There was nothing vicious in it, Chet would have come to the aid of beauty in distress as quickly as Don Quixote.  Any man with a blue shirt as clean, and a shave as smooth, and a haircut as round as Chet Ball’s has no meanness in him.  A certain dare-deviltry went hand in hand with his work—­a calling in which a careless load dispatcher, a cut wire, or a faulty strap may mean instant death.  Usually the girls laughed and called back to them or went on more quickly, the colour in their cheeks a little higher.

But not Anastasia Rourke.  Early the first morning of a two-weeks’ job on the new plant of the Western Castings Company Chet Ball, glancing down from his dizzy perch atop an electric light pole, espied Miss Anastasia Rourke going to work.  He didn’t know her name nor anything about her, except that she was pretty.  You could see that from a distance even more remote than Chet’s.  But you couldn’t know that Stasia was a lady not to be trifled with.  We know her name was Rourke, but he didn’t.

So then:  “Hoo-Hoo!” he had called.  “Hello, sweetheart!  Wait for me and I’ll be down.”

Stasia Rourke had lifted her face to where he perched so high above the streets.  Her cheeks were five shades pinker than was their wont, which would make them border on the red.

“You big coward, you!” she called, in her clear, crisp voice.  “If you had your foot on the ground you wouldn’t dast call to a decent girl like that.  If you were down here I’d slap the face of you.  You know you’re safe up there.”

The words were scarcely out of her mouth before Chet Ball’s sturdy legs were twinkling down the pole.  His spurred heels dug into the soft pine of the pole with little ripe, tearing sounds.  He walked up to Stasia and stood squarely in front of her, six feet of brawn and brazen nerve.  One ruddy cheek he presented to her astonished gaze.  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said.  And waited.  The Rourke girl hesitated just a second.  All the Irish heart in her was melting at the boyish impudence of the man before her.  Then she lifted one hand and slapped his smooth cheek.  It was a ringing slap.  You saw the four marks of her fingers upon his face.  Chet straightened, his blue eyes bluer.  Stasia looked up at him, her eyes wide.  Then down at her own hand, as if it belonged to somebody else.  Her hand came up to her own face.  She burst into tears, turned, and ran.  And as she ran, and as she wept, she saw that Chet was still standing there, looking after her.

Next morning, when Stasia Rourke went by to work, Chet Ball was standing at the foot of the pole, waiting.

They were to have been married that next June.  But that next June Chet Ball, perched perilously on the branch of a tree in a small woodsy spot somewhere in France, was one reason why the American artillery in that same woodsy spot was getting such a deadly range on the enemy.  Chet’s costume was so devised that even through field glasses (made in Germany) you couldn’t tell where tree left off and Chet began.