I immediately let go of Burnham.  “Go and half-lick him, Harry,” said I.  “And when you’ve done with him pass him over to me, and I’ll finish him.  The supercilious ass.”

That was the way Wilkins affected us.

The other men took their dose in different ways.  Jenks began to drink a little more; Lester drank a little less.  Hicks didn’t care much about it one way or the other, and Wilson swore that if Wilkins came to call on his sister again he’d kick him out of the house.

Six weeks rolled by thus, and finally Easter Sunday came.  No mitigation of the Wilkins visitation had entered into our lives.  As the days wore on the girls became more devoted to him than ever, and he became correspondingly unbearable.  The condescension with which he would treat his fellow-men was something hardly to be tolerated, and the worst of it was there didn’t seem to be any way of bringing the girls to terms.  There wasn’t anybody left for us to flirt with now that Mary Brown had gone over to the enemy, she who had always been willing to flirt with anybody.

“There’s only one hope,” said Jenks.  “If he’ll only marry one of ’em, the others will come back.  He can’t marry ’em all, thank Heaven.”

“Suppose it was Fiametta he married?” said I.

“Or Araminta!” was his preposterous retort.

“He’ll never do that,” said Lester.  “He’s in clover now, and for the first time in his life, and the more of an ass he is the more he’ll like clover.  He’s paying attention to the lot.  He’ll never settle down to one.  It’s all up with us—­unless he bankrupts himself.”

“He won’t,” observed Harry Burnham.  “Conscious rectitude won’t do anything like that.  I’m going to New York to call on an old flame, and I advise the rest of you to do the same.”

“Well, I don’t know but what you are right,” said I, “but Araminta shall have one more chance.  I’m going to church to-morrow.  It’s Easter Sunday, and I’ll offer to escort her home.  If she says ‘yes,’ all right.  If she doesn’t, I’m lost to her forever.”

“Good scheme,” quoth the others.  “We’re with you.”

And that is what we all did.  The girls were all there, resplendent in new bonnets and toggery of other sorts, and the smirking Wilkins was there too.  He passed the plate after the sermon, and his rectitude shone out oleaginously on every line of his face.  It was as much as I could do to keep from tripping him up in the aisle, and sending him and the contribution-plate sprawling.  I almost did it when I imagined his feelings as the nickels rattled down through the register into the furnace below, but I restrained myself—­and the killing glances he threw into those glass eyes of his, whenever he happened to hold the plate before one of those Dumfries girls!  It was sickening, and I came near to flying before the close of the service.  The others had the same sensations and temptations, and it is a wonder that Wilkins did not