“Mary——?”

“Damer.”

“I like the name,” says Wade, repeating it.  “It sounds simple and thoroughbred.”

“Just what she is.  One of the nine simple-hearted and thorough-bred girls on this continent.”

“Nine?”

“Is that too many?  Three, then.  That’s one in ten millions.  The exact proportion of Poets, Painters, Oratory, Statesmen, and all other Great Artists.  Well,—­three or nine,—­Mary Damer is one of them.  She never saw fear or jealousy, or knowingly allowed an ignoble thought or an ungentle word or an ungraceful act in herself.  Her atmosphere does not tolerate flirtation.  You must find out for yourself how much genius she has and has not.  But I will say this,—­that I think of puns two a minute faster when I’m with her.  Therefore she must be magnetic, and that is the first charm in a woman.”

Wade laughed.

“You have not lost your powers of analysis, Peter.  But talking of this heroine, you have not told me anything about yourself, except apropos of punning.”

“Come up and dine, and we’ll fire away personal histories, broadside for broadside!  I’ve been looking in vain for a worthy hero to set vis-a-vis to my fair kinswoman.  But stop! perhaps you have a Christmas turkey at home, with a wife opposite, and a brace of boys waiting for drumsticks.”

“No,—­my boys, like cherubs, await their own drumsticks.  They’re not born, and I’m not married.”

“I thought you looked incomplete and abnormal.  Well, I will show you a model wife,—­and here she comes!”

Here they came, the two ladies, gliding round the Point, with draperies floating as artlessly artful as the robes of Raphael’s Hours, or a Pompeian Bacchante.  For want of classic vase or patera, Miss Damer brandished Peter Skerrett’s pocket-pistol.

Fanny Skerrett gave her hand cordially to Wade, and looked a little anxiously at his pale face.

“Now, M.D.,” says Peter, “you have been surgeon, you shall be doctor and dose our patient.  Now, then,—­

       “’Hebe, pour free! 
  Quicken his eyes with mountain-dew,
  That Styx, the detested,
  No more he may view.’”

     “Thanks, Hebe!”

Wade said, continuing the quotation,—­

       “I quaff it! 
  Io Paean, I cry! 
  The whiskey of the Immortals
  Forbids me to die.”

“We effeminate women of the nineteenth century are afraid of broken heads,” said Fanny.  “But Mary Damer seems quite to enjoy your accident, Mr. Wade, as an adventure.”

Miss Damer certainly did seem gay and exhilarated.

“I enjoy it,” said Wade.  “I perceive that I fell on my feet, when I fell on my crown.  I tumbled among old friends, and I hope among new ones.”

“I have been waiting to claim my place among your old friends,” Mrs. Skerrett said, “ever since Peter told me you were one of his models.”