MAX’S LOGIC. 35

“ There was once a little boy,” said Max, — “a little boy,
with a very kind brother and sister; and he fought a
duel and kicked up such a row getting over it that he
drove his sister into consumption. His brother became
insane, and stood on his head for two years, in the left-hand
tower of the insane asylum. The girl went back to Ireland,
because she could n’t live with him, and so he had to go with-_
out his molasses gingerbread, and live on Graham crusts that
hismotherleft beforeshe went. She took a second-class passage
in a blue balloon for Alaska, and went into the seal fisheries

_ shortly after, where she died of a broken heart, telegraphing
home with her latest breath, to appoint Mr. Merino, the
butcher, sole guardian of her wretched son, who had caten
his last Graham crust the week before, and was reduced -—”’

“Max,” said Trotty, in an awful voice, “you may go.
You may go, Max. My publishers have failed. They can’t
print your book. It won’t sell. You may go. And when
I die, sir, I had made a will bequeeving my royal agate to
you, sir, but I’d rather they ’d bury it with me, now!”

Thus unmistakably dismissed, Max and his masculine
Logic disappeared from the scene, and Trotty was left once
more at the mercy of feminine intuitions.

Lill had one immediately. She did not call it an intuition,
she called it a bright idea.

“ Just the thing!” she said.

What was just the thing will be partly explained in the
next chapter.