My wits were knocked out of me; but they are tired
of secession, and pleading to be let in again."
"Keep some of them out for our sake! We must have you at our commonplace
level. Well, Miss Mary, I suppose this is the first time you have had
the sensation of breaking a man's head. You generally hit lower." Peter
tapped his heart.
"I'm all right now, thanks to my surgeon," says Wade. "Give me a lift,
Peter." He pulled up and clung to his friend.
"You're the vine and I'm the lamppost," Skerrett said. "Mary, do you
know what a pocket-pistol is?"
"I have seen such weapons concealed about the persons of modern
warriors."
"There's one in my overcoat-pocket, with a cup at the butt and a cork at
the muzzle. Skate off now, like an angel, and get it. Bring Fanny, too.
She is restorative."
"Are you alive enough to admire that, Dick?" he continued, as she
skimmed away.
"It would pat a soul under the ribs of Death."
"I venerate that young woman," says Peter. "You see what a beauty she
is, and just as unspoiled as this ice. Unspoiled beauties are rarer than
rocs' eggs.
"She has a singularly true face," Wade replied, "and that is the main
thing,--the most excellent thing in man or woman."
"Yes, truth makes that nuisance, beauty, tolerable."
"You did not do me the honor to present me."
"I saw you had gone a great way beyond that, my boy. Have you not her
initials in cambric on your brow? Not M.
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