" asked Barclay, as Mrs. Brownwell left the room, "how old are
you? I keep forgetting." When the young man answered twenty-five,
Barclay, who was putting away the tintype picture, said, "And Jeanette
will be twenty-three at her next birthday." He closed the desk and
looked at the youth bending over his typewriter and sighed. "Been
going together off and on five or six years--I should say."

Neal nodded. Barclay put his hand on his chin and contemplated the
young man a moment. "Ever have any other love affair, son?"

The youngster coloured and looked up quickly with a puzzled look and
did not reply.

Barclay cut in with, "Well, son, I'm glad to find you don't lie
easily." He laughed silently. "Jennie has--lots of them. When she was
six she used to cry for little Watts Fernald, and they quarrelled like
cats and dogs, and when she was ten there was an Irish boy--Finnegan
I think his name was--who milked the cow, whom she adored, and when
she was fourteen or so, it was some boy in the high school who gave
her candy until her mother had to shoo him off, and I don't know how
many others." He paused for a few seconds and then went on, "But she's
forgotten them--that's the way of women." His eyes danced merrily as
he continued, while he scratched his head: "But with us men--it's
different. We never forget." He chuckled a moment, and then his face
changed as he said, "Neal, I wish you'd go into the mail room and see
if the noon mail has anything in it from that damn scoundrel who's
trying to start a cracker factory in St. Louis--I hate to bother to
smash him right now when we're so busy."

But it so happened that the damn scoundrel thought better of his
intention and took fifty thousand for his first thought, and Neal
Ward, being one of the component parts of an engaged couple, went
ahead being sensible about it. All engaged couples, of course, resolve
to be sensible about it. And for two years and a half--during
nineteen one and two and part of nineteen three--Jeanette Barclay and
Neal Ward had tried earnestly and succeeded admirably (they believed)
in being exceedingly sensible about everything. Jeanette had gone
through school and was spending the year in Europe with her mother,
and she would be home in May; and in June--in June of 1904--why, the
almanac stopped there; the world had no further interest, and no one
on earth could imagine anything after that. For then they proposed not
to be sensible any longer.

In the e