This day I had coaxed from the cashier five shining silver dollars as a grumbling advance on a story that the Sunday editor had reluctantly accepted.  So if I was not feeling at peace with the world, at least an armistice had been declared; and I was beginning with ardor to write a description of the Brooklyn Bridge by moonlight.

“Well, Tripp,” said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, “how goes it?” He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden than I had ever seen him.  He was at that stage of misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed to kick him.

“Have you got a dollar?” asked Tripp, with his most fawning look and his dog-like eyes that blinked in the narrow space between his high-growing matted beard and his low-growing matted hair.

“I have,” said I; and again I said, “I have,” more loudly and inhospitably, “and four besides.  And I had hard work corkscrewing them out of old Atkinson, I can tell you.  And I drew them,” I continued, “to meet a want—­a hiatus—­a demand—­a need—­an exigency—­a requirement of exactly five dollars.”

I was driven to emphasis by the premonition that I was to lose one of the dollars on the spot.

“I don’t want to borrow any,” said Tripp, and I breathed again.  “I thought you’d like to get put onto a good story,” he went on.  “I’ve got a rattling fine one for you.  You ought to make it run a column at least.  It’ll make a dandy if you work it up right.  It’ll probably cost you a dollar or two to get the stuff.  I don’t want anything out of it myself.”

I became placated.  The proposition showed that Tripp appreciated past favors, although he did not return them.  If he had been wise enough to strike me for a quarter then he would have got it.

“What is the story?” I asked, poising my pencil with a finely calculated editorial air.

“I’ll tell you,” said Tripp.  “It’s a girl.  A beauty.  One of the howlingest Amsden’s Junes you ever saw.  Rosebuds covered with dew—­ violets in their mossy bed—­and truck like that.  She’s lived on Long Island twenty years and never saw New York City before.  I ran against her on Thirty-fourth Street.  She’d just got in on the East River ferry.  I tell you, she’s a beauty that would take the hydrogen out of all the peroxides in the world.  She stopped me on the street and asked me where she could find George Brown.  Asked me where she could find George Brown in New York City! What do you think of that?

“I talked to her, and found that she was going to marry a young farmer named Dodd—­Hiram Dodd—­next week.  But it seems that George Brown still holds the championship in her youthful fancy.  George had greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune.  But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice.  But when it comes to the scratch Ada—­her name’s Ada Lowery—­saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for the city.  Looking for George, you know—­you understand about women—­ George wasn’t there, so she wanted him.