The nephew laughed in a hearty, whole-souled way. He was not touched yet. “You mix your figures as you do your cobblers—after you get hold of the sherry bottle—with a swing. Wait until you see my ‘match.’ She is a glorious woman, Uncle Sim. The wonder is that she ever got her eyes down to my level.” The forty-year-old celibate continued to roll and harangue. His dress coat was new and a close fit to his rotund dapperness; with one lavender glove he smote the palm of his gloved left hand; the rose in his buttonhole was paler than the hard red spots on cheeks like underglazed pottery for smoothness and polish, his mustache curled upward and wriggled at animated periods. “Quite the thing, me dear boy, altogether proper. For me part, I wouldn’t care to be under obligations to a woman when she _had_ worked down to my level, but tastes differ, and a man of twenty-six who has a living to make ought to cast an anchor to windward, in case of squalls. A woman who can chop a stick, at a pinch, to set the pot to boiling is a convenience. Literature’s a better trade now than it used to be, I suppose. Jones of Illinois was telling me last night of the prices paid to good selling authors, and by George! I was surprised. All the same, I’d fight shy of the Guild if I were contemplating matrimony. If you could see some of the many objects that hang about the Capitol in wait for Tom, Dick, or Harry to pick up a ‘personal,’ or lobby a bill, or get subscriptions to a book or magazine, you wouldn’t wonder at my ‘prejudice,’ as you are pleased to style it. Pah!” To rid his mouth of the taste he caught up a tumbler of sherry cobbler, filmy without and icy amber within, and drained it. The expectant bridegroom glanced at the clock. His best man was to call for him at a quarter-past seven. It was exactly seven now, and the minutes drove heavily. “But Uncle Sim,”—still good-humoredly,—“Miss Welles is not a newspaper reporter, nor a lobbyist, nor yet a penny-a-liner. She wrote to please herself and her friends until her father’s death, six years ago. He was considered fairly wealthy, but something went wrong somewhere, and his widow would have suffered for the want of much to which she had been accustomed but for the talents and courage of her young daughter. I am afraid the poor girl worked harder than her mother suspected for a while, although the public received her favorably from the outset. Mrs. Welles survived her husband three years. Agnes then went to live with her only sister, Mrs. Ryder, the wife of my partner. I first met her at his house. She has continued to write and has supported herself handsomely in this way. She is as heroic as she is sweet—a thorough woman.”