and
intensive reading. Any woman who knew the art of keeping a kerosene
lamp in shape must of necessity find the oiling and cleaning of a
typewriting machine mere child's play. He didn't realize the
affinities of training. It would never have occurred to him to fancy
that because he kept his office desk in perfect order he was qualified
to do the same thing with a kitchen stove, or that the method he had
acquired as office boy, copying letters in the letterpress, would have
stood him in good stead if he suddenly had been called upon to make up
his own bed. What he did realize was that the leveling process which
goes hand in hand with the mingling of sexes in a workday world was
setting in. And he resented it. He wanted to coddle illusion ... he
had no wish for a world practical to the point of bleakness.

One afternoon Hilmer came in at the usual time with a handful of
memoranda. It was a violently rainy day--an early March day, to be
exact--the sort that refused to be softened even by the beguilements
of California. The rain wind, generally warm and humid, had been
chilled in its flight over the snow-piled Sierras, and it had pelted
down in a wintry flood, banking up piles of stinging hail between
warmer showerings. Fred had decided to forgo his soliciting and stay
indoors instead. Hilmer greeted him with biting raillery.

"Well, I should think this was a good day to bag a prospective
customer," he flung out as he laid his umbrella aside. "Or is business
swamping you?"

Fred tossed back a trite rejoinder. Helen went on pounding her machine
... she did not even lift her eyes.

"I've got something for you to-day," Hilmer went on, as he unbound the
bundle of papers and sat down beside Fred.

Starratt saw the edge of a blue print in Hilmer's hand. This spelled
all manner of possibilities, but he checked a surge of illogical hope.
"That's fine," he answered, heartily. "But why didn't you send for me?
I could have come over. It's bad enough to take your business without
letting you bring it in on a day like this..."

Hilmer made a contemptuous gesture. "Wind and weather never made any
difference to me... I've traveled twenty miles in a blizzard to court
a girl."

"Oh, when a woman's involved, that's different," Fred laughed back.
"There's nothing as alluring here."

"Well, Mrs. Starratt, what do you say?" Hilmer called out to her.
"Your husband doesn't seem to count you in at all."

Helen was erasing a misspelled