Bolton had become accustomed to see him bursting into his room at all hours, with a breeze which fluttered all his papers; and generally sat back resignedly in his chair, and laughed in helpless good-nature, no matter how untimely the interruption. "Oh, it's Jim!" he would say, in tones of comic resignation. "It's no use; he must have his fling!" "Time's up," said Jim, drumming on my door with his hair-brush when his toilet was completed. "Come on, my boy, 'Let us haste to Kelvyn Grove.'" I opened my door, and Jim took a paternal survey of me from neck-cloth to boot-toe, turning me round and inspecting me on all sides, as if I had been a Sunday-school boy, dressed for an exhibition. "Those girls have such confounded sharp eyes," he remarked, "a fellow needs to be well got up. Yes, you'll do; and you're not bad looking, Hal, either, all things considered," he added, encouragingly. "Come along. I've got lots of things to make a sensation with among the girls to-night." "What, for example?" "Oh, I've been investigating round, and know sundry little interesting particulars as to the new engagement just declared. I know when the engagement ring was got, and what it cost, and where the bride's jewels are making up, and what they are to be--all secrets, you understand, of the very deadest door-nail kind. But Jim knows them! Oh, yes!--you'll see the flutter I'll make in the roost to-night! I say, if you want to cultivate your acquaintance with Miss Eva there, I'll draw all the rest off, and keep 'em so wide awake round me that they'll never think what becomes of you." I must confess to feeling not a little nervous in the prospect of my initiation into society, and regarding with a secret envy the dashing, easy assurance of Jim. I called him in my heart something of a coxcomb, but it was with a half-amused tolerance that I allowed him to patronize me.