grind out his copy from the exchange
editor's clipping.

Just then his eye was caught by a familiar figure in trim, well-fitting
black halted on the opposite corner waiting for the passage of a cable
car. It was Travis Bessemer. No one but she could carry off such
rigorous simplicity in the matter of dress so well: black skirt, black
Russian blouse, tiny black bonnet and black veil, white kids with black
stitching. Simplicity itself. Yet the style of her, as Condy Rivers
told himself, flew up and hit you in the face; and her figure--was
there anything more perfect? and the soft pretty effect of her yellow
hair seen through the veil--could anything be more fetching? and her
smart carriage and the fling of her fine broad shoulders, and--no, it
was no use; Condy had to run down to speak to her.

"Come, come!" she said as he pretended to jostle against her on the
curbstone without noticing her; "you had best go to work. Loafing at
ten o'clock on the street corners--the idea!"

"It IS not--it can not be--and yet it is--it is SHE," he burlesqued;
"and after all these years!" Then in his natural voice: "Hello T.B."

"Hello, C.R."

"Where are you going?'

"Home. I've just run down for half an hour to have the head of my
banjo tightened."

"If I put you on the car, will you expect me to pay your car-fare?"

"Condy Rivers, I've long since got over the idea of ever expecting you
to have any change concealed about your person."

"Huh! no, it all goes for theatre tickets, and flowers, and boxes of
candy for a certain girl I know. But"--and he glared at her
significantly--"no more foolishness."

She laughed. "What are you 'on' this morning, Condy?"

Condy told her as they started to walk toward Kearney Street.

"But why DON'T you go to the dock and see the vessel, if you can make a
better article that way?"

"Oh, what's the good! The Centennial people have turned down my
stories."

She commiserated him for this; then suddenly exclaimed:

"No, you must go down to the dock! You ought to, Condy. Oh, I tell you,
let me go down with you!"

In an instant Condy leaped to the notion. "Splendid! splendid! no
reason why you shouldn't!" he exclaimed. And within fifteen minutes
the two were treading the wharves and quays of the city's water-front.

Ships innumerable nuzzled at the endless line of docks, mast
overspiring mast, and bowsprit overlapping bowsprit, till the eye was
bewildered, as if by the confusion o