es
drove to the south side to seek this modest abode of working-girls and
to call in person on Jeannette.

That afternoon came Cary Allison to visit his old friend the captain.
Day after day had the boy been there to inquire, and it was good to see
his rejoicing in the mending of the stalwart patient and refreshing to
hear his comments on affairs domestic. Flo and her spoons just made him
sick, he said, and the idea of having a Stoughton bottle like that for a
brother-in-law was disgusting. "Why couldn't _he_ have jumped out and
lent a helping hand, instead of sneaking inside the coach and crying at
Parks? Hubbard's a muff! I tell Flo he belongs to the family the squash
was named for, and I call him Squash, too, and so does pa, though he's
glad enough to rope him in to buying more stocks, I notice." It was
plain that in Cary's eyes sister Titania had found her Bottom and was
enamoured of an ass. Brother-like, he had made her wince many and many a
time, and now it was Forrest's turn.

"Say, cap, I do wish you'd come around and cheer the governor up a bit.
He's been warped all out of shape since the strike, and seems to feel
all broke up over home matters, too. He won't stay there at all. The
last thing he did was to drive around to Wallen's and offer him a
first-class clerkship, and now he's rowing with Wells because he won't
let on what's become of your typewriter."

His typewriter? The girl he loved with all the strength of his being,
honored and revered and longed to make his wife,--and the world could
speak of her in that loose, pragmatical, possessive, chattel-like way.
His typewriter! No more his than any man's who gave her employment. No
longer his, in fact, since he was virtually forbidden her presence. He
who had offered her his hand and name and love was actually of less
account in the arrangement of her daily life than any one of the
thousands who trod the pavement under her office windows, for they could
offer work. Forrest threw himself back upon his pillow, buried his face
in his arms, groaned aloud as the innocent youth went gayly forth into
the wintry sunshine, and the doctor and the household of anxious women
wondered what had happened to set back their impatient patient. Could it
be, suggested that social prophet, his sister, that he was, after all,
really interested in Florence Allison and chagrined at the news of her
engagement, now formally announced? Might it not be, after all, that, as
she had o