amined his glass, as though truth lay at the
bottom. For he could not tell for certain. Was he married or was he not?
That's what he himself would like to know! According to him, upon his soul
and conscience, he was not a married man; he did himself that justice.
Opportunities, certainly, had not been wanting ... with all the girls he
had known ... enough to fill a dozen beauty-shows. Sometimes even he had
had a narrow escape, as in that damned town in the West, in one of those
states where you can't so much as take a girl to supper without finding
yourself married to her in the morning, all for entering yourself in the
hotel book as "Mr. and Mrs. Trampy," in other words, as man and wife. And
yet he couldn't ask the girl who adored him to sleep on the mat! Yes, a
poor girl who had found glowing words in which to tell him her love, one
night in Mexico, words which had set Trampy quivering with longing
compassion: was he to be reproached with that? He had made her happy,
after all; and, on the whole, this lark was one of his pleasantest
memories; it hadn't lasted too long: a matter of a few weeks at most. He
had left Mexico, taking the girl with him, and played Trampy Wheel-Pad in
the Western States, with any amount of success, by Jove! Encores, packets
of tobacco, a new suit of clothes! And, by way of _entr'acte_, the
girl--"Tramp Wheel-Pad's Jumping Flea," as she was called--turned
somersaults and flip-flaps. But she would have killed him, this dark girl
with great dark eyes,--this girl with a boy's figure, all muscle and
sinew, keeping him awake all night and talking of nothing but smackings,
as though she had never learned anything else. And so much in love that
she would bite and scratch: a very tigress. Any one but himself would have
wearied of it. And then, one fine morning, for coupling their names in the
visitors' book, they found themselves married, in the name of the law! And
that was what people called a marriage! So little married were they,
according to him, that he had given her the slip then and there, leaving
her all the money he possessed, however: he was not the man to look at
fifteen dollars, when honor demanded it. Trampy had had more stories of
this kind in his life; they left as much impression on his mind as the
recollection of a "schooner" swallowed at a bar on a summer night.

It was dishonest, he considered, to pretend that he was married. Not that
he was perfect: far from it! He did not set up as