Quick to take a cue, he circulated with an aplomb which his striking garments and long shambling gait only heightened, and talked choppy and disconnected fragments with whomsoever he ran up against.

The Miss Mortimer, who spoke Parisian French, took him aback with her symbolists; but he evened matters up with a goodly measure of the bastard lingo of the Canadian _voyageurs_, and left her gasping and meditating over a proposition to sell him twenty-five pounds of sugar, white or brown.
But she was not unduly favored, for with everybody he adroitly turned the conversation to grub, and then led up to the eternal proposition.
"Sugar or bust," he would conclude gayly each time and wander on to the next.
But he put the capstone on his social success by asking Frona to sing the touching ditty, "I Left My Happy Home for You." This was something beyond her, though she had him hum over the opening bars so that she could furnish the accompaniment.

His voice was more strenuous than sweet, and Del Bishop, discovering himself at last, joined in raucously on the choruses.

This made him feel so much better that he disconnected himself from the chair, and when he finally got home he kicked up his sleepy tent-mate to tell him about the high time he'd had over at the Welse's.

Mrs.Schoville tittered and thought it all so unique, and she thought it so unique several times more when the lieutenant of Mounted Police and a couple of compatriots roared "Rule Britannia" and "God Save the Queen," and the Americans responded with "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and "John Brown." Then big Alec Beaubien, the Circle City king, demanded the "Marseillaise," and the company broke up chanting "Die Wacht am Rhein" to the frosty night.
"Don't come on these nights," Frona whispered to Corliss at parting.
"We haven't spoken three words, and I know we shall be good friends.
Did Dave Harney succeed in getting any sugar out of you ?" They mingled their laughter, and Corliss went home under the aurora borealis, striving to reduce his impressions to some kind of order..