“P-p-p-pass me the tobacco.” He filled his pipe very deliberately and walked across the room. “Where do you keep your matches? Ah, here they are. Who,” added he, striking one—“puff—do you—puff, puff—think so—puff, puff, puff—bright? Confound the thing!—puff—puff—it has gone out!” And he struck another. Lighting his pipe, and throwing himself upon a lounge, he looked the picture of content. “Say, old boy,” said I, “own up. Those hazel eyes—” “Do you know, Jack-Whack” (whenever he called me that he was in the best possible humor), “that you are making a howling ass of yourself?” And he shot a pillar of smoke straight towards the ceiling, following its eddying curves with contemplative eyes. “‘Howling ass’ is a mixed metaphor.” “Yes, but an unmixed truth, my boy. Did it ever occur to you, Jack,” said he, removing the Powhatan pipe, with its reed-root stem, from his lips, “that cigars are essentially vulgar? You never thought of it? But they are. So are dress-coats. You have only to put them into marble to see it. Look at the statue of Henry Clay in the Square. Was ever anything so absurd! Posterity will inevitably regard Henry as an ass.” “Of the howling variety?” “Of course. Now, just picture to yourself Phidias’ Jove with a cigar stuck into his mouth.” Charley shot upwards a circling wreath of smoke, watched it till it dissipated itself, and then turned his head, with a little jerk, towards me: “H’m? How would the Olympian Zeus look with a Parian Partaga between his ambrosial lips?” “I have seen lips that—” “Howling and so forth.” And he turned over on his back and commenced pulling away at his pipe. “I think she likes you.” Charley pursed up his mouth, and, taking aim, with one eye, at a spot on the ceiling, projected at it a fine-spun thread of smoke. I detected a tremor in his extended lips. “I may say I know she likes you.” With an explosive chuckle the pucker instantly dissolved. I had taken him at a disadvantage. His features snapped back into position as suddenly as those of a rubber mask. “I was thinking,” said he, “how great a solace and bulwark a pipe would have been to Socrates, during his interviews with Xantippe,—and it made me smile.” “Yes,” said I, carelessly. “_Yes!_” said he, rising up on his elbow,—“what do you mean by ‘yes’?” “I merely meant to agree with you, that a pipe would have been a great solace and bulwark to Socrates during his interviews with Xantippe.” He fell back on the lounge. “Let’s go to bed,” said he. “Good!” said I; and I began to remove my coat. “So the Don is to leave the Carters to-morrow and go to his own quarters.” “Yes,” said he, rising from the lounge. “I like that chap.” That was a great deal for Charley to say. It was the very first expression of his sentiments towards the Don. “I am glad you do,” said I; “I thought you did.”