“Oh, here!” exclaimed the wretched Bert, jumping to his feet; “let up on that dismal recitative.  It would make a dog howl to hear that!”

“Then you ‘let up’ on that suicidal talk of marrying,” replied John, “and all that harangue of incoherency about your growing old.  Why, my dear fellow, you’re at least a dozen years my junior, and look at me!” and John glanced at himself in the glass with a feeble pride, noting the gray sparseness of his side-hair, and its plaintive dearth on top.  “Of course I’ve got to admit,” he continued, “that my hair is gradually evaporating; but for all that, I’m ‘still in the ring,’ don’t you know; as young in society, for the matter of that, as yourself!  And this is just the reason why I don’t want you to blight every prospect in your life by marrying at your age—­especially a woman—­I mean the kind of woman you’d be sure to fancy at your age.”

“Didn’t I say ‘a good, sensible girl’ was the kind I had selected?” Bert remonstrated.

“Oh!” exclaimed John, “you’ve selected her, then?—­and without one word to me!” he ended, rebukingly.

“Well, hang it all!” said Bert, impatiently; “I knew how you were, and just how you’d talk me out of it; and I made up my mind that for once, at least, I’d follow the dictations of a heart that—­however capricious in youthful frivolties—­should beat, in manhood, loyal to itself and loyal to its own affinity.”

“Go it!  Fire away!  Farewell, vain world!” exclaimed the excited John.—­“Trade your soul off for a pair of ear-bobs and a button-hook—­a hank of jute hair and a box of lily-white!  I’ve buried not less than ten old chums this way, and here’s another nominated for the tomb.”

“But you’ve got no reason about you,” began Bert,—­“I want to”—­

“And so do I ‘want to,’” broke in John, finally,—­“I want to get some sleep.—­So ‘register’ and come to bed.—­And lie up on edge, too, when you do come—­’cause this old catafalque-of-a-bed is just about as narrow as your views of single blessedness!  Peace!  Not another word!  Pile in!  Pile in!  I’m three-parts sick, anyhow, and I want rest!” And very truly he spoke.

It was a bright morning when the slothful John was aroused by a long, vociferous pounding on the door.  He started up in bed to find himself alone—­the victim of his wrathful irony having evidently risen and fled away while his pitiless tormentor slept—­“Doubtless to at once accomplish that nefarious intent as set forth by his unblushing confession of last night,” mused the miserable John.  And he ground his fingers in the corners of his swollen eyes, and leered grimly in the glass at the feverish orbs, blood-shotten, blurred and aching.

The pounding on the door continued.  John looked at his watch; it was only 8 o’clock.

“Hi, there!” he called viciously.  “What do you mean, anyhow?” he went on, elevating his voice again; “shaking a man out of bed when he’s just dropping into his first sleep?”