of it. What had those two poverty-stricken little
creatures to marry on? She put the question rhetorically to Our Square
in general and to the two people most concerned in particular. Courts of
law might have rejected their replies as irrelevant. Humanly, however,
they were convincing enough.

Said Plooie: "Who will have a care of that little one if I have not?"

Said Annie Oombrella: "He is so lonely!"

So those two unfortunates united their misfortunes, and lo! happiness
came of it. Luckily that is all that did come of it. What disposition
the pair would have made of children, had any arrived, it is difficult
to conjecture. Only by miraculous compression of ribs, handles, and
fabrics was space contrived in the basement cubbyhole for Annie
Oombrella to squeeze in. However, she set up housekeeping cheerily as a
bird, with an odd lot of pots and pans which Schepstein had picked up at
an auction and resold to them at not more than two hundred per cent
profit, plus a kerosene stove, the magnificent wedding gift of the
Bonnie Lassie and her husband, Cyrus the Gaunt. Twice a week they had
meat. They were rising in the social scale.

Habitude is the real secret of tolerance. As we became accustomed to
Plooie, Our Square ceased to resent his invincible outlandishness; we
endured him with equanimity, although it would be exaggeration to say
that we accepted him, and we certainly did not patronize him
professionally. Nevertheless, in a minor degree, he nourished. Annie
Oombrella must have lavished care upon him. His pinched-in shoulders
broadened perceptibly. His gait, still a halting shuffle, grew
noticeably brisker. There was even a heartier note in his lamentable
trade cry:

"Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees a raccommoder!"

As for Annie Oombrella, having some one to look after quite transformed
her. She grew plump and chirpy, and bustling as a blithe little sparrow,
though perhaps duck would be a happier comparison, for she was dabbling
and splashing in water all the day long, making the stairs and porches
of her curatorship fairly glisten with cleanliness. Her rates went up to
twenty cents an hour. There were rumors that she had started a savings
account. Life stretched out before the little couple, smooth and
peaceful and sunny with companionship.

Then came the war.

The calamitous quality of a great world tragedy is that it brings to so
many helpless little folk bitter and ignoble tragedies of shame and
humiliation and m