As he regained his seat the butler pushed aside the light curtains of the veranda, and in his regulation monotone announced, “Miss Shirley, Major Slocomb, and Mr. Hardy.” “My dear madam,” broke out the major in his breeziest manner, before Mrs. Leroy could turn to greet him, “what would life be in this bake-oven of a city but for the joy of yo’r presence? And Henry! You here, too? Do you know that that rascal Jack has kept me waiting for two hours while he took Helen for a five minutes’ walk round the square, or I would have been here long ago. Where are you, you young dog?” he called to Jack, who had lingered in the darkened hall with Helen. “What’s the matter now, major?” inquired Jack, shaking hands with Mrs. Leroy, and turning again toward the Pocomokian. “I asked your permission. What would you have me do? Let Helen see nothing of New York, because you”— “Do hush up, cousin Tom,” said Helen, pursing her lips at the major. “We stayed out because we wanted to, didn’t we, Jack? Don’t you think he is a perfect ogre, Mrs. Leroy?” “He forgets his own younger days, my dear Miss Shirley,” she answered. “He shan’t scold you. Henry, make the major join you in a cigar, while I give Miss Helen a cup of coffee.” “They are both forgiven, my dear madam, when so lovely an advocate pleads their cause,” said the Pocomokian grandiloquently, bowing low, his hand on his chest. “Thank you; I will join you,” and leaned over Sanford as he spoke, and lighted a cigar in the blue flame of the tiny silver lamp. [Illustration: “Sanford ... raised her hand to his lips”] It was delightful to note how the coming alliance of the Hardy and Slocomb families had developed the paternal, not to say patriarchal attitude of the major toward his once boon companion. He already regarded Jack as his own son,—somebody to lean upon in his declining years, a prop and a staff for his old age. He had even sketched out in his mind a certain stately mansion on the avenue, to say nothing of a series of country-seats,—one on Crab Island in the Chesapeake,—all with porticoes and an especial suite of rooms on the ground floor; and he could hear Jack say, as he pointed them out to his visitors, “These are for my dear old friend Major Slocomb of Pocomoke,—member of my wife’s family.” He could see his old enemy, Jefferson, Jack’s servant, cowed into respectful obedience by the new turn in his master’s affairs, in which the Pocomokian had lent so helpful a hand. “She is the child of my old age, so to speak, suh, and I, of co’se, gave my consent after great hesitation,” he would frequently say, fully persuading himself that Helen had really sought his approbation, and never for one moment dreaming that, grateful as she was to him for his chaperonage of her while in New York, he was the last person in the world she would have consulted in any matter so vital to her happiness.