music book under his arm, comes out, with a strange, screwy motion, as
though through an opening much too narrow for him, and, having poised a
moment to nervously pull some imaginary object from his right boot and
hurl it madly from him, goes unexpectedly off with the precipitancy and
equilibriously concentric manner of a gentleman in his first private
essay on a tight-rope.

"Was that Mr. BUMSTEAD, SMYTHE?"

"It wasn't anybody else, your Reverence."

"Say 'his identity with the person mentioned scarcely comes within the
legitimate domain of doubt,' SMYTHE--to Father Dean, the younger of the
piggish persons softly interposes,

"Is Mr. BUMSTEAD unwell, SMYTHE?"

"He's got 'em bad to-night."

"Say 'incipient cerebral effusion marks him especially for its prey at
this vesper hour.' SMYTHE--to Father DEAN," again softly interposes Mr.
SIMPSON, the Gospeler.

"Mr. SIMPSON," pursues Father DEAN, whose name has been modified, by
various theological stages, from its original form of Paudean, to Pere
DEAN--Father DEAN, "I regret to hear that Mr. BUMSTEAD is so delicate in
health; you may stop at his boarding-house on your way home, and ask him
how he is, with my compliments." _Pax vobiscum_.

Shining so with a sense of his own benignity that the retiring sun gives