than she felt, so that Albert was happy, and this story was doomed to suffer because of his happiness.  I might give zest to this dull love-affair by telling you that Mr. Minorkey opposed the match.  Next to a disdainful lady-love, the best thing for a writer and a reader is a furious father.  But I must be truthful at all hazards, and I am obliged to say that while Mr. Minorkey would have been delighted to have had for son-in-law some man whose investments might have multiplied Helen’s inheritance, he was yet so completely under the influence of his admired daughter that he gave a consent, tacitly at least, to anything she chose to do.  So that Helen became recognized presently as the prospective Mrs. Charlton.  Mrs. Plausaby liked her because she wore nice dresses, and Katy loved her because she loved Brother Albert.  For that matter, Katy did not need any reason for loving anybody.  Even Isa stifled a feeling she was unable to understand, and declared that Miss Minorkey was smart, and just suited to Albert; and she supposed that Albert, with all his crotchets and theories, might make a person like Miss Minorkey happy.  It wasn’t every woman that could put up with them, you know.

But it was not about the prosperous but uninteresting courtship of two people with “idees” that I set out to tell in this chapter.  If Charlton got on smoothly with Helen Minorkey, and if he had no more serious and one-sided outbreaks with his step-father, he did not get on with his sister’s lover.

Westcott had been drinking all of one night with some old cronies of the Elysian Club, and his merry time of the night was subsiding into a quarrelsome time in the morning.  He was able, when he was sober, to smother his resentment towards Albert, for there is no better ambush than an entirely idiotic giggle.  But drink had destroyed his prudence.  And so when Albert stepped on the piazza of the hotel where Westcott stood rattling his pocketful of silver change and his keys for the amusement of the bystanders, as was his wont, the latter put himself in Charlton’s way, and said, in a dreary, half-drunk style: 

[Illustration:  ONE SAVAGE BLOW FULL IN THE FACE.]

“Mornin’, Mr. Hedgehog!  By George! he! he! he!  How’s the purty little girl?  My little girl.  Don’t you wish she wasn’t?  Hard feller, I am.  Any gal’s a fool to marry me, I s’pose.  Katy’s a fool.  That’s just what I want, by George I he! he!  I want a purty fool.  And she’s purty, and she’s—­the other thing.  What you goin’ to do about it?  He! he! he!”

“I’m going to knock you down,” said Albert, “if you say another word about her.”

“A’n’t she mine?  You can’t help it, either.  He! he!  The purty little goose loves Smith Westcott like lots of other purty little—­”