I suppose his profession was that of promoting--a pursuit which has since been compactly described to me as selling you a cullender for a wash-basin. Socially he took no hand beyond inviting young men to the house, and within an incredibly short time he did not even have occasion for that. They went, of their own motion, in droves, like all the rest of the world. And I will say here, speaking for our youth, that in spite of the cards and cigarettes and champagne, the over-eating and over-drinking, the general lax gaiety of that meteoric two years, I do not believe any of us were materially harmed. We sincerely liked the Pallinders; we did not merely hanker for their flesh-pots. And even now, after twenty-five years, and knowing all the mean and dingy side of their career, I still cherish a fondness for those hearty, happy, self-indulgent, irresponsible adventurers. The old Gwynne house now underwent a transformation the nature and extent of which can best be realised when it is learned that poor old Caroline Gwynne's room became Miss Mazie Pallinder's; the roses of Mazie's wall-paper climbed all over that tragic apartment; lace-edged muslins and flowered cretonne festooned the windows. What with a pillar obscuring the east window, and a heavy growth of wistaria matted on a frame in front of the south, you had to feel your way about at broad noon; and were liable to be suddenly assaulted on the tenderest part of the shins or ankles by some dastardly rocking-chair, lurking in the gloom like a Thug, and inadvertently set in motion. Surprises were pretty frequent in that room; it was not unusual to put your foot down in a box of chocolate-cream drops or through the parchment vitals of Mazie's banjo abandoned on the floor. And when you came face to face with a pale glimmering phantom in a corner it might be either your own figure reflected in one of the full-length mirrors liberally distributed around the walls, or Miss Pallinder herself in an embroidered French night-dress, her favourite afternoon wear. The other decorations were mostly photographs of Mazie in an astounding variety of costumes, and her numberless real or supposed conquests. Young men in regimentals, army or navy; young men in fancy dress, striking attitudes with a sword, or making a leg in silk tights; young men with the painfully close-fitting trousers and upright brush of hair fashionable in the eighties--it was a noble array, that gallery of Mazie's, particularly when she began to enrich it with certain more familiar likenesses. There you might see "J. B." Taylor--everybody called him "J. B."--with the cap and gown he had worn at his last Commencement; Teddy Johns laughing and showing all his teeth--Teddy had fine teeth and knew it; Bob Carson, with something written on the back of the photograph that Mazie made an affectation of not allowing us to read--we had all seen it nevertheless, and used to wonder if Bob were really in earnest; Gwynne Peters, whose fair hair did not