dients of city dust, contained
at least one thoroughly compatible pair of pneumonia germs. These went
for their honey-moon on a pleasant, warm journey up G. G's father's left
nostril and to house-keeping in his lungs. In a few hours they raised a
family of several hundred thousand bouncing baby germs; and these grew
up in a few minutes and began to set up establishments of their own
right and left.

G. G.'s father admitted that he had a "heavy cold on the chest." It was
such a heavy cold that he became delirious, and doctors came and sent
for nurses; and there was laid in the home of G. G.'s father the
corner-stone of a large edifice of financial disaster.

He had never had a partner. His practice came to a dead halt. The
doctors whom G. G.'s mother called in were, of course, the best she had
ever heard of. They would have been leaders of society if their persons
had been as fashionable as their prices. The corner drug store made its
modest little profit of three or four hundred per cent on the drugs
which were telephoned for daily. The day nurse rolled up twenty-five
dollars a week and the night nurse thirty-five. The servant's wages
continued as usual. The price of beef, eggs, vegetables, etc., rose. The
interest on the mortgage fell due. And it is a wonder, considering how
much he worried, that G. G.'s father ever lived to face his obligations.

Cynthia, meanwhile, having heard that G. G. was surely going to get
well, was so happy that she couldn't contain the news. And she proceeded
to divulge it to her father.

"Papa," she said, "I think I ought to tell you that years ago, at
Saranac--that Christmas when I went up with the Andersons--I met the
man that I am going to marry. He was a boy then; but now we're both
grown up and we feel just the same about each other."

And she told her father G. G.'s name and that he had been very delicate,
but that he was surely going to get well. Cynthia's father, who had
always given her everything she asked for until now, was not at all
enthusiastic.

"I can't prevent your marrying any one you determine to marry, Cynthia,"
he said. "Can this young man support a wife?"

"How could he!" she exclaimed--"living at Saranac and not being able to
work, and not having any money to begin with! But surely, if the way
_we_ live is any criterion, you could spare us some money--couldn't
you?"

"You wish me to say that I will support a delicate son-in-law whom I
have never seen? Consult