e into
the office whistling "The Dutch Company."

After his wedding we made brave, in a sly way, to rail at Mehronay about
his love affair, and he took it good-naturedly. He knew the situation
just as it was; his sense of humour allowed him no false view of the
matter. One afternoon when the paper was out, George Kirwin, the
foreman, and one of the reporters and Mehronay were in the back room
leaning against the imposing-stones looking over the paper, when Kirwin
said: "Say, Mehronay, how did you get yourself screwed up to ask her?"

It was spoken in a joke. The two young men were grinning, but Mehronay
looked at the floor in a study as he said:

"Well, to be honest--damfino if I ever did--just exactly." He smiled
reflectively in a pause and continued: "Nearest I remember was one night
we was sitting with our feet on the base-burner and I looked up and
says, 'Hell's afire, Commie'--I called her that for short--'why in the
devil don't a fine woman like you get married? She got up and come over
to where I was a-sitting and before I could say Lordamighty, she put her
hand on my shoulder and says real soft and solemn: 'I'll just be damned
if I don't believe I will.'"

He did not smile when he looked up, but sighed contentedly as he added
reverently: "And so, by hell, she did!" If Columbia Merley Mehronay had
known this language which her husband's innocent inadvertence put into
her mouth she would have strangled him--even then.

We did not have Mehronay with us more than a year after his wedding.
Mrs. Mehronay knew what he was worth. She asked for twenty-five dollars
a week for him, and when we told her the office could not afford it she
took him away. They went to New York City, where she peddled his pieces
about town until she got him a regular place. There they have lived
happily ever after. Mehronay brings his envelope home every Saturday
night, and she gives him his carfare and his shaving-money and puts the
rest where it will do the most good. When the men from our office go to
New York--which they sometimes do--they visit with Mehronay at his
office, and sometimes--if there is time for due and proper notice of the
function in writing--there is an invitation to dinner. Mehronay fondles
his old friends as a child fondles its playmates and he takes eager
pleasure in them, but she that was Columbia Merley all but searches
their pockets for the tempter.

Mehronay has never broken his word. He knows if he does break