No sluggards here--ha, ha!" he said heartily, slamming the door behind him, and by a series of pokes in the ribs genially backing his host into his own sitting-room.

"I'm up, too, and am here to see Nellie.

She's here, eh--of course ?" he added, darting a quick look at Burnham.
But Mr.Burnham was one of those large, liberal Western husbands who classified his household under the general title of "woman folk," for the integers of which he was not responsible.

He hesitated, and then propounded over the balusters to the upper story the direct query--"You don't happen to have Nellie Wynn up there, do ye ?" There was an interval of inquiry proceeding from half a dozen reluctant throats, more or less cottony and muffled, in those various degrees of grievance and mental distress which indicate too early roused young womanhood.

The eventual reply seemed to be affirmative, albeit accompanied with a suppressed giggle, as if the young lady had just been discovered as an answer to an amusing conundrum.
"All right," said Wynn, with an apparent accession of boisterous geniality.