Emeline had been there for nearly five years. He was a salesman for some
lines of tailored hats, a San Franciscan, but employed by a New York
wholesale house. Emeline chanced to be alone in the place, for Miss
Clarke was sick in bed, and the other saleswoman away on her vacation.
The trimmers, glancing out through a plush curtain at the rear, saw Miss
Cox and the "drummer" absorbed in a three hours' conversation. From two
to five o'clock they talked; the drummer watching her in obvious
admiration when an occasional customer interrupted, and when Miss Cox
went home the drummer escorted her. Emeline had left the parental roof
some two years before; she was rooming, now, with a mild and virtuous
girl named Regina Lynch, in Howard Street. Regina was the sort of girl
frequently selected by a girl of Emeline's type for confidante and
companion: timid, conventional, always ready to laugh and admire. Regina
consented to go to dinner with Emeline and Mr. Page, and as she later
refused to go to the theatre, Emeline would not go either; they all
walked out Market Street from the restaurant, and reached the Howard
Street house at about nine o'clock. Regina went straight upstairs, but
Emeline and George Page sat on the steps an hour longer, under the
bright summer moon, and when Emeline went upstairs she woke her roommate
up, and announced her engagement.

George came into the store at nine o'clock the next morning, to
radiantly confirm all that they had said the night before, and with
great simplicity the two began to plan for their future; from that time
they had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together every day; they were both
utterly satisfied; they never questioned their fate. In October George
had to go to San Diego, and a dozen little cities en route, for the
firm, and Emeline went, too. They were married in the little church of
Saint Charles in Eighteenth Street, only an hour or two before they
started for San Jose, the first stop in George's itinerary. Emeline's