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On one side was a youth who had begun to overtop her, on the other a girl of shorter and sturdier mould, who only reached up to her shoulder. 'So she is coming! the girl said. 'Yes, Uncle Maurice has answered my letter very kindly. 'I should think he would be very much obliged, observed the boy. 'Please, mamma, do tell us all about it, said the girl.
Overtop reasoned correctly; for, at ten A.M. the following day, that gentleman called at the office and paid the one hundred and fifty dollars, and said that he was very much obliged to Overtop & Maltboy for their gentlemanly conduct in the affair. Mr. "I am not ashamed to say that we were poor once," said Mr. Gudgeon, with a glow of pride.
Overtop's meditations, on this particular occasion, pertained to the style of the costume which would most become him as the lover of Mrs. Slapman, in an original play to be enacted at her house toward the close of the week. The question was chiefly of knee breeches. Overtop was mentally debating whether he ought not, in justice to his thin legs, to substitute an ampler style of integuments.
So he answered, "With pleasure." The two visitors bowed, and Miss Pillbody bent her head gracefully toward Mr. Overtop. "What do you think of the schoolmarm?" asked Tiffles, when they had got into the street. Overtop did not like the phrase "schoolmarm." "I think Miss Pillbody," said he, "is a sensible woman."
The firm of Overtop & Maltboy had recently come into a small but paying business, in this way: The release of Marcus Wilkeson was generally supposed to have been effected, not by his innocence, but by the skilful and professional, but unprincipled efforts of his legal advisers.
At the same time, he felt a pang of apprehension that she had found places in her school for the two young daughters of his supposititious country friend. Overtop dressed with unusual care that evening, and presented himself at Miss Pillbody's house, punctually at the appointed hour.
The hordes forced the outer works; but all their efforts, though made both by land and sea, were unavailing against the main defences; their attempt to sap the wall failed; their artillery was met and crushed by engines of greater power; a fleet of Slavonian canoes, which endeavored to force an entrance by the Golden Horn, was destroyed or driven ashore; the towers with which they sought to overtop the walls were burnt; and, after ten days of constantly repeated assaults, the barbarian leader became convinced that he had undertaken an impossible enterprise, and, having burnt his engines and his siege works, he retired.
"She needn't be a giantess to overtop you, mon ami," laughed Lorimer with a lazy shrug. "By Jove, I am sleepy, Errington, old boy; are we never going to bed? It's no good waiting till it's dark here, you know." "Have something first," said Sir Philip, seating himself at the saloon table, where his steward had laid out a tasty cold collation.
The flight of fancy was unprecedented for the speaker. He was sensible of unwonted excitement in a possibility. His companion was still dimpling at the lean figure in the roomy frock coat and high hat. Laura had been a small woman. The judge was considering that if his companion should rise she would equal or overtop his height. Starved. Very needy. So Thinkright had put it. Nonsense.
Biography is, of course, the basis of all history, since history is merely the record of man's failures and successes; and, read thus, it is a wonderful and inspiring thing, for the successes so overtop the failures, the good so out-weighs the bad. By the touchstone of imagination, even badly written biography may be colored and vitalized.
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