ed for futures, she ran
away from you and wouldn't tell where she'd gone. Suppose--well, I guess
that's enough supposing. I don't know why I'm telling you these things,
anyway."

He stopped and scowled at the floor, acting like he was sorry he spoke.
I pulled at my pipe a minute or so and then says I:

"Hum!" I says, "I presume likely it's fair to suppose that this break
with the old gent is for good?"

He didn't answer, but he didn't need to; the look on his face was
enough.

"Yes," says I. "Well, it's likewise to be supposed that the idea--the
eventual idea--is marriage, straight marriage, hey?"

He jumped out of his chair. "Why, damn you!" he says. "I'll--"

"All right. Set down and be nice. I was fairly sure of my soundings, but
it don't do no harm to heave the lead. I ask your pardon. Well, what you
going to support a wife on--her kind of a wife? A summer waiter's job at
twenty a month?"

He set down, but he looked more troubled than ever. I was sorry for him;
I couldn't help liking the boy.

"Suppose she keeps her word and goes away," says I. "What then?"

"I'll go after her."

"Suppose she still sticks to her principles and won't have you? Where'll
you go, then?"

"To the hereafter," says he, naming the station at the end of the route.

"Oh, well, there's no hurry about that. Most of us are sure of a free
one-way pass to that port some time or other, 'cording to the parson's
tell. See here, Jones; let's look at this thing like a couple of men,
not children. You don't want to keep chasing that girl from pillar to
post, making her more miserable than she is now. And you ain't in no
position to marry her. The way to show a young woman like her that you
mean business and are going to be wuth cooking meals for is to get the
best place you can and start in to earn a living and save money. Now,
Mr. Brown's father-in-law is a man by the name of Dillaway, Dillaway of
the Consolidated Cash Stores. He'll do things for me if I ask him to,
and I happen to know that he's just started a branch up to Providence
and is there now. Suppose I give you a note to him, asking him, as a
favor to me, to give you the best job he can. He'll do it, I know. After
that it's up to you. This is, of course, providing that you start for
Providence to-morrer morning. What d'you say?"

He was thinking hard. "Suppose I don't make good?" he says. "I never
worked in my life. And suppose she--"

"Oh, suppose your granny's pet hen hatc