“He's probably leading a double life,” said the exchange editor, jestingly, as he plunged his scissors into a Western paper, to cut out a poem by James Whitcomb Riley.
Without making many acquaintances, Whiskers, by reason of his hirsute peculiarity, became known throughout the building, from the business office on the ground floor to the composing-room on the top. When he went into the latter one day and passed down the long aisle between the long row of cases and type-setting machines, with a corrected proof in his hand, a certain printer, who was “setting” up a clothing-house advertisement, could not resist the temptation to give labial imitation of the blowing of wind. The bygone joke concerning whiskers and the wind was then current, and a score of compositors took up the whistle, so that all varieties of breeze were soon being simulated simultaneously. Whiskers coloured sightly, but, save a dignified straightening of his shoulders, he showed no other sign that he was conscious of the rude allusion to his copious beard.
Whiskers chose Tuesday for his day off.
It was on a certain Tuesday evening that one of the reporters came into the exchange editor's room and casually remarked:
“I saw your anti-shaving friend, who sits at that desk, riding out to the suburbs on a car to-day. He was all crushed up and carried a bouquet of roses.”
“That settles it,” cried the editorial writer to the exchange editor, with mock jubilation. “There can be no doubt the old man was leading a double life. The bouquet means a woman in the case.”
“And his money goes for flowers and presents,” added the exchange editor.
“Some of it, of course,” went on the editorial writer, “and the rest he's saving to get married on. Who'd have thought it at his age?”
“Why, he's not over forty. It's only his whiskers that make him look old. One can easily detect a sentimental vein in his composition.”
“That accounts for his fits of abstraction, too. So he's found favour in some fair one's eyes. I wonder what she's like.”