"The office used to belong to Pap's daddy," Bill explained to Jap, as Ellis and Miss Bowers stood chatting in the front door. "When Grandpap was lawyerin', he had this for his office, and Aunt Flossy lost her ring, scrubbin' the floor. I have heard tell that he made the wimmin folks curry the horses. They say he had a big funeral. I wonder--" Bill spoke wistfully, "I wonder if I have any kinfolks on the man-side that love anybody but theirselves. Flossy didn't get to go off to school till her daddy died. She's been teaching up to Barton, since my pappy married this last time, and my stepmother don't like her, so she never comes home." Jap and Bill noted that Ellis found frequent business in Barton, and despite the inhospitable atmosphere of the substantial Bowers home, across the little park from the _Herald_ office, Flossy came oftener than usual to her girlhood town. The autumn, the winter and the spring sped by. Ellis Hinton was too happy to scold, even when there was an excess of horse-play. In the gladsome June-tide the young girls of Bloomtown stripped their mothers' gardens to weave garlands for the little church, and Judge Bowers opened his heart and his house for the wedding reception. Flossy had a dower of two thousand dollars, besides the cottage, a part of her father's patrimony, on one of the side streets, a ten-minute walk from the office. In her trunk were stowed away the yellow linens that should have served her, had a certain college friend proved faithful, and the wedding presents came near to doing the rest. This strange turn of the wheel of fortune landed Jap Herron in his first real home. Flossy could cook, and thank the kind fates, she brought something to cook with her. Flossy was a misnomer, for even in her salad days, she had never been the least bit "flossy," and when Ellis bestowed himself upon her she had well turned thirty. The Judge made Ellis a present of the office, thereby relieving him of the haunting fear that he might, at some time, demand the rent. The paper put on a new dress, and the hell-box was dumped full of the discarded, mutilated types that had so long given strabismus to the patient readers of the Bloomtown _Herald_. CHAPTER IV "To-morrow is Jap's birthday," announced Ellis, one noontide early in July. "Jap, you are a joy-spoiler. With the Fourth yet smoking in the air, we must be upset by your birthday." "Dad allus cussed that day," remarked Jap, wiping the blackberry juice from his freckled face. "Gee, I never guessed that there was such grub as this," regretfully gazing at the generous blackberry cobbler--regretfully, because his exhausted stomach refused to give another stitch. "Cussed it?" queried Ellis, who was beginning to fat up a bit. "He said that I was the first nail in the coffin of his troubles," replied Jap cheerfully.