e poor thing and assassinate it?"

"See here, Rumsey," said Simmy Dodge sagely, "if I were in your place I'd
have a perfectly sound tooth pulled some time, just to keep it from aching
when you're an old man. Or you might have your left leg amputated so that
it couldn't be crushed in a railroad accident. You ought to do something
to please Madge, old chap. She's been a thoughtful, devoted wife to you
for twelve or thirteen years, and what have you ever done to please her?
Nothing! You've never so much as had a crick in your neck or a pain that
you couldn't account for, so do be generous, Rumsey. Besides, maybe you
haven't got an appendix at all. Just think how you could crow over her if
they couldn't find one, even after the most careful and relentless search
over your entire system."

"She's always wanting me to die or something like that," growled Fenn;
"but when I talked of going to the Spanish War she went into hysterics."

"We'd only been married a month, Rumsey," said his wife reproachfully.

"But how could I have known that war was to be declared so soon?" he
demanded.

Braden and Simeon Dodge left the restaurant together. They were old
friends, college-mates, and of the same age. Dodge had gone into the law-
school after his academic course, and Thorpe into the medical college.
Their ways did not part, however. Both were looked upon as heirs to huge
fortunes, and to both was offered the rather doubtful popularity that
usually is granted to affluence. Thorpe accepted his share with the
caution of the wise man, while Dodge, not a whit less capable, took his as
a philanderer. He now had an office in a big down-town building, but he
never went near it except when his partner took it into his head to go
away for a month's vacation at the slack season of the year. At such
periods Mr. Dodge, being ages younger than the junior member of the firm,
made it his practice to go down to the office and attend to the business
with an earnestness that surprised every one. He gave over frolicking and
stuck resolutely to the "knitting" that Johnson had left behind. Possessed
of a natural though thrifty intelligence,--one that wasted little in
public,--and a latent energy that could lift him occasionally above a
perfectly normal laziness, he made as much of his opportunities as one
could expect of a young man who has two hundred thousand a year and an
amiable disposition.

No one in the city was more popular than Simmy Dodge, a