For the moment Mr. Tuttle was a little demoralized, but he recovered himself, coughed, and explained. “Yes, that’s my _name_,” he said. “But you take the name George, now, it’s more kind of a nickname I have when anybody gits real well acquainted with me like this Swedish man I was tellin’ you about; and besides that, it was up in _Dee_-troit. Most everybody I knowed up in _Dee_-troit, they most always called me George fer a nickname like. You know anybody in _Dee_-troit?” “No.” “Married?” Tuttle inquired. “No.” “Never be’n?” he said. “No.” “Well, now, that’s too bad,” he said sympathetically. “It ain’t the right way to live. I’m a widower myself, and I ain’t never be’n the same man since I lost my first wife. She was an Irish lady from Chicago.” He sighed; finished the slice of lemon pie Tilly had given him, and drank what was left of his large cup of coffee, holding the protruding spoon between two fingers to keep it out of his eye. He set the cup down, gazed upon it with melancholy, then looked again at the unresponsive Tilly. She had charm for him; and his expression, not wholly lacking a kind of wistfulness, left no doubt of it. No doubt, too, there fluttered a wing of fancy somewhere in his head: some picture of what might-have-been trembled across his mind’s-eye’s field of vision. For an instant he may have imagined a fireside, with such a competent fair creature upon one side of it, himself on the other, and merry children on the hearth-rug between. Certainly he had a moment of sentiment and sweet longing. “You ever think about gittin’ married again?” he said, rather unfortunately. “I told you I ain’t been married.” “Excuse _me_!” he hastened to say. “I was thinkin’ about myself. I mean when I says ‘again’ I was thinkin’ about myself. I mean I was astin’ you: You think about gittin’ married at all?” “No.” “I s’pose not,” he assented regretfully; and added in a gentle tone: “Well, you’re a mighty fine-lookin’ woman; I never see no better build than what you got on you.” Tilly went out and came back with Mrs. Pinney, who mystified him with her first words. “Well, De Morris?” she said. “What?” he returned blankly, then luckily remembered, and said, “Oh, yes, ma’am?” “I _hope_ you meant it when you signed that pledge, De Morris.”