kill-joy--nobody liked him; for this female reason Christie distinguished
him.

He found a divine supper every Saturday night in her house; he ate, and
sighed! Christie fed him, and laughed at him.

Flucker ditto.

As she neither fed nor laughed at any other man, some twenty were
bitterly jealous of Willy Liston, and this gave the blighted youth a
cheerful moment or two.

But the bright alliance received a check some months before our tale.

Christie was _heluo librorum!_ and like others who have that taste, and
can only gratify it in the interval of manual exercise, she read very
intensely in her hours of study. A book absorbed her. She was like a
leech on these occasions, _non missura cutem._ Even Jean Carnie, her
co-adjutor or "neebor," as they call it, found it best to keep out of her
way till the book was sucked.

One Saturday night Willy Liston's evil star ordained that a gentleman of
French origin and Spanish dress, called Gil Blas, should be the
Johnstone's companion.

Willy Liston arrived.

Christie, who had bolted the door, told him from the window, civilly
enough, but decidedly, "She would excuse his company that night."