The Albany Register

"She's as beautiful as Hebe!" said Mr. Mortimer.

"Indeed!" said his nephew's wife, rather faintly.

"Eyes deep blue, like midsummer sky—hair lustrous as flaxen gold—teeth like twin rows of pearls," pursued the middle-aged gentleman.

"She must be very pretty," said Mrs. Mortimer, junior.

"Pretty." echoed the old bachelor. "Pretty's no word for it."

"And young?"

"Well, not so very," admitted Mr. Mortimer. "She's five and thirty, but she has the complexion of eighteen."

"That's easily accounted for," said Harry the nephew. "What with, 'Cream of Roses, Baths of Pearls,' and 'Balms of Venus,' people can have whatever complexion they please nowadays, provided they've got the money to pay for it."

"Nonsense!" snapped Mr. Mortimer, sitting up very straight, and looking around with a general air of defiance. "As if my Aurelia would condescend to such petty artifices as that! She's purity, frankness, single-minded artlessness itself!"

"Oh!" said Harry,

"in she"

"Certainly she is," said the senior. "Do you think I could love a woman who was made up as an actress?"

"People do," said Harry, dubiously.

"But not people of my standard," retorted his uncle, loftily.

And Mrs. Harry thought remorsefully of the little china powder pot, with its downy puff, with which she used to "cool down" her complexion on hot days.

"But really," thought poor little Mrs. Harry, "one don't want to look as if one were varnished all over, or dipped in a jar of boiling oil, like the forty thieves in the Arabian Nights."

"Harry," said she, when Uncle Mortimer had taken his leave, "do you really think it's wrong to use a dab of powder in the hot weather?"

"Nonsense," said Harry, with an upward elevation of his handsome Grecian nose. "I daresay that desperate old maid that Uncle Mortimer is going to marry is painted like a Jezebel."

"Harry."

"Sims says so. And Sims knows her—Miss Aurelia Hopkins, that's her name. And she's wagered a diamond bracelet with one of her friends that she will be married before Christmas. I wonder what sort of a wife that'll be for Uncle Morty!"

"But, Harry, why don't you tell him?" cried the little wife.

"Because, my dear, he's too far gone to believe a word of it."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Mortimer. "And of course he'll withdraw your little allowance now."

"Of course," admitted her husband with a grimace.

"It's too bad," sighed Mrs. Mortimer. "Just when you've lost your clerkship, and little Effie needs sea-air, and Aunt Christinia has written to ask if we can lend her money enough to send little lame Charlie to that famous London surgeon. Things always go contrary, don't they, Harry?"

"Don't fret, my pet," said Harry Mortimer, caressingly stroking the golden head that bent so low. "It'll all be right, if Uncle Morty should get married. I'll find something to do, if it's nothing better than sawing wood or hauling in coal."

But as he went out, gaily whistling, to keep up a brave exterior, he did wish, most earnestly, in his secret heart, that Miss Aurelia Hopkins hadn't seen fit to cast her siren spells over the heart of the rich bachelor uncle, whose heir-apparent he had always been.

If I believed, honestly and truly, that she would make him happy," thought Harry, "I wouldn't grudge his money to her. But I don't believe any thing of the sort."

Little Effie had the toothache next day. Mrs. Mortimer clasped her hands in despair.

"Oh, Harry," she said to her husband, "I'm afraid she'll have to have that tooth out!"

"Very well," said Harry. "Take her to the dentist's."

"Oh, Harry, I daren't!" faltered the little woman, who could not endure to see a fly killed or a mouse drowned.

"Then I will," said Harry, laughing.

The dentist, a dapper little man, smelling of scented soap, and orris root tooth powder, was engaged just at the moment of their entrance, but would be at liberty presently.

Little Effie sat down, quaking and trembling, in an easy chair.

"Oh, papa," faltered she, "I wish there wasn't any such thing as teeth."

Mr. Mortimer, taking up a newspaper at that moment, chanced to knock a little paste-board box off the mantel—a pasteboard box neatly tinctured with a ring of india rubber.

"Hallo!" said Mr. Mortimer, "what's this? I hope I haven't done any harm. Miss Aurelia Hopkins!" he repeated, reading a pencil inscription on the lid.

"Yes," said the little dentist, hurrying to the rescue—"Miss Hopkins' new set. Ought to have been sent yesterday."

"New set?" vaguely repeated Harry.

"Set of what?"

"Of teeth, to be sure, uppers and lowers," said the dentist. "Ah, you may look surprised, but I make teeth for some of our very best society. And if you yourself should ever require—Yes, yes, I'm coming, sir."

And the man of molars hurried back to his inner sanctum.

When little Effie's malignant tooth was safely drawn, and Harry Mortimer had paid reluctantly, he paused a minute on the threshold.

"Ah, by the way," said he "I'm going directly past Miss Hopkins' house—you're probably aware that she's to be married to my uncle next month—and if it would be any accommodation to you I could leave those teeth for her."

"Much obliged, I'm sure," said the dentist. "If you would take the trouble. I've only one errand boy, and he is so unreliable and forgetful that I sometimes scarcely know which way to turn—much obliged. Here they are, sir."