When he managed to wrench his skull free, he was ready to murder his tormentor. But as soon as he confronted the doddering and blinking toper, he was helpless. Drunken men have always been treated with great tenderness in America, and when Wellington, seeing Lathrop's white hair, exclaimed with rapture: "Why, hello, Pop! here's Pop!" the most that Lathrop could do was to tear loose those fat, groping hands, slap them like a school teacher, and push the man away. But that one shove upset Mr. Wellington and sent him toppling down upon the pit of the Englishman's stomach. For Wedgewood, it was suddenly as if all the air had been removed from the world. He gulped like a fish drowning for lack of water. He was a long while getting breath enough for words, but his first words were wild demands that Mr. Wellington remove himself forthwith. Wellington accepted the banishment with the sorrowful eyes of a dying deer, and tottered away wagging his fat head and wailing: "I'm a broken-hearted man, and nobody gives a ----." At this point he caromed over into Ira Lathrop's berth and was welcomed with a savage roar: "What the devil's the matter with you?" "I'm a broken-hearted man, that's all." "Oh, is that all," Lathrop snapped, vanishing behind his newspaper. The desperately melancholy seeker for a word of human kindness bleared at the blurred newspaper wall a while, then waded into a new attempt at acquaintance. Laying his hand on Lathrop's knee, he stammered: "Esscuzhe me, Mr.--Mr.----" From behind the newspaper came a stingy answer: "Lathrop's my name--if you want to know." "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Lothrop." "Lathrop!" "Lathrop! My name's Wellington. Li'l Jimmie Wellington. Ever hear of me?" He waited with the genial smile of a famous man; the smile froze at Lathrop's curt, "Don't think so." He tried again: "Ever hear of well-known Chicago belle, Mrs. Jimmie Wellington?" "Yes, I've heard of her!" There was an ominous grin in the tone. Wellington waved his hand with modest pride. "Well, I'm Jimmie." "Serves you right." This jolt was so discourteous that Wellington decided to protest: "Mister Latham!" "Lathrop!" The name came out with a whip-snap. He tried to echo it, "La-_throp_!" "I don't like that Throp. That's a kind of a seasick name, isn't it?" Finding the newspaper still intervening between him and his prey, he calmly tore it down the middle and pushed through it like a moon coming through a cloud. "But a man can't change his name by marrying, can he? That's the worst of it. A woman can. Think of a heartless cobra di capello in woman's form wearing my fair name--and wearing it out. Mr. La-_throp_, did you ever put your trust in a false-hearted woman?" "Never put my trust in anybody." "Didn't you ever love a woman?" "No!" "Well, then, didn't you ever marry a woman?" "Not one. I've had the measles and the mumps, but I've never had matrimony." "Oh, lucky man," beamed Wellington. "Hang on to your luck."