laid scheme,"
as the gentlemanly, cigarette-smoking villain of the melodrama used to
love to call it. To tell the truth, petticoat government was wearing on
him. The marriage agreement, to which his partners considered him bound,
and which he saw no way to evade, hung over him always, but he had put
this threat of the future from his mind so far as possible. He had not
found orderly housekeeping the joy that he once thought it would be, but
even this he could bear. Elsie Preston was the drop too much.

He liked Mrs. Snow, except in a marrying sense. He liked Elsie better
than any young lady he had ever seen. The trouble was, that between
the two, he, as he would have expressed it, "didn't have the peace of a
dog."

Before Elsie came, a game of checkers between Perez and himself had been
the regular after-supper amusement. Now they played whist, Captain Eri
and Elsie against him and his former opponent. As Elsie and her partner
almost invariably won, and as Perez usually found fault with him because
they lost, this was not an agreeable change. But it was but one. He
didn't like muslin curtains in his bedroom, because they were a nuisance
when he wanted to sit up in bed and look out of the window; but the
curtains were put there, and everybody else seemed to think them
beautiful, so he could not protest. Captain Perez and Captain Eri had
taken to "dressing up" for supper, to the extent of putting on neckties
and clean collars. Also they shaved every day. He stuck to the old
"twice-a-week" plan for a while, but looked so scrubby by contrast that
out of mere self-respect he had to follow suit. Obviously two females in
the house were one too many. Something had to be done.

Ralph Hazeltine's frequent calls gave him the inspiration he was looking
for. This was to bring about a marriage between Ralph and Miss Preston.
After deliberation he decided that if this could be done the pair would
live somewhere else, even though John Baxter was still too ill to be
moved. Elsie could come in every day, but she would be too busy with her
own establishment to bother with the "improvement" of theirs. It wasn't
a very brilliant plan and had some vital objections, but Captain Jerry
considered it a wonder.

He broached it to his partners, keeping his real object strictly in the
background and enlarging upon his great regard for Ralph and Elsie, and
their obvious fitness for each other. Captain Perez liked the scheme
well enough, provided