CHAPTER XV. JOHN'S COURTSHIP.

O LIVER didn't go back to his native village. Mr. Kenyon sent on his trunk, and thus obviated the necessity. Our hero took up his quarters at a cheap hotel until, with the help of John Meadows, he obtained a room in St. Mark's Place. The room was a large square one, tolerably well furnished. The price asked was four dollars a week.

"That is rather more than I ought to pay just for a room," said Oliver.

"I'll tell you how you can get it cheaper," said John Meadows.

"How?"

"Take me for your room-mate. I'll pay a dollar and a half toward the rent."

Oliver hesitated, but finally decided to accept John's offer. Though his fellow-clerk was not altogether to his taste, it would prevent his feeling lonely, and he had no other acquaintances to select from.

"All right," he said.

"Is it a bargain?" said John, delighted. "I'll give my Bleecker Street landlady notice right off. Why, I shall feel like a prince here!"

"Then this is better than your room?"

"You bet! That's only big enough for a middling sized cat, while this――"

"Is big enough for two large ones," said Oliver, smiling.

"Yes, and a whole litter of kittens into the bargain. We'll have a jolly time together."

"I hope so."

"Of course," said John seriously, "when I get married that'll terminate the contract."

"Do you think of getting married soon?" asked Oliver, surprised and amused.

"I'll tell you about it," said John, with the utmost gravity. "Last month I had my fortune told."

"Well?"

"It was told by Mme. Catalina, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter; so, of course, she wasn't a humbug."

"Does that make any difference—being the seventh daughter?"

"Of course it does. Well, she told me that I should marry a rich widow, and ever after live in luxury," said John, evidently elated by his prospects.

"Did you believe her?"

"Of course I did. She told things that I knew to be true about the past, and that convinced me she could foretell the future."

"Such as what?"

"She told me I had lately had a letter from a person who was interested in me. So I had. I got a letter from Charlie Cameron only a week before. Me and Charlie went to school together, so, of course, he feels interested in me."

"What else?"

"She said a girl with black eyes was in love with me."

"Is that true?"

John nodded complacently.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know her name, but I've met her two or three times on the street, and she always looked at me and smiled."

"Struck with your looks, I suppose," suggested Oliver.

John stroked an incipient mustache and stole a look into the glass.

"Looks like it," he said.

"If she were only a rich widow you wouldn't mind cultivating her acquaintance?"

"I wish she were," said John thoughtfully.

"You haven't any widow in view, have you?"

"Yes, I have," said John, rather to Oliver's surprise.

"Who is it?"

"Her husband used to keep a lager-beer saloon on Bleecker Street, and now the widow carries it on. I've enquired about, and I hear she's worth ten thousand dollars. Would you like to see her?"

"Very much," answered Oliver, whose curiosity was excited.

"Come along, then. We'll drop in and get a couple of glasses of something."

Following his guide, or rather side by side, Oliver walked round to the saloon.

"Does she know you admire her?" enquired Oliver.

"I don't," said John. "I admire her money."

"Would you be willing to sell yourself?"

"For ten thousand dollars? I guess I would. That's the easiest way of getting rich. It would take me two hundred years, at eight dollars a week, to make such a fortune."

They entered the saloon. Behind the counter stood a woman of thirty-five, weighing upward of two hundred pounds. She looked good-natured, but the idea of a marriage between her and John Meadows, a youth of nineteen, seemed too ridiculous.

"What will you have?" she asked, in a Teutonic accent.

"Sarsaparilla and lager!" answered John.

Frau Winterhammer filled two mugs in the most business-like manner. She evidently had no idea that John was an admirer.

In the same business-like manner she received the money he laid on the counter.

John smacked his lips in affected delight.

"It is very good," he said. "Your lager is always good, Mrs. Winterhammer."

"So!" replied the good woman.

"That's so!" repeated John.

"Then perhaps you comes again," said the frau, with an eye to business.

"Oh, yes; I'll be sure to come again," said John, with a tender significance which was quite lost upon the matter-of-fact lady.

"And you bring your friends, too," she suggested.

"Yes; I will bring my friends."

"Dat is good," said Mrs. Winterhammer, in a satisfied tone.

Having no excuse for stopping longer the two friends went out.

"What do you think of her, Oliver?" asked John.

"There's a good deal of her," answered Oliver, using a non-committal phrase.

"Yes, she's rather plump," said John. "I don't like a skeleton, for my part."

"She doesn't look much like one."

"She's good-looking; don't you think so?" enquired John, looking anxiously in his companion's face.

"She looks pleasant; but, John, she's a good deal older than you."

"She's about thirty."

"Nearer forty."

"Oh, no, she isn't. And she's worth ten thousand dollars! Think, Oliver, how nice it would be to be worth ten thousand dollars! I wouldn't clerk it for old Bond any more, I can tell you that."

"Would you keep the saloon?"

"No, I'd let her keep that and I'd set up in something else. We'd double the money in a short time and then I'd retire and go to Europe."

"That's all very well, John; but suppose she won't have you?"

John smiled—a self-satisfied smile.

"She wouldn't reject a stylish young fellow like me—do you think she would? She'd feel flattered to get such a young husband."

"Perhaps she would," said Oliver, who thought John under a strange hallucination. "You must invite me to the wedding whenever it comes off, John."

"You shall be my groomsman," answered John confidently.

A week later John said to Oliver after supper:

"Oliver, I'm goin' to do it."

"To do what?"

"I'm goin' to propose to the widder to-night."

"So soon!"

"Yes; I'm tired of workin' for old Bond; I want to go in for myself."

"Well, John, I wish you good luck, but I shall be sorry to lose you for a room-mate."

"Lend me a necktie, won't you, Oliver? I want to take her eye, you know."

So Oliver lent his most showy necktie to his room-mate, and John departed on his important mission.

About half an hour later John rushed into the room in a violent state of excitement, his collar and bosom looking as if they had been soaked in dirty water, and sank into a chair.

"What's the matter?" asked Oliver.

"I've cast her off!" answered John in a hollow voice. "She is a faithless deceiver."

"Tell me all about it, Jack."

John told his story. He went to the saloon, ordered a glass of lager, and after drinking it asked the momentous question. Frau Winterhammer seemed surprised, said "So!" and then called "Fritz!" A stout fellow in shirt-sleeves came out of a rear room, and the widow said something to him in German. Then he seized John's arms, and the widow deliberately threw the contents of a pitcher of lager in his face and bosom. Then both laughed rudely, and John was released.

"What shall you do about it, John?" asked Oliver, with difficulty refraining from laughing.

"I have cast her off!" he said gloomily, "I will never enter the saloon again."

"I wouldn't," said Oliver.

Oliver would have felt less like laughing had he known that at that very moment Ezekiel Bond, prompted by Mr. Kenyon, was conspiring to get him into trouble.