nd what do you think? Dropped me very neatly two thousand feet,
but softly. And I was serious, too."

"It seems to me that your Kitty is not half bad. What would you have
done had she accepted you?"

"Married her within twenty-four hours!"

"Come, Dan, be sensible. You are not such an ass as all that."

"Yes, I am," moodily. "I told you that I was a jackass half the time;
this is the half."

"But she won't have you?"

"Not for love or money."

"Are you sure about the money?" asked Hillard shrewdly.

"Seven hundred or seven thousand, it wouldn't matter to Kitty if she
made up her mind to marry a fellow. What's the matter with me, anyhow?
I'm not so badly set-up; I can whip any man in the club at my weight; I
can tell a story well; and I'm not afraid of anything."

"Not even of the future!" added Hillard.

"Do you really think it's my money?" pathetically.

"Well, seven thousand doesn't go far, and that's all you have. If it
were seventy, now, I'm not sure Kitty wouldn't reconsider."

Merrihew ran his tongue along the cigar wrapper which had loosened. He
had seven thousand a year, and every January first saw him shouldering a
thousand odd dollars' worth of last year's debts. Somehow, no matter how
he retrenched, he never could catch up. It's hard to pay for a horse
after one has ridden it to death, and Merrihew was always paying for
dead horses. He sighed.

"What's she like?" asked Hillard, with more sympathy than curiosity.

Merrihew drew out his watch and opened the case. It was a pretty face;
more than that, it was a refined prettiness. The eyes were merry, the
brow was intelligent, the nose and chin were good. Altogether, it was
the face of a merry, kindly little soul, one such as would be most
likely to trap the wandering fancy of a young man like Merrihew.

"And she won't have you," Hillard repeated, this time with more
curiosity than sympathy.

"Oh, she's no fool, I suppose. Honest Injun, Jack, it's so bad that I
find myself writing poetry on the backs of envelopes. And now she's
going to Europe!"

"London?"

"No. Some manager has the idea in his head that there is money to be
made in Italy and Germany during the spring and summer. American
comic-opera in those countries; can you imagine it? He has an angel, and
I suppose money is no object."

"This angel, then, has cut out a fine time for his bank account, and
he'll never get back to heaven, once he gets tangled up in foreign
red-tape. Eve