That is why the first thing Fireman Carter saw in his morning paper was his own name. He started guiltily at the sight and threw the sheet away. No maiden caught _en déshabillé_ could have been more abashed; and, as the maiden afterward might wonder how she _did_ look--was it so _very_ awful?--so did Dick. He picked the paper up again stealthily and read all about it, lost in wonder at the end. To the applause that came his way he turned an inattentive ear, thus giving further life to the old idea that the bravest are always the most modest, which looks like a double superlative and is no more true than that they are always the fattest, or anything else. The bravest are usually the most courageous, and there ends deduction. Dick was busy with his own thoughts--something troubled him. A strange thing was the fact that though his friend Holtzer scrupulously gave him every credit he did not seek his society. The frown of hard thinking was on Dick’s brow all day. At night he asked for a few hours off and got them. Mary Ellen met him at the door. “Oh, Dick!” she cried and gulped. “Ain’t you just grand, though!” she said, and looked at him with beatified gray eyes. Here was golden opportunity. The proper play for Fireman Carter was to reach out his strong arms and gather Mary Ellen then and there, but he did nothing of the sort. He seemed distrait and worried. To her anxiety, he seated himself on the sofa and fumbled his hat. “You ain’t mad at me, are you, Dick?” she asked tremulously. “Holtzer been here?” bruskly interrupted her visitor with no apparent relevance. “Yes,” said Mary Ellen. “What did you tell him?” “I--I--I told him ‘No.’” Fireman Carter passed his hand over his forehead, then drew out a newspaper, saying: “You’ve read this, ain’t you?” “Yes.” “More especially this?” reading aloud the most laudatory paragraph. Mary Ellen was not feazed by such flagrant egotism. “Beautiful!” she said dreamily. “Just beautiful!” “Beautiful!” yelled Fireman Carter, leaping to his feet. The scorn in his voice could not be rendered by a phonograph. Poor man! He was about to knock the light out of those gray eyes, to spoil his own image, and nothing is so trying to a man’s temper. “Hunh!” he continued. “Shows just about how much intelligence you got--beautiful! It’s a--lie--it’s fuzzy-water gas--there ain’t nothing to it at all--d’ye understand that?” This last came out so fiercely that Mary Ellen faltered as she said she did. “All right,” said Fireman Carter. “Now, I want to tell you just one thing: I ain’t the man to back-cap no man, when I come to get cooled down--not with a girl nor nothing else.” He tapped his knee with a perpendicular forefinger. “Not with a girl nor nothing!” he repeated. “Understand that?” “Yes.”