"I know. It's an awful rush this season. The girls can stand it, of course; they rest in the daytime. But a fellow's got to go to business. Somebody said to Arch. Lewis the other day, 'Oh, never mind. They don't need you at the office.' He said, 'Yes, but hang it all, I don't want 'em to find that out!'" Muriel listened and assented vaguely; she was not accustomed to young men who had businesses and offices. Time was passing, and they were no nearer the point than they were ten minutes ago. She hesitated; and J. B. admired, yet a little wondered at, the swift changes of colour in her cheeks. "These English girls beat everything at blushing," he said to himself; and then removed his eyes with a sudden guilty flush over his own face as he realised that he had been staring too hard. But, Jove, what a beauty she was! "You all think Mr. Johns is very good in his part, don't you?" said Muriel, nervously conscious that they had been silent too long. American men, she had noticed, expected the girls to do the most of the talking; and, somehow, the girls did. "Why, yes, especially in 'Tell,' don't _you_?" "Well, I--I don't always understand, you know. And the last night we rehearsed, after we went to that dinner at the Ellises', I couldn't even make out some of the words he said, he spoke so----" "He--he wasn't very well--we had to call the rehearsal off, you remember?" interrupted the young man hastily. Muriel was surprised to see him redden and avoid her eyes. There was an awkward pause--the kind of pause that, had Muriel been an American girl, with their uncanny sharpness of intuition, she would not have allowed to occur. But, had Muriel been an American girl, this history would have remained forever unwritten. But for her visit to the Pallinders' there would have been no 'Tell,' no 'Mrs. Tankerville,' no dinner at Doctor Vardaman's--who can say what might have happened instead? "Ted can imitate Billy Rice first-rate," said J. B., anxious to steer gracefully away from an uncomfortable situation. "We had a minstrel-show one time, and he made up to look like Rice and sang that song of his: "Arthur, they say, will em-i-grate," "Then all the rest of us had to shout, you know, "WHEN?" "Bye-and-bye! Into the ma-tri-mo-ni-al state." "WHEN?" "Bye-and-bye!" "They're all the time getting off something about the President marrying again, you know. Teddy was as good as Rice any day." "Billy Rice?" repeated Muriel. She had not thought the fragment of comic song very comic (and therein I dare say she was right), and she knew no more who Billy Rice was than--than the average reader of these lines. Time has dismissed that fat, jolly troubadour. Upon what bank of misty Acheron does he now perform his melodies? And where are the snows of yester-year? "He's a big fat fellow--a white man, you know. They're all white, but blacked up, in the minstrel-shows," J. B. explained patiently.