you get there and can chuck your load aboard.

We then stretched out in the cosy front room, and lighting our pipes
warmed to the task of being comfortable. I was pained to feel that the
day must come when woman would part us, but I said nothing more,
determined to let time and Jim's confiding nature reveal the tender
secrets of his heart now melting for that girl with the dancing brown
eyes, the mass of filmy dark hair straying in wisps from a harness of
braid, ribbon and pins, to Jim's utter distraction and the poor girl's
despair.

All my efforts in Jim's behalf had been lost apparently, or Jim, having
won the prizes in each case, became disenchanted for one reason or
another. Perhaps like my love letters, the girls were works of art and
would not bear too close an inspection. The coming case would make one
more failure, I imagined; still, I was sorry I had remarked how she had
coaxed her veil into shape; but with that wanton hair, a hat which was a
department to manage in itself, a tailor-made primness of figure to
superintend and the curvatures of Jim's conversation to follow, I could
understand that she needed the help of all her senses to keep her
pretty, light-hearted poise. I sighed to think of the trouble in store
for Mrs. Jim, not in the least knowing what a remarkable woman she was;
in my estimation of her at that time I think I was about as far off the
track as I got at any subsequent turn.

Jim had been uninterested so long (nearly three years), I felt love was
now a proposition which wouldn't find a crevice in his heart to trickle
into and widen until it split him asunder. But with the clever young
woman of business, in the rush and turmoil of the down-town hustle, it
is such a gentle humidity it seems to work its corrosion unseen in the
broad daylight. Thermometer readings don't show it. You have to keep
close to the barometer of eyes and sighs to know anything definite of
its ups and downs--unless it passes into fog or pours, then everybody
can see it dropping through the air. I began to feel that it would pour
soon around Jim, and I shuddered, for I thought I already heard the
patter of light feet in the hall. Some of the gray poetry of loneliness
began to spread around my disturbed and anxious soul for fear no
drippings like that would ever fall on me. Race suicide conscientiously
practiced is a hard game. Nature abhors a vacuum, and especially human
nature. Perhaps this girl had a sister. A comfor