ng became clearer after the dainty breakfast
served by Bison Billiam's white-capped cook, and expressed itself in a
sigh almost of content when Bison Billiam, with the coffee, passed him a
great fat cigar. Charles-Norton threw a surreptitious glance at the heavy
band; it was a dollar cigar.

Life, after all, has its compensations.

CHAPTER XVIII

And now, how about Charles-Norton and Dolly?

Well, they are getting along very well; very well, very well indeed.

Of course, they have their little differences--as have most couples.
Mostly, it is about wings. There seems to be a something fundamental
about both Charles-Norton and Dolly which irresistibly makes them diverge
on the question of the proper length of wings (male wings at least). For
a time, in fact, during the first months of their intoxicating public
success and before they had arrived to the present adjustment, the
question threatened to bring the conjugal craft to a final wreck.
Strangely enough (or naturally enough) it is a catastrophe that eased the
situation. One night, after Dolly, in a sudden access of resentment, had
taken an immoderate whack out of the left wing, Charles-Norton tumbled
to the ground in the midst of his performance, and broke his ankle.

It was, of course, in an agony of remorse that Dolly nursed her husband
during his long month of enforced and bed-ridden idleness. Luckily, Bison
Billiam behaved beautifully. He let the salary run on during the whole
course of Charles-Norton's incapacity, and then, with genial inspiration,
prevailed upon him, when he had recovered, to make his public
reappearance with the heavy plaster-of-paris cast still upon the injured
leg--which immensely increased the Flying Wonder's popularity and
success.

A _modus vivendi_ was agreed upon after this, which is still in force and
works very well. Bison Billiam was made the permanent arbitrator of the
wing question. Whenever they have a little difference now, Charles-Norton
and Dolly go to Bison Billiam, and, standing before him hand in hand,
listen to a sage adjudication of their rights and their wrongs. They call
him Papa Bison.

And so, they are quite happy. Dolly, of course, takes a keen pleasure in
her home. She has a neat little brick house, with a white door, near the
Riverside Drive, and a butler. A butler always had been Dolly's secret
dream.

Charles-Norton, also, though unconsciously perhaps, gets a good deal of
pleasure out of the hous