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“If one marries themselves?”

And she replied: “I believe it well.”

They kissed solemnly, and their faces, in the gleam of the electric light which at that moment spluttered into ill-timed and tactless activity, were transfigured so that I marveled at the dim splendor of them.

But the Bonnie Lassie was scandalized. On general principles she mistrusts that any marriage is really made in heaven unless she acts as earthly agent of it. What had those two poverty-stricken little creatures to marry on? She put the question rhetorically to Our Square in general and to the two people most concerned in particular. Courts of law might have rejected their replies as irrelevant. Humanly, however, they were convincing enough.

Said Plooie: “Who will have a care of that little one if I have not?”

Said Annie Oombrella: “He is so lonely!”

So those two unfortunates united their misfortunes, and lo! happiness came of it. Luckily that is all that did come of it. What disposition the pair would have made of children, had any arrived, it is difficult to conjecture. Only by miraculous compression of ribs, handles, and fabrics was space contrived in the basement cubbyhole for Annie Oombrella to squeeze in. However, she set up housekeeping cheerily as a bird, with an odd lot of pots and pans which Schepstein had picked up at an auction and resold to them at not more than two hundred per cent profit, plus a kerosene stove, the magnificent wedding gift of the Bonnie Lassie and her husband, Cyrus the Gaunt. Twice a week they had meat. They were rising in the social scale.

Habitude is the real secret of tolerance. As we became accustomed to Plooie, Our Square ceased to resent his invincible outlandishness; we endured him with equanimity, although it would be exaggeration to say that we accepted him, and we certainly did not patronize him professionally. Nevertheless, in a minor degree, he nourished. Annie Oombrella must have lavished care upon him. His pinched-in shoulders broadened perceptibly. His gait, still a halting shuffle, grew noticeably brisker. There was even a heartier note in his lamentable trade cry:

“Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees a raccommoder!”

As for Annie Oombrella, having some one to look after quite transformed her. She grew plump and chirpy, and bustling as a blithe little sparrow, though perhaps duck would be a happier comparison, for she was dabbling and splashing in water all the day long, making the stairs and porches of her curatorship fairly glisten with cleanliness. Her rates went up to twenty cents an hour. There were rumors that she had started a savings account. Life stretched out before the little couple, smooth and peaceful and sunny with companionship.

Then came the war.

The calamitous quality of a great world tragedy is that it brings to so many helpless little folk bitter and ignoble tragedies of shame and humiliation and misunderstanding. With a few racial exceptions, Our Square was vehemently pro-Ally. In spirit we fought with valiant France and prayed for heroic Belgium. What a Godspeed we gave to the few sons of Gaul who, in those early days, left us to fight the good fight! How sourly we looked upon Plooie continuing his peaceful rounds. Whence arose the rumor, I cannot say, but it was noised about just at that time of wrath and tension that Plooie was born in Liege. Liege, that city of fire and slaughter and heroism, upon which the eyes and hopes of the world were turned in wonder and admiration. Somebody had seen the entry on the marriage register! The Bonnie Lassie told me of it, pausing at my bench with a little furrow between her bright eyes.

“Dominie, you know Emile Garin pretty well?”

“Not at all,” I replied, failing to identify the rickety Plooie by his rightful name.

“Of course you do! Never a morning but he stops at your bench and asks if you have an umbrella to mend.”

“I never have. What of him?”

“Have you any influence with him?”