But these be mere externals.  The true harbinger is the heart.  When Strephon seeks his Chloe and Mike his Maggie, then only is spring arrived and the newspaper report of the five-foot rattler killed in Squire Pettigrew’s pasture confirmed.

Ere the first violet blew, Mr. Peters, Mr. Ragsdale and Mr. Kidd sat together on a bench in Union Square and conspired.  Mr. Peters was the D’Artagnan of the loafers there.  He was the dingiest, the laziest, the sorriest brown blot against the green background of any bench in the park.  But just then he was the most important of the trio.

Mr. Peters had a wife.  This had not heretofore affected his standing with Ragsy and Kidd.  But to-day it invested him with a peculiar interest.  His friends, having escaped matrimony, had shown a disposition to deride Mr. Peters for his venture on that troubled sea.  But at last they had been forced to acknowledge that either he had been gifted with a large foresight or that he was one of Fortune’s lucky sons.

For, Mrs. Peters had a dollar.  A whole dollar bill, good and receivable by the Government for customs, taxes and all public dues.  How to get possession of that dollar was the question up for discussion by the three musty musketeers.

“How do you know it was a dollar?” asked Ragsy, the immensity of the sum inclining him to scepticism.

“The coalman seen her have it,” said Mr. Peters.  “She went out and done some washing yesterday.  And look what she give me for breakfast—­the heel of a loaf and a cup of coffee, and her with a dollar!”

“It’s fierce,” said Ragsy.

“Say we go up and punch ’er and stick a towel in ’er mouth and cop the coin” suggested Kidd, viciously.  “Y’ ain’t afraid of a woman, are you?”

“She might holler and have us pinched,” demurred Ragsy.  “I don’t believe in slugging no woman in a houseful of people.”

“Gent’men,” said Mr. Peters, severely, through his russet stubble, “remember that you are speaking of my wife.  A man who would lift his hand to a lady except in the way of—­”

“Maguire,” said Ragsy, pointedly, “has got his bock beer sign out.  If we had a dollar we could—­”

“Hush up!” said Mr. Peters, licking his lips.  “We got to get that case note somehow, boys.  Ain’t what’s a man’s wife’s his?  Leave it to me.  I’ll go over to the house and get it.  Wait here for me.”

“I’ve seen ’em give up quick, and tell you where it’s hid if you kick ’em in the ribs,” said Kidd.

“No man would kick a woman,” said Peters, virtuously.  “A little choking—­just a touch on the windpipe—­that gets away with ’em—­and no marks left.  Wait for me.  I’ll bring back that dollar, boys.”

High up in a tenement-house between Second Avenue and the river lived the Peterses in a back room so gloomy that the landlord blushed to take the rent for it.  Mrs. Peters worked at sundry times, doing odd jobs of scrubbing and washing.  Mr. Peters had a pure, unbroken record of five years without having earned a penny.  And yet they clung together, sharing each other’s hatred and misery, being creatures of habit.  Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.