"Me?" I gasped. By Jove, in my horror, I lost my grip upon my jolly grammar. "Oh, I say now! _I_ think the frump--this Miss Kirkland, you know--is a fright--regular freak, dash it! I told the judge so!" "You--you--" "Of _course_!" And I shrugged disgustedly, making the ugliest grimace I possibly could. "Why, dash it, if I were a woman and had a face like hers, I never would have left China, or England--or wherever her jolly home was--_no, sir_!" She caught her breath with a little gasp--then she was off again! This time she rested her arms upon the rail behind and buried her head in them, her lovely shoulders jiggling up and down, her sobbing laughter sending her off at last into a spell of coughing. "Oh!" she breathed, lifting at last her gloriously blushing face and dabbing at it with her ridiculous little handkerchief, "oh, you'll _kill_ me--I know you will!" I certainly had stirred her up, and I was delighted. It _was_ funny to think of any one calling the frump beautiful--it must seem funnier still to her, of course--to Frances, I mean. Why, dash it, _she_ seemed to find a funny side to it that I didn't, don't you know! "Tell me, now"--she clasped her knee, lifting her lovely face coaxingly--"tell me all that she said about me--_everything_!" And I did--every word, by Jove! And no one could look into that sweet, ingenuous face as I proceeded, and doubt that the slanders were new to her. Never a jolly one touched her--only you could see their absurdity amused her. Several times I had to pause as she bent under a gale of laughter. Only once was she brought up, shocked. "Oh!" she uttered faintly, as I came to the intimation about her being hail-fellow-well-met with the footmen and her drinking and carousing with them and other men-servants until three in the morning. I realized that it wasn't the matter of the drinking that feazed her and drew from her little gasps as I came to this--knew _that_ didn't bother her, don't you know, for I knew she did drink--_could_ drink, I mean to say; for I had not forgotten the two full whisky glasses of high-proof Scotch she had tossed off that night in my rooms. Why, no, dash it, she was _able_ to drink--it went in the family! I could never forget with what pride she had told me of putting her brother Jack under the table two nights running. _That_ was all right--it was the other part of the frump's scandal that brought her up, standing, so to speak. For _now_ she really looked embarrassed, despite another lapse to laughter. Her face and neck were dyed a lovely crimson.