"Don't happen to need any basses, do you?" he grinned. Jap flung an empty ink bottle after him. When quiet had returned to the office, he said, as he hung his hat on the nail: "Isabel wants to learn to stick type." "Funny," said Bill shortly, "so does Rosy, and they hate each other like Pap hates beer. Pretty mix-up we'll have on our hands." "That's all nonsense, Bill. Rosy can't help liking Isabel." Bill scanned the copy on his hook, his eyes narrowing. "Appears like she can," he muttered. "Now, Bill, this won't do," argued Jap earnestly. "We can't afford to have dissension in such a vital matter. You must talk to Rosy." "You can have the job," waived Bill, picking up a type. "Isabel said that Rosy was shallow and only skin-deep, and Rosy heard about it. Isabel Granger is not so much----" He stopped abruptly as Jap's hand went up in pained alarm. "Look here, Bill, are we going to let the chatter of women come between us? There is something deeper holding us together than the friendship of a day. Give me your hand, Bill, and tell me that it is Ellis's work and not these trifles that you care for. We have a work to do, you and I." Bill threw the stick upon the case and grasped Jap's outstretched hand. Tears glistened in his eyes. "Better than all the loves in the world, I love you, Jap," he stormed. Jerking his hat from the nail, he strode out to walk off the emotionalism he decried. That afternoon he strove manfully to show Isabel how to put type in the stick upside down, and to save her feelings he stealthily corrected her faulty work, suppressing a grin at Jap's pride in her first attempt. Bill shook his head sadly as they strolled out together, Jap's eyes drinking in the girl's slender beauty. "Petticoat government 'll get old Jap tripped up," he complained to the office cat. "And then where'll I be? When Jap marries I'll play second fiddle. Come seven, come 'leven!" and he snapped his fingers in the air. CHAPTER XVI The sun was streaming through the east windows. Jap looked anxiously up and down the street. Bill had not been home all night. This was a state of affairs alarming to Jap. He walked back to the table and turned the exchanges over restlessly. "I wonder if the boy could have persuaded that butterfly to elope with him, as he threatened he would, when her mother cut up so rough," he worried. Tim Simpson came in and peered around furtively. "Bill is drunk as a lord," he announced in a stage whisper. "I've got him in the back room of the calaboose, to sober up without the news leakin'." Jap paled. "Bill drunk?" he faltered. "Who got him into it? Is he asleep, Tim?" "Lord, no! If he was, I would 'a' left him out when he come to, and said no word to you about it. But I'm plum scared about him. He's chargin' up and down like a Barnum lion. I reckon as how you'd better mosey down there and try to ca'm him." As Jap walked rapidly down the alley beside the night marshal, he asked: