The Girl and the Bill

'The Girl and the Bill' is a romance-adventure novel written by Bannister Merwin. In the beginning of the novel, we are first introduced to the character of Robert Orme who liked Chicago, but felt towards the Western city something more than the tolerant, patronizing interest which so often characterizes the Eastern man. To him it was the hub of genuine Americanism—young, aggressive, perhaps a bit too cocksure, but ever bounding along with eyes toward the future. Here was the city of great beginnings, the city of experiment—experiment with life; hence its incompleteness—an incompleteness not dissimilar to that of life itself. Chicago lived; it was the pulse of the great Middle West. Orme watched the procession with clear eyes. He had been strolling southward from the Masonic Temple, into the shopping district. The clangor, the smoke and dust, the hurrying crowds, all worked into his mood. The expectation of adventure was far from him. Nor was he a man 2who sought impressions for amusement; whatever came to him he weighed, and accepted or rejected according as it was valueless or useful. Wholesome he was; anyone might infer that from his face. Doubtless, his fault lay in his overemphasis on the purely practical; but that, after all, was a lawyer's fault, and it was counterbalanced by a sweet kindliness toward all the world—a loveableness which made for him a friend of every chance acquaintance.