As I walked into Paddy’s, there stood Simple grinning from ear to ear. He greeted me like a long-lost brother, pulling me toward the bar as he announced, “This evening the beers are on me and I have the where-with-all to pay for two rounds and a half, so pick up and drink down.”

“What, may I ask, is the occasion for this sudden conviviality? Tonight is not Saturday.”

“No,” said Simple, “but it is a new day right on, a new week, and a new year. They say a man’s life changes every seven years. I am in the change. Here, read this letter that I found laying on the radiator in the hall this evening when I come in that I know my landlady tried to peer through the envelope. It’s from my wife, Isabel.”

“I have no desire to pry into your personal correspondence,” I said.

“Read it, man, read it,” urged Simple. “Desire or not, read it. I want to hear it in words out loud what Mrs. Semple says—because I cannot believe my eyes. Unfold it, go ahead.”

“She writes a nice clear hand,” I said, “big round letters. You can tell this woman is a positive character. I see she’s still in Baltimore, too. Well, here goes:

Dear Mr. Semple:

Jess, at last I have found a man who loves me enough to pay for my divorce, which is more than you was ever willing to do and you are my husband. Now, listen, this man is a mail clerk that owns two houses, one of which he has got rented and the other one he needs somebody to take care of it. His first wife being dead so he wants me for his second. He knows I have been married once before and am still married in name only to you as you have not been willing to pay for the legal paper which grants freedom from our entanglement. This man is willing to pay for it, but he says I will have to file the claim. He says he will get a lawyer to furnish me grounds I have to swear on and that you also have to swear on unless you want to contest. I do not want no contest, you hear me? All I want is my divorce, since I have found a nice man, willing to marry me and pay for it, too. I am writing to find out if you will please not make no contest out of this because he has never done nothing to you, only do you a favor by bearing the expenses of the grounds that rightly belong to a husband. Let me hear from you this evening as he has already passed the point where he could wait.

Once sincerely yours but not now,

ISABEL

“I suppose you would have no intention of cross-filing,” I said.