he blinds down all over her face just like biff. She take
one swing on me, Phil, right there, and pretty near break my
jaw;--knock my four dollar hat all to hell in the middle of the road
and walk away laughing like, like--oh, like big, fat, laundry maid
laugh."

Very seriously, Phil asked his further adventures.

"Ain't that plenty for one day? No dam-good catch wife that way. I try
another trick, though. Maybe it work better."

"What's the other trick, Sol?"

The big simpleton drew a pink coloured, badly frayed newspaper out of
his pocket. It was _The Matrimonial Times_, a monthly sheet printed in
Seattle and intended for the lonely, lovesick and forlorn of both
sexes; a sort of agony column by the mile.

"You don't mean to say you correspond with anybody through that?"

"You bet!"

"And can't you land anyone?"

"Not yet! Everybody say, 'Send photo.' I send it, then no answer come
back."

"Never mind!" commiserated Phil. "One of these days your picture will
reach the right one and she'll think you're the only man on earth."

"Well,--she have to be pretty gol-darn quick now, for I'm all sick
inside waiting."

"Meantime, hadn't you better get back to work, Sol?"

"Guess, maybe just as well."

He went into a corner, took off his glad rags, folded them and laid
them carefully on a bench, then donned his working trousers, shirt and
leather apron, and was soon swinging his hammer and making the sparks
fly as if he had no other thought in the world but the welding of the
iron he handled to its fore-ordained shape.

CHAPTER XII

The Dance

That night, Phil and Jim attired themselves in their best clothes and
set out for the town hall. There was no missing the way, for Chinese
lanterns and strings of electric lights led there, and all pedestrians
were making for that important objective.

The two comrades were late in getting there; much too late to be
partakers of the supper and listeners to the toasting and speech-making
so dear to the hearts of politicians, aspiring politicians, lodge
men, newspaper men, parsons, lawyers, ward-committee chairmen and the
less pretentious, common-ordinary soap-box orator--whom no community
is without. The long-suffering and patient public had evidently been
hypnotised into putting up with the usual surfeit of lingual fare by the
nerve-soothing influences of a preceding supper with a dance to follow.

Outside the town hall, horses, harnessed and saddled, lined t