his own. He never thought of resenting the
fact that he had written away in those books the good red years
between twenty-one and twenty-seven. He would have hated to let any
one else put so much as a pen-scratch in them. He liked all the boys
about the office; his desk, worn smooth by the sleeves of his alpaca
coat; his rulers and inks and pens and calendars. He had a great
pride in working economics, and he always got so far ahead when
supplies were distributed that he had drawers full of pencils and
pens and rubber bands against a rainy day.

Percy liked regularity: to get his work done on time, to have his
half-day off every Saturday, to go to the theater Saturday night, to
buy a new necktie twice a month, to appear in a new straw hat on the
right day in May, and to know what was going on in New York. He read
the morning and evening papers coming and going on the elevated, and
preferred journals of approximate reliability. He got excited about
ballgames and elections and business failures, was not above an
interest in murders and divorce scandals, and he checked the news
off as neatly as he checked his mail-orders. In short, Percy Bixby
was like the model pupil who is satisfied with his lessons and his
teachers and his holidays, and who would gladly go to school all his
life. He had never wanted anything outside his routine until he
wanted Stella Brown to marry him, and that had upset everything.

It wasn't, he told himself for the hundredth time, that she was
extravagant. Not a bit of it. She was like all girls. Moreover, she
made good money, and why should she marry unless she could better
herself? The trouble was that he had lied to her about his salary.
There were a lot of fellows rushing Mrs. Brown's five daughters, and
they all seemed to have fixed on Stella as first choice and this or
that one of the sisters as second. Mrs. Brown thought it proper to
drop an occasional hint in the presence of these young men to the
effect that she expected Stella to "do well." It went without saying
that hair and complexion like Stella's could scarcely be expected to
do poorly. Most of the boys who went to the house and took the girls
out in a bunch to dances and movies seemed to realize this. They
merely wanted a whirl with Stella before they settled down to one of
her sisters. It was tacitly understood that she came too high for
them. Percy had sensed all this through those slumbering instincts
which awake in us all to be