were better friends than ever since the little scene at the Van Tassels.
"Hear! hear!" cried Steve, looking more than ever like a cheerful young cockerel trying to crow, as he stood upon the hearth-rug with his hands under his coat-tails, rising and falling alternately upon the toes and heels of his neat little boots.
"Come, you've given them each a pat on the head: haven't you got one for me? I need it enough; for if ever there was a poor devil born under an evil star, it is C. C. Campbell," exclaimed Charlie, leaning his chin on his cue with a discontented expression of countenance; for trying to be good is often very hard work till one gets used to it.
"Oh, yes! I can accommodate you;" and, as if his words suggested the selection, Mac, still lying flat upon his back, repeated one of his favorite bits from Beaumont and Fletcher; for he had a wonderful memory, and could reel off poetry by the hour together.
"'Man is his own star: and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are; or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.'"
"Confoundedly bad angels they are too," muttered Charlie, ruefully; remembering the one that undid him.
His cousins never knew exactly what occurred on
