"Ye-as," said Lind, negligently drawing the long silky moustache and beard through the hollow of his hand and letting the points drop. "Woodlawn. We talked it over. 'Marry, my boy,' said the old girl, 'and settle.' 'All right!' said I, 'aunty: _I'll_ marry, and _you_ settle.' Payne and I made out a liberal schedule of my liabilities for her lawyer last night. My motto is, be off at the tap if you can, or a wink before it, and come down the quarter under the whip. I consider my autograph on Aunt Fanny good for a thousand any day. T'other day I said to Payne I wanted the stick and two hoops ($100), and Aunt Fanny just said, 'Double it, and arrange with your cousin Sue.' Soon as this baggytell is over little Sue Brown jines the Masons.--Here's to her, gentlemen! and no heeltaps. No need to say fellows of this party are welcome to our table;" and he delicately tipped off the wine, saying "he had drunk better." "Payne says the fellow will apologize," said one. "What will you do?" "Well," drawled Mason, dipping a cracker in the fragrant sherry and munching, "a fellow that saw it all from Mill Springs to Appomattox doesn't care for these little things. If it was the first time, or even the second or third, I wouldn't stand it. But after that the thing loses its gloss and gets to be a confounded bore. You see it's getting up so early; and there's your man squatting on the grass like a hurt wild-duck, and all the fellows scared and ugly, and poking at you as if it was your fault. And the confounded police, and the bother of keeping out of the way, and maybe lose the spring meeting. It gets to be deuced low, fellows. No: if the little man will own up and quit annoying somebody--" with a lazy wink. "I drink to Sue Mason, _née_ Brown, gentlemen. I don't care: he may get off whole. Of course a written apology." "Apology," said Major Johnstone, whose impressible nature went with the extremists. "My God, sir! is a venerable lady of wealth and fashion--of the American peerage, by George, sir! American peerage--to be insulted in an assembly of her nearest relatives, and the base scullion to escape with a bare 'Sorry for it'? A pocket full of apologies and a back full of bruises, as Tom Marshall said, by George! Look at Rule 10, Tipperary Code," slapping Barrington's _Sketches_ emphatically. "No, sir! Such an example would corrupt American youth." "Bosh!" said another, who sat on the side of the bed and rocked his legs alternately as if for a wager. "That rot is past salting down. A lady's name involved! Our chivalrous principal is right. Honorably adjusted, satisfactory, etc., is the end of it." "But a blow?" said the major, like a weathercock in contradictory flaws, and running over the leaves. "Here is Rule 5--" "That's Payne," said one, interrupting the major unceremoniously at a step outside. "Payne never walked that fast in his life," was the reply. "Payne was born tired. There's somebody with him."