“Is it always different?” Alma asked, lifting her head and her hand from her drawing, and staring at it absently.

Fulkerson pushed both his hands through his whiskers.  “Look here!  Look here!” he said.  “Won’t somebody start some other subject?  We haven’t had the weather up yet, have we?  Or the opera?  What is the matter with a few remarks about politics?”

“Why, Ah thoat you lahked to toak about the staff of yo’ magazine,” said Miss Woodburn.

“Oh, I do!” said Fulkerson.  “But not always about the same member of it.  He gets monotonous, when he doesn’t get complicated.  I’ve just come round from the Marches’,” he added, to Mrs. Leighton.

“I suppose they’ve got thoroughly settled in their apartment by this time.”  Mrs. Leighton said something like this whenever the Marches were mentioned.  At the bottom of her heart she had not forgiven them for not taking her rooms; she had liked their looks so much; and she was always hoping that they were uncomfortable or dissatisfied; she could not help wanting them punished a little.

“Well, yes; as much as they ever will be,” Fulkerson answered.  “The Boston style is pretty different, you know; and the Marches are old-fashioned folks, and I reckon they never went in much for bric-a-brac They’ve put away nine or ten barrels of dragon candlesticks, but they keep finding new ones.”

“Their landlady has just joined our class,” said Alma.  “Isn’t her name Green?  She happened to see my copy of ‘Every Other Week’, and said she knew the editor; and told me.”

“Well, it’s a little world,” said Fulkerson.  “You seem to be touching elbows with everybody.  Just think of your having had our head translator for a model.”

“Ah think that your whole publication revolves aroand the Leighton family,” said Miss Woodburn.

“That’s pretty much so,” Fulkerson admitted.  “Anyhow, the publisher seems disposed to do so.”

“Are you the publisher?  I thought it was Mr. Dryfoos,” said Alma.

“It is.”

“Oh!”

The tone and the word gave Fulkerson a discomfort which he promptly confessed.  “Missed again.”

The girls laughed, and he regained something of his lost spirits, and smiled upon their gayety, which lasted beyond any apparent reason for it.

Miss Woodburn asked, “And is Mr. Dryfoos senio’ anything like ouah Mr. Dryfoos?”

“Not the least.”

“But he’s jost as exemplary?”

“Yes; in his way.”

“Well, Ah wish Ah could see all those pinks of puffection togethah, once.”

“Why, look here!  I’ve been thinking I’d celebrate a little, when the old gentleman gets back.  Have a little supper—­something of that kind.  How would you like to let me have your parlors for it, Mrs. Leighton?  You ladies could stand on the stairs, and have a peep at us, in the bunch.”

“Oh, mah!  What a privilege!  And will Miss Alma be there, with the othah contributors?  Ah shall jost expah of envy!”