He had had a serio-comic flirtation with every girl in turn.  He had cut out Jake Dexter with Nellie Atterbury, and made it up to his friend by offering him a lock of Bell’s hair, which he had surreptitiously cut from her hanging braids, and which Jake wore pinned in his button hole as a trophy for the rest of the evening, to the immense scandal of everybody.  But with the supper-hour Dick’s spirits ebbed.  He knew, poor fellow, what Fate held in store.  His father intended making a few remarks over him, as a sort of substitute for his defrauded speech to the non-existing tenantry.

“Stand by me, Jake, there’s a man!” whispered Dick, forlornly, to his crony.

“I will, Dick, like a woman!” Jake responded, tenderly, and the two stood together just at Mr. Hardcastle’s elbow, as that worthy advanced to a central spot between the bonfires, cleared his throat ominously, and pirouetted solemnly around, holding up his hand to attract general attention.

“My friends,” began Mr. Hardcastle, swelling with the importance of the moment to even more than his usual rotundity, “this has been a day of days to me.  All of you who are parents will appreciate my feelings of mingled pride and humility,—­of pride and humility,” repeated Mr. Hardcastle, pleased with the antithesis, and swaying gently back and forth, “as I stand here before you with my son, the boy whom I have watched over from his cradle up with an unsleeping eye, and whose tender feet”—­Dick here stooped over to inspect those honest, able members.  Jake did the same with evident disapproval of them.  Mr. Hardcastle raised his voice—­“whose tender feet I have endeavored from his youth up, so far as lay in my limited power, to guide in the way that I hope he may never depart from.  This boy I now present to you, friends, a man,—­this boy who has grown up among you, whom you all know, and whom I hope you all harbor some kindly feeling for,—­this boy,”—­he put out his hand to draw him forward, Dick gave Jake a gentle push toward the hand and vanished, and Mr. Hardcastle, quite unconscious of the manoeuvre, drew the grinning Jake solemnly up to him, and casting around a look of triumph which seemed to say:  Do better than this, friends, if you can, placed his hand on Jake’s shoulder with his grandest air, and continued, sonorously,—­“my son, ladies and gentlemen,—­my son Dick.”

There was a moment’s pause of consternation among the guests and a suppressed scream from the defrauded Mother Dexter.  Mr. Hardcastle slowly turned his radiant face toward his supposed son, and immediately dropped his hand and exclaimed, in entirely altered and most natural tones of amazement:  “Well, I never!  How in the world did you get here, Jake Dexter?”