ve Moonlight Quill
he preferred to sink with it, and so took to letting his suits gather
undisturbed the wispy burdens of the air and to throwing his socks
indiscriminately into the shirt drawer, the underwear drawer, and even
into no drawer at all. It was not uncommon in his new carelessness to
let many of his clean clothes go directly back to the laundry without
having ever been worn, a common eccentricity of impoverished
bachelors. And this in the face of his favorite magazines, which at
that time were fairly staggering with articles by successful authors
against the frightful impudence of the condemned poor, such as the
buying of wearable shirts and nice cuts of meat, and the fact that
they preferred good investments in personal jewelry to respectable
ones in four per cent saving-banks.

It was indeed a strange state of affairs and a sorry one for many
worthy and God-fearing men. For the first time in the history of the
Republic almost any negro north of Georgia could change a one-dollar
bill. But as at that time the cent was rapidly approaching the
purchasing power of the Chinese ubu and was only a thing you got back
occasionally after paying for a soft drink, and could use merely in
getting your correct weight, this was perhaps not so strange a
phenomenon as it at first seems. It was too curious a state of things,
however, for Merlin Grainger to take the step that he did take--the
hazardous, almost involuntary step of proposing to Miss Masters.
Stranger still that she accepted him.

It was at Pulpat's on Saturday night and over a $1.75 bottle of water
diluted with _vin ordinaire_ that the proposal occurred.

"Wine makes me feel all tingly, doesn't it you?" chattered Miss
Masters gaily.

"Yes," answered Merlin absently; and then, after a long and pregnant
pause: "Miss Masters--Olive--I want to say something to you if you'll
listen to me."

The tingliness of Miss Masters (who knew what was coming) increased
until it seemed that she would shortly be electrocuted by her own
nervous reactions. But her "Yes, Merlin," came without a sign or
flicker of interior disturbance. Merlin swallowed a stray bit of air
that he found in his mouth.

"I have no fortune," he said with the manner of making an
announcement. "I have no fortune at all."

Their eyes met, locked, became wistful, and dreamy and beautiful.

"Olive," he told her, "I love you."

"I love you too, Merlin," she answered simply. "Shall we have another
b