come out very well in the photograph, looking startlingly like his grandfather's portrait, with the same long thick flourish of the pen under his name as used to adorn the Governor's. "Yours truly, Gwynne Peters," and the _s_ streeling off in a comet's-tail like the final _e_ of old Samuel Gwynne's signature. All these young fellows frequented the house; on summer nights they could be heard as they strode away down Richmond Avenue, proclaiming at the tops of their several sets of lungs to a smiling world that the moon shone bright on their old Kentucky-y-y ho-ome, or lamenting in concert that Alas, they were no swimmers, so they lost their Clementine! Doctor Vardaman heard them as he sat smoking the pipe of peace in his porch. "God bless the boys!" the old man used to say to himself with a sigh. Sometimes they stayed over night, and came yawning downtown to their desks in the morning, sheepishly evading the paternal scowl, victims of Colonel Pallinder's strenuous hospitality. If Mazie had no scalps strung at her belt, she at least displayed the spoils of the vanquished; gloves, bangles, and bon-bons were hers in profuse supply; when she went away on a visit she corresponded with all of them, and was reported to be engaged three deep, to our horrified delight. It is a mistake to suppose that girls envy one another these light successes; we all admired, and I am afraid some of us tried to imitate Miss Pallinder. It was to be noticed that she herself showed an entire impartiality; when no one else was convenient, she did not hesitate to keep her hand in on Doctor Vardaman, half in fun of course. The old gentleman made an open joke of it. "This is the first time I have given away my picture in forty years," he said; and wrote at the bottom of the card in his neat, clear, physician's hand: _"Non sum qualis eram_----" "What does that mean, Doctor?" Mazie asked him suspiciously. "It is a plaint--the plaint of an elderly sentimentalist like me," he answered gravely. "'I am not what once I was in thy day, oh dear Cynara,' he remarks--in effect. Shall I write the English?" "No, don't. I think it's ever so much cuter this way. Who was Cynara?" "Well--ahem----" "Huh! Bet she wasn't any better than she'd ought to be!" grunted old Mrs. Botlisch sceptically; whereat the doctor, after a momentary struggle, laughed so immoderately that we all more than half suspected she was right. CHAPTER SIX