I saw no fun for me in feeding beans to Rams. Besides, my two hundred nice little dollars felt so snug in my hind pocket. They stayed there, too.
I was a very acrobat on my crutches, before the quality at Freak House bestowed another visit. This time, my caller was Rams, in a state of panic.
"I may have dallied," so began his plaint, "but not philandered. Believe me, I never. Once, of course, I chucked her under the chin, and when she said that pimples on the neck could be kissed away—of course! But it never went so far as a hint, much less a suggestion."
"Then, why this fuss?"
It appeared that Loco, who had tact enough to stampede a locomotive, wanted to know the intentions of his deah young friend with regard to his—ahem—niece.
The American heavy father, especially when he happens to be the heavy uncle, can be frightfully impressive on that subject. Rams, too, had been reading Wild West in his leisure moments, and, as everybody knows, the denizens of that region invariably shoot. In Rams' dilated vision, Loco Burrows was a westerner, a frontiersman, with symptoms of desperado and a gun.
"Asked me," the Englishman groaned, "if my intentions were honorable. As if I had intentions! Why, my dear fellow, strictly on the q.t., she's lower middle class!"
"You don't say so?"
"Fact. My father, Sir Augustus, you know, will cut me off with a bob. Still, I didn't want to be shot."
"So you're engaged? A thousand felicitations!"