“Hallo, what’s the row? Have I sthruck your girl? Do you know her?” Pondy asked, while his companions stood staring at Kenneth with their wine untouched. “I know her, yes; she is, or was, my father’s ward,” Kenneth replied, his voice trembling with the indignation he felt at hearing Connie’s name on the lips of the little drunken jackanapes, who answered: “Then you know a deuced pretty girl, if she did call me an insholent cur.” “Oh,” a chorus of voices chimed in, as the guests put down their glasses and resumed their seats. “So she is the girl who snubbed you. Tell us about it and where you met her.” Either the mention of Connie, or the threatening look in Kenneth’s eyes, partially sobered Pondy, who replied more naturally than he had been talking for some time. “I met her in France and Italy. She was with her aunt, a hawk-eyed woman, and I didn’t think either of ’em hankered for my company. But, ’pon my shoul, the girl was such a shtunner that I would keep with ’em. I’d heard American girls were eashy going, and once in a diligence, when I shat next to her and it wash darkish, and her bare hand lay on her lap, looking so white and shoft, I just touched it, kinder friendly, you know, to shee what she would do. I’d held another girl’s hand five minutes, or more, but, my Lord! I believe thish one would have throttled me on the shpot if there had not been others in the diligence and she hated a schene. She never spoke to me again, and her aunt forbade my speaking to either of them. All the shame, she’s a beauty, and a catch for some of you chaps. Plenty of tin, they shay. Here’s to her health! Constance Elliott.” He drank it alone, with the exception of the two choice spirits from Rocky Point. The rest of the party were watching Kenneth, whose fists were clenched and whose eyes were blazing with anger. He, however, sat still while the hilarity went on, and songs were sung and stories told and college yells were given and cigars and pipes were smoked and wine was drank, until Pondy was beside himself, and by way of emphasizing his good time threw his glass across the room at Mrs. Stannard’s mirror. The noise seemed to intensify his enjoyment and make him wild. A second glass went after the first, and a third would have followed if Harry and Charlie Browne had not interfered. Taking advantage of this diversion, Kenneth left the feast, which lasted till after midnight. In the morning, when the sun looked into the dining-room at the Morris house, it saw broken bottles and wine glasses and stained linen and the one-hundred-year-old mirror, with scarcely a whole piece in it. Pondy, who had grown unmanageable, had again made it his target, calling it sometimes the “old lady” and again the “W. C. T. U.” At last, when there was nothing more in his reach to throw, he fell out of his chair under the table, where his comrades left him after several ineffectual efforts to get him up.