"Pa, he was in the back room the first day Fan's pa and the new clerk took the shop, after pa got it good'n started. Him an' me most died laughin' at the kickin' o' the people. Every last one of 'em ast fer pa to wait on 'em, but Fan's pa he told 'em that he'd bankrupted hisself and had t' sell out to him. Pa said he wisht he had somethin' to bankrupt on. But, law, he'll never make no money. He ain't built that way. He's a tip top perfessional starter tho', ain't he, Fan?" she concluded with a gleeful reminiscent grimace at her friend. Francis shifted her position awkwardly, and tried to feel that everything was quite as it should be in good society, and Gertrude made a little attempt to divert the conversation to affairs of the Guild, but Ettie Berton, who appeared to look upon her father as a huge joke, and to feel herself most at home in discussing him, broke in again:-- "But the time he started the 'Stable fer Business Horses,' was the funniest yet," and she laughed until her eyes filled with tears, and she dried them with the lower part of the palms of her hands, rubbing them red. "The boss told him not to take anything _but_ business horses. What he meant was, to be sure not to let in any fancy high-steppers, fer fear they'd get hurt or sick, an' he'd have trouble about 'em Well, pa didn't understand at first, an' he wouldn't take no mules, an' most all the business horses around there _was_ mules, an' when drivers'd ask him why he wouldn't feed 'em 'er take 'em in, he jest had t' fix up the funniest stories y' ever heard. He tole one man that he hadn't laid in the kind o' feed mules eat, n' the man told him he was the biggest fool to talk he ever see. The mule-man he--" Francis King had arisen, and started awkwardly toward Gertrude, with her hand extended. "I think we ought to go," she said, uneasily, her large eyes burning with mortification, and an oppressed sense of being at a disadvantage. "So soon?" said Gertrude, smiling as she took her hand, and laid her other arm about the shoulders of Ettie, who had hastened to place herself in the group. "I was so entertained that I did not realize that perhaps you ought to go before it grows late--oh," glancing at a tiny watch in her bracelet, "it is late--too late for you to go way down there alone. I will send James, or--" "Allow me the pleasure, will you not?" asked Avery, bowing first to Gertrude, and then toward Francis, and Gertrude said:-- "Oh, thank you, if--" but Ettie clapped her hands in glee.