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 and dignified manner: 'Why, of course, I will get you a paper, Mr. Clemens, if you will deign to wait five or six minutes.'

"Then it was my turn to put on airs," concluded Mark. "'I am going to see Mr. Moberly Bell,' I said; 'fetch me the paper upstairs and keep the change.'"

We were still laughing when a copy boy entered with a trayful of dispatches. "Allow me," said Mr. Bell. "It will take but a minute to skim over these wires." But he interrupted himself immediately.

"There's a job for you, Fisher," he said, handing me a Paris dispatch. "Blowitz cables that your Aunt Rosine is dying. Hope she will leave you a lot of money. 'The Times' will take eight hundred words on Rosine, sixpence a word, you know. Let me have them by seven to-night."

"My, I wish I had an aunt that I could make sixpence a word out of," said Mark, as we were going down the lift, which is British for elevator. "Who is, or was, this relative of yours in which 'The Times' is interested to the extent of eight hundred words?"

"Why Rosine Stoltz, whom Verdi called 'his divine inspiration,' the creator of Aida and of the title roles of most of Rossini's Grand Operas."

"That's a jolly mouthful," assented Mark, "but couldn't she do anything but sing?" 169