OUR MR. WRENN .............................................................................................................................................1

SINCLAIR LEWIS ..................................................................................................................................1

The tickettaker of the Nickelorion MovingPicture Show is a public personage, who stands out on

Fourteenth Street, New York, wearing a gorgeous lightblue coat of numerous brass buttons. He nods to all

the patrons, and his nod is the most cordial in town. Mr. Wrenn used to trot down to Fourteenth Street,

passing ever so many other shows, just to get that cordial nod, because he had a lonely furnished room for

He stands out in the correspondence of the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company as "Our Mr. Wrenn," who

would be writing you directly and explaining everything most satisfactorily. At thirtyfour Mr. Wrenn was

the salesentry clerk of the Souvenir Company. He was always bending over bills and columns of figures at a

desk behind the stockroom. He was a meek little bachlora person of inconspicuous blue readymade

Todayhistorians have established the date as April 9, 1910there had been some confusing mixed

orders from the Wisconsin retailers, and Mr. Wrenn had been "called down" by the office manager, Mr.

Mortimer R. Guilfogle. He needed the friendly nod of the Nickelorion tickettaker. He found Fourteenth

Street, after office hours, swept by a dusty wind that whisked the skirts of countless plump Jewish girls,

whose Vnecked blouses showed soft throats of a warm brown. Under the elevated station he secretly made

believe that he was in Paris, for here beautiful Italian boys swayed with trays of violets; a tramp displayed

crimson mechanical rabbits, which squeaked, on silvery leadingstrings; and a newsstand was heaped with

"Gee!" inarticulated Mr. Wrenn. "Lots of colors. Hope I see foreign stuff like that in the moving pictures."

He came primly up to the Nickelorion, feeling in his vest pockets for a nickel and peering around the booth at

the friendly tickettaker. But the latter was thinking about buying Johnny's pants. Should he get them at the

Fourteenth Street Store, or SiegelCooper's, or over at Aronson's, near home? So ruminating, he twiddled his

wheel mechanically, and Mr. Wrenn's pasteboard slip was indifferently received in the plateglass gullet of

Mr. Wrenn trembled into the door of the Nickelorion. He wanted to turn back and rebuke this fellow, but was

restrained by shyness. He _had_ liked the man's "Fine evenin', sir "rain or shinebut he wouldn't stand

for being cut. Wasn't he making nineteen dollars a week, as against the tickettaker's ten or twelve? He shook

his head with the defiance of a cornered mouse, fussed with his mustache, and regarded the moving pictures

They helped him. After a Selig domestic drama came a stirring Vitagraph Western scene, "The Goat of the

Rancho," which depicted with much humor and tumult the revolt of a ranch cook, a Chinaman. Mr. Wrenn

was really seeing, not cowpunchers and sagebrush, but himself, defying the office manager's surliness and

revolting against the ticketman's rudeness. Now he was ready for the nearly overpowering delight of

He was a connoisseur of travelpictures, for all his life he had been planning a great journey. Though he had

done Staten Island and patronized an excursion to Bound Brook, neither of these was his grand tour. It was

yet to be taken. In Mr. Wrenn, apparently fastened to New York like a domesticminded barnacle, lay the

possibilities of heroic roaming. He knew it. He, too, like the man who had taken the Gaumont pictures, would

saunter among dusky Javan natives in "markets with tiles on the roofs and temples andanduh,

wellplaces!" The scent of Oriental spices was in his broadened nostrils as he scampered out of the

Nickelorion, without a look at the tickettaker, and headed for "home"for his thirdfloorfront on West

Sixteenth Street. He wanted to prowl through his collection of steamship brochures for a description of Java.

But, of course, when one's landlady has both the sciatica and a case of Patient Suffering one stops in the

Mrs. Zapp was a fat landlady. When she sat down there was a straight line from her chin to her knees. She

was usually sitting down. When she moved she groaned, and her apparel creaked. She groaned and creaked

from bed to breakfast, and ate five griddlecakes, two helpin's of scrapple, an egg, some rump steak, and

three cups of coffee, slowly and resentfully. She creaked and groaned from breakfast to her rockingchair,

and sat about wondering why Providence had inflicted upon her a weak digestion. Mr. Wrenn also wondered

why, sympathetically, but Mrs. Zapp was too conscientiously dolorous to be much cheered by the sympathy

of a niggerlovin' Yankee, who couldn't appreciate the subtle sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp's Bog, allied to all

Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the stuffy furniturecrowded basement room,

which smelled of dead food and deader pride in a race that had never existed. He sat still because the chair

For the hundred and twentyninth time in those years Mrs. Zapp said, in her rich corruption of Southern

negro dialect, which can only be indicated here, "Ah been meaning to get that chair mended, Mist' Wrenn."

He looked gratified and gazed upon the crayon enlargements of Lee Theresa, the older Zapp daughter (who

was forewoman in a factory), and of Godiva. Godiva Zapp was usually called "Goaty," and many times a day

was she called by Mrs. Zapp. A tamed child drudge was Goaty, with adenoids, which Mrs. Zapp had been

meanin' to have removed, and which she would continue to have benevolent meanin's about till it should be

too late, and she should discover that Providence never would let Goaty go to school.

"Yes, Mist' Wrenn, Ah told Goaty she was to see the man about getting that chair fixed, but she nev' does

In the kitchen was the noise of Goaty, ungovernable Goaty, aged eight, still snivelingly washing, though not

cleaning, the incredible pile of dinner dishes. With a trail of hesitating remarks on the sadness of sciatica and

windy evenings Mr. Wrenn sneaked forth from the august presence of Mrs. Zapp and mounted to

It was an abjectly respectable roomthe bedspread patched; no two pieces of furniture from the same

family; halftones from the magazines pinned on the wall. But on the old marble mantelpiece lived his

friends, books from wanderland. Other friends the room had rarely known. It was hard enough for Mr. Wrenn

to get acquainted with people, anyway, and Mrs. Zapp did not expect her gennulman lodgers to entertain. So

Mr. Wrenn had given up asking even Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper at the Souvenir Company,

to call. That left him the books, which he now caressed with small eager fingertips. He picked out a P. O.

The April skies glowed with benevolence this Saturday morning. The Metropolitan Tower was singing,

bright ivory tipped with gold, uplifted and intensely glad of the morning. The buildings walling in Madison

Square were jubilant; the honest redbrick fronts, radiant; the new marble, witty. The sparrows in the middle

of Fifth Avenue were all talking at once, scandalously but cleverly. The polished brass of limousines threw

off teethy smiles. At least so Mr. Wrenn fancied as he whisked up Fifth Avenue, the skirts of his small blue

doublebreasted coat wagging. He was going blocks out of his way to the office; ready to defy time and

eternity, yes, and even the office manager. He had awakened with Defiance as his bedfellow, and throughout

breakfast at the hustler Dairy Lunch sunshine had flickered over the dirty tessellated floor.

He pranced up to the Souvenir Company's brick building, on Twentyeighth Street near Sixth Avenue. In the

office he chuckled at his inkwell and the untorn blotters on his orderly desk. Though he sat under the weary

unnatural brilliance of a mercuryvapor light, he dashed into his work, and was too keen about this business

of living merrily to be much flustered by the bustle of the lady buyer's superior "_Good_ morning." Even up

to tenthirty he was still slamming down papers on his desk. Just let any one try to stop his course, his

readiness for snapping fingers at The Job; just let them _try_ it, that was all he wanted!

Then he was shot out of his chair and four feet along the corridor, in reflex response to the surly "

Burrrrr" of the buzzer. Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the manager, desired to see him. He scampered

along the corridor and slid decorously through the manager's doorway into the long sunbright room, ornate

with rugs and souvenirs. Seven Novelties glittered on the desk alone, including a large rococo

Shakespearestyle glass inkwell containing cloves and a small iron Pittsburgstyle one containing ink. Mr.

Wrenn blinked like a noonroused owlet in the brilliance. The manager dropped his fist on the desk, glared,

smoothed his flowered prairie of waistcoat, and growled, his red jowls quivering:

"Look here, Wrenn, what's the matter with you? The Bronx Emporium order for May Day novelties was

"They ordered twice, sir. By 'phone," smiled Mr. Wrenn, in an agony of politeness.

"They say they've looked it up. Anyway, they won't pay twice. I know, em. We'll have to crawl down

The announcement that Mr. Wrenn twice wriggled his head, and once tossed it, would not half denote his

wrath. At last! It was herethe time for revolt, when he was going to be defiant. He had been careful; old

Goglefogle was only barking; but why should _he_ be barked at? With his voice palpitating and his heart

"Probably. You looked it up, eh? Um! Send me in the two orderrecords. Well. But, anyway, I want you to

be more careful after this, Wrenn. You're pretty sloppy. Now get out. Expect me to make firms pay twice for

Mr. Wrenn found himself outside in the dark corridor. The manager hadn't seemed much impressed by his

"GENTLEMEN:Our Mr. Wrenn has again (underline that `again,' Miss Blaustein), again looked up your

order for May Day novelties. As we wrote before, order certainly was duplicated by 'phone. Our Mr. Wrenn

is thoroughly reliable, and we have his records of these two orders. We shall therefore have to push collection

After all, Mr. Wrenn was thinking, the crafty manager might be merely concealing his hand. Perhaps he had

understood the defiance. That gladdened him till after lunch. But at three, when his head was again foggy

with work and he had forgotten whether there was still April anywhere, he began to dread what the manager

might do to him. Suppose he lost his job; The Job! He worked unnecessarily late, hoping that the manager

would learn of it. As he wavered home, drunk with weariness, his fear of losing The Job was almost equal to

He had worked so late that when he awoke on Sunday morning he was still in a whirl of figures. As he went

out to his breakfast of coffee and whisked wheat at the Hustler Lunch the lines between the blocks of the

cement walk, radiant in a white flare of sunshine, irritatingly recalled the crosslines of orderlists, with the

narrow cement blocks at the curb standing for unfilled columnheadings. Even the ridges of the Hustler

Lunch's imitation steel ceiling, running in parallel lines, jeered down at him that he was a prosaic man whose

He went clear up to the branch postoffice after breakfast to get the Sunday mail, but the mail was a

disappointment. He was awaiting a wonderful fully illustrated guide to the Land of the Midnight Sun, a

suggestion of possible and coyly improbable trips, whereas he got only a letter from his oldest

acquaintanceCousin John, of Parthenon, New York, the boywhocomestoplay of Mr. Wrenn's

backyard days in Parthenon. Without opening the letter Mr. Wrenn tucked it into his inside coat pocket,

He jogged down Twentythird Street to the North River ferries afoot. Trolleys took money, and of course

one saves up for future great traveling. Over him the April clouds were fetterless vagabonds whose gaiety

made him shrug with excitement and take a curb with a frisk as gambolsome as a Central Park lamb. There

was no hint of saleslists in the clouds, at least. And with them Mr. Wrenn's soul swept along, while his

halfsoled CumFeeBest $3.80 shoes were ambling past warehouses. Only once did he condescend to being

really on Twentythird Street. At the Ninth Avenue corner, under the grimy Elevated, he sighted two blocks

down to the General Theological Seminary's brick Gothic and found in a pointed doorway suggestions of

But his real object was to loll on a West and South Railroad in luxury, and go sailing out into the foam and

perilous seas of North River. He passed through the smokingcabin. He didn't smokethe habit used up

travelmoney. Once seated on the upper deck, he knew that at last he was outwardbound on a liner. True,

there was no great motion, but Mr. Wrenn was inclined to let realism off easily in this feature of his voyage.

At least there were undoubted lifepreservers in the white racks overhead; and everywhere the world, to his

certain witnessing, was turned to crusading, to setting forth in great ships as if it were again in the brisk

He wasn't excited over the liners they passed. He was so experienced in all of travel, save the traveling, as to

have gained a calm interested knowledge. He knew the _Campagnia_ three docks away, and explained to a

Harlem grocer her fine points, speaking earnestly of stacks and sticks, tonnage and knots.

Not excited, butwhere couldn't he go if he were pulling out for Arcady on the _Campagnia!_ Gee! What

were even the buildingblock towers of the Metropolitan and Singer buildings and the _Times's_

creamstick compared with some old shrine in a cathedral close that was misted with centuries!

All this he felt and hummed to himself, though not in words. He had never heard of Arcady, though for many

Sure, he declared to himself, he was on the liner now; he was sliding up the muddy Mersey (see the _W. S.

Travel Notes_ for the source of his visions); he was off to St. George's Square for an organrecital (see the

The ferryboat was entering her slip. Mr. Wrenn trotted toward the bow to thrill over the bump of the boat's

snub nose against the lofty swaying piles and the swash of the brown waves heaped before her as she sidled

He did not notice the individual people in his exultation as he heard the great chords of the station's paean.

The vast roof roared as the iron coursers stamped titanic hoofs of scorn at the little stayathome.

That is a washedout hint of how the poets might describe Mr. Wrenn's passion. What he said was "Gee!"

He strolled by the lists of destinations hung on the track gates. Chicago (the plains! the Rockies! sunset over

miningcamps!), Washington, and the magic Southlandthither the iron horses would be galloping, their

swarthy smoke manes whipped back by the whirlwind, pounding out with clamorous strong hoofs their sixty

miles an hour. Very well. In time he also would mount upon the iron coursers and charge upon Chicago and

Then he headed for Cortlandt Street; for Long Island, City. finally, the Navy Yard. Along his way were the

docks of the tramp steamers where he might ship as steward in the allpromising Sometime. He had never

done anything so reckless as actually to ask a skipper for the chance to go asailing, but he had once gone

into a mission society's free shippingoffice on West Street where a disapproving elder had grumped at him,

"Are you a sailor? No? Can't do anything for you, my friend. Are you saved?" He wasn't going to risk another

horror like that, yet when the golden morning of Sometime dawned he certainly was going to go cruising off

As he walked through Long Island City he contrived conversations with the sailors he passed. It would have

surprised a Norwegian bos'un's mate to learn that he was really a gunrunner, and that, as a matter of fact, he

was now telling yarns of the Spanish Main to the man who slid deprecatingly by him.

Mr. Wrenn envied the jackies on the trainingship and carelessly went to sea as the President's guest in the

admiral's barge and was frightened by the stare of a sauntering shopgirl and arrived home before dusk, to

Dusk made incantations in his thirdfloorfront. Pleasantly fagged in those slight neat legs, after his walk,

Mr. Wrenn sat in the wicker rocker by the window, patting his scrubby tan mustache and reviewing the day's

wandering. When the gas was lighted he yearned over pictures in a geographical magazine for a happy hour,

then yawned to himself, "Wellll, Willum, guess it's time to crawl into the downy."

He undressed and smoothed his readymade suit on the rockingchair back. Sitting on the edge of his bed,

quaint in his cotton nightgown, like a rare little bird of dull plumage, he rubbed his head sleepily.

Ummmmm! How tired he was! He went to open the window. Then his tamed heart leaped into a waltz,

Through the window came the chorus of foghorns on North River. "Boommm!" That must be a giant

liner, battling up through the fog. (It was a ferry.) A liner! She'd be roaring just like that if she were off the

Banks! If he were only off the Banks! "Toot! Toot!" That was a tug. "Whawnnn!" Another liner. The

He dropped upon the bed again and stared absently at his clothes. Out of the inside coat pocket stuck the

He read a paragraph of it. He sprang from the bed and danced a tarantella, pranced in his cottony nightgown

like a drunken Yaqui. The letter announced that the flinty farm at Parthenon, left to Mr. Wrenn by his father,

had been sold. Its location on a river bluff had made it valuable to the Parthenon Chautauqua Association.

There was now to his credit in the Parthenon National Bank nine hundred and forty dollars!

He was wealthy, then. He had enough to stalk up and down the earth for many venturesome (but economical)

months, till he should learn the trade of wandering, and its mysterious trick of living without a job or a salary.

He crushed his pillow with burrowing head and sobbed excitedly, with a terrible stomachsinking and a chill

shaking. Then he laughed and wanted tobut didn'trush into the adjacent hall room and tell the total

stranger there of this worldchanging news. He listened in the hall to learn whether the Zapps were up, but

heard nothing; returned and cantered up and down, gloating on a map of the world.

"Gee! It's happened. I could travel all the time. I guess I won't bevery muchafraid of wrecks and stuff. . .

. Things like that. . . . Gee! If I don't get to bed I'll be late at the office in the morning!"

Mr. Wrenn lay awake till three o'clock. Monday morning he felt rather ashamed of having done so eccentric a

thing. But he got to the office on time. He was worried with the cares of wealth, with having to decide when

to leave for his worldwanderings, but he was also very much aware that office managers are disagreeable if

one isn't on time. All morning he did nothing more reckless than balance his new fortune, plus his savings,

The noonhour was not The Job's, but his, for exploration of the parlous lands of romance that lie hard by

Twentyeighth Street and Sixth Avenue. But he had to go out to lunch with Charley Carpenter, the assistant

bookkeeper, that he might tell the news. As for Charley, He needed frequently to have a confidant who knew

Mr. Wrenn and Charley chose (that is to say, Charley chose) a table at Drubel's Eating House. Mr. Wrenn

But Charley interrupted, "Say, did you hear old Goglefogle light into me this morning? I won't stand for it.

"Trouble? Nothing was the trouble. Except with old Goglefogle. I made one little break in my accounts. Why,

if old Gogie had to keep track of seventy'leven accounts and watch every single last movement of a fool girl

that can't even run the addingmachine, why, he'd get green around the gills. He'd never do anything _but_

make mistakes! Well, I guess the old codger must have had a bum breakfast this morning. Wanted some

exercise to digest it. Me, I was the exerciseI was the goat. He calls me in, and he calls me _down_, and

Charley Carpenter stopped his rapid tirade, delivered with quick headshakes like those of palsy, to raise his

smelly cigarette to his mouth. Midway in this slow gesture the memory of his wrongs again overpowered

him. He flung his right hand back on the table, scattering cigarette ashes, jerked back his head with the

irritated patience of a nervous martyr, then waved both hands about spasmodically, while he snarled, with his

"Sure! You can just bet your bottom dollar I let him see from the way I looked at him that I wasn't going to

stand for no more monkey business. You bet I did!... I'll fix him, I will. You just _watch_ me. (Hey, Drubel,

got any lemon merang? Bring me a hunk, will yuh?) Why, Wrenn, that crosseyed doublejointed fat old

slob, I'll slam him in the slats so hard some day I will, you just watch my smoke. If it wasn't for that

"Yuh." Mr. Wrenn was curt for a second.... "I know how it is, Charley. But you'll get over it, honest you will.

Say, I've got some news. Some land that my dad left me has sold for nearly a thousand plunks. By the way,

"Great, Wrenn! Great! Lemme congratulate you. Don't know anybody I'd rather've had this happen to. You're

a meek little baalamb, but you've got lots of stuff in you, old Wrennski. Oh say, by the way, could. you let

me have fifty cents till Saturday? Thanks. I'll pay it back sure. By golly! you're the only man around the

office that 'preciates what a double ducklined old fiend old Goglefogle is, the old"

"Aw, gee, Charley, I wish you wouldn't jump on Guilfogle so hard. He's always treated me square."

"Gogiesquare? Yuh, he's square just like a hoop. You know it, too, Wrenn. Now that you've got enough

money so's you don't need to be scared about the job you'll realize it, and you'll want to soak him, same's I do.

_Say!_" The impulse of a great idea made him gleefully shake his fist sidewise. "Say! Why _don't_ you soak

him? They bank on you at the Souvenir Company. Darn' sight more than you realize, lemme tell you. Why,

you do about half the stockkeeper's work, sides your own. Tell you what you do. You go to old Goglefogle

and tell him you want a raise to twentyfive, and want it right now. Yes, by golly, _thirty!_ You're worth

that, or pretty darn' near it, but 'course old Goglefogle'll never give it to you. He'll threaten to fire you if you

say a thing more about it. You can tell him to go ahead, and then where'll he be? Guess that'll call his bluff

"Yes, but, Charley, then if Guilfogle feels he can't pay me that muchyou know he's responsible to the

directors; he can't do everything he wants towhy, he'll just have to fire me, after I've talked to him like that,

whether he wants to or not. And that'd leave us that'd leave them without a sales clerk, right in the

"Why, sure, Wrenn; that's what we want to do. If you go it 'd leave 'em without just about _two_ men. Bother

'em like the deuce. It 'd bother Mr. Mortimer X. Y. Guglefugle most of all, thank the Lord. He wouldn't know

where he was attrying to break in a man right in the busy season. Here's your chance. Come on, kid; don't

"Oh gee, Charley, I can't do that. You wouldn't want me to try to _hurt_ the Souvenir Company after being

"Well, maybe you _like_ to get your cute little nose rubbed on the grindstone! I suppose you'd like to stay on

"Aw, Charley, don't get sore; please don't! I'd like to get off, all rightlike to go traveling, and stuff like that.

"But can't you see, you poor nut, you won't be _leaving_ 'emthey'll either pay you what they ought to or

"Charley was making up for some uncertainty as to his own logic by beaming persuasiveness, and Mr. Wrenn

"Well, all right!" snarled Charley, "if you like to be Gogie's goat.... Oh, you're all right, Wrennski. I suppose

you had ought to stay, if you feel you got to.... Well, so long. I've got to beat it over and buy a pair of socks

Mr. Wrenn crept out of Drubel's behind him, very melancholy. Even Charley admitted that he "had ought to

stay," then; and what chance was there of persuading the dread Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle that he wished to

be looked upon as one resigning? Where, then, any chance of globetrotting; perhaps for months he would

remain in slavery, and he had hoped just that morning One dreadful quarterhour with Mr. Guilfogle

and he might be free. He grinned to himself as he admitted that this was like seeing Europe after merely

Well, he had nine minutes more, by his twodollar watch; nine minutes of vagabondage. He gazed across at a

Greek restaurant with signs in real Greek letters like "ruins atwell, at Aythens." A Chinese chopsuey den

with a redandyellow carved dragon, and at an upper window a squat Chinaman who might easily be

carrying a _kris_, "or whatever them Chink knives are," as he observed for the hundredth time he had taken

this journey. A rotisserie, before whose upright fender of scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a

shiny brown. In a furrier's window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts of "awful brave convicks"; the

steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses, just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear

(meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the _igloo_ at night). And the florists! There were

orchids that (though he only half knew it, and that all inarticulately) whispered to him of jungles where, in the

hot hush, he saw the slumbering python and "What was it in that poem, that, Mandalay, thing? _was_ it

He had to hurry back to the office. He stopped only to pat the head of a florist's delivery horse that looked

wistfully at him from the curb. "Poor old fella. What you thinking about? Want to be a circus horse and

At threethirty, the time when it seems to office persons that the day's work never will end, even by a

miracle, Mr. Wrenn was shaky about his duty to the firm. He was more so after an electrical interview with

the manager, who spent a few minutes, which he happened to have free, in roaring "I want to know why" at

Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular "why" that he wanted to know; he was merely getting scientific

efficiency out of employees, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken from a business magazine that dilutes

At fivetwenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on nothing in particular, and suggested that

he stay late with Charley Carpenter and the stockkeeper to inventory a line of deskclocks which they were

As Mr. Wrenn returned to his desk he stopped at a window on the corridor and coveted the bright late

afternoon. The cornices of lofty buildings glistened; the sunset shone fierily through the glassinclosed

layerlike upper floors. He wanted to be out there in the streets with the shopping crowds. Old Goglefogle

As he left the Souvenir Company building after working late at taking inventory and roamed down toward

Fourteenth Street, Mr. Wrenn felt forlornly aimless. The worst of it all was that he could not go to the

Nickelorion for moving pictures; not after having been cut by the tickettaker. Then, there before him was

the glaring sign of the Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with "Great Train Robbery Film Tonight" made his

heart thump like stairclimbingand he dashed at the ticketbooth with a nickel doughtily extended. He felt

queer about the scalp as the cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be watching him so closely?

As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he tried to glance away from the Brassbutton Man. For one

nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned. It turned back of itself; he stared full at the man, half

bowedand received a hearty absentminded nod and a "Fine evenin'." He sang to himself a monotonous

song of great joy. When he stumbled over the feet of a large German in getting to a seat, he apologized as

The trainrobbery film waswell, he kept repeating "Gee!" to himself pantingly. How the masked men did

sneak, simply sneak and sneak, behind the bushes! Mr. Wrenn shrank as one of them leered out of the picture

at him. How gallantly the train dashed toward the robbers, to the spiritstirring roll of the snaredrum. The

rush from the bushes followed; the battle with detectives concealed in the express car. Mr. Wrenn was

standing sturdily and shooting coolly with the slender hawkfaced Pinkerton man in puttees; with him he

leaped to horse and followed the robbers through the forest. He stayed through the whole program twice to

As he started to go out he found the tickettaker changing his long lightblue robe of state for a highly

commonplace sackcoat without brass buttons. In his astonishment at seeing how a Highness could be

transformed into an everyday man, Mr. Wrenn stopped, and, having stopped, spoke:

"Yuh, I guess Now where's the devil and his wife flew away to with my hat? Them guys is always

swiping it. Picture, mister? Why, I didn't see it no more 'n Say you, Pink Eye, say you crabfooted

usher, did you swipe my hat? Ain't he the cutup, mister! Ain't both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads,

though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the boxoffice. _Picture?_ I don't get no chance to see any of 'em.

Funny, ain't it?me barking for 'em like I was the grandmother of the guy that invented 'em, and not

knowing whether the train robbery Now who stole my goinghome shoes?... Why, I don't know

He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk's heart bounded in comradeship. He was surprised into

"SayuhI bowed to you the other night and youwell, honestly, you acted like you never saw me."

"Well, well, now, and that's what happens to me for being the dad of five kids and a shegirl and a tomcat.

Sure, I couldn't 've seen you. Me, I was probably that busy with fambly caresI was probably thinking who

was it et the lemon pie on mewas it Pete or Johnny, or shall I lick 'em both together, or just bite me wife."

Mr. Wrenn knew that the tickettaker had never, never really considered biting his wife. _He_ knew! His nod

"Oh yes, I'm sure you didn't intend to hand me the icy mitt. Say! I'm thirsty. Come on over to Moje's and I'll

He was aghast at this abyss of moneyspending into which he had leaped, and the Brassbutton Man was

suspiciously wondering what this person wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent saloon, a New York

corner saloon, which of course "glittered" with a large mirror, heaped glasses, and a long shining footrail on

"Uhhhhh," said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now thatwealthy citizen though he had

becomehe was in danger of exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn't choose his drink properly. "Stummick

"You're the brotherinlaw to a wise one," commented the Brassbutton Man. "Me, I ain't never got the

sense to do the traffic cop on the booze. The old woman she says to me, `Mory,' she says, `if you was in

heaven and there was a pail of beer on one side and a gold harp on the other,' she says, `and you was to have

"`Me?' I says to her. `Me? I'd pinch the harp and pawn it for ten growlers of Dutch beer and some mansized

"Wellll," yawned the tickettaker, "the old woman'll be chasing me best pants around the flat, if she don't

have me to chase, pretty soon. Guess I'd better beat it. Much obliged for the drink, Mr. Uh. So long, Jimmy."

Mr. Wrenn set off for home in a high state of exhilaration which, he noticed, exactly resembled driving an

aeroplane, and went briskly up the steps of the Zapps' genteel but unexciting residence. He was much nearer

to heaven than West Sixteenth Street appears to be to the outsider. For he was an explorer of the Arctic, a

trusted man on the job, an associate of witty Bohemians. He was an army lieutenant who had, with his friend

the hawk faced Pinkerton man, stood off bandits in an attack on a train. He opened and closed the door

He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn. His landlady stood on the bottom step of the hall stairs in a bunchy

"Mist' Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you wouldn't just make all the noise you can. Ah don't

see why Ah should have to be kept awake all night. Ah suppose it's the will of the Lord that whenever Ah go

out to see Mrs. Muzzy and just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get insomina, but Ah don't see why anybody

that tries to be a gennulman should have to go and bang the door and just rack mah nerves."

"There's something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zappsomething that's happened to me. That's why I was out

celebrating last evening and got in so late." Mr. Wrenn was diffidently sitting in the basement.

"You see, Mrs. Zapp, Iuhmy father left me some land, and it's been sold for about one thousand

" Ah'm awful' glad, Mist' Wrenn," she said, funereally. "Maybe you'd like to take that hall room beside yours

now. The two rooms'd make a nice apartment." (She really said "nahs 'pahtmun', "you understand.)

"Why, I hadn't thought much about that yet." He felt guilty, and was profusely cordial to Lee Theresa Zapp,

Miss Theresa was a large young lady with a bust, much black hair, and a handsome disdainful discontented

face. She waited till he had finished greeting her, then sniffed, and at her mother she snarled:

"Ma, they went and kept us late again tonight. I' m getting just about tired of having a bunch of Jews and

"T'resa, Mist' Wrenn's just inherited two thousand dollars, and he's going to take that upper hall room." Mrs.

But the gallant friend of Pinkertons faced herfor the first time. "Waste his travelmoney?" he was

"That fellow! Oh, he ain't going to be perm'nent. And he promised me So you can have"

"I'm _awful_ sorry, Mrs. Zapp, but I'm afraid I can't take it. Fact is, I may go traveling for a while."

"Why, I'm afraid I'll have to give it up, but Oh, I may not be going for a long long while yet; and of

course I'll be glad to comeI'll want to come back here when I get back to New York. I won't be gone for

"And Ah thought you said you was going to be perm'nent!" Mrs. Zapp began quietly, prefatory to working

herself up into hysterics. "And here Ah've gone and had your room fixed up just for you, and new paper put

in, and you've always been talking such a lot about how you wanted your furniture arranged, and Ah've gone

Mr. Wrenn had been a shyly paying guest of the Zapps for four years. That famous new paper had been put

up two years before. So he spluttered: "Oh, I'm _awfully_ sorry. I wishuhI don't"

"Ah'd _thank_ you, Mist' Wrenn, if you could _conveniently_ let me _know_ before you go running off and

leaving me with empty rooms, with the landlord after the rent, and me turning away people that 'd pay more

for the room, because Ah wanted to keep it for you. And people always coming to see you and making me

Even the roominghouse worm was making small wormlike sounds that presaged turning. Lee Theresa

snapped just in time, "Oh, cut it out, Ma, will you!" She had been staring at the worm, for he had suddenly

become interesting and adorable and, incidentally, an heir. "I don't see why Mr. Wrenn ain't giving us all the

"Oh!" grunted Mrs. Zapp. "So mah own flesh and blood is going to turn against me!"

She rose. Her appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for

unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded upstairs with a train of

Mr. Wrenn looked as though sudden illness had overpowered him. But Theresa laughed, and remarked: "You

With much billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her garments, she sailed to the cloudy mirror over the

magazinefilled bookcase and inspected her cap of false curls, with many prods of her large firm hands

which flashed with Brazilian diamonds. Though he had heard the word "puffs," he did not know that half her

hair was false. He stared at it. Though in disgrace, he felt the honor of knowing so ample and rustling a

"But, say, I wish I could 've let her know I was going earlier, Miss Zapp. I didn't know it myself, but it does

"Why, child, you won't do anything of the sort. Ma hasn't got a bit of kick coming. You've always been awful

nice, far as I can see." She smiled lavishly. "I went for a walk tonight.... I wish all those men wouldn't stare

Mr. Wrenn nodded, but that didn't seem to be the right comment, so he shook his head, then looked

"I went by that Armenian restaurant you were telling me about, Mr. Wrenn. Some time I believe I'll go dine

Remarking to herself that there was no question about it, after all, he _was_ a little fool, Theresa continued

"Oh!... I do get so awfully tired of the greasy stuff Ma and Goaty dish up. They think a big stew that tastes

like dishwater is a dinner, and if they do have anything I like they keep on having the same thing every day

till I throw it in the sink. I wish I could go to a restaurant once in a while for a change, but of course I

dunno's it would be proper for a lady to go alone even there. What do you think? Oh dear!" She sat brooding

He had an inspiration. Perhaps Miss Theresa could be persuaded to go out to dinner with him some time. He

"Now, didn't I tell you to call me `Miss Theresa'? Well, I suppose you just don't want to be friends with me.

"Oh, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Honest I didn't. I've always thought you'd think I was fresh if I called

"Why, I guess I could go up to the Armenian with you, perhaps. When would you like to go? You know I've

always got lots of dates but Iumlet's see, I think I could go tomorrow evening."

"Yes, you may if you'll be a good boy. Good night." She departed with an air of intimacy.

Mr. Wrenn scuttled to the Nickelorion, and admitted to the Brassbutton Man that he was "feeling pretty

He had never supposed that a handsome creature like Miss Theresa could ever endure such a "slow fellow" as

himself. For about one minute he considered with a chill the question of whether she was agreeable because

of his new wealth, but reproved the fiend who was making the suggestion; for had he not heard her mention

with great scorn a second cousin who had married an old Yankee for his money? That just settled _that_, he

assured himself, and scowled at a passing messengerboy for having thus hinted, but hastily grimaced as the

The Armenian restaurant is peculiar, for it has foreign food at low prices, and is below Thirtieth Street, yet it

has not become Bohemian. Consequently it has no bad music and no crowd of persons from Missouri whose

women risk salvation for an evening by smoking cigarettes. Here prosperous Oriental merchants, of mild

natures and bandit faces, drink semiliquid Turkish coffee and discuss rugs and revolutions.

In fact, the place seemed so unartificial that Theresa, facing Mr. Wrenn, was bored. And the menu was

foreign without being Society viands. It suggested rats' tails and birds' nests, she was quite sure. She would

gladly have experimented with _pate de foie gras_ or alligatorpears, but what social prestige was there to be

gained at the factory by remarking that she "always did like _pahklava_"? Mr. Wrenn did not see that she was

glancing about discontentedly, for he was delightedly listening to a lanky young man at the next table who

was remarking to his _visavis_, a pale slithey lady in black, with the lines of a torpedoboat: "Try some of

the stuffed vineleaves, child of the angels, and some wheat _pilaf_ and some _bourma_. Your wheat _pilaf_

is a comfortable food and cheering to the stomach of man. Simply _won_derful. As for the _bourma_, he is

a merry beast, a brown rose of pastry with honey cunningly secreted between his petals and Here!

Waiter! Stuffed vineleaves, wheat _p'laf, bourm'_ twice on the order and hustle it."

"When you get through listening to that manhe talks like a bar of soaptell me what there is on this bill of

"I thought he was real funny," insisted Mr. Wrenn.... "I'm sure you'll like _shish kebab_ and s"

"_Shish kibub!_ Who ever heard of such a thing! Haven't they anyoh, I thought they'd have stuff they call

"Well, I know it isn't, because I read about it in a story in a magazine. And they were eating it. On the

"Well, I'm not going to trust any heathens to cook my meat. I'll take some eggs and some of thatwhat was

"_Bourma_.... That's awful nice. With honey. And do try some of the stuffed peppers and rice."

Somehow Mr. Wrenn wasn't vastly transformed even by the possession of the two thousand dollars her

mother had reported. He was still "funny and sort of scary," not like the overpowering Southern gentlemen

she supposed she remembered. Also, she was hungry. She listened with stolid glumness to Mr. Wrenn's

observation that that was "an awful big hat the lady with the funny guy had on."

He was chilled into quietness till Papa Gouroff, the owner of the restaurant, arrived from above stairs. Papa

Gouroff was a Russian Jew who had been a police spy in Poland and a hotel proprietor in Mogador, where he

called himself Turkish and married a renegade Armenian. He had a nose like a sickle and a neck like a

bluegum nigger. He hoped that the place would degenerate into a Bohemian restaurant where liberal

clergymen would think they were slumming, and barbers would think they were entering society, so he

always wore a _fez_ and talked bad Arabic. He was local color, atmosphere, Bohemian flavor. Mr. Wrenn

"Say, do you see that man? He's Signor Gouroff, the owner. I've talked to him a lot of times. Ain't he great!

Golly! look at that beak of his. Don't he make you think of _kiosks_ and _hyrems_ and stuff? Gee! What

"He's got on a dirty collar.... That waiter's awful slow.... Would you please be so kind and pour me another

But when she reached the honied _bourma_ she grew tolerant toward Mr. Wrenn. She had two cups of cocoa

and felt fat about the eyes and affectionate. She had mentioned that there were good shows in town. Now she

"Gwendolyn Muzzy was telling me that this was the funniest show she'd ever seen. Tells how two confidence

men fooled one of those terrible little jay towns. Shows all the funny people, you know, like they have in jay

towns.... I wish I could go to it, but of course I have to help out the folks at home, so Well.... Oh dear."

"Say! I'd like to take you, if I could. Let's gothis evening!" He quivered with the adventure of it.

"Why, I don't know; I didn't tell Ma I was going to be out. Butoh, I guess it would be all right if I was with

"All right." Her assent was too eager, but she immediately corrected that error by yawning, "I don't suppose

They were a very lively couple as they walked up. He trickled sympathy when she told of the selfishness of

the factory girls under her and the meanness of the superintendent over her, and he laughed several times as

she remarked that the superintendent "ought to be boiled alivethat's what _all_ lobsters ought to be," so she

repeated the epigram with such increased jollity that they swung up to the theater in a gale; and, once facing

the ennuied ticketseller, he demanded dollar seats just as though he had not been doing sums all the way up

The play was a glorification of Yankee smartness. Mr. Wrenn was disturbed by the fact that the swindler

heroes robbed quite all the others, but he was stirred by the brisk romance of moneymaking. The swindlers

were supermenblonde beasts with card indices and options instead of clubs. Not that Mr. Wrenn made any

observations regarding supermen. But when, by way of commercial genius, the swindler robbed a young

night clerk Mr. Wrenn whispered to Theresa, "Gee! he certainly does know how to jolly them, heh?"

Every one made millions, victims and all, in the last act, as a proof of the social value of being a live

American business man. As they oozed along with the departing audience Mr. Wrenn gurgled:

"That makes me feel just like I'd been making a million dollars." Masterfully, he proposed, "Say, let's go

"Let's I almost feel as if I could afford Rector's, after that play; but, anyway, let's go to Allaire's."

Though he was ashamed of himself for it afterward, he was almost haughty toward his waiter, and ordered

Welsh rabbits and beer quite as though he usually breakfasted on them. He may even have strutted a little as

he hailed a car with an imaginary walkingstick. His parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he shook her

As he undressed he hoped that he had not been too abrupt with the waiter, "poor cuss." But he lay awake to

think of Theresa's hair and handclasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who curtly summoned

bankpresidents and who hadhe tossed the bedclothes about in his struggle to get the wordwho had a

The five thousand princes of New York to protect themselves against the four million ungrateful slaves had

devised the sacred symbols of dresscoats, large houses, and automobiles as the outward and visible signs of

the virtue of making money, to lure rebels into respectability and teach them the social value of getting a

dollar away from that inhuman, socially injurious fiend, Some One Else. That Our Mr. Wrenn should dream

for dreaming's sake was catastrophic; he might do things because he wanted to, not because they were

fashionable; whereupon, police forces and the clergy would disband, Wall Street and Fifth Avenue would go

thundering down. Hence, for him were provided those Y. M. C. A. night bookkeeping classes administered

by solemn earnest men of thirty for solemn credulous youths of twentynine; those sermons on content;

articles on "building up the rundown store by live advertising"; Kiplingesque stories about playing the game;

and correspondenceschool advertisements that shrieked, "Mount the ladder to thorough knowledgethe

To all these Mr. Wrenn had been indifferent, for they showed no imagination. But when he saw Big Business

glorified by a humorous melodrama, then The Job appeared to him as picaresque adventure, and he was in

The eighto'clock sun, which usually found a wildly shaving Mr. Wrenn, discovered him dreaming that he

was the manager of the Souvenir Company. But that was a complete misunderstanding of the case. The

manager of the Souvenir Company was Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, and he called Mr. Wrenn in to acquaint

him with that fact when the new magnate started his career in Big Business by arriving at the office one hour

What made it worse, considered Mr. Guilfogle, was that this Wrenn had a higher average of punctuality than

any one else in the office, which proved that he knew better. Worst of all, the Guilfogle family eggs had not

been scrambled right at breakfast; they had been anemic. Mr. Guilfogle punched the buzzer and set his face

"Look here, Wrenn; you were just about two hours late this morning. What do you think this office is? A club

or a readingroom for hoboes? Ever occur to you we'd like to have you favor us with a call now and then so's

we can learn how you're getting along at golf or whatever you're doing these days?"

There was a sample babyshoe office pincushion on the manager's desk. Mr. Wrenn eyed this, and said

"Couldn't help! And you call that an explanation! I know just exactly what you're thinking, Wrenn;

you're thinking that because I've let you have a lot of chances to really work into the business lately you're

"Well, hang it, man, you _want_ to think. What do you suppose we pay you a salary for? And just let me tell

you, Wrenn, right here and now, that if you can't condescend to spare us some of your valuable time, now and

"I'm real glad you can get along without me. I've just inherited a big wad of money! I think I'll resign! Right

Whether he or Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle was the more aghast at hearing him bawl this no one knows. The

manager was so worried at the thought of breaking in a new man that his eyeglasses slipped off his poor

"Why, you can't be thinking of leaving us! Why, we expect to make a big man of you, Wrenn. I was joking

about firing you. You ought to know that, after the talk we had at Mouquin's the other night. You can't be

At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brassbutton Man at his station before the Nickelorion,

"No, honest, straight, tell me. I've got a chance to travel. What d'yuh think of that? Ain't it great! And I'm

going right away. What I wanted to ask you was, what's the best place in Ireland to see?"

Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn joyously added the new point of interest to

He skipped uptown, looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the

end of Fourteenth Street. He stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of a Greek

bootblack's stand. Starssteamertemples, all these were his. He owned them now. He was free.

Lee Theresa sat waiting for him in the basement livingroom till tenthirty while he was flirting with

trainboards at the Grand Central. Then she went to bed, and, though he knew it not, that prince of wealthy

suitors, Mr. Wrenn, had entirely lost the heart and hand of Miss Zapp of the F. F. V.

"Goodby, Mr. Guilfogle. Leaving today. I wish Gee! I wish I could tell you, you knowabout how

The manager moved a wire basket of carbon copies of letters from the left side of his desk to the right, staring

at them thoughtfully; rearranged his pencils in a pile before his inkwell; glanced at the point of an indelible

pencil with a manner of startled examination; tapped his deskblotter with his knuckles; then raised his eyes.

He studied Mr. Wrenn, smiled, put on the look he used when inviting him out for a drink. Mr. Guilfogle was

essentially an honest fellow, harshened by The Job; a wellsatisfied victim, with the imagination clean gone

out of him, so that he took followup letters and the celerity of officeboys as the only serious things in the

"Well, Wrenn, I suppose there's no use of rubbing it in. Course you know what I think about the whole thing.

It strikes me you're a fool to leave a good job. But, after all, that's your business, not ours. We like you, and

when you get tired of being just a bum, why, come back; we'll always try to have a job open for you.

Meanwhile I hope you'll have a mighty good time, old man. Where you going? When d'yuh start out?"

"Why, first I'm going to just kind of wander round generally. Lots of things I'd like to do. I think I'll get away

real soon now.... Thank you awfully, Mr. Guilfogle, for keeping a place open for me. Course I prob'ly won't

"Say, I don't believe you're so plumb crazy about leaving us, after all, now that the cards are all dole out.

"Yes, sir, it does make me feel a little bluebeen here so long. But it'll be awful good to get out at sea."

"Yuh, I know, Wrenn. I'd like to go traveling myselfI suppose you fellows think I wouldn't care to go

bumming around like you do and never have to worry about how the firm's going to break even. But

Well, goodby, old man, and don't forget us. Drop me a line now and then and let me know how you're

getting along. Oh say, if you happen to see any novelties that look good let us hear about them. But drop me a

line, anyway. We'll always be glad to hear from you. Well, goodby and good luck. Sure and drop me a line."

In the corner which had been his home for eight years Mr. Wrenn could not devise any new and yet more

improved arrangement of the wire baskets and clips and desk reminders, so he cleaned a pen, blew some gray

eraserdust from under his iron inkwell standard, and decided that his desk was in order; reflecting:

He'd been there a long time. Now he could never come back to it, no matter how much he wanted to.... How

good the manager had been to him. Gee! he hadn't appreciated how considerut Guilfogle was!

He started down the corridor on a round of farewells to the boys. "Too bad he hadn't never got better

acquainted with them, but it was too late now. Anyway, they were such fine jolly sports; they'd never miss a

Just then he met them in the corridor, all of them except Guilfogle, headed by Rabin, the traveling salesman,

and Charley Carpenter, who was bearing a box of handkerchiefs with a large greenandcrimsonpaper

"Gov'nor Wrenn," orated Charley, "upon this suspicious occasion we have the pleasure of showing by this

small token of our esteem our 'preciation of your untiring efforts in the investigation of Mortimer R.

"Say, old man, joking aside, we're mighty sorry you're going anduhwell, we'd like to give you

something to show we'reuhmighty sorry you're going. We thought of a box of cigars, but you don't

smoke much; anyway, these han'k'chiefs'll help to show Three cheers for Wrenn, fellows!"

Afterward, by his desk, alone, holding the box of handkerchiefs with the resplendent redandgreen label,

He was lying abed at eightthirty on a morning of late June, two weeks after leaving the Souvenir Company,

deliberately hunting over his pillow for cool spots, very hot and restless in the legs and enormously depressed

in the soul. He would have got up had there been anything to get up for. There was nothing, yet he felt

uneasily guilty. For two weeks he had been afraid of losing, by neglect, the job he had already voluntarily

Nearly every morning he had driven himself from bed and had finished shaving before he was quite satisfied

that he didn't have to get to the office on time. As he wandered about during the day he remarked with

frequency, "I'm scared as teacher's pet playing hookey for the first time, like what we used to do in

Parthenon." All proper persons were at work of a weekday afternoon. What, then, was he doing walking

along the street when all morality demanded his sitting at a desk at the Souvenir Company, being a little more

He was sure that if he were already out on the Great Traveling he would be able to "push the buzzer on

himself and get up his nerve." But he did not know where to go. He had planned so many trips these years

that now he couldn't keep any one of them finally decided on for more than an hour. It rather stretched his

short arms to embrace at once a gay old dream of seeing Venice and the stern civic duty of hunting

The expense bothered him, too. He had through many years so persistently saved money for the Great

Traveling that he begrudged money for that Traveling itself. Indeed, he planned to spend not more than $300

of the $1,235.80 he had now accumulated, on his first venture, during which he hoped to learn the trade of

He was always influenced by a sentence he had read somewhere about "one of those globetrotters you meet

carrying a monkeywrench in Calcutta, then in raiment and a monocle at the Athenaeum." He would learn

some Kiplingy trade that would teach him the use of astonishingly technical tools, also daring and the

location of smugglers' haunts, copra islands, and whaling stations with curious names.

He pictured himself shipping as third engineer at the Manihiki Islands or engaged for taking moving pictures

of an aeroplane flight in Algiers. He _had_ to get away from Zappism. He had to be out on the iron seas,

where the battleships and liners went by like a marching military band. But he couldn't get started.

Once beyond Sandy Hook, he would immediately know all about engines and fighting. It would help, he was

certain, to be shanghaied. But no matter how wistfully, no matter how late at night he timorously forced

himself to loiter among unwashed English stokers on West Street, he couldn't get himself molested except by

When he had dallied through breakfast that particular morning he sat about. Once he had pictured sitting

about reading travelbooks as a perfect occupation. But it concealed no exciting little surprises when he

could be a Sunday loafer on any plain Monday. Furthermore, Goaty never made his bed till noon, and the

Midway in a paragraph he rose, threw _One Hundred Ways to See California_ on the tumbled bed, and ran

away from Our Mr. Wrenn. But Our Mr. Wrenn pursued him along the wharves, where the sun glared on oily

water. He had seen the wharves twelve times that fortnight. In fact, he even cried viciously that "he had seen

Early in the afternoon he went to a movingpicture show, but the first sight of the white giant figures bulking

against the gray background was wearily unreal; and when the inevitable largeeyed blackbraided Indian

maiden met the canonical cowpuncher he threshed about in his seat, was irritated by the nervous click of the

machine and the hot stuffiness of the room, and ran away just at the exciting moment when the Indian chief

As he came into his room he stood at gaze like a kitten of good family beholding a mangy mongrel asleep in

its pink basket. For on his bed was Mrs. Zapp, her rotund curves stretching behind her large flat feet, whose

soles were toward him. She was noisily somnolent; her stays creaked regularly as she breathed, except when

Guiltily he tiptoed downstairs and went snuffling along the dusty unvaried brick side streets, wondering

where in all New York he could go. He read minutely a placard advertising an excursion to the Catskills, to

start that evening. For an exhilarated moment he resolved to go, but" oh, there was a lot of them rich

society folks up there." He bought a morning _American_ and, sitting in Union Square, gravely studied the

They suggested an uninteresting idea that somehow he might find it economical to go venturing as a waiter or

MEN WANTED. Free passage on cattleboats to Liverpool feeding cattle. Low fee. Easy work. Fast boats.

The International and Atlantic Employment Bureau is a long dirty room with the plaster cracked like the

outlines on a map, hung with steamship posters and the laws of New York regarding employment offices,

which are regarded as humorous by the proprietor, M. Baraieff, a short slender ejaculatory person with a

nervous black beard, lively blandness, and a knowledge of all the incorrect usages of nine languages. Mr.

Wrenn edged into this junkheap of nationalities with interested wonder. M. Baraieff rubbed his smooth

Confidentially leaning across the counter, Mr. Wrenn murmured: "Say, I read your ad. about wanting

"I tole you I feex you up. Ha! Ha! I know it; you are a gentleman; you want a nice leetle trip on Europe. Sure.

I feex you right up. I send you off on a nice easy cattleboat where you won't have to work much hardly any.

"But when does the boat start? Where does it start from?" Mr. Wrenn was a bit confused. He had never met a

Mr. Wrenn regretfully exchanged ten dollars for a card informing Trubiggs, Atlantic Avenue, Boston, that

Mr. "Ren" was to be "ship 1st poss. catel boat right away and charge my acct. fee paid Baraieff." Brightly

declaring "I geef you a fine ship," M. Baraieff added, on the margin of the card, in copperplate script, "Best

ship, easy work." He caroled, "Come early next Tuesday morning, "and bowed out Mr. Wrenn like a Parisian

shopkeeper. The row of waiting servantgirls curtsied as though they were a hedge swayed by the wind,

He was too excited to worry over the patient and quiet suffering with which Mrs. Zapp heard the

announcement that he was going. That Theresa laughed at him for a cattleman, while Goaty, in the kitchen,

audibly observed that "nobody but a Yankee would travel in a pigpen, "merely increased his joy in moving

Tuesday morning, clad in a sweaterjacket, tennisshoes, an old felt hat, a khaki shirt and corduroys,

carrying a suitcase packed to bursting with clothes and Baedekers, with one hundred and fifty dollars in

expresscompany drafts craftily concealed, he dashed down to Baraieff's hole. Though it was only

Till 2 P.M. he sat waiting, then was sent to the Joy Steamship Line wharf with a ticket to Boston and a letter

to Trubiggs's shippingoffice: "Give bearer Ren as per inclosed receet one trip England catel boat charge my

Standing on the hurricanedeck of the Joy Line boat, with his suitcase guardedly beside him, he crooned to

himself tuneless chants with the refrain, "Free, free, out to sea. Free, free, that's _me!_" He had persuaded

himself that there was practically no danger of the boat's sinking or catching fire. Anyway, he just wasn't

going to be scared. As the steamer trudged up East River he watched the late afternoon sun brighten the

Manhattan factories and make soft the stretches of Westchester fields. (Of course, he "thrilled.")

He had no stateroom, but was entitled to a place in a twelveberth room in the hold. Here large farmers

without their shoes were grumpily talking all at once, so he returned to the deck; and the rest of the night,

while the other passengers snored, he sat modestly on a canvas stool, unblinkingly gloating over a seafabric

of frosty blue that was shot through with golden threads when they passed lighthouses or ships. At dawn he

The front part of the shippingoffice on Atlantic Avenue was a glassinclosed room littered with chairs, piles

of circulars, old pictures of Cunarders, older calendars, and directories to be ranked as antiques. In the midst

of these remains a redheaded Yankee of forty, smoking a Pittsburg stogie, sat tilted back in a kitchen chair,

reading the Boston _American_. Mr. Wrenn delivered M. Baraieff's letter and stood waiting, holding his

"Bryff's crazy. Always sends 'em too early. Wrenn, you ought to come to me first. What j'yuh go to that Jew

first for? Here he goes and sends you a day lateor couple days too early. 'F you'd got here last night I could

've sent you off this morning on a Dominion Line boat. All I got now is a Leyland boat that starts from

Portland Saturday. Le's see; this is Wednesday. Thursday, Fridayyou'll have to wait three days. Now you

want me to fix you up, don't you? I might not be able to get you off till a week from now, but you'd like to get

"Well, I'll try to fix it. You can see for yourself; boats ain't leaving every minute just to please Bryff. And it's

the busy season. Bunches of rahrah boys wanting to cross, and Canadians wanting to get back to England,

and Jews beating it to Polandto sling bombs at the Czar, I guess. And lemme tell you, them Jews is all

right. They're willing to pay for a man's time and trouble in getting 'em fixed up, and so"

With dignity Mr. William Wrenn stated, "Of course I'll be glad touhmake it worth your while."

"I _thought_ you was a gentleman. Hey, Al! _Al!_" An underfed boy with few teeth, dusty and grown out of

his trousers, appeared. "Clear off a chair for the gentleman. Stick that valise on top my desk.... Sit down, Mr.

Wrenn. You see, it's like this: I'll tell you in confidence, you understand. This letter from Bryff ain't worth the

paper it's written on. He ain't got any right to be sending out men for cattleboats. Me, I'm running that. I deal

direct with all the Boston and Portland lines. If you don't believe it just go out in the back room and ask any

"Yes, I see," Mr. Wrenn observed, as though he were ill, and toed an old almanac about the floor.

This last was said quite without conviction. It was evidently a joke which had come down from earlier years.

"I'll tell you just how it is, Mr. Wrenn. I ain't one of these Sheeny employment bureaus; I'm an American; I

like to look out for Americans. Even if you _didn't_ come to me first I'll watch out for your interests, same's

if they was mine. Now, do you want to get fixed up with a nice fast boat that leaves Portland next Saturday,

"Well, my list is really fullmen waiting, toobut if it 'd be worth five dollars to you to"

The shippingagent was disgusted. He had estimated from Mr. Wrenn's cheap sweaterjacket and

tennisshoes that he would be able to squeeze out only three or four dollars, and here he might have made

"Of course you understand I may have a lot of trouble working you in on the _next_ boat, you coming as late

as this. Course five dollars is less 'n what I usually get." He contemptuously tossed the bill on his desk. "If

Mr. Wrenn was too headachy to be customarily timid. "Let's see that. Did I give you only five dollars?"

Receiving the bill, he folded it with much primness, tucked it into the pocket of his shirt, and remarked:

"Now, you said you'd fix me up for five dollars. Besides, that letter from Baraieff is a form with your name

printed on it; so I know you do business with him right along. If five dollars ain't enough, why, then you can

just go to hell, Mr. Trubiggs; yes, sir, that's what you can do. I'm just getting tired of monkeying around. If

five _is_ enough I'll give this back to you Friday, when you send me off to Portland, if you give me a receipt.

Now, Trubiggs was a warmhearted rogue, and he liked the society of what he called "white people." He

"All right. I'll fix you up. Have a smoke. Pay me the five Friday, or pay it to my foreman when he puts you

on the cattleboat. I don't care a rap which. You're all right. Can't bluff you, eh?"

And, further bluffing Mr. Wrenn, he suggested to him a lodginghouse for his two nights in Boston. "Tell the

clerk that redheaded Trubiggs sent you, and he'll give you the best in the house. Tell him you're a friend of

When Mr. Wrenn had gone Mr. Trubiggs remarked to some one, by telephone, "'Nother sucker coming,

Blaugeld. Now don't try to do me out of my bit or I'll cap for some other joint, understand? Huh? Yuh, stick

The caravan of Trubiggs's cattlemen who left for Portland by night steamer, Friday, was headed by a

bulkyshouldered boss, who wore no coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open. A motley troupe

were the cattlemen Jews with small trunks, large imitationleather valises and assorted bundles, a stolid

prophetbearded procession of weary men in tattered derbies and sweatshop clothes.

There were Englishmen with ropebound pine chests. A lewdmouthed American named Tim, who said he

was a hatter out of work, and a loudtalking tough called Pete mingled with a straggle of hoboes.

The boss counted the group and selected his confidants for the trip to PortlandMr. Wrenn and a youth

Morton was a square heavyfleshed young man with stubby hands, who, up to his eyes, was stolid and solid

as a granite monument, but merry of eye and hinting friendliness in his tousled softbrown hair. He was

Mr. Wrenn and he smiled at each other searchingly as the Portland boat pulled out, and a wind swept straight

After dinner Morton, smoking a pipe shaped somewhat like a golfstick head and somewhat like a toad, at

"So'm I. Been waiting for this for years. I'm a clerk for the P. R. R. in N' York."

"Well, I been working for the Penn. for seven years now. Now I've got a vacation of three months. On me.

Gives me a chance to travel a little. Got ten plunks and a secondclass ticket back from Glasgow. But I'm

"Oh, got to come back like a gentleman. You know. You're from New York, too, eh?"

"Yes, I'm with an artnovelty company on Twentyeighth Street. I been wanting to get away for quite some

"Oh, work m' way. Cinch. Always land on my feet. Not on my uppers, at that. I'm only twentyeight, but I've

been on my own, like the English fellow says, since I was twelve.... Well, how about you? Traveling or going

"Just traveling. I'm glad we're going together, Mr. Morton. I don't think most of these cattlemen are very nice.

Except for the old Jews. They seem to be fine old coots. They make you think of oh you know

prophets and stuff. Watch 'em, over there, making tea. I suppose the steamer grub ain't kosher. I seen one on

Distinctly, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was one of the gentlemen who, in Kipling, stand at steamer rails

"Holy smoke! it sure is. I don't see how anybody could believe in religion after looking at that."

Shocked and confused at such a theory, yet excited at finding that Morton apparently had thoughts, Mr.

Wrenn piped: "Honestly, I don't see that at _all_. I don't see how anybody could disbelieve anything after a

sunset like that. Makes me believe all sorts of thinggets me goingI imagine I'm all sorts of placeson

"Sure! That's just it. Everything's so peaceful and natural. Just _is_. Gives the imagination enough to do, even

"Well," reflected Mr. Wrenn, "I don't hardly ever go to church. I don't believe much in all them highbrow

sermons that don't come down to brass tacksain't got nothing to do with real folks. But just the same, I love

to go up to St. Patrick's Cathedral. Why, I get real _thrilled_I hope you won't think I'm trying to get

"It gets me going when I look down the aisle at the altar and see the arches and so on. And the priests in their

"Sure, I know. Just the esthetic end of the game. Esthetic, you knowthe beauty part of it."

"Yuh, sure, that's the word. 'Sthetic, that's what it is. Yes, 'sthetic. But, just the same, it makes me feel's

"Tell you what I believe may happen, though," exulted Morton. "This socialism, and maybe even these here

International Workers of the World, may pan out as a new kind of religion. I don't know much about it, I got

to admit. But looks as though it might be that way. It's dead certain the old political parties are just

gangsdon't stand for anything except the name. But this comrade businessgood stunt. Brotherhood of

manreal brotherhood. My idea of religion. One that is because it's got to be, not just because it always has

been. Yessir, me for a religion of guys working together to make things easier for each other."

"You bet!" commented Mr. Wrenn, and they smote each other upon the shoulder and laughed together in a

"I wish I knew something about this socialism stuff," mused Mr. Wrenn, with tilted head, examining the

"Great stuff. Not working for some lazy cuss that's inherited the right to boss you. And _international_

He saw the processional of world brotherhood tramp steadily through the paling sunset; saffronvestured

Mandarin marching by flaxfaced Norseman and languid South Sea Islanderthe diverse peoples toward

"But I don't care so much for some of these ranting streetcorner socialists, though," mused Morton. "The

kind that holler `Come get saved _our_ way or go to hell! Keep off scab guides to prosperity.'"

Morton soon had another thought. "Still, same time, us guys that do the work have got to work out something

for ourselves. We can't bank on the rahrah boys that wear eyeglasses and condescend to like us, cause they

think we ain't entirely too dirty for 'em to associate with, and all these writer guys and so on. That's where

They looked at each other and laughed again; initiated friends; tasting each other's souls. They shared

sandwiches and confessions. When the other passengers had gone to bed and the sailors on watch seemed

lonely the two men were still declaring, shyly but delightedly, that "things is curious."

In the damp discomfort of early morning the cattlemen shuffled from the steamer at Portland and were herded

to a lunchroom by the boss, who cheerfully smoked his corncob and ejaculated to Mr. Wrenn and Morton

"Trubiggs is a lobster. You don't want to let the bosses bluff you aboard the _Merian_. They'll try to chase

"Beef stew without the beef. Oh, the grub'll be rotten. Trubiggs is a lobster. He wouldn't be nowhere if 't

Mr. Wrenn appreciated England's need of roast beef, but he timidly desired not to be gored by steers, which

seemed imminent, before breakfast coffee. The streets were coldly empty, and he was sleepy, and Morton

was silent. At the restaurant, sitting on a high stool before a pine counter, he choked over an egg sandwich

made with thick crumby slices of a bread that had no personality to it. He roved forlornly about Portland,

beside the gloomy pipevaliant Morton, fighting two fears: the company might not need all of them this trip,

and he might have to wait; secondly, if he incredibly did get shipped and started for England the steers might

prove dreadfully dangerous. After intense thinking he ejaculated, "Gee! it's be bored or get gored." Which

was much too good not to tell Morton, so they laughed very much, and at ten o'clock were signed on for the

Cattle were still struggling down the chutes from the dock. The dirty decks were confusingly littered with

cordage and the cattlemen's luggage. The Jewish elders stared sepulchrally at the wilderness of open hatches

But Mr. Wrenn, standing sturdily beside his suitcase to guard it, fawned with romantic love upon the rusty

iron sides of their pilgrims' caravel; and as the _Merian_ left the wharf with no more handkerchiefwaving or

When the _Merian_ was three days out from Portland the frightened cattleman stiff known as "Wrennie"

wanted to die, for he was now sure that the smell of the fo'c'sle, in which he was lying on a thin mattress of

straw covered with damp gunnysacking, both could and would become daily a thicker smell, a stronger

Though it was so late as eight bells of the evening, Pete, the tough factory hand, and Tim, the downandout

hatter, were still playing sevenup at the dirty fo'c'sle table, while McGarver, underboss of the Morris cattle

gang, lay in his berth, heavily studying the game and blowing sulphurous fumes of Lunch Pail Plug Cut

Pete, the tough, was very evil. He sneered. He stole. He bullied. He was a drunkard and a person without

cleanliness of speech. Tim, the hatter, was a loudtalking weakling, under Pete's domination. Tim wore a

McGarver, the underboss, was a good shepherd among the men, though he had recently lost the head

foremanship by a spree complicated with language and violence. He looked like one of the _Merian_ bulls,

with broad short neck and short curly hair above a thickskinned deeply wrinkled low forehead. He never

undressed, but was always seen, as now, in heavy shoes and bluegray woolen socks tucked over the bottoms

Wrennie shook and drew his breath sharply as the foghorn yawped out its "Whawnnnn" again, reminding

him that they were still in the Bank fog; that at any moment they were likely to be stunned by a

heartstopping crash as some liner's bow burst through the fo'c'sle's walls in a collision. Bowplates buckling

in and shredding, the inthrust of an enormous black bow, water flooding in, cries and However, the

horn did at least show that They were awake up there on the bridge to steer him through the fog; and weren't

They experienced seamen? Hadn't They made this trip ever so many times and never got killed? Wouldn't

Butjust the same, would he really ever get to England alive? And if he did, would he have to go on holding

his breath in terror for nine more days? Would the fo'c'sle always keep heaving upupup, like this, then

Pete, the tough, spit the question up at him from a corner of his mouth. "Hope we don't run into no ships."

"I'm kinda afraid we're going to, ain't you, Pete? The mate was telling me he was scared we would."

"Sures' t'ing you know. Hey, Wrennie, wait till youse have to beat it downstairs and tie up a bull in a storm.

But Morton was seasick; and Pete, not heeding him, outlined other dangers which he was happily sure were

threatening them. Wrennie shivered to hear that the "grub 'd git worse." He writhed under Pete's loud

questions about his loss, in some cattlepen, of the grayandscarlet sweaterjacket which he had proudly

and gaily purchased in New York for his work on the ship. And the cardplayers assured him that his

suitcase, which he had intrusted to the Croac ship's carpenter, would probably be stolen by "Satan."

Satan! Wrennie shuddered still more. For Satan, the gauntjawed hooknosed railfaced head foreman,

diabolically smiling when angry, sardonically sneering when calm, was a lean human whiplash. Pete

sniggered. He dilated upon Satan's wrath at Wrennie for not "coming across" with ten dollars for a bribe as

(He lied, of course. And his words have not been given literally. They were not beautiful words.)

McGarver, the strawboss, would always lie awake to enjoy a good brisk indecent story, but he liked

Wrennie's admiration of him, so, lunging with his bulllike head out of his berth, he snorted:

Wrennie called down, sternly, "I ain't no theological student, Pete, and I don't mind profanity, but I wish you

"Hey, Poicy, did yuh bring your dictionary?" Pete bellowed to Tim, two feet distant from him. To Wrennie,

"Say, Gladys, ain't you afraid one of them long woids like, t'eological, will turn around and bite you right on

"Shut up," added McGarver, the strawboss. "Both of you." Raging: "Gwan to bed, Pete, or I'll beat your

Yes, Pete heard him. Doubtless the first officer on the bridge heard, too, and perhaps the inhabitants of

Newfoundland. But Pete took his time in scratching the back of his neck and stretching before he crawled

into his berth. For half an hour he talked softly to Tim, for Wrennie's benefit, stating his belief that Satan, the

head boss, had once thrown overboard a Jew much like Wrennie, and was likely thus to serve Wrennie, too.

Tim pictured the result when, after the capsizing of the steamer which would undoubtedly occur if this long

Then, there was Satan, the head boss, jerking him out of his berth, stirring his cramped joints to another dawn

of drudgerytwo hours of work and two of waiting before the daily eighto'clock insult called breakfast. He

tugged on his shoes, marveling at Mr. Wrenn's really being there, at his sitting in cramped stoop on the side

of a berth in a dark filthy place that went up and down like a freight elevator, subject to the orders of persons

Through the damp gray seaair he staggered hungrily along the gangway to the hatch amidships, and

First, watering the steers. Sickened by walking backward with pails of water he carried till he could see and

think of nothing in the world save the waterbutt, the puddle in front of it, and the cattlemen mercilessly

dipping out pails there, through centuries that would never end. How those steers did drink!

McGarver's favorite bull, which he called "the Grenadier," took ten pails and still persisted in leering with

dripping gray mouth beyond the headboard, trying to reach more. As Wrennie was carrying a pail to the

heifers beyond, the Grenadier's horn caught and tore his overalls. The boat lurched. The pail whirled out of

his hand. He grasped an iron stanchion and kicked the Grenadier in the jaw till the steer backed off, a

But Wrennie lost this credit before they had finished feeding out the hay, for he grew too dizzy to resent

Straining to pitch forkfuls into the pens while the boat rolled, slopping along the wet gangway, down by the

bunkers of coal, where the heat seemed a closewound choking shroud and the darkness was made only a

little pale by light coming through dustcaked portholes, he sneezed and coughed and grunted till he was

exhausted. The floating bits of haydust were a thousand impish hands with poisoned nails scratching at the

roof of his mouth. His skin prickled all over. He constantly discovered new and aching muscles. But he

He crawled up to the main deck and huddled in the shelter of a pile of haybales where Pete was declaring to

Morton broke into Pete's publicity with the question, "Say, is it straight what they say, Pete, that you're the

guy that owns the Leyland Line and that's why you know so much more than the rest of us poor lollops?

Wrennie felt personally grateful to Morton for this, but he went up to the aft top deck, where he could lie

alone on a pile of tarpaulins. He made himself observe the sea which, as Kipling and Jack London had

specifically promised him in their stories, surrounded him, everywhere shining free; but he glanced at it only

Home! Gee! That _was_ rubbing it in! While at work, whether he was sick or not, he could forgetthings.

But the liner, fleeting on with bright ease, made the cattleboat seem about as romantic as Mrs. Zapp's

Why, he wondered "why had he been a chump? Him a wanderer? No; he was a hired man on a seagoing

dairyfarm. Well, he'd get onto this confounded job before he was through with it, but thengee! back to

While the _Merian_, eleven days out, pleasantly rocked through the Irish Sea, with the moon revealing the

coast of Anglesey, one Bill Wrenn lay on the afterdeck, condescending to the heavens. It was so warm that

they did not need to sleep below, and half a dozen of the cattlemen had brought their mattresses up on deck.

Beside Bill Wrenn lay the man who had given him that nameTim, the hatter, who had become weakly

alarmed and admiring as Wrennie learned to rise feeling like a boy in early vacationtime, and to find

Morton, who lay near by, had also adopted the name "Bill Wrenn." Most of the trip Morton had discussed

Pete and Tim instead of the fact that "things is curious." Mr. Wrenn had been jealous at first, but when he

learned from Morton the theory that even a Pete was a "victim of 'vironment" he went out for knowing him

To McGarver he had been "Bill Wrenn" since the fifth day, when he had kept a haybale from slipping back

into the hold on the boss's head. Satan and Pete still called him "Wrennie," but he was not thinking about

Tim fell asleep. Bill Wrenn lay quiet and let memory color the sky above him. He recalled the gardens of

water which had flowered in foam for him, strange ships and nomadic gulls, and the schools of sleekly black

porpoises that, for him, had whisked through violet waves. Most of all, he brought back the yesterday's long

excitement and delight of seeing the Irish coast hillshis first foreign landwhose faint sky fresco had

seemed magical with the elfin lore of Ireland, a country that had ever been to him the haunt not of potatoes

and politicians, but of fays. He had wanted fays. They were not common on the asphalt of West Sixteenth

He was falling asleep under the dancing dome of the sky, a happy Mr. Wrenn, when he was aroused as a

furious Bill, the cattleman. Pete was clogging near by, singing hoarsely, "Dey was a skoit and 'er name was

"Say, be careful!" the awakened Tim implored of him. Pete snorted: "Who says to `shut up,' hey? Who was it,

From the capstan, where he was still smoking, the head foreman muttered: "What's the odds? The little man

Bill popped out of bed with what he regarded as a vicious fightingcrouch. For he was too sleepy to be

afraid. "I did! What you going to do about it?" More mildly, as a fear of his own courage began to form, "I

The tough grabbed at Bill's shirtcollar across the mattress. Bill ducked, stuck out his arm wildly, and struck

Pete, half by accident. Roaring, Pete bunted him, and he went down, with Pete kneeling on his stomach and

Morton and honest McGarver, the strawboss, sprang to drag off Pete, while Satan, the panther, with the first

interest they had ever seen in his eyes, snarled: "Let 'em fight fair. Rounds. You're a' right, Bill."

Armored with Satan's praise, firm but fearful in his rubber sneakers, surprised and shocked to find himself

here doing this, Bill Wrenn squared at the rowdy. The moon touched sadly the lightly sketched Anglesey

coast and the rippling wake, but Bill Wrenn, oblivious of dream moon and headland, faced his

They circled. Pete stuck out his foot gently. Morton sprang in, bawling furiously, "None o' them

Pete scowled. He was left powerless. He puffed and grew dizzy as Bill Wrenn danced delicately about him,

for he could do nothing without backstreet tactics. He did bloody the nose of Bill and pummel his ribs, but

many cigarettes and much whisky told, and he was ready to laugh foolishly and make peace when, at the end

of the sixth round, he felt Bill's neat little fist in a straight and entirely accidental rip to the point of his

Pete sent his opponent spinning with a backhander which awoke all the cruelty of the terrible Bill. Silently

Bill Wrenn plunged in with a smash! smash! smash! like a murderous savage, using every grain of his

Let us turn from the lamentable luck of Pete. He had now got the idea that his supposed victim could really

fight. Dismayed, shocked, disgusted, he stumbled and sought to flee, and was sent flat.

This time it was the great little Bill who had to be dragged off. McGarver held him, kicking and yammering,

his mild mustache bristling like a battling cat's, till the next round, when Pete was knocked out by a clumsy

He lay on the deck, with Bill standing over him and demanding, "What's my name, _heh?_"

"I t'ink it's Bill now, all right, Wrennie, old hossBill, old hoss," groaned Pete.

Bill Wrenn went below. In the dark passage by the fidley he fell to tremorous weeping. But the brackish

hydrant water that stopped his nosebleed saved him from hysterics. He climbed to the top deck, and now he

The stiffs and bosses were talking excitedly of the fight. Tim rushed up to gurgle: "Great, Bill, old man!

You done just what I'd 'a' done if he'd cussed me. I told you Pete was a bluffer."

Morton came up, looked at Bill Wrenn, pounded him on the shoulder, and went off to his mattress. The other

Snuggling on the hard black pile of tarpaulins, Bill talked to them, warmed to them, and became Mr. Wrenn.

"Nice work." "Sure." "You'll make a snappy little ole globetrotter." "Sure; ought to be able to get the

slickest kind of grub for four bits a day." "Nice work," Satan interjected from time to time, with smooth

McGarver broke in: "Cut that out, Marvin. You're a `Satan' all right. Quit your kidding the little man. He's all

Lying on his mattress, Bill stared at the network of the ratlines against the brilliant sky. The crisscross lines

"Gee!" he mused, "I'd like to know if Jake is handling my work the way wetheylike it. I'd like to see the

old office again, and Charley Carpenter, just for a couple of minutes. Gee! I wish they could have seen me

put it all over Pete tonight! That's what I'm going to do to the blooming Englishmen if they don't like me."

The S.S. _Merian_ panted softly beside the landingstage at Birkenhead, Liverpool's Jersey City, resting in

the sunshine after her voyage, while the cattle were unloaded. They had encountered fogbanks at the mouth

of the Mersey River. Mr. Wrenn had ecstatically watched the shores of England_England!_ride at him

through the fog, and had panted over the lines of English villas among the dunes. It was like a dream, yet the

shore had such amazingly safe solid colors, real red and green and yellow, when contrasted with the fogwet

Now he was seeing his first foreign city, and to Morton, stolidly curious beside him, he could say nothing

save "Gee!" With churchtower and swarthy dome behind dome, Liverpool lay across the Mersey. Up

through the Liverpool streets that ran down to the river, as though through peepholes slashed straight back

into the Middle Ages, his vision plunged, and it wandered unchecked through each street while he hummed:

The cattlemen were called to help unload the remaining hay. They made a game of it. Even Satan smiled,

even the Jewish elders were lightly affable as they made pretendedly fierce gestures at the squat patient

haybales. Tim, the hatter, danced a limber foolish jig upon the deck, and McGarver bellowed, "The bonnee

The crowd bawled: "Come on, Bill Wrenn; your turn. Hustle up with that bale, Pete, or we'll sic Bill on you."

Bill Wrenn, standing very dignified, piped: "I'm Colonel Armour. I own all these cattle, 'cept the Morris uns,

The hatter laid his head on the deck and waved his anemic legs in accordance with directions from Colonel

The hay was off. The _Merian_ tooted and headed across the Mersey to the Huskinson Dock, in Liverpool,

while the cattlemen played tag about the deck. Whooping and laughing, they made last splashy toilets at the

As the cattlemen passed Bill Wrenn and Morton, shouting affectionate goodbys in English or courteous

Yiddish, Bill commented profanely to Morton on the fact that the solid stone floor of the great shed seemed

to have enough seamotion to "make a guy sick." It was nearly his last utterance as Bill Wrenn. He became

Mr. Wrenn, absolute Mr. Wrenn, on the street, as he saw a real English bobby, a real English carter, and the

Stretching out their legs under a table glorified with toasted Sally Lunns and Melton Mowbrays, served by a

waitress who said "Thank _you_" with a rising inflection, they gazed at the line of mirrors running Britishly

all around the room over the long lounge seat, and smiled with the triumphant content which comes to him

Big wharves, all right. England sure is queen of the sea, heh? Busy town, Liverpool. But, say, there is a

quaint English flavor to these shops.... Look at that: `Red Lion Inn.'... `Overhead trams' they call the elevated.

Real flavor, all right. English as can be.... I sure like to wander around these little shops. Street crowd. That's

Thus Morton, to the glowing Mr. Wrenn, as they turned into St. George's Square, noting the Lipton's Tea

establishment. _Sir_ Thomas Liptonwasn't he a friend of the king? Anyway, he was some kind of a lord,

"That's St. George's Hall, where they have big organ concerts," explained Mr. Wrenn. "And there's the

artgallery across the Square, and here's the Lime Street Station." He had studied his Baedeker as club

"Funny little boxes, ain't they, Wrenn, them cars! Quaint things. What is it they call 'emcarriages? First,

Mr. Wrenn insisted on paying for both their high teas at the cheap restaurant, timidly but earnestly. Morton

was troubled. As they sat on a park bench, smoking those most Anglican cigarettes, "Dainty Bits," Mr.

"Oh, nothing. Just thinking." Morton smiled artificially. He added, presently: "Well, old Bill, got to make the

"Aw, thunder! You ain't living on me. Besides, I want you to. Honest I do. We can have a whole lot better

"Yes, but Nope; I can't do it. Nice of you. Can't do it, though. Got to go on my own, like the fellow

"Aw, come on. Look here; it's my money, ain't it? I got a right to spend it the way I want to, haven't I? Aw,

come on. We'll bum along together, and then when the money is gone we'll get some kind of job together.

"Hunka. Don't believe you'd care for the kind of knockabout jobs I'll have to get."

"You're too levelheaded to like to bum around like a fool hobo. You'd dam soon get tired of it."

"What if I did? Morty, look here. I've been learning something on this trip. I've always wanted to just do one

thingsee foreign places. Well, I want to do that just as much as ever. But there's something that's a whole

lot more important. Somehow, I ain't ever had many friends. Some ways you're about the best friend I've ever

hadyou ain't neither too highbrow or too lowbrow. And this friendship businessit means such an awful

lot. It's like what I was reading aboutsomething by Elbert Hubbard orthunder, I can't remember his

name, but, anyway, it's one of those poet guys that writes for the back page of the _Journal_something

about a _joyous adventure_. That's what being friends is. Course you understand I wouldn't want to say this

to most people, but you'll understand how I mean. It'sthis friendship business is just like those old

crusaders you knowthey'd start out on a fine morningyou know; armor shining, all that stuff. It

wouldn't make any dif. what they met as long as they was fighting together. Rainy nights with folks sneaking

through the rain to get at 'em, and all sorts of things ready for anything, long as they just stuck together.

That's the way this friendship business is, I b'lieve. Just like it said in the _Journal_. Yump, sure is. Gee!

it's Chance to tell folks what you think and really get some fun out of seeing places together. And I ain't

ever done it much. Course I don't mean to say I've been living off on any blooming desert island all my life,

but, just the same, I've always been kind of alonenot knowing many folks. You know how it is in a New

York roominghouse. So now Aw, don't slip up on me, Morty. Honestly, I don't care what kind of work

we do as long as we can stick together; I don't care a hang if we don't get anything better to do than scrub

"Yuh, I know how you mean. And it's good of you to like beating it around with me. But you sure got the

There was a certain pride which seemed dreadfully to shut Mr. Wrenn out as Morton added:

"Why, man, I'm going to do all of Europe. From the Turkish jails tooh, St. Petersburg.... You made good

"We might stay friends if we busted up now and met in New York again. But not if you get into all sorts of

"with me.... However, I'll think it over. Let's not talk about it till tomorrow."

"Oh, please do think it over, Morty, old man, won't you? And tonight you'll let me take you to a musichall,

A musichallnot mere vaudeville! Mr. Wrenn could hardly keep his feet on the pavement as they

scampered to it and got ninepenny seats. He would have thought it absurd to pay eighteen cents for a ticket,

but pence They were out at ninethirty. Happily tired, Mr. Wrenn suggested that they go to a

temperance hotel at his expense, for he had read in Baedeker that temperance hotels were respectablealso

"No, no!" frowned Morton. "Tell you what you do, Bill. You go to a hotel, and I'll beat it down to a

lodginghouse on Duke Street.... Juke Street!... Remember how I ran onto Pete on the street? He told me you

"Aw, come on to a hotel. Please do! It 'd just hurt me to think of you sleeping in one of them holes. I wouldn't

"Say, for the love of Mike, Wrenn, get wise! Get wise, son! I'm not going to sponge on you, and that's all

"Well, you don't need to get so sore about it. I don't go around asking folks can I give 'em a meal ticket all the

time, let me tell you, and when I do Oh rats! Say, I didn't mean to get huffy, Morty. But, doggone you,

old man, you can't shake me this easy. I sye, old top, I'm peeved; yessir. We'll go Dutch to a lodginghouse,

"All right, sir; all right. I'll take you up on that. We'll sleep in an areaway some place."

They walked to the outskirts of Liverpool, questing the desirable dark alley. Awed by the solid quietude and

semigrandeur of the large private estates, through narrow streets where dim trees leaned over high walls

whose long silent stretches were broken only by mysterious little doors, they tramped bashfully, inspecting,

They came to a stone church with a porch easily reached from the street, a large and airy stone porch, just

suited, Morton declared, "to a couple of hoboes like us. If a bobby butts in, why, we'll just slide under them

Mr. Wrenn had never so far defied society as to steal a place for sleeping. He felt very uneasy, like a man left

naked on the street by robbers, as he rolled up his coat for a pillow and removed his shoes in a place that was

perfectly open to the street. The paved floor was cold to his bare feet, and, as he tried to go to sleep, it kept

getting colder and colder to his back. Reaching out his hand, he fretfully rubbed the cracks between stones.

He scowled up at the ceiling of the porch. He couldn't bear to look out through the door, for it framed the

vicar's house, with lamplight bodying forth latticed windows, suggesting soft beds and laughter and

He sprang up, put on his shoes, and paced the churchyard. It seemed a great waste of educational advantages

not to study the tower of this foreign church, but he thought much more about his aching shoulderblades.

Morton came from the porch stiff but grinning. "Didn't like it much, eh, Bill? Afraid you wouldn't. Must say I

didn't either, though. Well, come on. Let's beat it around and see if we can't find a better place."

In a vacant lot they discovered a pile of hay. Mr. Wrenn hardly winced at the hearty slap Morton gave his

back, and he pronounced, "Some WaldorfAstoria, that stack!" as they sneaked into the lot. They had laid

loving hands upon the hay, remarking, "Well, I _guess!_" when they heard from a low stable at the very back

A reflective carter, who had been twisting two straws, ambled out of the shadow of the stable and prepared to

"Say, old man, can't we sleep in your hay just tonight?" argued Morton. "We're Americans. Came over on a

cattleboat. We ain't got only enough money to last us for food," while Mr. Wrenn begged, "Aw, please let

"Oh! You're Americans, are you? You seem decent enough. I've got a brother in the States. He used to own

this stable with me. In St. Cloud, Minnesota, he is, you know. Minnesota's some kind of a shire. Either of you

"Oh, that was way up in the northern part, in the Big Woods. I've had some narrow escapes."

Then Morton, who had never been west of Pittsburg, sang somewhat in this wise the epic of the hunting he

Alone. Among the pines. Dead o' winter. Only one shell in his rifle. Cold of winter. Snowdeep snow.

Snowshoes. Hiking alongreg'lar mushingpacking grub to the lumbercamp. Way up near the Canadian

Mr. Wrenn thought he remembered the story. He had read it in a magazine. Morton was continuing:

Snow stretched out among the pines. He was wearing a Mackinaw and shoepacks. Saw a bear loping along.

He hadMorton hada .44.40 Marlin, but only one shell. Thrust the muzzle of his rifle right into the

bear's mouth. Scared for a minute. Almost fell off his snowshoes. Hardest thing he ever did, to pull that

trigger. Fired. Bear sort of jumped at him, then rolled over, clawing. Great place, those Minnesota Big

"Kind of a moccasin.... Great place, those woods. Hope your brother gets the chance to get up there."

"Jock Scrabbleno, but _say!_ By golly, there was a fellow up in the Big Woods that came from St. Cl

St. Cloud? Yes, that was it. He was telling us about the town. I remember he said your brother had great

The Englishman meditatively accepted a bad cigar from Mr. Wrenn. Suddenly: "You chaps can sleep in the

So in the dark odorous haymow Mr. Wrenn stretched out his legs with an affectionate "good night" to

Morton. He slept nine hours. When he awoke, at the sound of a chain clanking in the stable below, Morton

DEAR OLD MAN,I still feel sure that you will not enjoy the hiking. Bumming is not much fun for most

people, I don't think, even if they say it is. I do not want to live on you. I always did hate to graft on people.

So I am going to beat it off alone. But I hope I will see you in N Y we will enjoy many a good laugh together

over our trip. If you will phone the P. R. R. you can find out when I get back so on. As I do not know what

your address will be. Please look me up I hope you will have a good trip. Yours truly, HARRY P. MORTON.

Mr. Wrenn lay listening to the unfriendly rattling of the chain harness below for a long time. When he

crawled languidly down from the hayloft he glowered in a manner which was decidedly surly even for Bill

Wrenn at a middleaged English stranger who was stooping over a cow's hoof in a stall facing the ladder.

"Wot you doing here?" asked the Englishman, raising his head and regarding Mr. Wrenn as a housewife does

Mr. Wrenn was bored. This seemed a very poor sort of man; a bloated Cockney, with a dirty neckcloth, vile

"Ow. 'E did, did 'e? 'E ayn't been giving you any of the perishin' 'osses, too, 'as 'e?"

It was sturdy old Bill Wrenn who snarled, "Oh, shut up!" Bill didn't feel like standing much just then. He'd

"Ow.... It's shut up, is it?... I've 'arf a mind to set the 'tecs on you, but I'm lyte. I'll just 'it you on the bloody

Bill Wrenn stepped off the ladder and squared at him. He was sorry that the Cockney was smaller than Pete.

The Cockney came over, feinted in an absentminded manner, made swift and confusing circles with his left

hand, and hit Bill Wrenn on the aforesaid bloody nose, which immediately became a bleeding nose. Bill

Wrenn felt dizzy and, sitting on a grainsack, listened amazedly to the Cockney's apologetic:

"I'm sorry I ayn't got time to 'ave the law on you, but I could spare time to 'it you again."

Bill shook the blood from his nose and staggered at the Cockney, who seized his collar, set him down outside

"Gee!" mourned Mr. William Wrenn, "and I thought I was getting this hobo business down pat.... Gee! I

Sadly clinging to the plan of the walking trip he was to have made with Morton, Mr. Wrenn crossed by

ferry to Birkenhead, quite unhappily, for he wanted to be discussing with Morton the quaintness of the

uniformed functionaries. He looked for the _Merian_ half the way over. As he walked through Birkenhead,

bound for Chester, he pricked himself on to note redbrick houserows, almost shocking in their lack of high

front stoops. Along the country road he reflected: "Wouldn't Morty enjoy this! Farmyard all paved.

Haystack with a little roof on it. Kitchen stove stuck in a kind of fireplace. Foreign as the deuce."

But Morton was off some place, in a darkness where there weren't things to enjoy. Mr. Wrenn had lost him

forever. Once he heard himself wishing that even Tim, the hatter, or "good old McGarver" were along. A

scene so British that it seemed proper to enjoy it alone he did find in a real gardenparty, with what appeared

to be a real curate, out of a story in _The Strand_, passing teacups; but he passed out of that hot glow into a

cold plodding that led him to Chester and a dull hotel which might as well have been in Bridgeport or

He somewhat timidly enjoyed Chester the early part of the next day, docilely following a guide about the

walls, gaping at the mill on the Dee and asking the guide two intelligent questions about Roman remains. He

snooped through the galleried streets, peering up dark stairways set in heavy masonry that spoke of historic

sieges, and imagined that he was historically besieging. For a time Mr. Wrenn's fancies contented him.

He smiled as he addressed glossy red and green postcards to Lee Theresa and Goaty, Cousin John and Mr.

Guilfogle, writing on each a variation of "Having a splendid trip. This is a very interesting old town. Wish

you were here." Pantingly, he found a panorama showing the hotel where he was stayingor at least two of

its chimneysand, marking it with a heavy cross and the announcement "This is my hotel where I am

He was at his nearest to greatness at Chester Cathedral. He chuckled aloud as he passed the remains of a

refectory of monastic days, in the close, where knights had tied their romantically pawing chargers, "just like

he'd read about in a story about the olden times." He was really there. He glanced about and assured himself

But shortly thereafter he was in an English temperance hotel, sitting still, almost weeping with the longing to

see Morton. He walked abroad, feeling like an intruder on the lively night crowd; in a taproom he drank a

glass of English porter and tried to make himself believe that he was acquainted with the others in the room,

to which theory they gave but little support. All this while his loneliness shadowed him.

Of that loneliness one could make many books; how it sat down with him; how he crouched in his chair,

bespelled by it, till he violently rose and fled, with loneliness for companion in his flight. He was lonely. He

sighed that he was "lonely as fits." Lonelythe word obsessed him. Doubtless he was a bit mad, as are all

Next morning he hastened to take the train for Oxford to get away from his loneliness, which lolled evilly

beside him in the compartment. He tried to convey to a stodgy North Countryman his interest in the way the

seats faced each other. The man said "Oh aye?" insultingly and returned to his Manchester newspaper.

Feeling that he was so offensive that it was a matter of honor for him to keep his eyes away, Mr. Wrenn

There is a calm beauty to New College gardens. There is, Mr. Wrenn observed, "something simply _slick_

about all these old quatrangleses," crossed by summering students in short flappy gowns. But he always

returned to his exile's room, where he now began to hear the new voice of shapeless nameless Fearfear of

He sat thinking of the cattleboat as a home which he had loved but which he would never see again. He had

to use force on himself to keep from hurrying back to Liverpool while there still was time to return on the

No! He was going to "stick it out somehow, and get onto the hang of all this highbrow business."

"Those, sir, are the windows of the apartment once occupied by Walter Pater," said the cultured American

after whom he was trailing. Mr. Wrenn viewed them attentively, and with shame remembered that he didn't

know who Walter Pater was. Butoh yes, now he remembered; Walter was the guy that 'd murdered his

whole family. So, aloud, "Well, I guess Oxford's sorry Walt ever come here, all right."

"My dear sir, Mr. Pater was the most immaculate genius of the nineteenth century," lectured Dr. Mittyford,

Mr. Wrenn had met Mittyford, Ph.D., near the barges; had, upon polite request, still more politely lent him a

match, and seized the chance to confide in somebody. Mittyford had a bald head, neat eyeglasses, a fair

family income, a chatty goodfellowship at the Faculty Club, and a chilly contemptuousness in his rhetoric

classroom at Leland Stanford, Jr., University. He wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter " P" in

Dr. Mittyford grudgingly took Mr. Wrenn about, to teach him what not to enjoy. He pointed at Shelley's

rooms as at a certificated angel's feather, but Mr. Wrenn writhingly admitted that he had never heard of

Shelley, whose name he confused with Max O'Rell's, which Dr. Mittyford deemed an error. Then, Pater's

window. The doctor shrugged. Oh well, what could you expect of the proletariat! Swinging his stick aloofly,

he stalked to the Bodleian and vouchsafed, "That, sir, is the _AEschylus_ Shelley had in his pocket when he

Though he heard with sincere regret the news that his new idol was drowned, Mr. Wrenn found that

_AEschylus_ left him cold. It seemed to be printed in a foreign language. But perhaps it was merely a very

Standing before a case in which was an exquisite book in a queer wrigglesome language, bearing the legend

that from this volume Fitzgerald had translated the _Rubaiyat_, Dr. Mittyford waved his hand and looked for

"Uhyes." He hastily glanced at the placard. "Mr. Fitzgerald. Say, I think I read some of that Rubaiyat. It

About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn's landlady knocked with, "There's a gentleman below to see you, sir."

He galloped downstairs, panting to himself that Morton had at last found him. He peered out and was

overwhelmed by a motorcar, with Dr. Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat, goggles, and gauntlets,

"Get on your things," said the pedagogue. "I'm going to give you the time of your life."

Mr. Wrenn obediently went up and put on his cap. He was excited, yet frightened and resentful at being

"dragged into all this highbrow business" which he had resolutely been putting away the past two hours.

As he stole into the car Dr. Mittyford seemed comparatively human, remarking: "I feel bored this evening. I

thought I would give you a _nuit blanche_. How would you like to go to the Red Unicorn at Bremptonone

His chilliness impressed Dr. Mittyford, who promptly told one of the best of his well known whimsical yet

He had been saying to himself: "By golly! I ain't going to even try to be a society guy with him no more. I'm

So he was gentle and sympathetic and talked West Sixteenth Street slang, to the rhetorician's lofty

The taproom of the Red Unicorn was lighted by candles and a fireplace. That is a simple thing to say, but it

was not a simple thing for Mr. Wrenn to see. As he observed the trembling shadows on the sanded floor he

The shadows slipped in arabesques over the dustgray floor and scampered as bravely among the rafters as

though they were in such a tale as men told in believing days. Rustics in smocks drank ale from tankards; and

in a corner was snoring an earringed peddler with his beetleblack head propped on an oilcloth pack.

Stamping in, chilly from the ride, Mr. Wrenn laughed aloud. With a comfortable feeling on the side toward

the fire he stuck his slight legs straight out before the oldtime settle, looked devilmaycare, made

delightful ridges on the sanded floor with his toe, and clapped a pewter pot on his knee with a small emphatic

"Wop!" After about two and a quarter tankards he broke out, "Say, that peddler guy there, don't he look like

he was a gipsyyou knowsneaking through the hedges around the mannerhouse to steal the earl's

"Yes, I guess I am. Kind of. Like to read romances and stuff." He stared at Mittyford beseechingly. "But,

saysay, I wonder why Somehow, I haven't enjoyed Oxford and the rest of the places like I ought to.

See, I'd always thought I'd be simply nutty about the quatrangles and stuff, but I'm afraid they're too

highbrow for me. I hate to own up, but sometimes I wonder if I can get away with this traveling stunt."

Mittyford, the magnificent, had mixed ale and whisky punch. He was mellowly instructive:

"Do you know, I've been wondering just what you _would_ get out of all this. You really have a very fine

imagination of a sort, you know, but of course you're lacking in certain factual bases. As I see it, your

_metier_ would be to travel with a pleasant wife, the two of you hand in hand, so to speak, looking at the

more obvious public buildings and plesauncesavenues and plesuances. There must be a certain portion of

Dr. Mittyford finished his second toddy and with a wave of his hand presented to Mr. Wrenn the world and

all the plesaunces thereof, for to see, though not, of course, to admire Mittyfordianly.

"Butwhat are you to do now about Oxford? Well, I'm afraid you're taken into captivity a bit late to be

trained for that sort of thing. Do about Oxford? Why, go back, master the world you understand. By the way,

have you seen my book on _Saxon Derivatives?_ Not that I'm prejudiced in its favor, but it might give you a

The rustics were droning a church anthem. The glow of the ale was in Mr. Wrenn. He leaned back, entirely

happy, and it seemed confusedly to him that what little he had heard of his learned and affectionate friend's

advice gratefully confirmed his own theory that what one wanted was friendsa "nice wife"folks. "Yes,

sir, by golly! It was awfully nice of the Doc." He pictured a tender girl in golden brown back in the New

York he so much desired to see who would await him evenings with a smile that was kept for him.

Homeythat was what _he_ was going to be! He happily and thoughtfully ran his finger about the rim of his

"Time to go, I' m afraid," Dr. Mittyford was saying. Through the exquisite haze that now filled the room Mr.

Wrenn saw him dimly, as a triangle of shirtfront and two gleaming ellipses for eyes.... His dear friend, the

Doc!... As he walked through the room chairs got humorously in his way, but he goodnaturedly picked a

path among them, and fell asleep in the motorcar. All the ride back he made soft mouselike sounds of

When he awoke in the morning with a headache and surveyed his unchangeably dingy room he realized

slowly, after smothering his head in the pillow to shut off the light from his scorching eyeballs, that Dr.

Mittyford had called him a fool for trying to wander. He protested, but not for long, for he hated to venture

out there among the dreadfully learned colleges and try to understand stuff written in letters that look like

He packed his suitcase slowly, feeling that he was very wicked in leaving Oxford's opportunities.

Mr. Wrenn rode down on a Tottenham Court Road bus, viewing the quaintness of London. Life was a rosy

ringing valiant pursuit, for he was about to ship on a Mediterranean steamer laden chiefly with adventurous

friends. The bus passed a victoria containing a man with a real monocle. A newsboy smiled up at him. The

But the gray stonework and curtained windows of the AngloSouthern Steamship Company's office did not

invite any Mr. Wrenns to come in and ship, nor did the hall porter, a beefy person with a huge collar and

sparse painfully sleek hair, whose eyes were like cold boiled mackerel as Mr. Wrenn yearned:

"Pleaseuhplease will you be so kind and tell me where I can ship as a steward for the Med"

"Or Spain? I just want to get any kind of a job at first. Peeling potatoes or It don't make any

Bill Wrenn suddenly popped into being and demanded: "Look here, you; I want to see somebody in authority.

The porter turned round and started. All his faith in mankind was destroyed by the shock of finding the fellow

The porter was privately esteemed a wit at his motherinlaw's. Waddling away, he answered, "Or not."

Mr. Wrenn drooped out of the corridor. He had planned to see the Tate Gallery, but now he hadn't the

courage to face the difficulties of enjoying pictures. He zigzagged home, mourning: "What's the use. And

I'll be hung if I'll try any other offices, either. The icy mitt, that's what they hand you here. Some day I'll go

Out of all this fog of unfriendliness appeared the waitress at the St. Brasten Cocoa House; first, as a human

being to whom he could talk, second, as a woman. She was ignorant and vulgar; she misused English cruelly;

she wore greasy cotton garments, planted her large feet on the floor with firm clumsiness, and always laughed

at the wrong cue in his diffident jests. But she did laugh; she did listen while he stammered his ideas of

meatpies and St. Paul's and aeroplanes and Shelley and fog and tan shoes. In fact, she supposed him to be a

She let him know that he was a man and she a woman, young and kindly, clearskinned and joyouseyed.

She touched him with warm elbow and plump hip, leaning against his chair as he gave his order. To that he

looked forward from meal to meal, though he never ceased harrowing over what he considered a shameful

That opinion of his actions did not keep him from tingling one lunchtime when he suddenly understood that

she was expecting to be tempted. He tempted her without the slightest delay, muttering, "Let's take a walk

She accepted. He was shivery and short of breath while he was trying to smile at her during the rest of the

meal, and so he remained all afternoon at the Tower of London, though he very well knew that all this

They were to meet on a streetcorner at eight. At seventhirty he was waiting for her. At eightthirty he

indignantly walked away, but he hastily returned, and stood there another halfhour. She did not come.

When he finally fled home he was glad to have escaped the great mystery of life, then distressingly angry at

He sat in his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock Place trying to keep his attention on the "tick,

tick, tick, tick" of his twodollar watch, but really cowering before the vast shadowy presences that slunk in

He didn't in the least know what he was afraid of. The actual Englishman whom he passed on the streets did

not seem to threaten his life, yet his friendly watch and familiar suitcase seemed the only things he could

trust in all the menacing world as he sat there, so vividly conscious of his fear and loneliness that he dared not

The tension could not last. For a time he was able to laugh at himself, and he made pleasant

picturesCharley Carpenter telling him a story at Drubel's; Morton companionably smoking on the top

deck; Lee Theresa flattering him during an evening walk. Most of all he pictured the browneyed sweetheart

he was going to meet somewhere, sometime. He thought with sophomoric shame of his futile affair with the

waitress, then forgot her as he seemed almost to touch the comforting hand of the browneyed girl.

"Friends, that's what I want. You bet!" That was the work he was going to domake acquaintances. A girl

who would understand him, with whom he could trot about, seeing departmentstore windows and

It was then, probably, hunched up in the dowdy chair of faded upholstery, that he created the two phrases

which became his formula for happiness. He desired "somebody to go home to evenings"; still more, "some

It seemed to him that he had mapped out his whole life. He sat back, satisfied, and caught the sound of

He leaped up and raised the window. It was raining, but through the slow splash came the night rattle of

hostile London. Staring down, he studied the desolate circle of light a streetlamp cast on the wet pavement.

A cat gray as dishwater, its fur worn off in spots, lean and horrible, sneaked through the circle of light like

the spirit of unhappiness, like London's sneer at solitary Americans in Russell Square rooms.

Mr. Wrenn gulped. Through the light skipped a man and a girl, so little aware of him that they stopped,

laughingly, wrestling for an umbrella, then disappeared, and the street was like a forgotten tomb. A hansom

swung by, the hoofbeats sharp and cheerless. The rain dripped. Nothing else. Mr. Wrenn slammed down the

He smoothed the sides of his suitcase and reckoned the number of miles it had traveled with him. He spun

his watch about on the table, and listened to its rapid mocking speech, "Friends, friends; friends, friends."

Sobbing, he began to undress, laying down each garment as though he were going to the scaffold. When the

room was dark the great shadowy forms of fear thronged unchecked about his narrow dingy bed.

Once during the night he woke. Some sound was threatening him. It was London, coming to get him and

torture him. The light in his room was dusty, mottled, gray, lifeless. He saw his door, half ajar, and for some

moments lay motionless, watching stark and bodiless heads thrust themselves through the opening and

But he did not even stop to glance down the hall for the crowd of phantoms that had gathered there. Some

hidden manful scorn of weakness made him sneer aloud, "Don't be a baby even if you _are_ lonely."

His voice was deeper than usual, and he went to bed to sleep, throwing himself down with a coarse

He awoke after dawn, and for a moment curled in happy wriggles of satisfaction over a good sleep. Then he

remembered that he was in the cold and friendless prison of England, and lay there panting with desire to get

He wanted to leap out of bed, dash for the Liverpool train, and take passage for America on the first boat. But

perhaps the officials in charge of the emigrants and the steerage (and of course a fellow would go steerage to

save money) would want to know his religion and the color of his hairas bad as trying to ship. They might

hold him up for a couple of days. There were quarantines and customs and things, of which he had heard.

Perhaps for two or even three days more he would have to stay in this nauseating prisonland.

This was the morning of August 3, 1910, two weeks after his arrival in London, and twentytwo days after

Mr. Wrenn was sulkily breakfasting at Mrs. Cattermole's Tea House, which Mrs. Cattermole kept in a genteel

fashion in a basement three doors from his roominghouse on Tavistock Place. After his night of fear and

tragic portents he resented the general floweredpapernapkin aspect of Mrs. Cattermole's establishment.

"Hungh!" he grunted, as he jabbed at the fringed doily under the silly pinkandwhite teacup on the

greenandwhite lacquered tray brought him by a fat waitress in a frilly apron which must have been made

for a Christmas pantomime fairy who was not fat. "Hurump!" he snorted at the pictures of lambs and radishes

He wished it were possiblewhich, of course, it was notto go back to the St. Brasten Cocoa House, where

he could talk to the honest flatfooted galumping waitress, and cross his feet under his chair. For here he was

daintily, yes, daintily, studied by the tearoom habituestwo bouncing and talkative daughters of an

American tourist, a slender palehaired English girl student of Assyriology with large topbarred

eyeglasses over her protesting eyes, and a sprinkling of people living along Tavistock Place, who looked as

though they wanted to know if your opinions on the National Gallery and abstinence were sound.

His disapproval of the lambiness of Mrs. Cattermole's was turned to a feeling of comradeship with the other

patrons as he turned, with the rest, to stare hostilely at a girl just entering. The talk in the room halted,

Mr. Wrenn gasped. With his head solemnly revolving, his eyes followed the young woman about his table to

A slender girl of twentyeight or twentynine, clad in a onepiece gown of sagegreen, its lines unbroken by

either belt or collarbrooch, fitting her as though it had been pasted on, and showing the long beautiful sweep

of her fragile thighs and longcurving breast. Her collar, of the material of the dress, was so high that it

touched her delicate jaw, and it was set off only by a fine silver chain, with a La Valliere of silver and carved

Burmese jade. Her red hair, red as a poinsettia, parted and drawn severely back, made a sweep about the fair

deadwhite skin of her bored sensitive face. Bored bluegray eyes, with pathetic crescents of faintly

violethued wrinkles beneath them, and a scarce noticeable web of tinier wrinkles at the side. Thin long

cheeks, a delicate nose, and a straight strong mouth of thin but startlingly red lips.

She stared about the tearoom like an officer inspecting raw recruits, sniffed at the stare of the thin girl

student, ordered breakfast in a low voice, then languidly considered her toast and marmalade. Once she

glanced about the room. Her heavy brows were drawn close for a second, making a deepcleft wrinkle of

ennui over her nose, and two little indentations, like the impressions of a box corner, in her forehead over her

Mr. Wrenn's gaze ran down the line of her bosom again, and he wondered at her hands, which touched the

heavy breadandbutter knife as though it were a finepoint pen. Long hands, colored like ivory; the joint

wrinkles etched into her skin; orange cigarette stains on the second finger; the nails

He stared at them. To himself he commented, "Gee! I never did see such freak fingernails in my life."

Instead of such smoothly rounded nails as Theresa Zapp displayed, the new young lady had nails narrow and

As she breakfasted she scanned Mr. Wrenn for a second. He was too obviously caught staring to be able to

drop his eyes. She studied him all out, with almost as much interest as a policeman gives to a passing

Though you should penetrate Greenland or talk anarchism to the daughter of a millionaire grocer, never shall

you feel a more devouring chill than enveloped Mr. Wrenn as the new young lady glanced away from him,

paid her check, rose slithily from her table, and departed. She rounded his table; not stalking out of its way, as

Theresa would have done, but bending from the hips. Thus was it revealed to Mr. Wrenn that

He was almost too horrified to put it into words.... He had noticed that there was something kind of funny in

regard to her waist; he had had an impression of remarkably smooth waist curves and an unjagged sweep of

back. Now he saw that It was unheard of; not at all like Lee Theresa Zapp or ladies in the Subway.

When she had passed him he again studied her back, swiftly and covertly. No, sir. No question about it. It

couldn't be denied by any one now that the girl was a freak, for, charitable though Our Mr. Wrenn was, he

had to admit that there was no sign of the midback ridge and little rounded knobbinesses of corseted

respectability. And he had a closer view of the texture of her sagegreen crash gown.

"Golly!" he said to himself; "of all the doggone cloth for a dress! Reg'lar gunny sacking. She's skinny, too.

Brightred hair. She sure is the prize freak. Kind of goodlooking, butget a brick!"

He hated to rule so cleverseeming a woman quite out of court. But he remembered her scissors glance at

How brittle are our steel resolves! When Mr. Wrenn walked out of Mrs. Cattermole's excellent establishment

and heavily inspected the quiet Bloomsbury Street, with a cat'smeatman stolidly clopping along the

pavement, as loneliness rushed on him and he wondered what in the world he could do, he mused, "Gee! I bet

A day of furtive darts out from his room to do London, which glumly declined to be done. He went back to

the Zoological Gardens and made friends with a tiger which, though it presumably came from an English

colony, was the friendliest thing he had seen for a week. It did yawn, but it let him talk to it for a long while.

He stood before the bars, peering in, and whenever no one else was about he murmured: "Poor fella, they

won't let you go, heh? You got a worse boss 'n Goglefogle, heh? Poor old fella."

He didn't at all mind the disorder and rancid smell of the cage; he had no fear of the tiger's sleek murderous

power. But he was somewhat afraid of the sound of his own tremorous voice. He had spoken aloud so little

A man came, an Englishman in a high offensively wellfitting waistcoat, and stood before the cage. Mr.

Wrenn slunk away, robbed of his new friend, the tiger, the forlornest person in all London, kicking at pebbles

As halfdusk made the quiet street even more detached, he sat on the steps of his roominghouse on

Tavistock Place, keeping himself from the one definite thing he wanted to dothe thing he keenly imagined

a happy Mr. Wrenn doingdashing over to the Euston Station to find out how soon and where he could get a

A girl was approaching the house. He viewed her carelessly, then intently. It was the freak lady of Mrs.

Cattermole's Tea Housethe corsetless young woman of the tightfitting crash gown and flamecolored

He made room for her with feverish courtesy. She lived in the same house He instantly, without a bit of

encouragement from the uninterested way in which she snipped the door to, made up a whole novel about

her. Gee! She was a French countess, who lived in a reg'lar chateau, and she was staying in Bloomsbury

Above him a window opened. He glanced up. The countess incog. was leaning out, scanning the street

uncaringly. Whyher windows were next to his! He was living next room to an unusual personas unusual

He hurried upstairs with a fervid but vague plan to meet her. Maybe she really was a French countess or

somepun'. All evening, sitting by the window, he was comforted as he heard her move about her room. He

had a friend. He had started that great work of making friendswell, not started, but started startingthen

he got confused, but the idea was a flame to warm the fogchilled spaces of the London street.

At his Cattermole breakfast he waited long. She did not come. Another daybut why paint another day that

was but a smear of flat dull slate? Yet another breakfast, and the lady of mystery came. Before he knew he

was doing it he had bowed to her, a slight uneasy bend of his neck. She peered at him, unseeing, and sat

He got much good healthy human vindictive satisfaction in evicting her violently from the French chateau he

had given her, and remembering that, of course, she was just a "fool freak Englishwomanprob'ly a

bloomin' stoodent" he scorned, and so settled _her!_ Also he told her, by telepathy, that her new gown was

As he was coming in that evening he passed her in the hall. She was clad in what he called a bathrobe, and

what she called an Arabian _burnoose_, of black embroidered with dull gold crescents and stars, showing a

V of exquisite flesh at her throat. A shred of tenuous lace straggled loose at the opening of the _burnoose_.

Her radiant hair, tangled over her forehead, shone with a thousand various gleams from the gaslight over her

head as she moved back against the wall and stood waiting for him to pass. She smiled very doubtfully,

distantlythe smile, he felt, of a great lady from Mayfair. He bobbed his head, lowered his eyes abashedly,

and noticed that along the shelf of her forearm, held against her waist, she bore many silver toilet articles, and

He lay awake to picture her brilliant throat and shining hair. He rebuked himself for the lack of dignity in

"thinking of that freak, when she wouldn't even return a fellow's bow." But her shimmering hair was the star

Napping in his room in the afternoon, Mr. Wrenn heard slight active sounds from her, next room. He hurried

She stood behind him on the doorstep, glaring up and down the street, as bored and as ready to spring as the

Zoo tiger. Mr. Wrenn heard himself saying to the girl, "Please, miss, do you mind telling meI'm an

American; I'm a stranger in LondonI want to go to a good play or something and what would Iwhat

"I don't know, reahlly," she said, with much hauteur. "Everything's rather rotten this season, I fancy." Her

"Oh, I guess I was justwell, it was almost makeb'lievehow you had a castle in Francejust a kind of a

"Oh, _don't_ be ashamed of imagination," she demanded, stamping her foot, while her voice fluttered, low

and beautifully controlled, through half a dozen notes. "Tell me the rest of your story about me."

She was sitting on the rail above him now. As he spoke she cupped her chin with the palm of her delicate

"Oh yes, of course you are!" he cried, delight submerging timidity. "And your father was sick with somepun'

mysterious, and all the docs shook their heads and said `Gee! we dunno what it is,' and so you sneaked down

to the treasurechamberyou see, your dadyour father, I should sayhe was a cranky old

Frenchmanjust in the story, you know. He didn't think you could do anything yourself about him being

"Oh, was it dark? Very _very_ dark? And silent? And my footsteps rang on the hollow flagstones? And I

"It was like this: You wanted to come over here and study medicine so's you could cure your father."

"But please, sir," said the girl, with immense gravity, "mayn't I let him die, and not find out what's ailing him,

"Nope," firmly, "you got to Say, _gee!_ I didn't expect to tell you all this makeb'lieve.... I'm afraid

"Oh, I loved itreally I didbecause you liked to make it up about poor Istra. (My name is Istra Nash.) I'm

sorry to say I'm not reahlly"her two "reallys" were quite different"a countess, you know. Tell meyou

live in this same house, don't you? Please tell me that you're not an interesting Person. Please!"

"Why, stupid, an Interesting Person is a writer or an artist or an editor or a girl who's been in Holloway Jail or

Canongate for suffraging, or any one else who depends on an accident to be tolerable."

"Good! Good! My dear sirwhom I've never seen beforehave I? By the way, please don't think I usually

pick up stray gentlemen and talk to them about my pure white soul. But you, you know, made stories about

me.... I was saying: If you could only know how I loathe and hate and despise Interesting People just now!

I've seen so much of them. They talk and talk and talkthey're just like Kipling's bandarlogWhat is it?

"See us rise in a flung festoon Halfway up to the jealous moon. Don't you wish you

Then she wriggled her fingers in the air like white butterflies, shrugged her shoulders elaborately, rose from

"Oh yes.... How is it you aren't out sightseeing? Or is it blessedly possible that you aren't a tripper a

"Why, I dunno." He hunted uneasily for the right answer. "Not exactly. I tried a stuntcoming over on a

She sat silent while, with enormous and selfbetraying pains to avoid detection, he studied her firm thin

"Please tell me something about London. Some of you English Oh, I dunno. I can't get acquainted

"My dear child, I'm not English! I'm quite as American as yourself. I was born in California. I never saw

I'm an art student.... That's why my accent is so perishin' EnglishI can't afford to be just _ordinary_ British,

"Tell me about yourselfsince apparently we're now acquainted.... Unless you want to go to that

"Oh no, no, no! Gee, I was just _crazy_ to have somebody to talk tosomebody niceI was just about

nutty, I was so lonely," all in a burst. He finished, hesitatingly, "I guess the English are kinda hard to get

"Lonely, eh?" she mused, abrupt and bluffly kind as a man, for all her modulating woman's voice. "You don't

"Wrenn's my name; William Wrenn. I work forI used to work for the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company.

"Oh. I see. Novelties? Nice little ashtrays with `Love from the Erie Station'? And woggly pincushions?"

"`Nutty'? You mean `idiotically'? The slang's changed since Oh yes, of course; you've succeeded in

"Don't apologize!" Istra Nash demanded, savagely. "Haven't they taught you that?"

She sat silent again, apparently not at all satisfied with the architecture of the opposite side of Tavistock

"Honest, I did think you was English. You came from California? Oh, say, I wonder if you've ever heard of

Dr. Mittyford. He's some kind of schoolteacher. I think he teaches in Leland Stamford College."

"Really?... My brother was at Stanford. I think I've heard him speak of Oh yes. He said that Mittyford

was a cultural climber, if you know what I mean; ratheroh, how shall I express it?oh, shall we put it,

To the luxury of feeling that he knew the unusual Miss Istra Nash he sacrificed Dr. Mittyford, scholarship

"Of course you know he's a great man, however?" Istra was as bland as though she had meant that all along,

Without warning she rose from the steps, flung at him "G' night," and was off down the street.

Sitting alone, all excited happiness, Mr. Wrenn muttered: "Ain't she a wonder! Gee! she's strikinglookin'!

Some hours later he said aloud, tossing about in bed: "I wonder if I was too fresh. I hope I wasn't. I ought to

He was so worried about it that he got up and smoked a cigarette, remembered that he was breaking still

another rule by smoking too much, then got angry and snapped defiantly at his suitcase: "Well, what do I

care if I _am_ smoking too much? And I'll be as fresh as I want to." He threw a newspaper at the censorious

suitcase and, much relieved, went to bed to dream that he was a rabbit making enormously amusing jests, at

which he laughed rollickingly in halfdream, till he realized that he was being awakened by the sound of

Afternoon; Mr. Wrenn in his room. Miss Nash was back from tea, but there was not a sound to be heard from

her room, though he listened with mouth open, bent forward in his chair, his hands clutching the wooden seat,

his fingertips rubbing nervously back and forth over the rough undersurface of the wood. He wanted to

help herthe wonderful lady who had been sobbing in the night. He had a plan, in which he really believed,

At last he heard her moving about. He rushed downstairs and waited on the stoop.

When she came out she glanced down and smiled contentedly. He was flutteringly sure that she expected to

see him there. But all his plan of proffering assistance vanished as he saw her impatient eyes and her

splendors of dress another tight fitting gown, of smoky gray, with faint silvery lights gliding along the

She sat on the rail above him, immediately, unhesitatingly, and answered his "Evenin'" cheerfully.

He wanted so much to sit beside her, to be friends with her. But, he felt, it took courage to sit beside her. She

was likely to stare haughtily at him. However, he did go up to the rail and sit, shyly kicking his feet, beside

her, and she did not stare haughtily. Instead she moved over an inch or two, glanced at him almost as though

"I thought quite a bit about you last evening. I believe you really have an imagination, even though you are a

"After I left here last night I went over to Olympia Johns', and she dragged me off to a play. I thought of you

at it because there was an imaginative butler in it. You don't mind my comparing you to a butler, do you? He

was really quite the nicest person in the play, y' know. Most of it was gorgeously rotten. It used to be a

French farce, but they sent it to Sundayschool and gave it a nice fresh frock. It seemed that a

gentlemantabby had been trying to make a match between his nephew and his ward. The ward arted.

Personally I think it was by tonsorial art. But, anyway, the uncle knew that nothing brings people together so

well as hating the same person. You know, like hating the cousin, when you're a kiddy, hating the cousin that

"So he turned nasty, and of course the nephew and ward clinched till death did them partwhich, I'm very

sorry to have to tell you, death wasn't decent enough to do on the stage. If the play could only have ended

Mr. Wrenn laughed gratefully, though uncertainly. He knew that she had made jokes for him, but he didn't

He was frightfully startled. His "No" sounded as though he couldn't quite remember.

She seemed much amused. You wouldn't have believed that this superior quizzical woman who tapped her

"Oh, that wasn't a personal question," she said. "I just wanted to know what you're like. Don't you ever collect

people? I dochloroform 'em quite cruelly and pin their poor little corpses out on nice clean corks.... You

"Notnot much of anybody. Except maybe Charley Carpenter. He's assistant bookkeeper for the Souvenir

Company. "He had wanted to, and immediately decided not to, invent _grandes mondes_ whereof he was an

"What dooh, you knowpeople in New York who don't go to parties or read muchwhat do they do for

That was all he could say till he had digested a pair of thoughts: Just what did she mean by "types"? Had it

something to do with printing stories? And what could he say about the people, anyway? He observed:

"Oh, I don't knowjust talk aboutoh, cards and jobs and folks and things andoh, you know; go to

"Well, I read a good deal. Quite a little. Shakespeare and geography and a lot of stuff. I like reading."

"Why, you remember, don't you? Haeckel and he wrote the great musical comedy of the century. And

"I haven't been to it," he said, vaguely. "...I don't know much German. Course I know a few words, like

_Spricken Sie Dutch_ and _Bitty, sir_, that Rabin at the Souvenir Companyhe's a German Jew, I

guesslearnt me.... But, say, isn't Kipling great! Gee! when I read _Kim_ I can imagine I'm hiking along

one of those roads in India just like I was thereyou know, all those magicians and so on.... Readin's

"Very little. OhD'Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little Tourgenieff.... That last was a joke, you

"Moving pictures mostly," he said, easily, then bitterly wished he hadn't confessed so lowlife a habit.

"Welltell me, my dear Oh, I didn't mean that; artists use it a good deal; it just means `old chap.' You

_don't_ mind my asking such beastly personal questions, do you? I'm interested in people.... And now I must

go up and write a letter. I was going over to Olympia'sshe's one of the Interesting People I spoke ofbut

you see you have been much more amusing. Good night. You're lonely in London, aren't you? We'll have to

"Yes, I am lonely!" he exploded. Then, meekly: "Oh, thank you! I sh'd be awful pleased to.... Have you seen

"No. You see, I thought it 'd be kind of a gloomy thing to see all alone. Is that why you haven't never been

"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you. Shall I? I've been taken in hand by so many peopleit

"One simply doesn't go and see the Tower, because that's what trippers do. Don't you understand, my dear?

(Pardon the `my dear' again.) The Tower is the sort of thing school superintendents see and then go back and

lecture on in school assemblyroom and the G. A. R. hall. I'll take you to the Tate Gallery." Then, very

He stared after her smooth back, thinking: "Gee! I wonder if she got sore at something I said. I don't think I

was fresh this time. But she beat it so quick.... Them lips of hersI never knew there was such red lips. And

an artistpaints pictures!... Read a lotNitchyGerman musical comedy. Wonder if that's that `Merry

In her room Istra Nash inspected her nose in a mirror, powdered, and sat down to write, on thick creamy

Skilly dear, I'm in a fierce Bloomsbury boardinghousebores except for a Phenomenonlittle man of

35 or 40 with embryonic imagination a virgin soul. I'll try to keep from planting radical thoughts in the virgin

Oh Skilly dear I'm lonely as the devil. Would it be too bromid. to say I wish you were here? I put out my

hand in the darkness, yours wasn't there. My dear, my dear, how desolate Oh you understand it only too

well with your supercilious grin your superior eyeglasses your beatific Oxonian ignorance of poor eager

I suppose I _am_ just a barbarous Californian kiddy. It's just as Pere Dureon said at the atelier, "You haf a'

onderstanding of the 'igher immorality, but I 'ope you can cookpaint you cannot."

He wins. I can't sell a single thing to the art editors here or get one single order. One horrid eyeglassed

earnest youth who Sees People at a magazine, he vouchsafed that they "didn't use any Outsiders." Outsiders!

And his hair was nearly as red as my wretched mop. So I came home howled burned Milan tapers before your

Oh damn it, am I getting sentimental? You'll read this at Petit Monsard over your drip grin at your poor

Mr. Wrenn, chewing and chewing and chewing the cud of thought in his room next evening, after an hour

(a) The only thing he wanted to do was to go back to America at once, because England was a country where

every onenative or Americanwas so unfriendly and so vastly wise that he could never understand them.

(b) The one thing in the world that he wanted to do was to be right here, for the most miraculous event of

which he had ever heard was meeting Miss Nash. First one, then the other, these thoughts swashed back and

forth like the swinging tides. He got away from them only long enough to rejoice that somehowhe didn't

know how he was going to be her most intimate friend, because they were both Americans in a strange

Then he was proving that Istra would, and would not, be the perfect comrade among women when some one

Electrified, his cramped body shot up from its crouch, and he darted to the door.

Istra Nash stood there, tapping her foot on the sill with apologetic haste in her manner. Abruptly she said:

"So sorry to bother you. I just wondered if you could let me have a match? I'm all out."

"Oh _yes!_ Here's a whole box. Please take 'em. I got plenty more." [Which was absolutely untrue.]

She turned away, but he followed her into the hall, bashfully urging: "Have you been to another show? Gee! I

She glanced back in the half dark hall from her doorsome fifteen feet from his. He was scratching at the

Suddenly she flashed out the humanest of smiles, her bluegray eyes crinkling with cheery friendship. "Come

in, come in, child." As he hesitatingly entered she warbled: "Needn't both be so lonely all the time, after all,

need we? Even if you _don't_ like poor Istra. You don'tdo you?" Seemingly she didn't expect an answer to

her question, for she was busy lighting a Russian cigarette. It was the first time in his life that he had seen a

With embarrassed politeness he glanced away from her as she threw back her head and inhaled deeply. He

In the farther corner two trunks stood open. One had the tray removed, and out of the lower part hung a

confusion of lacey things from which he turned away uncomfortable eyes. He recognized the blackandgold

burnoose, which was tumbled on the bed, with a nightgown of lace insertions and soft wrinkles in the lawn, a

green book with a paper label bearing the title _Three Plays for Puritans_, a red slipper, and an open box of

On the plain kitchenware table was spread a cloth of Reseda green, like a dull old leaf in color. On it lay a

goldmounted fountainpen, huge and stubpointed; a medley of papers and torn envelopes, a bottle of

Creme Yvette, and a silverframed portrait of a lean smiling man with a single eyeglass.

Mr. Wrenn did not really see all these details, but he had an impression of luxury and high artistic success. He

considered the Yvette flask the largest bottle of perfume he'd ever seen; and remarked that there was "some

guy's picture on the table." He had but a moment to reconnoiter, for she was astonishingly saying:

"Oh, I could see it. We all get lonely, don't we? I do, of course. Just now I'm getting sorer and sorer on

Interesting People. I think I'll go back to Paris. There even the Interesting People arewhy, they're

"WhyuhuhuhI ddon't exactly get what you mean. How do you mean about `Interesting People'?"

"My dear child, of course you don't get me." She went to the mirror and patted her hair, then curled on the

bed, with an offhand "Won't you sit down?" and smoked elaborately, blowing the blue tendrils toward the

ceiling as she continued: "Of course you don't get it. You're a nice sensible clerk who've had enough real

work to do to keep you from being afraid that other people will think you're commonplace. You don't have to

coddle yourself into working enough to earn a living by talking about temperament.

"Why, these Interesting People You find 'em in London and New York and San Francisco just the same.

They're convinced they're the wisest people on earth. There's a few artists and a bum novelist or two always,

and some social workers. The particular bunch that it amuses me to hate just nowand that I apparently can't

do withoutthey gather around Olympia Johns, who makes a kind of salon out of her rooms on Great James

Street, off Theobald's Road.... They might just as well be in New York; but they're even stodgier. They don't

"I'll have to take you there. It's a cheery sensation, you know, to find a man who has some imagination, but

who has been unspoiled by Interesting People, and take him to hear them wamble. They sit around and growl

and rush the growlerI hope you know growlerrushingand rejoice that they're free spirits. Being Free, of

course, they're not allowed to go and play with nice people, for when a person is Free, you know, he is never

free to be anything but Free. That may seem confusing, but they understand it at Olympia's.

"Of course there's different sorts of intellectuals, and each cult despises all the others. Mostly, each cult

consists of one person, but sometimes there's twoa talker and an audienceor even three. For instance,

you may be a militant and a vegetarian, but if some one is a militant and has a good figure, why thenoof!...

That's what I mean by `Interesting People.' I loathe them! So, of course, being one of them, I go from one

bunch to another, and, upon my honor, every single time I think that the new bunch _is_ interesting!"

Then she smoked in gloomy silence, while Mr. Wrenn remarked, after some mental labor, "I guess they're

like cattlementhe cattleier they are, the more romantic they look, and then when you get to know them

"Yes, that's it. They're why, they're Oh, poor dear, there, there, there! It _sha'n't_ have so much

intellekchool discussion, _shall_ it!... I think you're a very nice person, and I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll

She pulled the oldfashioned bellcord, and the oldfashioned North Country landlady cametall, thin,

parchmentfaced, mustylooking as though she had been dressed up in Victorian garments in 1880 and left

to stand in an unaired parlor ever since. She glowered silent disapproval at the presence of Mr. Wrenn in

Istra's room, but sent a slavey to make the fire"saxpence uxtry." Mr. Wrenn felt guilty till the coming of

the slavey, a perfect Christmasstorybook slavey, a small and merry lump of soot, who sang out, "Chilly

t'night, ayn't it?" and made a fire that was soon singing "Chilly t'night," like the slavey.

Istra sat on the floor before the fire, Turkwise, her quick delicate fingers drumming excitedly on her knees.

"Come sit by me. You, with your sense of the romantic, ought to appreciate sitting by the fire. You know it's

He slumped down by her, clasping his knees and trying to appear the dignified American business man in his

"Tell me about the last time you sat with a girl by the fire. Tell poor Istra the dark secret. Was she the perfect

She reached out her hand and took his. He was terrifically conscious of the warm smoothness of her fingers

"Dear child, you've missed so much of the tea and cakes of life, haven't you? And you have an interest in life.

Do you know, when I think of the jaded Interesting People I've met Why do I leave you to be spoiled by

some shopgirl in a flowered hat? She'd drag you to movingpicture shows.... Oh! You didn't tell me that

"It _shall_ go to the nice moving pictures if it wants to! It shall take me, too. We'll forget there are any

syndicalists or brokencolorists for a while, won't we? We'll let the robins cover us with leaves."

"You mean like the babes in the woods? But, say, I'm afraid you ain't just a babe in the woods! You're the

first person with brains I ever met, 'cept, maybe, Dr. Mittyford; and the Doc never would play games, I don't

"Thank you!" Her warm pressure on his hand tightened. His heart was making the maddest gladdest leaps,

and timidly, with a feeling of historic daring, he ventured to explore with his thumbtip the fine lines of the

side of her hand.... It actually was he, sitting here with a princess, and he actually did feel the softness of her

"Come. We'll have tiffin, and then I'll send you away, and tomorrow we'll go see the Tate Gallery."

While Istra was sending the slavey for cakes and a pint of light wine Mr. Wrenn sat in a chairjust sat in it;

he wanted to show that he could be dignified and not take advantage of Miss Nash's kindness by slouchin'

round. Having read much Kipling, he had an idea that tiffin was some kind of lunch in the afternoon, but of

Istra whisked the writingtable with the Resedagreen cover over before the fire, chucked its papers on the

bed, and placed a bunch of roses on one end, moving the small blue vase two inches to the right, then two

The wine she poured into a decanter. Wine was distinctly a problem to him. He was excited over his sudden

rise into a society where one took wine as a matter of course. Mrs. Zapp wouldn't take it as a matter of

course. He rejoiced that he wasn't narrowminded, like Mrs. Zapp. He worked so hard at not being

narrowminded like Mrs. Zapp that he started when he was called out of his daydream by a mocking voice:

"Oh say, I know about that cavemanJack London's guys. I'm afraid I ain't one. Still on the

cattleboat Say, I wish you could of seen it when the gang were tying up the bulls, before starting. Dark

close place 'tweendecks, with the steers bellowin' and all parked tight together, and the stiffs gettin'

seasickso seasick we just kind of staggered around; and we'd get hold of a head rope and yank and then let

go, and the bosses, d yell, `Pull, or I'll brain you.' And then the fo'c'slemen packed in like herrings."

She was leaning over the table, making a labyrinth with the currants from a cake and listening intently. He

stopped politely, feeling that he was talking too much. But, "Go on, please do," she commanded, and he told

simply, seeing it more and more, of Satan and the Grenadier, of the fairies who had beckoned to him from the

She interrupted only once, murmuring, "My dear, it's a good thing you're articulate, anyway" which

She sent him away with a light "It's been a good party, hasn't it, caveman? (If you _are_ a caveman.) Call for

A morning of planning his conduct so that in accompanying Istra Nash to the Tate Gallery he might be the

faithful shadow and beautiful transcript of Mittyford, Ph.D. As a result, when he stood before the large

canvases of Mr. Watts at the Tate he was so heavy and correctly appreciative, so ready not to enjoy the

"Oh, my dear child, I have taken a great deal on my hands. You've got to learn to play. You don't know how

She explained as they left the gallery: "First, the art of riding on the buses. Oh, it is an art, you know. You

must appreciate the flowergirls and the grrrand young bobbies. You must learn to watch for the blossoms

on the restaurant terraces and roll on the grass in the parks. You're much too respectable to roll on the grass,

aren't you? I'll try ever so hard to teach you not to be. And we'll go to tea. How many kinds of tea are there?"

"And golf tees!" he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in front atop the bus.

"Course; call me Istra or anything else. Only, you mustn't call my bluff. What do I know about tea? All of us

who play are bluffers, more or less, and we are ever so polite in pretending not to know the others are

bluffing.... There's lots of kinds of tea. In the New York Chinatown I saw once Do you know

"Well, down at the Seven Flowery Kingdoms Chop Suey and American Cooking there's tea at five dollars a

cup that they advertise is grown on `cloudcovered mountaintops.' I suppose when the tops aren't

cloudcovered they only charge three dollars a cup.... But, seriouslike, there's really only two kinds of

teasthose you go to to meet the man you love and ought to hate, and those you give to spite the women you

hate but ought tohate! Isn't that lovely and complicated? That's playing. With words. My aged parent calls

it `talking too much and not saying anything.' Note that lastnot saying _anything!_ It's one of the rules in

He understood that better than most of the things she said. "Why," he exclaimed, "it's kind of talking

She said many other things; things implying such vast learning that he made gigantic resolves to "read like

Her great lesson was the art of taking tea. He found, surprisedly, that they weren't really going to endanger

their clothes by rolling on park grass. Instead, she led him to a tearoom behind a candyshop on Tottenham

Court Road, a low room with white wicker chairs, colored tiles set in the wall, and green Sedjiware jugs

with irregular bunches of white roses. A waitress with wildrose cheeks and a busy step brought Orange

Pekoe and lemon for her, Ceylon and Russian Caravan tea and a jug of clotted cream for him, with a pile of

"But" said Istra. "Isn't this like Alice in Wonderland! But you must learn the buttering of English

muffins most of all. If you get to be very good at it the flunkies will let you take tea at the Carleton. They are

such hypercritical flunkies, and the one that brings the gold buttermeasuring rod to test your skill, why, he

always wears kneebreeches of silver gray. So you can see, Billy, how careful you have to be. And eat them

without buttering your nose. For if you butter your nose they'll think you're a Greek professor. And you

wouldn't like that, would you, honey?" He learned how to pat the butter into the comfortable brown insides of

the muffins that looked so cold and floury without. But Istra seemed to have lost interest; and he didn't in the

"Doubtless it _was_ the best butter. But where, where, dear dormouse, are the hatter and hare? Especially the

sweet bunny rabbit that wriggled his ears and loved Gralice, the _princesse d' outremer._

Presently: "Come on. Let's beat it down to Soho for dinner. Orno! Now you shall lead me. Show me where

you'd go for dinner. And you shall take me to a musichall, and make me enjoy it. Now _you_ teach _me_ to

"Yes, but See here! We are two lonely Western barbarians in a strange land. We'll play together for a

little while. We're not used to each other's sort of play, but that will break up the monotony of life all the

"Why, course I would! And ha'p'ny tea? Lead me to it, O brave knight! And to a vaudeville."

He found that this devoted attendant of theaters had never seen the beautiful Italians who pounce upon

protesting zylophones with small clubs, or the sidesplitting juggler's assistant who breaks up piles and piles

of plates. And as to the top hat that turns into an accordion and produces much melody, she was ecstatic.

At aftertheater supper he talked of Theresa and South Beach, of Charley Carpenter and

"I do know you now, "she mused. "It's curious how any two babes in a strangeenough woods get

acquainted. You _are_ a lonely child, aren't you?" Her voice was mothersoft. "We will play just a

"You would be loyal.... And I need some one's admiration.... Mostly, Paris and London hold their sides

He caught her hand. "Oh, don't! They _must_ 'preciate you. I'd like to kill anybody that didn't!"

"Thanks." She gave his hand a return pressure and hastily withdrew her own. "You'll be good to some sweet

pink face.... And I'll go on being discontented. Oh, isn 't life the fiercest proposition!... We seem different,

you and I, but maybe it's mostly surfacedown deep we're alike in being desperately unhappy because we

He wanted to put his head down on her knees and rest there. But he sat still, and presently their cold hands

After a silence, in which they were talking of themselves, he burst out: "But I don't see how Paris could help

'preciating you. I'll bet you're one of the best artists they ever saw.... The way you made up a picture in your

"Ah, stuff!" with a rudeness quite masterful. "I'll bet your pictures are corkers."

"Please, would you let me see some of them some time. I suppose it would bother"

"Come upstairs. I feel inspired. You are about to hear some great though nasty criticisms on the works of

She led the way, laughing to herself over something. She gave him no time to blush and hesitate over the

impropriety of entering a lady's room at midnight, but stalked ahead with a brief "Come in."

She opened a large portfolio covered with greenveined black paper and yanked out a dozen unframed

pastels and washdrawings which she scornfully tossed on the bed, saying, as she pointed to a mass of

"Do you see this sketch? The only good thing about it is the thing that last art editor, that redheaded youth,

probably didn't like. Don't you hate red hair? You see these ridiculous glaring purple shadows under the

She stared down at the picture interestedly, forgetting him, pinching her chin thoughtfully, while she

"But look at this. Consider this arch. It's miserably out of drawing. And see how I've faked this figure? It isn't

a real person at all. Don't you notice how I've juggled with this stairway? Why, my dear man, every bit of the

drawing in this thing would disgrace a seventhgrade drawingclass in Dos Puentes. And regard the bunch of

lombardies in this other picture. They look like umbrellas upside down in a silly washbasin. Uff! It's

terrible. _Affreux!_ Don't act as though you liked them. You really needn't, you know. Can't you see now that

Mr. Wrenn's fancy was walking down a green lane of old France toward a white cottage with orangetrees

gleaming against its walls. In her pictures he had found the land of all his forsaken dreams.

He wanted to find a cable office, stalk in, and nonchalantly send to his bank for more money. He could see

himself doing it. Maybe the cable clerk would think he was a rich American. What did he care if he spent all

he had? A guy, he admonished himself, just had to have coin when he was goin' with a girl like Miss Istra. At

least seven times he darted up from the doorstep, where he was on watch for her, and briskly trotted as far

as the corner. Each time his courage melted, and he slumped back to the doorstep. Sending for

For three hours he writhed on that doorstep, till he came to hate it; it was as much a prison as his room at the

Zapps' had been. He hated the areaway grill, and a big brown spot on the pavement, and, as a truckdriver

hates a motorman, so did he hate a pudgy woman across the street who peeped out from a secondstory

window and watched him with cynical interest. He finally could endure no longer the world's criticism, as

expressed by the woman opposite. He started as though he were going to go right now to some place he had

He caught a bus, then another, then walked a while. Now that he was moving, he was agonizedly considering

his problem: What was Istra to him, really? What could he be to her? He _was_ just a clerk. She could never

love him. "And of course," he explained to himself, "you hadn't oughta love a person without you expected to

marry them; you oughtn't never even touch her hand." Yet he did want to touch hers. He suddenly threw his

chin back, high and firm, in defiance. He didn't care if he was wicked, he declared. He wanted to shout to

Istra across all the city: Let us be great lovers! Let us be mad! Let us stride over the hilltops. Though that was

Then he bumped into a knot of people standing on the walk, and came down from the hilltops in one swoop.

He gaped at the sign. A Salvationist in the crowd, trim and well set up, his redribboned Salvation Army cap

Now it chanced that Adjutant Crabbenthwaite told much of Houssas and the N'Gombi, of saraweks and

weeklong treks, but Mr. Wrenn's imagination was not for a second drawn to Africa, nor did he even glance

at the sunbonneted Salvationist women packed in the hall. He was going over and over the Adjutant's

Suppose it had been himself and his madness over Istra at the moment he quite called it madnessthat the

He walked away from the jubilee reflectively. He ate his dinner with a grave courtesy toward the food and the

waiter. He was positively courtly to his fork. For he was just reformed. He was going to "steer clear" of mad

artist womenof all but nice good girls whom you could marry. He remembered the Adjutant's thundered

"Flirting you call itflirting! Look into your hearts. God Himself hath looked into them and found flirtation

the gateway to hell. And I tell you that these army officers and the bedizened women, with their wine and

cigarettes, with their devil's callingcards and their jewels, with their helllighted talk of the sacrilegious

follies of socialism and art and horseracing, O my brothers, it was all but a cloak for looking upon one

another to lust after one another. Rotten is this empire, and shall fall when our soldiers seek flirtation instead

Istra.... Cardplaying.... Talk of socialism and art. Mr. Wrenn felt very guilty. Istra.... Smoking and drinking

wine.... But his moral reflections brought the picture of Istra the more clearly before himthe persuasive

warmth of her perfect fingers; the curve of her backwardbent throat as she talked in her melodious voice of

He dashed out of the restaurant. No matter what happened, good or bad, he had to see her. While he was

climbing to the upper deck of a bus he was trying to invent an excuse for seeing her.... Of course one couldn't

"go and call on ladies in their rooms without havin' some special excuse; they would think that was awful

He left the bus midway, at the sign of a periodical shop, and purchased a _Blackwood's_ and a _Nineteenth

Century_. Morton had told him these were the chief English "highbrow magazines."

He carried them to his room, rubbed his thumb in the lampblack on the gasfixture, and smeared the

magazine covers, then cut the leaves and ruffled the margins to make the magazines look dogeared with

much reading; not because he wanted to appear to have read them, but because he felt that Istra would not

All this business with details so calmed him that he wondered if he really cared to see her at all. Besides, it

"Rats! Hang it all! I wish I was dead. I don't know what I do want to do," he groaned, and cast himself upon

his bed. He was sure of nothing but the fact that he was unhappy. He considered suicide in a dignified

He did not know that he was the toy of forces which, working on him through the strangeness of passionate

womanhood, could have made him a great cad or a petty hero as easily as they did make him confusedly

sorry for himself. That he wasn't very much of a cad or anything of a hero is a detail, an accident resulting

from his thirtyfive or thirtysix years of stodgy environment. Cad or hero, filling scandal columns or

He was thinking of Istra as he lay on his bed. In a few minutes he dashed to his bureau and brushed his

thinning hair so nervously that he had to try three times for a straight parting. While brushing his eyebrows

"I look like a damn rabbit," he scorned, and marched halfway to Istra's room. He went back to change his tie

to a navyblue bow which made him appear younger. He was feeling rather resentful at everything, including

There was in her room a wonderful being lolling in a wingchair, one leg over the chairarm; a young young

man, with broken brown teeth, always seen in his perpetual grin, but a godlike Grecian nose, a high forehead,

and bristly yellow hair. The being wore large round tortoiseshell spectacles, a soft shirt with a goldplated

Istra was curled on the bed in a leafgreen silk kimono with a great goldmounted medallion pinned at her

She had been frowning as he came in and fingering a long thin green book of verses, but she glowed at Mr.

Wrenn as though he were her most familiar friend, murmuring, "Mouse dear, I'm _so_ glad you could come

Mr. Wrenn stood there awkwardly. He hadn't expected to find another visitor. He seemed to have heard her

call him "Mouse." Yes, but what did Mouse mean? It wasn't his name at all. This was all very confusing. But

"Mouse dear, this is one of our best little indecent poets, Mr. Carson Haggerty. From

Mr. Wrenn implored: "IuhI thought you might like to look at these magazines. Just dropped in to give

"Thank youso good of you. _Please_ sit down. Carson and I were only fightinghe's going pretty soon.

We knew each other at art school in Berkeley. Now he knows all the toffs in London."

"Mr. Wrenn," said the best little poet, "I hope you'll back up my contention. Izzy says th"

"Carson, I have told you just about enough times that I do not intend to stand for `Izzy' any more! I should

think that even _you_ would be able to outgrow the standard of wit that obtains in firstyear art class at

Mr. Haggerty showed quite all of his ragged teeth in a noisy joyous grin and went on, unperturbed: "Miss

Nash says that the best European thought, personally gathered in the best salons, shows that the Rodin vogue

Mr. Wrenn turned to Istra for protection. She promptly announced: "Mr. Wrenn absolutely agrees with me.

By the way, he's doing a big book on the recrudescence of Kipling, after his slump, and"

"Oh, come off, now! Kipling! Blatant imperialist, antiStirner!" cried Carson Haggerty, kicking out each

Much relieved that the stormcenter had passed over him, Mr. Wrenn sat on the front edge of a caneseated

chair, with the magazines between his hands, and his hands pressed between his forwardcocked knees.

Always, in the hundreds of times he went over the scene in that room afterward, he remembered how cool

and smooth the magazine covers felt to the palms of his flattened hands. For he associated the papery surfaces

with the apprehension he then had that Istra might give him up to the jagtoothed grin of Carson Haggerty,

He hated the poetic youth, and would gladly have broken all of Carson's teeth short off. Yet the dread of

having to try the feat himself made him admire the manner in which Carson tossed about long

creepysounding words, like a bushape playing with scarlet spiders. He talked insultingly of Yeats and the

Istra yawned openly on the bed, kicking a pillow, but she was surprised into energetic discussion now and

then, till Haggerty intentionally called her Izzy again, when she sat up and remarked to Mr. Wrenn: "Oh,

don't go yet. You can tell me about the article when Carson goes. Dear Carson said he was only going to stay

Mr. Wrenn hadn't had any intention of going, so he merely smiled and bobbed his head to the room in

general, and stammered "Yyes," while he tried to remember what he had told her about some article.

Article. Perhaps it was a Souvenir Company novelty article. Great idea! Perhaps she wanted to design a motto

for them. He decidedly hoped that he could fix it up for herhe'd sure do his best. He'd be glad to write over

Yet when dear Carson had jauntily departed, leaving the room still loud with the smack of his grin, Istra

seemed to have forgotten that Mr. Wrenn was alive. She was scowling at a book on the bed as though it had

said things to her. So he sat quiet and crushed the magazine covers more closely till the silence choked him,

"He's a bounder," she snapped. She softened her voice as she continued: "He was in the art school in

California when I was there, and he presumes on that.... It was good of you to stay and help me get rid of

him.... I'm getting I'm sorry I'm so dull tonight. I suppose I'll get sent off to bed right now, if I can't be

more entertaining. It was sweet of you to come in, Mouse.... You don't mind my calling you `Mouse,' do you?

He awkwardly walked over and laid the magazines on the bed. "Why, it's all right.... What was it about some

"Oh! Oh, that was just to get rid of Carson.... His _insufferable_ familiarity! The penalty for my having been

a naive kiddy, hungry for friendship, once. And now, good n. Oh, Mouse, he says my eyeseven with

She moved with a quick swing to the side of her bed. Thrusting out her two arms, she laid ivory hands

clutchingly on his shoulder. He stood quaking, forgetting every one of the Wrennish rules by which he had

edged a shy polite way through life. He fearfully reached out his hands toward her shoulders in turn, but his

arms were shorter than hers, and his hands rested on the sensitive warmth of her upper arms. He peered at

those dear grayblue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself enough to tell whether they were chinablue

Leaning out from the side of her bed, she kissed him. She sprang up, and hastened to the window, laughing

nervously, and deploring: "I shouldn't have done that! I shouldn't! Forgive me!" Plaintively, like a child:

"Istra was so bad, so bad. Now you must go." As she turned back to him her eyes had the peace of an old

Because he had wished to be kind to people, because he had been pitiful toward Goaty Zapp, Mr. Wrenn was

able to understand that she was trying to be a kindly big sister to him, and he said "Good night, Istra," and

smiled in a lively way and walked out. He got out the smile by wrenching his nerves, for which he paid in

agony as he knelt by his bed, acknowledging that Istra would never love him and that therefore he was not to

love, would be a fool to love, never would love herand seeing again her white arms softly shadowed by her

No sight of Istra, no scent of her hair, no sound of her alwayschanging voice for two days. Twice, seeing a

sliver of light under her door as he came up the darkened stairs, he knocked, but there was no answer, and he

Numbers of times he quite gave her up, decided he wanted never to see her again. But after one of the

savagest of these renunciations, while he was stamping defiantly down Tottenham Court Road, he saw in a

window a walkingstick that he was sure she would like his carrying. And it cost only twoandsix. Hastily,

before he changed his mind, he rushed in and slammed down his money. It was a very beautiful stick indeed,

and of a modesty to commend itself to Istra, just a plain straight stick with a cap of metal curiously like

silver. He was conscious that the whole world was leering at him, demanding "What're _you_ carrying a cane

for?" but hethe misunderstoodwas willing to wait for the reward of this martyrdom in Istra's approval.

The third night, as he stood at the window watching two children playing in the dusk, there was a knock. It

was Istra. She stood at his door, smart and inconspicuous in a black suit with a small toque that hid the flare

"Come," she said, abruptly. "I want you to take me to Olympia'sOlympia Johns' flat. I've been reading all

He seized his small foolishly round hat, and he tucked his new walkingstick under his arm without

She led the way downstairs and across the quiet streets and squares of Bloomsbury to Great James Street.

"I'm sick of Olympia's bunchI never want to dine in Soho with an inhibition and a varietistic sex instinct

Then he was so cheered that he tapped the pavements boldly with his stick and delicately touched her arm as

"We'll just run in and see them for a little while, and then you can take me out and buy me a Rhine wine and

Olympia Johns' residence consisted of four small rooms. When Istra opened the door, after tapping, the

livingroom was occupied by seven people, all interrupting one another and drinking fourpenny ale; seven

people and a fog of cigarette smoke and a tangle of papers and books and hats. A swamp of unwashed dishes

appeared on a large table in the room just beyond, divided off from the livingroom by a burlap curtain to

which were pinned suffrage buttons and medallions. This last he remembered afterward, thinking over the

room, for the medals' glittering points of light relieved his eyes from the intolerable glances of the people as

he was hastily introduced to them. He was afraid that he would be dragged into a discussion, and sat looking

away from them to the medals, and to the walls, on which were posters, showing mighty fists with hammers

and flaming torches, or hoglike men lolling on the chests of workmen, which they seemed to enjoy more

Carson Haggerty, the American poet, was there. But the center of them all was Olympia Johns

herselfspinster, thirtyfour, as small and active and excitedly energetic as an ant trying to get around a

match. She had much of the ant's brownness and slimness, too. Her pale hair was always falling from under

her fillet of worn black velvet (with the dingy under side of the velvet showing curled up at the edges). A

lock would tangle in front of her eyes, and she would impatiently shove it back with a jab of her thin rough

"Yes, yes, yes, yes," she would pour out. "Don't you _see?_ We must do something. I tell you the conditions

The conditions were, it seemed, intolerable in the several branches of education of female infants, water rates

And mostly she was right. Only her rightness was so demanding, so restless, that it left Mr. Wrenn gasping.

Olympia depended on Carson Haggerty for most of the "Yes, that's so's," though he seemed to be trying to

steal glances at another woman, a young woman, a lazy smiling pretty girl of twenty, who, Istra told Mr.

Wrenn, studied Greek archaeology at the Museum. No one knew why she studied it. She seemed peacefully

ignorant of everything but her kissable lips, and she adorably poked at things with lazy graceful fingers, and

talked the Little Language to Carson Haggerty, at which Olympia shrugged her shoulders and turned to the

There were a Mr. and Mrs. Stettiniusshe a poet; he a bleached man, with goatish whiskers and a

sanctimonious white neckcloth, who was Puritanically, ethically, gloomily, religiously atheistic. Items in the

room were a young man who taught in Mr. Jeney's Select School and an Established Church mission worker

It was Mr. Wrenn who was really shocked, however, not by the noise and odor; not by the smoking of the

women; not by the demand that "we" tear down the state; no, not by these was Our Mr. Wrenn of the

Souvenir Company shocked, but by his own fascinated interest in the frank talk of sex. He had always had a

quite undefined supposition that it was wicked to talk of sex unless one made a joke of it.

For always there is a greater rebellion; and though you sell your prayerbook to buy Bakunine, and esteem

yourself revolutionary to a point of madness, you shall find one who calls you reactionary. The scorners came

in togetherMoe Tchatzsky, the syndicalist and direct actionist, and Jane Schott, the writer of

Istra rose, nodded at Mr. Wrenn, and departed, despite Olympia's hospitable shrieks after them of "Oh stay!

Istra shut the door resolutely. The hall was dark. It was gratefully quiet. She snatched up Mr. Wrenn's hand

"Oh, Mouse dear, I'm so bored! I want some real things. They talk and talk in there, and every night they

settle all the fate of all the nations, always the same way. I don't suppose there's ever been a bunch that knew

"Why, I don't think you ought to talk about them so severe," he implored, as they started downstairs. "I don't

mean they're like you. They don't savvy like you do. I mean it! But I was awful int'rested in what that Miss

Johns said about kids in school getting crushed into a mold. Gee! that's so; ain't it? Never thought of it before.

"Oh, my dear, you make my task so much harder. I want you to be different. Can't you see your cattleboat

experience is realer than any of the things those halfbaked thinkers have done? I _know_. I'm half baked

"But you're ready to. Oh, I don't know. I want I wish Jock Setonthe filibuster I met in San

FranciscoI wish he were here. Mouse, maybe I can make a filibuster of you. I've got to create something.

Oh, those people! If you just knew them! That fool Mary Stettinius is mad about that Tchatzsky person, and

her husband invites him to teas. Stettinius is mad about Olympia, who'll probably take Carson out and marry

But as he didn't know what he didn't know she merely patted his arm and said, soothingly: "I won't criticize

your first specimens of radicals any more. They are trying to do something, anyway." Then she added, in an

irrelevant tone, "You're exactly as tall as I am. Mouse dear, you ought to be taller."

They were entering the drab stretch of Tavistock Place, after a silence as drab, when she exclaimed: "Mouse,

I am _so_ sick of everything. I want to get out, away, anywhere, and do something, anything, just so's it's

"A picnic picnic? With pickles and a pillow cushion and several kinds of cake?... I'm afraid the Bois

She drooped down on the steps of their house. Her head back, her supple strong throat arched with the

passion of hating boredom, she devoured the starlight dim over the stale old roofs across the way.

"Stars," she said. "Out on the moors they would come down by you.... What is _your_ adventureyour

formula for it?... Let's see; you take common roadside things seriously; you'd be dear and excited over a Red

"My dear Mouse, England is a menagerie of Red Lions and White Lions and fuzzy Green Unicorns.... Why

not, why not, _why not!_ Let's walk to Aengusmere. It's a fool colony of artists and so on, up in Suffolk; but

they _have_ got some beautiful cottages, and they're more Celt than Dublin.... Start right now; take a train to

Chelmsford, say, and tramp all night. Take a couple of days or so to get there. Think of it! Tramping through

dawn, past English fields. Think of it, Yankee. And not caring what anybody in the world thinks. Gipsies.

"Whhhhy" He was sure she was mad. Tramping all night! He couldn't let her do this.

She sprang up. She stared down at him in revulsion, her hands clenched. Her voice was hostile as she

"Look here. You know I want to. You're the elegantestI mean you're Oh, you ought to know! Can't

you see how I feel about you? Why, I'd rather do this than anything I ever heard of in my life. I just don't

"Who would know? Besides, my dear man, I don't regard it as exactly wicked to walk decently along a

"Oh, it isn't that. Oh, please, Istra, don't look at me like thatlike you hated me."

She calmed at once, drummed on his arm, sat down on the railing, and drew him to a seat beside her.

"Of course, Mouse. It's silly to be angry. Yes, I do believe you want to take care of me. But don't worry....

"No. The whole thing's so mad that if I wait till then I'll never want to do it. And you've got to come, so that

I'll have some one to quarrel with.... I hate the smugness of London, especially the smugness of the

antismug antibourgeois radicals, so that I have the finest mad mood! Come. We'll go."

Even this logical exposition had not convinced him, but he did not gainsay as they entered the hall and Istra

rang for the landlady. His knees grew sick and old and quavery as he heard the landlady's voice loud

belowstairs: "Now wot do they want? It's eleven o'clock. Aren't they ever done aringing and aringing?"

The landlady, the tired thin parchmentfaced North Countrywoman, whose god was Respectability of

Lodgings, listened in a frightened way to Istra's blandly superior statement: "Mr. Wrenn and I have been

invited to join an excursion out of town that leaves tonight. We'll pay our rent and leave our things here."

"My good woman, we are going to Aengusmere. Here's two pound. Don't allow any one in my room. And I

may send for my things from out of town. Be ready to pack them in my trunks and send them to me. Do you

On the stairs, ascending, she whispered, with the excitement not of a tired woman, but of a

tennisanddancingmad girl: "We're off! Just take a toothbrush. Put on an outing suitany old

Now Mr. Wrenn had, for any old thing, as well as for afternoon and evening dress, only the sturdy

undistinguished clothes he was wearing, so he put on a cap, and hoped she wouldn't notice. She didn't. She

came knocking in fifteen minutes, trim in a khaki suit, with low thick boots and a jolly tousled blue

"Come on. There's a train for Chelmsford in half an hour, my timetable confided to me. I feel like singing."

They rode out of London in a thirdclass compartment, opposite a curate and two stodgy people who were

just people and defied you (Istra cheerfully explained to Mr. Wrenn) to make anything of them but just

Mr. Wrenn bobbed his head in entire agreement. He was trying, without any slightest success, to make

himself believe that Mr. William Wrenn, Our Mr. Wrenn, late of the Souvenir Company, was starting out for

The night foreman of the station, a person of bedizenment and pride, stared at them as they alighted at

Chelmsford and glanced around like strangers. Mr. Wrenn stared back defiantly and marched with Istra from

the station, through the sleeping town, past its ragged edges, into the country.

They tramped on, a bit wearily. Mr. Wrenn was beginning to wonder if they'd better go back to Chelmsford.

Mist was dripping and blind and silent about them, weaving its heavy gray with the night. Suddenly Istra

A paved courtyard with farm outbuildings thatched and ancient was lit faintly by a lantern hung from a post

"That couldn't be America," he exulted. "Gee! I'm just gettin' it! I'm so darn glad we came.... Here's real

England. No tourists. It's what I've always wanted a country that's old. And different.... Thatched houses!...

And pretty soon it'll be dawn, summer dawn; with you, with Istra! _Gee!_ It's the darndest adventure."

"Yes.... Come on. Let's walk fast or we'll get sleepy, and then your romantic heroine will be a grouchy

Interesting People!... Listen! There's a sleepy dog barking, a million miles away.... I feel like telling you

"Oh, it shall have its romance! But some time I'll tell youperhaps I willhow I'm not really a clever

person at all, but just a savage from outer darkness, who pretends to understand London and Paris and

Munich, and gets frightfully scared of them.... Wait! Listen! Hear the mist drip from that tree. Are you nice

"Let me see. Why, your sleeve is wet clear through. This khaki of mine keeps out the water better.... But I

don't mind getting wet. All I mind is being bored. I'd like to run up this hill without a thing onjust feeling

Mile after mile. Mostly she talked of the boulevards and Pere Dureon, of Debussy and artichokes, in little

Dawn came. From a hilltop they made out the roofs of a town and stopped to wonder at its silence, as though

through long ages past no happy footstep had echoed there. The fog lifted. The morning was newborn and

clean, and they fairly sang as they clattered up to an old coaching inn and demanded breakfast of an amazed

rustic pottering about the inn yard in a smock. He did not know that to a "thrilling" Mr. Wrenn heor

perhaps it was his smockwas the hero in an English melodrama. Nor, doubtless, did the English crisp

bacon and eggs which a sleepy housemaid prepared know that they were theater properties. Why, they were

English eggs, served at dawn in an English inna stonefloored raftered room with a starling hanging in a

little cage of withes outside the latticed window. And there were no trippers to bother them! (Mr. Wrenn

When he informed her of this occult fact she laughed, "You know mighty well, Mouse, that you have a

For once their tones had not been those of teacher and pupil, but of comrades. They set out from the inn

The sun crept out, with the warmth and the dust, and Istra's steps lagged. As they passed the outlying corner

of a farm where a strawstack was secluded in a clump of willows Istra smiled and sighed: "I'm pretty tired,

dear. I'm going to sleep in that strawstack. I've always wanted to sleep in a strawstack. It's _comme il faut_

She made a pillow of her khaki jacket, while he dug down to a dry place for her. He found another den on the

It was afternoon when he awoke. He sprang up and rushed around the stack. Istra was still asleep, curled in a

pathetically small childish heap, her tired face in repose against the brownyellow of her khaki jacket. Her

She looked so frail that he was frightened. Surely, too, she'd be very angry with him for letting her come on

He scribbled on a leaf from his addressbookreligiously carried for six years, but containing only four

and, softly crawling up the straw, left the note by her head. He hastened to a farmhouse. The farmwife was

inclined to be curious. O curious farmwife, you of the creamthick Essex speech and the shuffling feet, you

were brave indeed to face Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt selfpossession, for he was on a mission for

Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes of all England. What though he was a bunnyfaced man with an

innocuous mustache? Istra would be awakening hungry. That was why he bullied you into selling him a

stewpan and a bundle of faggots along with the tea and eggs and a bread loaf and a jar of the marmalade

your husband's farm had been making these two hundred years. And you should have had coffee for him, not

When he returned to their outdoor inn the late afternoon glow lay along the rich fields that sloped down from

their wellconcealed nook. Istra was still asleep, but her cheek now lay wistfully on the crook of her thin

arm. He looked at the auburnframed paleness of her face, its lines of thought and ambition, unmasked,

unprotected by the swift changes of expression which defended her while she was awake. He sobbed. If he

He built a fire by a brooklet beyond the willows, boiled the eggs and toasted the bread and made the tea, with

cream ready in a jar. He remembered boyhood camping days in Parthenon and old camp lore. He returned to

She shook her head, nestled closer into the straw, then sat up, her hair about her shoulders. She smiled and

"Never better in my life. I'm so sleepy yet. But comfy. I needed a quiet sleep outdoors, and it's so peaceful

She went to wash in the brook, and came back with eyes dancing and hair trim, and they laughed over

breakfast, glancing down the slope of golden hazy fields. Only once did Istra pass out of the land of their

intimacy into some hinterland of analysiswhen she looked at him as he drank his tea aloud out of the

stewpan, and wondered: "Is this really you here with me? But you _aren't_ a boulevardier. I must say I don't

understand what you're doing here at all.... Nor a caveman, either. I don't understand it.... But you _sha'n't_ be

"Yes, and we were in college. Don't you remember when I was baseball captain? You don't? Gee, you got a

"I suppose now it'll go and rain," said Istra, viciously, at dusk. It was the first time she had spoken for a mile.

Then, after another quartermile: "Please don't mind my being silent. I'm sort of stiff, and my feet hurt most

Of course he did mind, and of course he said he didn't. He artfully skirted the field of conversation by very

West Sixteenth Street observations on a town through which they passed, while she merely smiled wearily,

He was reflecting: "Istra's terrible tired. I ought to take care of her." He stopped at the woodpillared entrance

of a temperance inn and commanded: "Come! We'll have something to eat here." To the astonishment of both

It cannot be truthfully said that Mr. Wrenn proved himself a person of _savoir faire_ in choosing a

temperance hotel for their dinner. Istra didn't seem so much to mind the fact that the tablecloth was coarse

and the waterglasses thick, and that everywhere the elbow ran into a superfluity of greasy pepper and salt

castors. But when she raised her head wearily to peer around the room she started, glared at Mr. Wrenn,and

accused: "Are you by any chance aware of the fact that this place is crowded with tourists? There are two

"Oh, they ain't such badlooking people," protested Mr. Wrenn.... Just because he had induced her to stop for

"Why, that big guythat big man with the rimless spectacles looks like he might be a good civil engineer,

"Now see here. Must I argue with you? Can I have no peace, tired as I am? Those trippers are speaking of

`quaint English flavor.' Can you want anything more than that to damn them? And they've been touring by

"Now _don't_ argue with me. I know what I'm talking about. Why do I have to explain everything? They're

Mr. Wrenn felt a good wholesome desire to spank her, but he said, most politely: "You're awful tired. Don't

"No. Don't want to stay any place. Want to get away from myself," she said, exactly like a naughty child.

Darkness was near. They had plunged into a country which in the night seemed to be a stretch of desolate

moorlands. As they were silently plodding up a hill the rain came. It came with a roar, a pitiless drenching

against which they fought uselessly, soaking them, slapping their faces, blinding their eyes. He caught her

arm and dragged her ahead. She would be furious with him because it rained, of course, but this was no time

"To the skin!" she shouted, gleefully. "And I don't care! We're _doing_ something. Poor dear, is it worried?

The dark bulk of a building struck their sight at the top, and they ran to it. Just now Mr. Wrenn was ready to

devour alive any irate householder who might try to turn them out. He found the building to be a ruined

stablethe door off the hinges, the desolate thatch falling in. He struck a match and, holding it up, standing

straight, the master, all unconscious for once in his deprecating life of the Wrennishness of Mr. Wrenn, he

"This is a perfectly good place for a murder," she grinned, as they sat swinging their legs.

"Have I been so very grouchy, Mouse? Don't you want to murder me? I'll try to find you a long pin."

"Oh dear, dear! This is very dreadful. You're so used to me now that you aren't even scared of me any more."

"Gee! I guess I'll be scared of you all right as soon as I get you into a dry place, but I ain't got time now.

Sitting on a manger! Ain't this the funniest place!... Now I must beat it out and find a house. There ought to

"And leave me here in the darknesses and wetnesses? Not a chance. The rain'll soon be over, anyway. Really,

Her voice was natural again, natural and companionable and brave. She laughed as she stroked her wet

shoulder and held his hand, sitting quietly and bidding him listen to the soft forlorn sound of the rain on the

But the rain was not soon over, and their dangling position was very much like riding a rail.

"See here, Istra, please, I think I'd better go see if I can't find a house for you to get dry in."

But he interrupted her. "Oh, _let_ the darn place catch fire! I'm going to make a fire, I tell you!"

"I don't want to move. It'll just be another kind of discomfort, that's all. Why couldn't you try and take a little

"Oh, honey!" he wailed, in youthful bewilderment. "I did try to get you to stay at that hotel in town and get

"Well, you ought to have made me. Don't you realize that I took you along to take care of me?"

He thought instantly of Lee Theresa Zapp quarreling with her mother, but he said nothing. He gathered the

driest bits of thatch and wood he could find in the litter on the stable floor and kindled a fire, while she sat

sullenly glaring at him, her face wrinkled and tired in the wan firelight. When the blaze was going steadily, a

compact and safe little fire, he spread his coat as a seat for her, and called, cheerily, "Come on now, honey;

She slipped down from the manger edge and stood in front of him, looking into his eyeswhich were level

"You _are_ good to me," she half whispered, and smoothed his cheek, then slipped down on the outspread

All night the rain dribbled, but no one came to drive them away from the fire, and they dozed side by side,

their hands close and their garments steaming. Istra fell asleep, and her head drooped on his shoulder. He

straightened to bear its weight, though his back twinged with stiffness, and there he sat unmoving, through an

hour of pain and happiness and confused meditation, studying the curious backgroundthe dark roof of

broken thatch, the agecorroded walls, the littered earthen floor. His hand pressed lightly the clammy

smoothness of the wet khaki of her shoulder; his wet sleeve stuck to his arm, and he wanted to pull it free.

His eyes stung. But he sat tight, while his mind ran round in circles, considering that he loved Istra, and that

he would not be entirely sorry when he was no longer the slave to her moods; that this adventure was the

Toward dawn she stirred, and, slipping stiffly from his position, he moved her so that her back, which was

still wet, faced the fire. He built up the fire again, and sat brooding beside her, dozing and starting awake, till

morning. Then his head bobbed, and he was dimly awake again, to find her sitting up straight, looking at him

"It simply can't be, that's all.... Did you curl me up? I'm nice and dry all over now. It was very good of you.

You've been a most commendable person.... But I think we'll take a train for the rest of our pilgrimage. It

For a moment he hated her, with her smooth politeness, after a night when she had been unbearable and

human by turns. He hated her bedraggled hair and tired face. Then he could have wept, so deeply did he

desire to pull her head down on his shoulder and smooth the wrinkles of weariness out of her dear face, the

dearer because they had endured the weariness together. But he said, "Well, let's try to get some breakfast

With their garments wrinkled from rain, half asleep and rather cross, they arrived at the esthetic but

The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and artistic that it makes the ordinary person long

for a dingy oldfashioned room in which he can play solitaire and chew gum without being rebuked with

exasperating patience by the wall stencils and clever etchings and polished brasses. It is adjectiferous. The

common room (which is uncommon for hotel parlor) is all in superlatives and chintzes.

Istra had gone up to her room to sleep, bidding Mr. Wrenn do likewise and avoid the wrong bunch at the

Caravanserai; for besides the wrong bunch of Interesting People there were, she explained, a right bunch, of

working artists. But he wanted to get some new clothes, to replace his rainwrinkled readymades. He was

tottering through the common room, wondering whether he could find a clothingshop in Aengusmere, when

"Ohhhh, _Mister_ Wrenn; Mr. _Wrenn!_" There sat Mrs. Stettinius, the poetlady of Olympia's rooms

"Ohhhh, Mr. Wrenn, you _bad_ man, _do_ come sit down and tell me all _about_ your _wonderful_ trek

with Istra Nash. I _just_ met _dear_ Istra in the upper hall. Poor dear, she was _so_ crumpled, but her hair

only of course this was her _hair_ and not her _lips_and she told me that you had tramped all the _way_

from London. I've never heard of anything so romanticor no, I won't say `romantic'I _do_ agree with

dear Olympia_isn't_ she a mag_nificent_ woman_so_ fearless and progressivedidn't you _adore_

meeting her?she is our modern Joan of Arcsuch a _noble_ figureI _do_ agree with her that

_romantic_ love is _passe_, that we have entered the era of glorious companionship that regards varietism as

_exactly_ as romantic as monogamy. Butbutwhere was I?I think your gipsying down from London

was _most_ exciting. Now _do_ tell us all about it, Mr. Wrenn. First, I want you to meet Miss Saxonby and

Mr. Gutch and _dear_ Yilyena Dourschetsky and Mr. Howard Bancock Binchof course you know his

And then she drew a breath and flopped back into the wingchair's muffling depths.

During all this Mr. Wrenn had stood, frightened and unprotected and rainwrinkled, before the gathering by

the fireless fireplace, wondering how Mrs. Stettinius could get her nose so blue and yet so powdery. Despite

her encouragement he gave no fuller account of the "gipsying" than, "Whyuhwe just tramped down," till

RussianJewish Yilyena rolled her ebony eyes at him and insisted, "Yez, you mus' tale us about it."

Now, Yilyena had a pretty neck, colored like a cigar of mild flavor, and a trick of smiling. She was

"Whyuhwe just walked, and we got caught in the rain. Say, Miss Nash was a wonder. She never peeped

when she got soaked throughshe just laughed and beat it like everything. And we saw a lot of quaint

A perfectly strange person, a heavy old man with horn spectacles and a soft shirt, who had joined the group

"Is it not a strange paradox that in traveling, the most observant of all pursuits, one should have to encounter

"Uh" began Mr. Gutch. He apparently had something to say. But the chorus went on:

"Mr. Wrrrenn," thrilled Mrs. Stettinius, the lady poet, "didn't you notice that they were perfectly oblivious

"I guess they wanted to make sure they were admirin' the right things," ventured Mr. Wrenn, with secret

"Yes, that's so," came so approvingly from the Greek chorus that the personal pupil of Mittyford, Ph.D., made

"It isn't so much what you like as what you don't like that shows if you're wise."

"Yes," they gurgled; and Mr. Wrenn, much pleased with himself, smiled _au prince_ upon his new friends.

Mrs. Stettinius was getting into her stride for a few remarks upon the poetry of industrialism when Mr.

Gutch, who had been "Uh"ing for some moments, trying to get in his remark, winked with sly rudeness at

"I fancy romance isn't quite dead yet, y' know. Our friends here seem to have had quite a romantic little

"Say, what do you mean?" demanded Bill Wrenn, hoteyed, fists clenched, but very quiet.

"Oh, I'm not _blaming_ you and Miss Nashquite the reverse!" tittered the Gutch person, wagging his head

"Say, you whitefaced unhealthy dirtyminded lump, I ain't much of a fighter, but I'm going to muss you up

Bill Wrenn, watching the dramatization of himself as hero, was enjoying the drama. "You apologize, then?"

Do you see them?Mr. Wrenn, selfconscious and ready to turn into a blind belligerent Bill Wrenn at the

first disrespect; the talkers sitting about and assassinating all the princes and proprieties and, poor things,

taking Mr. Wrenn quite seriously because he had uncovered the great truth that the important thing in

sightseeing is not to see sights. He was most unhappy, Mr. Wrenn was, and wanted to be away from there.

He darted as from a spring when he heard Istra's voice, from the edge of the group, calling, "Come here a

"I can't get to sleep yet. Don't you want me to show you some of the buildings here?"

Istra took him to the belvedere on a little slope overlooking the lawns of Aengusmere, scattered with low

"It is beautiful, isn't it? Perhaps one could be happy hereif one could kill all the people except the

Standing there beside her, happiness enveloping them, looking across the marvelous sward, Bill Wrenn was

at the climax of his comedy of triumph. Admitted to a world of lawns and bungalows and big studio

"Mouse dear," she said, hesitatingly, "the reason why I wanted to have you come out here, why I couldn't

sleep, I wanted to tell you how ashamed I am for having been peevish, being petulant, last night. I'm so sorry,

because you were very patient with me, you were very good to me. I don't want you to think of me just as a

crochety woman who didn't appreciate you. You are very kind, and when I hear that you're married to some

"Oh, Istra," he cried, grasping her arm, "I don't want any girl in the worldI meanoh, I just want to be let

"No, no, dear. You must have seen last night; that's impossible. Please don't argue about it now; I'm too tired.

I just wanted to tell you I appreciated And when you get back to America you won't be any the worse

for playing around with poor Istra because she told you about different things from what you've played with,

about rearing children as individuals and painting in _tempera_ and all those things? Andand I don't want

you to get too fond of me, because we'redifferent.... But we have had an adventure, even if it was a little

moist." She paused; then, cheerily: "Well, I'm going to beat it back and try to sleep again. Goodby, Mouse

dear. No, don't come back to the Caraadvancedserai. Play around and see the animiles. G'by."

He watched her straight swaying figure swing across the lawn and up the steps of the halftimbered inn. He

watched her enter the door before he hastened to the shops which clustered about the railway station,

He noticed, as he went, that the men crossing the green were mostly clad in Norfolk jackets and knickers, so

he purchased the first pair of unrespectable unankleconcealing trousers he had owned since small

boyhood, and a jacket of rough serge, with a gaudy buckle on the belt. Also, he actually dared an orange tie!

He wanted something for Istra at dinner"a s'prise," he whispered under his breath, with fond babying.

For the first time in his life he entered a florist's shop.... Normally, you know, the poor of the city cannot

afford flowers till they are dead, and then for but one day.... He came out with a bunch of orchids, and

remembered the days when he had envied the people he had seen in florists' shops actually buying flowers.

When he was almost at the Caravanserai he wanted to go back and change the orchids for simpler flowers,

The linen and glassware and silver of the Caravanserai were almost as coarse as those of a temperance hotel,

for all the raftered ceiling and the etchings in the diningroom. Hunting up the stewardess of the inn, a

bustling young woman who was reading Keats energetically at an officelike desk, Mr. Wrenn begged: "I

wonder could I get some special cups and plates and stuff for high tea tonight. I got a kind of party"

"How many?" The stewardess issued the words as though he had put a penny in the slot.

"Certainly. Of course there's a small extra charge. I have a Royal Satsuma teaservicepractically Royal

Mendacious Mr. Wrenn! as we have commented. He put his head on one side, rubbed his chin with nice

"For a party high tea? Why, perhaps consomme and omelet Bergerac and a salad and a sweet and _cafe

diable_. We have a chef who does French eggs rather remarkably. That would be simple, but"

"Yes, that would be very good," gravely granted the patron of cuisine. "At six; for two."

As he walked away he grinned within. "Gee! I talked to that omelet Berg' rac like I'd known it all my life!"

Other s'prises for Istra's party he sought. Let's see; suppose it really were her birthday, wouldn't she like to

have a letter from some important guy? he queried of himself. He'd write her a makeb'lieve letter from a

duke. Which he did. Purchasing a stamp, he humped over a desk in the common room and with infinite pains

he inked the stamp in imitation of a postmark and addressed the letter to "Lady Istra Nash, Mouse Castle,

Some one sat down at the desk opposite him, and he jealously carried the task upstairs to his room. He rang

for pen and ink as regally as though he had never sat at the wrong end of a buzzer. After half an hour of

DEAR MADAM,We hear from our friend Sir William Wrenn that some folks are saying that today is not

your birthday want to stop your celebration, so if you should need somebody to make them believe today is

your birthday we have sent our secretary, Sir Percival Montague. Sir William Wrenn will hide him behind his

chair, and if they bother you just call for Sir Percival and he will tell them. Permit us, dear Lady Nash, to

wish you all the greetings of the season, and in close we beg to remain, as ever, Yours sincerely, DUKE

He was very tired. When he lay down for a minute, with a pillow tucked over his head, he was almost asleep

in ten seconds. But he sprang up, washed his prickly eyes with cold water, and began to dress. He was shy of

the knickers and golfstockings, but it was the orange tie that gave him real alarm. He dared it, though, and

went downstairs to make sure they were setting the table with glory befitting the party.

As he went through the common room he watched the three or four groups scattered through it. They seemed

to take his clothes as a matter of course. He was glad. He wanted so much to be a credit to Istra.

Returning from the diningroom to the common room, he passed a group standing in a window recess and

"Who is the remarkable new person with the orange tie and the rococo buckle on his jacket beltthe one that

His collar didn't come within an inch and a half of fitting his neck. He must be a poet. I wonder if his verses

"And the beautiful lack of development of his legs! It's like the good old cycling days, when every draper's

assistant went bankholidaying.... I don't know him, but I suppose he's some tuppenyha'p'ny illustrator."

"Or perhaps he has convictions about fried bananas, and dines on a bean saute. O Aengusmere! Shades of

"Not at all. When they look as gentle as he they always hate the capitalists as a militant hates a cabinet

minister. He probably dines on the left ear of a SouthAfrican millionaire every evening before exercise at

the barricades.... I say, look over there; there's a real artist going across the green. You can tell he's a real

Mr. Wrenn was walking away, across the common room, quite sure that every one was eying him with

He stuck out his jaw, and remembered that he had planned to hide the "letter from the duke" in Istra's napkin

that it might be the greater surprise. He sat down at their table. He tucked the letter into the napkin folds. He

moved the vase of orchids nearer the center of the table, and the table nearer the open window giving on the

green. He rebuked himself for not being able to think of something else to change. He forgot his clothes, and

At sixfifteen he summoned a boy and sent him up with a message that Mr. Wrenn was waiting and high tea

The boy came back muttering, "Miss Nash left this note for you, sir, the stewardess says."

Mr. Wrenn opened the greenandwhite Caravanserai letter excitedly. Perhaps Istra, too, was dressing for the

Mouse dear, I'm sorrier than I can tell you, but you know I warrned you that bad Istra was a creature of

moods, and just now my mood orders me to beat it for Paris, which I'm doing, on the 5.17 train. I won't say

goodbyI hate goodbys, they're so stupid, don't you think? Write me some time, better make it care

Amer. Express Co., Paris, because I don't know yet just where I'll be. And please don't look me up in Paris,

because it's always better to end up an affair without explanations, don't you think? You have been

wonderfully kind to me, and I'll send you some good thoughtforms, shall I? I. N.

He walked to the office of the Caravanserai, blindly, quietly. He paid his bill, and found that he had only fifty

dollars left. He could not get himself to eat the waiting high tea. There was a sevenfourteen train for

London. He took it. Meantime he wrote out a cable to his New York bank for a hundred and fifty dollars. To

keep from thinking in the train he talked gravely and gently to an old man about the brave days of England,

when men threw quoits. He kept thinking over and over, to the tune set by the rattling of the train trucks:

"Friends... I got to make friends, now I know what they are.... Funny some guys don't make friends. Mustn't

He arrived at his room on Tavistock Place about eleven, and tried to think for the rest of the night of how

deeply he was missing Morton of the cattleboat now thatnow that he had no friend in all the hostile

In a London A. B. C. restaurant Mr. Wrenn was talking to an American who had a clipped mustache, brisk

manners, a KnightofPythias pin, and a mind for duckshooting, hardwareselling, and cigars.

"No more England for mine," the American snapped, goodhumoredly. "I'm going to get out of this foggy

I want to find out what's doing at the store, and I want to sit down to a plate of flapjacks. I'm good and plenty

sick of tea and marmalade. Why, I wouldn't take this fool country for a gift. No, sir! Me for God's

"Like it? Like this damp crowded hole, where they can't talk English, and have a fool coinage Say,

that's a great system, that metric system they've got over in France, but herewhy, they don't know whether

Kansas City is in Kansas or Missouri or both.... `Right as rain'that's what a fellow said to me for `all right'!

Ever hear such nonsense?.... And tea for breakfast! Not for me! No, sir! I'm going to take the first steamer!"

With a gigantic smokepuff of disgust the man from Sleepy Eye stalked out, jingling the keys in his trousers

Mr. Wrenn, picturing him greeting the Singer Tower from an incoming steamer, longed to see the tower.

He rose and, from that table in the basement of an A. B. C. restaurant, he fled to America.

He dashed upstairs, fidgeted while the cashier made his change, rang for a bus, whisked into his room,

slammed his things into his suitcase, announced to it wildly that they were going home, and scampered to

the Northwestem Station. He walked nervously up and down till the Liverpool train departed. "Suppose Istra

wanted to make up, and came back to London?" was a terrifying thought that hounded him. He dashed into

the waitingroom and wrote to her, on a souvenir postcard showing the Abbey: "Called back to

Americawill write. Address care of Souvenir Company, Twentyeighth Street." But he didn't mail the

Once settled in a secondclass compartment, with the train in motion, he seemed already much nearer

America, and, humming, to the great annoyance of a lady with bangs, he planned his new great workthe

making of friends; the discovery, some day, if Istra should not relent, of "somebody to go home to." There

was no end to the "societies and lodges and stuff" he was going to join directly he landed.

At Liverpool he suddenly stopped at a postbox and mailed his card to Istra. That ended his debate. Of

In his whitepainted steerage berth Mr. Wrenn lay, with a scratch pad on his raised knees and a small mean

pillow doubled under his head, writing sample followup letters to present to the Souvenir and Art Novelty

Company, interrupting his work at intervals to add to a list of the books which, beginning about five minutes

after he landed in New York, he was going to master. He puzzled over Marie Corelli. Morton liked Miss

He had worked for many hours on a letter to Istra in which he avoided mention of such indecent matters as

steerages and immigrants. He was grateful, he told her, for "all you learned me," and he had thought that

Aengusmere was a beautiful place, though he now saw "what you meant about them interesting people," and

He tore up the several pages that repeated that oldest most melancholy cry of the lover, which rang among the

deodars, from viking ships, from the moonlit courtyards of Provence, the cry which always sounded about

Mr. Wrenn as he walked the deck: "I want you so much; I miss you so unendingly; I am so lonely for you,

dear." For no more clearly, no more nobly did the golden Aucassin or lean Dante word that cry in their

A third class steward with a mangy mustache and setter like tan eyes came teetering down stairs, each

step like a nervous pencil tap on a table, and peered over the side of Mr. Wrenn's berth. He loved Mr. Wrenn,

who was proven a scholar by the reading of real bound booksan English history and a secondhand copy

of _Haunts of Historic English Writers_, purchased in Liverpooland who was willing to listen to the

steward's serial story of how his woman, Mrs. Wargle, faithlessly consorted with Foddle, the cat'smeat man,

when the steward was away, and, when he was home, cooked for him lights and liver that unquestionably

were purchased from the same cat'smeat man. He now leered with a fond and watery gaze upon Mr.

Mr. Wrenn sat up so vigorously that he bumped his head. He chucked his papers beneath the pillow with his

right hand, while the left was feeling for the side of the berth. "Land!" he bellowed to drowsing cabinmates

The steerage promenadedeck, ironsided, blackfloored, ending in the iron approaches to the galley at one

end and the iron superstructures about a hatch at the other, was like a grim swart oilily clean machineshop

aisle, so inclosed, so overroofed, that the side toward the sea seemed merely a long factory window. But he

loved it and, except when he had guiltily remembered the books he had to read, he had stayed on deck,

worshiping the naive bright attire of immigrants and the dark roll and glory of the sea.

Now, out there was a blue shading, made by a magic pencil; land, his land, where he was going to become the

beloved comrade of all the friends whose likenesses he saw in the whitecaps flashing before him.

Humming, he paraded down to the buffet, where small beer and smaller tobacco were sold, to buy another

The children knew he was coming. "Fat rascals," he chuckled, touching their dark cheeks, pretending to be

frightened as they pounded soft fists against the iron side of the ship or rolled unregarded in the scuppers.

Their shawled mothers knew him, too, and as he shyly handed about the candy the chattering stately line of

Jewish elders nodded their beards like the forest primeval in a breeze, saying words of blessing in a strange

He smiled back and made gestures, and shouted "Land! Land!" with several variations in key, to make it

But he withdrew for the sacred moment of seeing the Land of Promise he was newly discoveringthe Long

Island shore; the grassclad redouts at Fort Wadsworth; the vast pile of New York skyscrapers, standing in

"Singer Tower.... Butterick Building," he murmured, as they proceeded toward their dock. "That's something

like.... Let's see; yes, sir, by golly, right up there between the Met. Tower and the _Times_good old

Souvenir Company office. Jiminy! `One Dollar to Albany'something _like_ a sign, that isgood old

dollar! To thunder with their darn shillings. Home!... Gee! there's where I used to moon on a wharf!... Gosh!

He went to a hotel. While he had to go back to the Zapps', of course, he did not wish, by meeting those old

friends, to spoil his first day. No, it was cheerfuler to stand at a window of his cheap hotel on Seventh

Avenue, watching the "good old American crowd"Germans, Irishmen, Italians, and Jews. He went to the

Nickelorion and grasped the hand of the ticket taker, the Brassbutton Man, ejaculating: "How are you?

"Fine and dandy! Been away, uh? Well, it's good to get back to the old town, heh? Summer hotel?"

Next morning Mr. Wrenn made himself go to the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. He wanted to get the

teasing, due him for staying away so short a time, over as soon as possible. The office girl, addressing

circulars, seemed surprised when he stepped from the elevator, and blushed her usual shy gratitude to the men

"Why, hullo, Wrenn! Wondered if that could be you. Back so soon? Thought you were going to Europe."

"You must have been learning to sass back real smart, in the Old Country, heh? Going to be with us again?

He was not madly excited at seeing Rabin; still, the drummer was part of the good old Souvenir Company,

the one place in the world on which he could absolutely depend, the one place where they always wanted

He had been absently staring at the sampletables, noting new novelties. The office girl, speaking sweetly,

Mr. Wrenn felt like the prodigal son, with no calf in sight, at having to wait on the callers' bench, but he

shook with faint excited gurgles of mirth at the thought of the delightful surprise Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle,

the office manager, was going to have. He kept an eye out for Charley Carpenter. If Charley didn't come

through the entryroom he'd go into the bookkeepingroom, and"talk about your surprises"

As he entered the manager's office Mr. Guilfogle made much of glancing up with busy amazement.

"Well, well, Wrenn! Back so soon? Thought you were going to be gone quite a while."

"Oh, I wanted to Say, Mr. Guilfogle, I really wanted to get back to the office again. I'm awfully glad to

"Glad see _you_. Well, where did you go? I got the card you sent me from Chesterton with the picture of the

"Why, I went to Liverpool and Oxford and London and wellKew and Ealing and places and And I

tramped through Essex and Suffolkall throughon foot. Aengusmere and them places."

"Just a moment. (Well, Rabin, what is it? Why certainly. I've told you that already about five times. _Yes_, I

saidthat's what I had the samples made up for. I wish you'd be a little more careful, d' ye hear?) You went

"No, I'm afraid I didn't, Mr. Guilfogle. I'm awfully sorry. I hunted around, but I couldn't find a thing we could

use. I mean I couldn't find anything that began to come up to our line. Them English are pretty slow."

"WhyuhI kind of thought Honestly, Mr. Guilfogle, I'd like to get back on my old job. You

"Afraid there's nothing doing just now, Wrenn. Not a thing. Course I can't tell what may happen, and you

want to keep in touch with us, but we're pretty well filled up just now. Jake is getting along better than we

thought. He's learning" Not one word regarding Jake's excellence did Mr. Wrenn hear.

"Gee! I hadn't thought of that. I'd kind of banked on the Souvenir Company, Mr. Guilfogle."

"Sorry, Wrenn. That's the way it goes in business, though. If you will go beating it around A rolling

stone don't gather any moss. Well, cheer up! Possibly there may be something doing in"

Mr. Guilfogle remarked into it: "Hello. Yes, it's me. Well, who did you think it was? The cat? Yuh. Sure. No.

"Say, Mr. Guilfogle, you say there'll bewhen will there be likely to be an opening?"

"Now, how can I tell, my boy? We'll work you in if we canyou ain't a bad clerk; or at least you wouldn't be

if you'd be a little more careful. By the way, of course you understand that if we try to work you in it'll take

lots of trouble, and we'll expect you to not go flirting round with other firms, looking for a job. Understand

"All right. We appreciate your work all right, but of course you can 't expect us to fire any of our present

force just because you take the notion to come back whenever you want to.... Hiking off to Europe, leaving a

"Well.... Oh, say, how's the grub in London? Cheaper than it is here? The wife was saying this morning we'd

"Yes, it's quite a little cheaper. You can get fine tea for two and three cents a cup. Clothes is cheaper, too. But

I don't care much for the English, though there is all sorts of quaint places with a real flavor.... Say, Mr.

Guilfogle, you know I inherited a little money, and I can wait awhile, and you'll kind of keep me in mind for

"You come around and see me a week from now. And leave your address with Rosey. I don't know, though,

as we can afford to pay you quite the same salary at first, even if we can work you inthe season's been very

slack. But I'll do what I can for you. Come in and see me in about a week. Goo' day."

"You look kind of peeked, Wrenn. Old Goglefogle been lighting into you? Say, I ought to have told you first.

I forgot it. The old rat, he's been planning to stick the knife into you all the while. 'Bout two weeks ago me

and him had a couple of cocktails at Mouquin's. You know how chummy he always gets after a couple of

smiles. Well, he was talking aboutI was saying you're a good man and hoping you were having a good

timeand he said, `Yes,' he says, `he's a good man, but he sure did lay himself wide open by taking this trip.

I've got him dead to rights,' he says to me. `I've got a hunch he'll be back here in three or four months,' he

says to me. `And do you think he'll walk in and get what he wants? Not him. I'll keep him waiting a month

before I give him back his job, and then you watch, Rabin,' he says to me, `you'll see he'll be tickled to death

to go back to work at less salary than he was getting, and he'll have sense enough to not try this stunt of

getting off the job again after that. And the trip'll be good for him, anywayhe'll do better workvacation

at his own expensesave us money all round. I tell you, Rabin,' he says to me, `if any of you boys think you

can get the best of the company or me you just want to try it, that's all.' Yessir, that's what the old rat told me.

They parted. Eager though he was for the great moment of again seeing his comrade, Charley Carpenter, Mr.

Wrenn dribbled toward the bookkeepingroom mournfully, planning to tell Charley of Guilfogle's

"No. He got through. He got to boozing pretty bad, and one morning about three weeks ago, when he had a

pretty bad hangover, he told Guilfogle what he thought of him, so of course Guilfogle fired him."

" East a Hundred and Eighteenth.... Well, I'm glad to see you back, Wrenn. Didn't expect to see you

"I ain't sure," said Mr. Wrenn, crabbedly, then shook hands warmly with the bookkeeper, to show there was

For nearly a hundred blocks Mr. Wrenn scowled at an advertisement of Corn Flakes in the Third Avenue

Elevated without really seeing it.... Should he go back to the Souvenir Company at all?

Yes. He would. That was the best way to start making friends. But he would "get our friend Guilfogle at

recess," he assured himself, with an outthrust of the jaw like that of the great Bill Wrenn. He knew

Guilfogle's lead now, and he would show that gentleman that he could play the game. He'd take that lower

He did not proclaim even to himself what dreadful thing he was going to do, but as he left the Elevated he

The flatbuilding where Charley Carpenter lived was one of hundreds of pressedbrick structures, apparently

all turned out of the same mold. It was filled with the smells of steamy washing and fried fish. Languid with

the heat, Mr. Wrenn crawled up an infinity of iron steps and knocked three times at Charley's door. No

answer. He crawled down again and sought out the janitress, who stopped watching an icewagon in the

"I guess you'll be finding him asleep up there, sir. He do be lying there drunk most of the day. His wife's left

him. The landlord's give him notice to quit, end of August. Warm day, sir. Be you a bill collector? Mostly,

Superior in manner, but deeply dejected, Mr. Wrenn rang the downstairs bell long enough to wake Charley,

pantingly got himself up the interminable stairs, and kicked the door till Charley's voice quavered inside:

Three other doors on the same landing were now partly open and blocked with the heads of frowsy

inquisitive women. The steamy smell was thicker in the darkness. Mr. Wrenn felt prickly, then angry at this

Charley Carpenter's pale face leered out. His tousled hair was stuck to his forehead by perspiration; his eyes

were red and vaguely staring. His clothes were badlv wrinkled. He wore a collarless shirt with a frilled bosom

"It's ol' Wrenn. C'm in. C'm in quick. Collectors always hanging around. They can't catch me. You bet."

He closed the door and wabbled swiftly down the long drab hall of the "railroad flat," evidently trying to

walk straight. The reeking stifling main room at the end of the hall was terrible as Charley's eyes. Flies

boomed everywhere. The oak table, which Charley and his bride had once spent four happy hours in

selecting, was littered with half a dozen empty whiskyflasks, collars, torn sensational newspapers, dirty

plates and coffeecups. The cheap brocade cover, which a bride had once joyed to embroider with red and

green roses, was half pulled off and dragged on the floor amid the cigarette butts, Durham tobacco, and bacon

This much Mr. Wrenn saw. Then he set himself to the hard task of listening to Charley, who was muttering:

"Back quick, ain't you, ol' Wrenn? You come up to see me, didn't you? You're m' friend, ain't you, eh? I got

Mr. Wrenn stared at him weakly, but only for a minute. Perhaps it was his cattleboat experience which now

made him deal directly with such drunkenness as would have nauseated him three months before; perhaps his

"Wife left me. I was drinking. You think I'm drunk, don't you? But I ain't. She went off with her

sisteralways hated me. She took my money out of savingsbankthree hundred; all money I had 'cept

fifty dollars. I'll fix her. I'll kill her. Took to hitting the booze. Goglefogle fired me. Don't care. Drink all I

want. Keep young fellows from getting it! Say, go down and get me pint. Just finished up pint. Got to have

"I'll go and get you a drink, Charleyjust one drink, savvy?if you'll promise to get cleaned up, like I tell

Mr. Wrenn hastened out with a whiskyflask, muttering, feverishly, "Gee! I got to save him." Returning, he

poured out one drink, as though it were medicine for a refractory patient, and said, soothingly:

"Now we'll take a cold bath, heh? and get cleaned up and sobered up. Then we'll talk about a job, heh?"

"Aw, don't want a bath. Say, I feel better now. Let's go out and have a drink. Gimme that flask. Where j' yuh

Mr. Wrenn went to the bathroom, turned on the coldwater tap, returned, and undressed Charley, who

struggled and laughed and let his whole inert weight rest against Mr. Wrenn's shoulder. Though normally

Charley could have beaten three Mr. Wrenns, he was run into the bathroom and poked into the tub.

Instantly he began to splash, throwing up water in handfuls, singing. The water poured over the side of the

tub. Mr. Wrenn tried to hold him still, but the wet sleek shoulders slipped through his hand like a wet platter.

In the bedroom he found an unwrinkled winterweight suit and one clean shirt. In the livingroom he hung

up his coat, covering it with a newspaper, pulled the broom from under the table, and prepared to sweep.

The disorder was so great that he made one of the inevitable discoveries of every housekeeper, and admitted

to himself that he "didn't know where to begin." He stumblingly lugged a heavy pile of dishes from the

centertable to the kitchen, shook and beat and folded the tablecover, stuck the chairs atop the table, and

"Just sweeping, Charley," from Mr. Wrenn, and an uninterrupted "Tuff, tuff, tuff" from the broom.

"Say, d' yuh think you can run me? Get out of this, or I'll throw you out. Got house way I want it."

Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, rushed at him, smacked him with the broom, drove him back into the tub, and

waited. He laughed. It was all a good joke; his friend Charley and he were playing a little game. Charley also

laughed and splashed some more. Then he wept and said that the water was cold, and that he was now

"Li'l ministering angel, ain't you? You think you're awful good, don't you? Come up here and bother me.

When I ain't well. Salvation Army. You . Aw, lemme _'lone_, will you?" Bill Wrenn kept

There was enough energy in Charley's voice to indicate that he was getting sober. Bill Wrenn soused him

under once more, so thoroughly that his own cuffs were reduced to a state of flabbiness. He dragged Charley

He went out and bought dishtowels, soap, washingpowder, and collars of Charley's size, which was an

inch larger than his own. He finished sweeping and dusting and washing the dishesall of them. Hewho

had learned to comfort Istrahe really enjoyed it. His sense of order made it a pleasure to see a plate yellow

with dried egg glisten iridescently and flash into shining whiteness; or a room corner filled with dust and

tobacco flakes become again a "nice square clean corner with the baseboard shining, gee! just like it was

An irate grocer called with a bill for fifteen dollars. Mr. Wrenn blandly heard his threats all through,

pretending to himself that this was his home, whose honor was his honor. He paid the man eight dollars on

account and loftily dismissed him. He sat down to wait for Charley, reading a newspaper most of the time,

but rising to pursue stray flies furiously, stumbling over chairs, and making murderous flappings with a

When Charley awoke, after three hours, clear of mind but not at all clear as regards the roof of his mouth, Mr.

Wrenn gave him a very little whisky, with considerable coffee, toast, and bacon. The toast was not bad.

"Say, you been darn' decent to me, old man. Lord! how you've been sweeping up! How was Iwas I pretty

"Well, it's no wonder I had a classy hangover, Wrenn. I was at the Amusieren Rathskeller till four this

morning, and then I had a couple of nips before breakfast, and then I didn't have any breakfast. But

saaaay, man, I sure did have some fiesta last night. There was a little peroxide blonde that"

"Now you look here, Carpenter; you listen to me. You're sober now. Have you tried to find another job?"

"Yes, I did. But I got down in the mouth. Didn't feel like I had a friend left."

"Look here, Charley, you know I don't want to pull off no Charity Society stunt or talk like I was a preacher.

But I like you so darn much I want to see you sober up and get another job. Honestly I do, Charley. Are you

"Prett' nearly. Only got about ten dollars to my name.... I _will_ take a brace, old man. I know you ain't no

preacher. Course if you came around with any `holierthanthou' stunt I'd have to go right out and get soused

"Well, there's a chance at night clerking in a little hotel where I was a bellhop long time ago. The night

clerk's going to get through, but I don't know just whenprob'ly in a week or two."

"Well, keep after it. And _please_ come down to see me the old placeWest Sixteenth Street."

"What about the old girl with the ingrowing grouch? What's her name? She ain't stuck on me."

"Mrs. Zapp? Ohhope she chokes. She can just kick all she wants to. I'm just going to have all the visitors I

"Oh, I had a great time. Lots of nice fellows on the cattleboat. I went over on one, you know. Fellow named

Mortonawfully nice fellow. Say, Charley, you ought to seen me being butler to the steers. Handing 'em

hay. But say, the sea was fine; all kinds of colors. Awful dirty on the cattleboat, though."

"Oh, a lot of different places. Say, I seen some great vaudeville in Liverpool, Charley, with Mortonhe's a

slick fellow; works for the Pennsylvania, here in town. I got to look him up. Say, I wish we had an agency for

college sofapillows and banners and souvenir stuff in Oxford. There's a whole bunch of colleges there, all

right in the same town. I met a prof. there from some American collegehe hired an automobubble and took

"Yuh. Gee! it's a big place. Say, that Westminster Abbey's a great place. I was in there a couple of times.

More darn tombs of kings and stuff. And I see a bishop, with leggins on! But I got kind of lonely. I thought of

you a lot of times. Wished we could go out and get an ale together. Maybe pick up a couple of pretty girls."

"Nope.... Well, I guess I'd better beat it now. Got to move inI'm at a hotel. You will come down and see

"So you thought of me, eh?... Yuhsure, old socks. I'll be down tonight. And I'll get right after that job."

It is doubtful whether Mr. Wrenn would ever have returned to the Zapps' had he not promised to see Charley

there. Even while he was carrying his suitcase down West Sixteenth, broiling by degrees in the sunshine, he

Lee Theresa, taking the day off with a headache, answered the bell, and ejaculated:

"What, are you back so soon? Why, you ain't been gone more than a month and a half, have you?"

Beware, daughter of Southern pride! The little Yankee is regarding your fullblown curves and empty eyes

"Well, I just knew you couldn't stand it away from us. I suppose you'll want your room back. Ma, here's Mr.

"Ohhhh!" sounded Goaty Zapp's voice, in impish disdain, below. "Mr. Wrenn's back. Hee, hee! Couldn't

A slap, a wail, then Mrs. Zapp's elephantine slowness on the stairs from the basement. She appeared,

buttoning her collar, smiling almost pleasantly, for she disliked Mr. Wrenn less than she did any other of her

"Back already, Mist' Wrenn? Ah declare, Ah was saying to Lee Theresa just yest'day, Ah just knew you'd be

He was surveying the airless parlor rather heavily, and his curt manner was not pleasing to the head of the

"It ain't taken just now, Mist' Wrenn, but Ah dunno. There was a gennulman alooking at it just yesterday,

and he said he'd be permanent if he came. Ah declare, Mist' Wrenn, Ah dunno's Ah like to have my

"Ah know, butwell, Ah reckon Ah can let you have it, but Ah'll have to have four and a half a week instead

of four. Prices is all going up so, Ah declare, Ah was just saying to Lee T'resa Ah dunno what we're all going

to do if the dear Lord don't look out for us. And, Mist' Wrenn, Ah dunno's Ah like to have you coming in so

Mr. Wrenn was dangerously polite. Let gentility look out for the sharp practices of the Yankee.

It was our hero, our madman of the seven and seventy seas, our revolutionist friend of Istra, who leaped

straight from the saltincrusted decks of his laboring steamer to the musty parlor and declared, quietly but

unmovablypractically unmovably"Well, then, I guess I'd better not take it at all."

"So that's the way you're going to treat us!" bellowed Mrs. Zapp. "You go off and leave us with an

"Ma ain't feeling a bit well this afternoon. I'm sorry she talked like that. You will come back, won't you?" She

showed all her teeth in a genuine smile, and in her anxiety reached his heart. "Remember, you promised you

Bill Wrenn was fading, an affrighted specter. The "but" was the last glimpse of him, and that Theresa

overlooked, as she bustlingly chirruped: "I _knew_ you would understand. I'll skip right up and look at the

One month, one hot New York month, passed before the imperial Mr. Guilfogle gave him back The Job, and

then at seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week instead of his former nineteen dollars. Mr. Wrenn refused,

upon pretexts, to go out with the manager for a drink, and presented him with twenty suggestions for new

novelties and circular letters. He rearranged the unsystematic methods of Jake, the cub, and two days later he

was at work as though he had never in his life been farther from the Souvenir Company than Newark.

DEAR ISTRA,I am back in New York feeling very well hope this finds you the same. I have been wanting

to write to you for quite a while now but there has not been much news of any kind so I have not written to

you. But now I am back working for the Souvenir Company. I hope you are having a good time in Paris it

must be a very pretty city I have often wished to be there perhaps some day I shall go. I [several erasures

here] have been reading quite a few books since I got back think now I shall get on better with my reading.

You told me so many things about books so on I do appreciate it. In closing, I am yours very sincerely,

There was nothing else he could say. But there were a terrifying number of things he could think as he

crouched by the window overlooking West Sixteenth Street, whose dull hue had not changed during the

centuries while he had been tramping England. Her smile he rememberedand he cried, "Oh, I want to see

At last he cursed himself, "Why don't you _do_ something that 'd count for her, and not sit around yammering

He worked on his plan to "bring the South into line"the Souvenir Company's line. Again and again he

sprang up from the writingtable in his hot room when the presence of Istra came and stood compellingly by

The Souvenir Company salesmen had not been able to get from the South the business which the company

deserved if right and justice were to prevail. On the steamer from England Mr. Wrenn had conceived the idea

that a Dixieland Inkwell, with the Confederate and Union flags draped in graceful cast iron, would make an

admirable present with which to draw the attention of the Southem trade. The inkwell was to be followed by

a series of letters, sent on the slightest provocation, on order or reorder, tactfully hoping the various healths

of the Southland were good and the baseball season important; all to insure a welcome to the salesmen on the

He drew up his letters; he sketched his inkwell; he got up the courage to talk with the office manager.... To

forget love and the beloved, men have ascended in aeroplanes and conquered African tribes. To forget love, a

new, busy, much absorbed Mr. Wrenn, very much Ours, bustled into Mr. Guilfogle's office, slapped down his

papers on the desk, and demanded: "Here's that plan about gettin' the South interested that I was telling you

about. Say, honest, I'd like awful much to try it on. I'd just have to have part time of one stenographer."

"Well, you know our stenographers are pretty well crowded. But you can leave the outline with me. I'll look

That same afternoon the manager enthusiastically O. K.'d the plan. To enthusiasticallyO. K. is an office

technology for saying, gloomily, "Well, I don't suppose it 'd hurt to try it, anyway, but for the love of Mike be

So Mr. Wrenn dictated a letter to each of their Southern merchants, sending him a Dixieland Inkwell and

inquiring about the crops. He had a stenographer, an efficient intolerant young woman who wrote down his

halting words as though they were examples of bad English she wanted to show her friends, and waited for

"By gosh!" growled Bill Wrenn, the cattleman, "I'll show her I'm running this. I'll show her she's got another

think coming." But he dictated so busily and was so hot to get results that he forgot the girl's air of highclass

He watched the Southern baseball results in the papers. He seized on every salesman on the Southern route as

he came in, and inquired about the religion and politics of the merchants in his district. He even forgot to

worry about his next rise in salary, and found it much more exciting to rush back for an important letter after

a quick lunch than to watch the time and make sure that he secured every minute of his lunchhour.

When October cameOctober of the vagabond, with the leaves brilliant out on the Palisades, and Sixth

Avenue movingpicture palaces cool again and gayMr. Wrenn stayed late, under the mercuryvapor

lights, making card crossfiles of the Southern merchants, their hobbies and prejudices, and whistling as he

worked, stopping now and then to slap the desk and mutter, "By gosh! I'm gettin' 'emgettin' 'em."

He rarely thought of Istra till he was out on the street again, proud of having worked so late that his eyes

ached. In fact, his chief troubles these days came when Mr. Guilfogle wouldn't "let him put through an idea."

Their first battle was over Mr. Wrenn's signing the letters personally; for the letters, the office manager felt,

were as much Ours as was Mr. Wrenn, and should be signed by the firm. After some difficulty Mr. Wrenn

persuaded him that one of the best ways to handle a personal letter was to make it personal. They nearly

It's not at all certain that Mr. Guilfogle should have yielded. What's the use of a manager if his underlings use

The next battle Mr. Wrenn lost. He had demanded a monthly holiday for his stenographer. Mr. Guilfogle

pointed out that she'd merely be the worse off for a holiday, that it 'd make her discontented, that it was a

kindness to her to keep her mind occupied. Mr. Wrenn was, however, granted a new typewriter, in a manner

which revealed the fact that the Souvenir Company was filled with almost too much mercy in permitting an

You cannot trust these employees. Mr. Wrenn was getting so absorbed in his work that he didn't even act as

though it was a favor when Mr. Guilfogle allowed him to have his letters to the trade copied by carbon paper

instead of having them blurred by the wet tissuepaper of a copybook. The manager did grant the request,

but he was justly indignant at the curt manner of the rascal, whereupon our bumptious revolutionist, our

friend to anarchists and redheaded artists, demanded a "raise" and said that he didn't care a hang if the

[qualified] letters never went out. The kindness of chiefs! For Mr. Guilfogle apologized and raised the

madman's wage from seventeen dollars and fifty cents a week to his former nineteen dollars. [He had

expected eighteen dollars; he had demanded twentytwo dollars and fifty cents; he was worth on the labor

market from twenty five to thirty dollars; while the profit to the Souvenir Company from his work was

Not only that. Mr. Guilfogle slapped him on the back and said: "You're doing good work, old man. It's fine. I

After his raise he could afford to go to the theater, since he was not saving money for travel. He wrote small

letters to Istra and read the books he believed she would approvea Paris Baedeker and the second volume

of Tolstoi's _War and Peace_, which he bought at a secondhand bookstall for five cents. He became

interested in popular and inaccurate French and English histories, and secreted any amount of footnote

anecdotes about Guy Fawkes and rushlights and the divine right of kings. He thought almost every night

about making friends, which he intendedjust as much as everto do as soon as Sometime arrived.

On the day on which one of the Southern merchants wrote him about his son "fine young fellow, sirhas

every chance of rising to a lieutenancy on the Atlanta police force"Mr. Wrenn's eyes were moist. Here was

a friend already. Sure. He would make friends. Then there was the cripple with the Capitol Corner News and

Souvenir Stand in Austin, Texas. Mr. Wrenn secreted two extra Dixieland Inkwells and a Yale football

banner and sent them to the cripple for his brothers, who were in the Agricultural College.

The ordersyes, they were growing larger. The Southern salesmen took him out to dinner sometimes. But

he was shy of them. They were so knowing and had so many smokingroom stories. He still had not found

Miggleton's restaurant, on Fortysecond Street, was a romantic discovery. Though it had "popular

prices"plain omelet, fifteen centsit had red and green bracket lights, missionstyle tables, and music

played by a sparrowlike pianist and a violinist. Mr. Wrenn never really heard the music, but while it was

quavering he had a happier appreciation of the SilkHatHarry humorous pictures in the _Journal_, which he

always propped up against an oilcruet. [That never caused him inconvenience; he had no convictions in

regard to salads.] He would drop the paper to look out of the window at the Lazydays Improvement

Company's electric sign, showing gardens of paradise on the instalment plan, and dream ofwell, he hadn't

the slightest idea whatsomething distant and deliciously likely to become intimate. Once or twice he knew

that he was visioning the girl in soft brown whom he would "go home to," and who, in a Lazydays suburban

residence, would play just such music for him and the friends who lived near by. She would be as clever as

Istra, but "oh, more so's you can go regular places with her."... Often he got good ideas about letters South, to

On that October evening in 1910 he dined early at Miggleton's. The thirtycent table d'hote was perfect. The

creamofcorn soup was, he went so far as to remark to the waitress, "simply slick"; the Waldorf salad had

The fat man with the white waistcoat, whom he had often noted as dining in this same corner of the

restaurant, smiled at him and said "Pleasant evening" as he sat down opposite Mr. Wrenn and smoothed the

The music included a "potpourri of airs from `The Merry Widow,'" which set his foot tapping. All the while

he was conscious that he'd made the Seattle Novelty and Stationery Corner Store come through with a

The _Journal_ contained an editorial essay on "Friendship" which would have been, and was, a credit to

He laid down the paper, stirred his large cup of coffee, and stared at the motherofpearl buttons on the

waistcoat of the fat man, who was now gulping down soup, opposite him. "My land!" he was thinking,

"friendship! I ain't even begun to make all those friends I was going to. Haven't done a thing. Oh, I will; I

"Wish I had time. But I gotta get down to the storecigarstore. I'm on nights, three times a week."

Silence. But Mr. Wrenn was fighting for things to say, means of approach, for the chance to become

acquainted with a new person, for all the friendly human ways he had desired in nights of loneliness.

Mr. Wrenn sat trying to think of something else to say. Lonely people in city restaurants simply do not get

acquainted. Yet he did manage to observe, "Great building that'll be," in the friendliest manner.

"No. But I'd like to see it. Gee! there must be kind ofkind of adventure in them things, heh?"

"Yuhsure is. First machine I saw, thoughI was just getting off the train at Belmont Park, and there was

an areoplane up in the air, and it looked like one of them big mechanical beetles these fellows sell on the

street buzzing around up there. I was kind of disappointed. But what do you think? It was that J. A. D.

McCurdy, in a Curtiss biplaneI think it wasand by golly! he got to circling around and racing and

tipping so's I thought I'd loose my hat off, I was so excited. And, say, what do you think? I see McCurdy

himself, afterward, standing near one of thethe handgarshandsome young chap, not over twentyeight

or thirty, built like a halfmiler. And then I see Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxey"

"dipping and doing thewhat do you call it?Dutch sausageroll or something like that. Yelled my

There seemed to be no other questions to settle. Mr. Wrenn slowly folded up his paper, pursued his check

under three plates and the menucard to its hidingplace beyond the catsupbottle, and left the table with a

At the desk of the cashier, a decorative blonde, he put a cent in the machine which goodnaturedly drops out

"Out of order?" asked the cashier lady. "Here's two boxes of matches. Guess you've earned them."

"Well, well, well, well!" sounded the voice of his friend, the fat man, who stood at the desk paying his bill.

"Pretty easy, heh? Two boxes for one cent! Sting the restaurant." Cocking his head, he carefully inserted a

cent in the slot and clattered the lever, turning to grin at Mr. Wrenn, who grinned back as the machine failed

"Let me try it," caroled Mr. Wrenn, and pounded the lever with the enthusiasm of comradeship.

"I guess _I_ draw two boxes, too, eh? And I'm in a cigarstore. How's that for stinging your competitors,

The cashier handed him two boxes, with an embarrassed simper, and the fat man clapped Mr. Wrenn's

"My turn!" shouted a young man in a fuzzy green hat and a brightbrown suit, who had been watching with

Mr. Wrenn was glowing. "No, it ain'tit's mine," he achieved. "I invented this game." Never had he so stood

forth in a crowd. He was a Bill Wrenn with the cosmopolitan polish of a floorwalker. He stood beside the

It is true that he didn't add to this spiritual triumph the triumph of getting two more boxes of matches, for the

cashiergirl exclaimed, "No indeedy; it's my turn!" and lifted the match machine to a high shelf behind her.

But Mr. Wrenn went out of the restaurant with his old friend, the fat man, saying to him quite as would a wit,

And the fat man seemed to mean it. He confided to Mr. Wrenn that the fishing was something elegant at

Trulen, New Jersey; that he was some punkins at the casting of flies in fishing; that he wished exceedingly to

be at Trulen fishing with flies, but was prevented by the manager of the cigarstore; that the manager was an

old devil; that his (the fat man's own) name was Tom Poppins; that the store had a slick new brand of Manila

cigars, kept in a swell new humidor bought upon the advice of himself (Mr. Poppins); that one of the young

clerks in the store had done fine in the Modified Marathon; that the Cubs had had a great team this year; that

he'd be glad to give Mr. Mr. Wrenn, eh? one of those Manila cigarsgreat cigars they were, too; and

that he hadn't "laughed so much for a month of Sundays as he had over the way they stung Miggleton's on

All this in the easy, affectionate, slightly wistful manner of fat men. Mr. Poppins's large round friendly

childish eyes were never sarcastic. He was the man who makes of a crowd in the Pullman smokingroom old

friends in half an hour. In turn, Mr. Wrenn did not shy off; he hinted at most of his lifelong ambitions and a

fair number of his sorrows and, when they reached the store, not only calmly accepted, but even sneezingly

He was to see Tom Poppins the coming Thursday at Miggleton's. And now he was going to find Morton! He

laughed so loudly that the policeman at Thirtyfourth Street looked selfconscious and felt secretively to find

out what was the matter with his uniform. Now, this evening, he'd try to get on the track of Morton. Well,

perhaps not this eveningthe Pennsylvania offices wouldn't be open, but some time this week, anyway.

Two nights later, as he waited for Tom Poppins at Miggleton's, he lashed himself with the thought that he had

not started to find Morton; good old Morton of the cattleboat. But that was forgotten in the wonder of Tom

Poppins's account of Mrs. Arty's, a boardinghouse "where all the folks likes each other."

"You've never fed at a boardinghouse, eh?" said Tom. "Well, I guess most of 'em are pretty poor feed. And

pretty sad bunch. But Mrs. Arty's is about as near like home as most of us poor bachelors ever gets. Nice

crowd there. If Mrs. ArtyMrs. R. T. Ferrard is her name, but we always call her Mrs. Artyif she don't

take to you she don't mind letting you know she won't take you in at all; but if she does she'll worry over the

holes in your socks as if they was her husband's. All the bunch there drop into the parlor when they come in,

pretty near any time clear up till twelvethirty, and talk and laugh and rush the growler and play Five

"Mrs. Arty's nearly as fat as I am, but she can be pretty spry if there's something she can do for you. Nice

crowd there, too except that Teddemhe's one of these here Willyboy actors, always out of work; I guess

Mrs. Arty is kind of sorry for him. Say, Wrennyou seem to me like a good fellowwhy don't you get

acquainted with the bunch? Maybe you'd like to move up there some time. You was telling me about what a

cranky old party your landlady is. Anyway, come on up there to dinner. On me. Got anything on for next

"Well, why don't you, then? Get there about six. Ask for me. Monday. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I

don't have to get to the store evenings. Come on; you'll find out if you like the place."

At last he was "through, just _through_ with loafing around and not getting acquainted," he told himself. He

was tired of Zapps. There was nothing to Zapps. He would go up to Mrs. Arty's and nowhe was going to

find Morton. Next morning, marveling at himself for not having done this easy task before, he telephoned to

the Pennsylvania Railroad offices, asked for Morton, and in onehalf minute heard:

"Nope." Mr. Wrenn felt lonely at finding himself so completely outside Morton's own world that he was not

"Say, Mr. Morton, I wonder if you've ever heard of a cattleboat called the _Merian?_"

"Oh, I been back quite a little while, Morty. Tried to get hold of youalmost called up couple of times. I'm

in my officeSouvenir Companynow. Back on the old job. Say, I'd like to see you."

"Nno. No, I don't _think_ I've got anything on." Morton's voice seemed to sound a doubt. Mr. Wrenn

reflected that Morton must be a society person; and he made his invitation highly polite:

"Well, say, old man, I'd be awful happy if you could come over and feed on me. Can't you come over and

Gazing across the table at Miggleton's, Mr. Wrenn saw, in the squat familiar body and sturdy face of Morton

of the cattleboat, a stranger, slightly uneasy and very quiet, wearing garments that had nothing whatever to

do with the cattleboatsa crimson scarf with a horseshoepin of "Brazilian diamonds," and sleek brown

Morton would say nothing of his wanderings after their parting in Liverpool beyond: "Oh, I just bummed

around. Places.... Warm tonight. For this time of year." Thrice he explained, "I was kind of afraid you'd be

sore at me for the way I left you; that's why I've never looked you up." Thrice Mr. Wrenn declared that he

Their talk wilted. Both of them played with their knives a good deal. Morton built a set of triangles out of

toothpicks while pretending to give hushed attention to the pianist's rendition of "Mammy's Little Cootsie

Bootsie Coon," while Mr. Wrenn stared out of the window as though he expected to see the building across

get afire immediately. When either of them invented something to say they started chattering with guilty

Mr. Wrenn surprised himself in the thought that Morton hadn't anything very new to say, which made him

"Say, come on now, old man; I just got to hear about what you did after you left Liverpool."

"I never got out of Liverpool! Worked in a restaurant.... But next time! I'll go clean to Constantinople!"

Mr. Wrenn talked long and rapidly of the world's baseball series, and Regal _vs._ Walkover shoes.

"Say, Morty, I know an awful nice guy down here in a cigarstore. Let's go down and see him."

Tom Poppins was very cordial to them. He dragged brown canvas stools out of the tobaccoscented room

where cigars were made, and the three of them squatted in the back of the store, while Tom gossiped of the

Juarez races, Taft, cigarwrappers, and Jews. Morton was aroused to tell the timemellowed story of the

judge and the darky. He was cheerful and laughed much and frequently said "Ah there, cull!" in general

commendation. But he kept looking at the clock on the jog in the wall over the watercooler. Just at ten he rose

abashedly, hesitated, and murmured, "Well, I guess I'll have to be beating it home."

"I've got to run clear over to Jersey City." Morton was cordial, but not convincing.

"SayuhMorton," said Tom, kindly of face, his bald head shining behind his twin bangs, as he rose, "I'm

going to have Wrenn up to dinner at my boardinghouse next Monday. Like to have you come along. It's a

fine placeMrs. Artyshe's the landladyshe's a wonder. There's going to be a vacant room

theremaybe you two fellows could frame it up to take it, heh? Understand, I don't get no rakeoff on this,

"No, no!" said Morton. "Sorry. Couldn't do it. Staying with my brotherinlawcosts me only 'bout half as

much as it would I don't do much chasing around when I'm in town.... I'm going to save up enough money for

a good long hike. I'm going clean to St. Petersburg!... But I've had a good time tonight."

Morton hastened on, protectively, a bit critically: "You fellows sport around a good deal, don't you?... I can't

Their walk was quiet and, for Mr. Wrenn, tragically sad. He saw Morton (presumably) doing the wandering

he had once planned. He felt that, while making his vast new circle of friends, he was losing all the wild

At the ferryhouse Morton pronounced his "Well, so long, old fellow" with an affection that meant finality.

Mr. Wrenn fled back to Tom Poppins's store. On the way he was shocked to find himself relieved at having

At home Mrs. Zapp waylaid him for his rent (a day overdue), and he was very curt. That was to keep back the

"O God, how rotten I feel!" with which, in his room, he voiced the desolation of loneliness.

The ghost of Morton, dead and forgotten, was with him all next day, till he got home and unbelievably found

on the staid blackwalnut Zapp hatrack a letter from Paris, in a gray foreignappearing envelope with Istra's

He put off the luxury of opening the letter till after the rites of brushing his teeth, putting on his slippers,

pounding his rockingchair cushion into softness. Panting with the joy to come, he stared out of the window

at a giant and glorious figure of Istrathe laughing Istra of breakfast campfirewhich towered from the

Mouse dear, just a word to let you know I haven't forgotten you and am very glad indeed to get your letters.

Not much to write about. Frightfully busy with work and fool parties. You _are_ a dear good soul and I hope

England, in all its Istra ness, scarce gave Mr. Wrenn a better thrill for his collection than the thrill he

received on the November evening when he saw the white doorway of Mrs. R. T. Ferrard, in a decorous row

It is a block where the citizens have civic pride. A newspaper has not the least chance of lying about on the

asphaltsome householder with a frequently barbered mustache will indignantly pounce upon it inside of an

hour. No awe. is caused by the sight of vestibules floored with marble in alternate black and white tiles,

scrubbed not by landladies, but by maids. There are dotted Swiss curtains at the basement windows and Irish

point curtains on the first floors. There are two polished brass doorplates in a stretch of less than eight houses.

Distinctly, it is not a quarter where children fill the street with shouting and little sticks.

Occasionally a taxicab drives up to some door without a crowd of small boys gathering; and young men in

evening clothes are not infrequently seen to take out young ladies wearing tightfitting gowns of black, and

light scarfs over their heads. A Middle Western college fraternity has a clubhouse in the block, and four of

the houses are privateone of them belonging to a police inspector and one to a school principal who wears

It is a block that is satisfied with itself; as different from the Zapp district, where landladies in gingham run

Mrs. Arty Ferrard's house is a poor relation to most of the residences there. The black areaway rail is broken,

and the basementdoor grill is rusty. But at the windows are redandwhitefigured chintz curtains, with a

$2.98 bisque figurine of an unclothed lady between them; the door is of spotless white, with a bellpull of

Mr. Wrenn yanked this bellpull with an urbane briskness which, he hoped, would conceal his nervousness

and delight in dining out. For he was one of the lonely men in New York. He had dined out four times in

The woman of thirtyfive or thirtyeight who opened the door to him was very fat, twothirds as fat as Mrs.

Zapp, but she had young eyes. Her mouth was small, arched, and quivering in a grin.

"This is Mr. Wrenn, isn't it?" she gurgled, and leaned against the doorpost, merry, apparently indolent. "I'm

Mrs. Ferrard. Mr. Poppins told me you were coming, and he said you were a terribly nice man, and I was to

Her indolence turned to energy as she charged down the hall to the large double door on the right and threw it

Several persons [they seemed dozens, in their liveliness] were singing and shouting to piano music, in the

midst of a general redness and brightness of furnishingsred paper and worn red carpet and a high ceiling

with circular moldings tinted in pink. Handpainted pictures of old mills and ladies brooding over salmon

sunsets, and an especially handpainted Christmas scene with snow of inlaid motherofpearl, animated the

walls. On a goldenoak centertable was a large lamp with a mosaic shade, and through its mingled bits of

The room was crowded with tufted plush and imitationleather chairs, sidetables and corner brackets, a

couch and a "lady's desk." Green and red and yellow vases adorned with figures of youthful lovers crammed

the top of the piano at the farther end of the room and the polished blackmarble mantel of the fireplace. The

glaring gas raced the hearthfire for snap and glare and excitement. The profusion of furniture was like a

tumult; the redness and oakness and polishedness of furniture was a dizzying activity; and it was all

Tom Poppins lumbered up from a couch of terrifically new and red leather, and Mr. Wrenn was introduced to

the five new people in the room with dismaying swiftness. There seemed to be fifty times five

unapproachable and magnificent strangers from whom he wanted to flee. Of them all he was sure of only

twoa Miss Nelly somebody and what sounded like Horatio Hood Tem (Teddem it was).

He wished that he had caught Miss Nelly's last name (which, at dinner, proved to be Croubel), for he was

instantly taken by her sweetness as she smiled, held out a wellshaped hand, and said, "So pleased meet you,

She returned to the front of the room and went on talking to a lank spinster about ruchings, but Mr. Wrenn

felt that he had known her long and as intimately as it was possible to know so clever a young woman.

Nelly Croubel gave him the impression of a delicate prettiness, a superior sort of prettiness, like that of the

daughter of the Big White House on the Hill, the Squire's house, at Parthenon; though Nelly was not

unusually pretty. Indeed, her mouth was too large, her hair of somewhat ordinary brown. But her face was

always changing with emotions of kindliness and life. Her skin was perfect; her features fine, rather Greek;

her smile, quick yet sensitive. She was several inches shorter than Mr. Wrenn, and all curves. Her blouse of

white silk lay tenderly along the adorably smooth softness of her young shoulders. A smart patentleather

belt encircled her sleek waist. Thin black lisle stockings showed a modestly arched and rather small foot in a

She looked as though she were trained for business; awake, selfreliant, selfrespecting, expecting to have to

get things done, all done, yet she seemed indestructibly gentle, indestructibly good and believing, and just a

Nelly Croubel was twentyfour or twentyfive in years, older in business, and far younger in love. She was

born in Upton's Grove, Pennsylvania. There, for eighteen years, she had played Skip to Malue at parties, hid

away the notes with which the boys invited her to picnics at Baptist Beach, read much Walter Scott, and

occasionally taught Sundayschool. Her parents died when she was beginning her fourth year in high school,

and she came to New York to work in Wanamacy's toy department at six dollars a week during the holiday

rush. Her patience with fussy old shoppers and her large salestotals had gained her a permanent place in the

She had loftily climbed to the position of second assistant buyer in the lingerie department, at fourteen dollars

and eighty cents a week That was quite all of her history except that she attended a Presbyterian church

nearly every Sunday. The only person she hated was Horatio Hood Teddem, the cheap actor who was playing

Just now Horatio was playing ragtime with amazing rapidity, stamping his foot and turning his head to smirk

Mrs. Arty led her chattering flock to the basement diningroom, which had pink wallpaper and a

mountainous sideboard. Mr. Wrenn was placed between Mrs. Arty and Nelly Croubel. Out of the mist of

strangeness presently emerged the personality of Miss Mary Proudfoot, a lively but religious spinster of forty

who made doilies for the Dorcas Women's Exchange and had two hundred dollars a year family income. To

the right of the redglass pickledish were the elderly EbbittsSamuel Ebbitt, Esq., also Mrs. Ebbitt. Mr.

Ebbitt had come from Hartford five years before, but he always seemed just to have come from there. He was

in a realestate office; he was gray, illtempered, impatiently honest, and addicted to rheumatism and the

Across the table was felt the presence of James T. Duncan, who looked like a dignified redmustached

Sundayschool superintendent, but who traveled for a cloak and suit house, gambled heavily on poker and

auction pinochle, and was esteemed for his straight back and knowledge of trains.

As soon as Mrs. Arty had guided Annie, the bashful maid, in serving the vegetable soup, and had coaxed her

into bringing Mr. Wrenn a napkin, she took charge of the conversation, a luxury which she would never have

intrusted to her flock's amateurish efforts. Mr. Poppins, said she, had spoken of meeting a friend of Mr.

Wrenn's; Mr. Morton, was it not? A very nice man, she understood. Was it true that Mr. Wrenn and Mr.

"Oh, how interesting!" contributed pretty Nelly Croubel, beside Mr. Wrenn, her young eyes filled with an

admiration which caused him palpitation and difficulty in swallowing his soup. He was confused by hearing

"Uhhhhback in 18uh1872 the vessel _Prissie_no, it was 1873; no, it must have been '72"

"1873. I was on a coastingvessel, young man. But we didn't carry cattle." Mr. Ebbitt inspected Horatio Hood

Teddem darkly, clicked his spectacle case sharply shut, and fell to eating, as though he had settled all this

With occasional witty interruptions from the actor, Mr. Wrenn told of pitching hay, of the wit of Morton, and

"But you haven't told us about the brave things _you_ did," cooed Mrs. Arty. She appealed to Nelly Croubel:

Mr. Wrenn knew that there was just one thing in the world that he wanted to do; to persuade Miss Nelly

Croubel that (though he was a solid business man, indeed yes, and honorable) he was a cool one, who had

chosen, in wandering o'er this world so wide, the most perilous and cattleboaty places. He tried to think of

something modest yet striking to say, while Tom was arguing with Miss Mary Proudfoot, the respectable

As they finished their floating custard Mr. Wrenn achieved, "Do you come from New York, Miss Croubel?"

and listened to the tale of sleighingparties in Upton's Grove, Pennsylvania. He was absolutely happy.

"This is like getting home," he thought. "And they're classy folks to get home tonow that I can tell 'em

He had a frightened hope that after dinner he would be able to get into a corner and talk with Nelly, but Tom

Poppins conferred with Horatio Hood Teddenm and called Mr. Wrenn aside. Teddem had been acting with a

movingpicture company for a week, and had three passes to the celebrated Waldorf Photoplay Theater.

Mr. Wrenn had bloodthirstily disapproved Horatio Hood's effeminate remarks, such as "Tee _hee!_" and

"Oh, you naughty man," but when he heard that this mollycoddle had shared in the glory of making moving

pictures he went proudly forth with him and Tom. He had no chance to speak to Mrs. Arty about taking the

He wished that Charley Carpenter or the Zapps could see him sitting right beside an actor who was shown in

the pictures miraculously there before them, asking him how they made movies, just as friendly as though

He wanted to do something to entertain his friends beyond taking them out for a drink. He invited them down

Teddem was in wonderful form; he mimicked every one they saw so amiably that Tom Poppins knew the

actor wanted to borrow money. The party were lovingly humming the popular song of the time"Any Little

Girl That's a Nice Little Girl is the Right Little Girl for Me"as they frisked up the gloomy steps of the

Zapps. Entering, Poppins and Teddem struck attitudes on the inside stairs and sang aloud.

Mr. Wrenn felt enormously conscious of Mrs. Zapp down below. He kept listening, as he led them upstairs

and lighted the gas. But Teddem so imitated Colonel Roosevelt, with two waterglasses for eyeglasses and

a small hatbrush for mustache, that Mr. Wrenn was moved wrigglingly to exclaim: "Say, I'm going out and

get some beer. Or 'd you rather have something else? Some cheese sandwiches? How about 'em?"

Not only did Mr. Wrenn buy a large newspapercovered bundle of bottles of beer and Swisscheese

sandwiches, but also a small can of caviar and salty crackers. In his room he spread a clean towel, then two

clean towels, on the bureau, and arrayed the feast, with two waterglasses and a shavingmug for cups.

Horatio Hood Teddem, spreading caviar on a sandwich, and loudly singing his masterpiece, "Waal I swan,"

Mr. Wrenn hastily turned. The light fellas on a cliff of crumbly gray rockon Mrs. Zapp, in the open

door, vast in her ungirdled gray wrapper, her arms folded, glowering speechlessly.

But she was addressing the formidable adventurer, Bill Wrenn. He had to protect his friends. He sprang up

But Mrs. Zapp was too well started. " If you think Ah'm going to stand for a lazy sneaking little drunkard

Just then Mr. William Wrenn saw and heard the most astounding thing of his life, and became an etemal

"Beat it or I'll run you in. Trouble with you is, you old hag, you don't appreciate a nice quiet little chap like

Wrenn, and you try to bully himand him here for years. Get out or I'll put you out. I'm no lamb, and I won't

stand for any of your monkeyshines. Get out. This ain't your room; he's rented ithe's paid the rentit's

Kindly Tom Poppins worked in a cigarstore and was accustomed to talk back to drunken men six feet tall.

His voice was tremendous, and he was fatly immovable; he didn't a bit mind the fact that Mrs. Zapp was still

But behold an ally to the forlorn lady. When Theresa, in the hall below, heard Tom, she knew that Mr. Wrenn

would room here no more. She galloped upstairs and screeched over her mother's shoulder:

"You will pick on a lady, will you, you drunken scumyouyou cads I'll have you arrested so quick

"Look here, lady," said Tom, gently. "I'm a plainclothes man, a detective." His large voice purred like a

tigertabby's. "I don't want to run you in, but I will if you don't get out of here and shut that door. Or you

might go down and call the cop on this block. He'll run you infor breaking Code 2762 of the Penal Law!

Uneasy, frightened, then horrified, Mrs. Zapp swung bulkily about and slammed the door.

Sick, guilty, banished from home though he felt, Mr. Wrenn's voice quavered, with an attempt at dignity:

"I'm awful sorry she butted in while you fellows was here. I don't know how to apologize "

"Forget it, old man," rolled out Tom's bass. "Come on, let's go up to Mrs. Arty's."

"That's all right. We can get up there by a little after, and Mrs. Arty stays up playing cards till after twelve."

"Golly!" Mr. Wrenn agitatedly ejaculated under his breath, as they noisily entered Mrs. Arty'sthough not

The parlor door was open. Mrs. Arty's broad back was toward them, and she was announcing to James T.

Duncan and Miss Proudfoot, with whom she was playing threehanded Five Hundred, "Well, I'll just bid

seven on hearts if you're going to get so set up." She glanced back, nodded, said, "Come in, children," picked

up the "widow," and discarded with quick twitches of the cards. The frightened Mr. Wrenn, feeling like a

shipwrecked landlubber, compared this gaming smoking woman unfavorably with the intense respectability

of his dear lost patron, Mrs. Zapp. He sat uneasy till the hand of cards was finished, feeling as though they

Suddenly said Mrs. Arty, "And now you would like to look at that room, Mr. Wrenn, unless I'm wrong."

"Come with me, child," she said, in pretended severity. "Tom, you take my hand in the game, and don't let me

hear you've been bidding ten on no suit without the joker." She led Mr. Wrenn to the settee hatrack in the

hall. "The thirdfloorback will be vacant in two weeks, Mr. Wrenn. We can go up and look at it now if

you'd like to. The man who has it now works nightshe's some kind of a head waiter at Rector's, or

When he saw that thirdfloorback, the room that the smart people at Mrs. Arty's were really willing to let

him have, he felt like a man just engaged. It was all in soft greengrassgreen matting, palegreen walls,

chairs of white wicker with green cushions; the bed, a couch with a denim cover and four sofa pillows. It

"It's kind of a plain room," Mrs. Arty said, doubtfully. "The furniture is kind of plain. But my headwaiter

manit was furnished for a friend of hishe says he likes it better than any other room in the house. It _is_

It was a terrible extravagance; much like marrying a sick woman on a salary of ten a week, he reflected;

nineteen minus elevenfifty left him only sevenfifty for clothes and savings and things andbut" I'll

take it," he said, hastily. He was frightened at himself, but glad, very glad. He was to live in this heaven; he

was going to be away from that Zapp woman; and Nelly Croubel Was she engaged to some man? he

Mrs. Arty was saying: "First, I want to ask you some questions, though. Please sit down." As she creaked into

one of the wicker chairs she suddenly changed from the cigaretterolling chaffing cardplayer to a woman

dignified, reserved, commanding. "Mr. Wrenn, you see, Miss Proudfoot and Miss Croubel are on this floor.

Miss Proudfoot can take care of herself, all right, but Nelly is such a trusting little thing She's like my

daughter. She's the only one I've ever given a reduced rate toand I swore I never would to anybody!... Do

Nelly on this floor! Near him! Now! He had to have this room. He forced himself to speak directly.

"I know how you mean, Mrs. Ferrard. No, I don't drink much of anyhardly at all; just a glass of beer now

and then; sometimes I don't even touch that a week at a time. And I don't gamble andand I do try to

"I work for the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company on Twentyeighth Street. If you want to call them up I

"I don't believe I'll need it, Mr. Wrenn. It's my business to find out what sort of animiles men are by just

talking to them." She rose, smiled, plumped out her hand. "You _will_ be nice to Nelly, _won't_ you! I'm

going to fire that Teddem outdon't tell him, but I ambecause he gets too fresh with her."

She suddenly broke into laughter, and ejaculated: "_Say_, that was hard work! Don't you _hate_ to have to be

serious? Let's trot down, and I'll make Tom or Duncan rush us a growler of beer to welcome you to our

midst.... I'll bet your socks aren't darned properly. I'm going to sneak in and take a look at them, once I get

you caged up here.... But I won't read your loveletters! Now let's go down by the fire, where it's comfy."

On a couch of glossy red leather with glossy black buttons and stiff fringes also of glossy red leather, Mr.

William Wrenn sat upright and was very confiding to Miss Nelly Croubel, who was curled among the satin

pillows with her skirts drawn carefully about her ankles. He had been at Mrs. Arty's for two weeks now. He

"Yes, I suppose you're engaged to some one, Miss Nelly, and you'll go off and leave usgo off to that

"I am _not_ engaged. I've told you so. Who would want to marry me? You stop teasing meyou're mean as

"I am _not_. Why, I've never hardly known but just two girls in my life. One was just a girl I went to theaters

with once or twiceshe was the daughter of the landlady I used to have before I came here."

"If you don't make love to the landlady's daughter You won't get a second piece of pie!"

"Oh! She.... She was aan artist. I liked hera lot. But she wasoh, awful highbrow. Gee! if

"Yes, they're funny people. Artists.... Do you have your lesson in Five Hundred tonight? Your very first

"I think so. Say, is it much like this here bridgewhist? Oh say, Miss Nelly, why do they call it Five

"That's what you have to make to go out. No, I guess it isn't very much like bridge; though, to tell the truth, I

"Oh, I thought prob'ly you could play it. You can do 'most everything. Honest, I've never seen nothing like

"Now you stop, Mr. Wrenn. I know I'm awhat was it Mr. Teddem used to call me? A minx. But"

"I am not! Even if I can wriggle my nose like a rabbit. Besides, it sounds like a muskmelon. But, anyway, the

"Would you beat him for me?" She cuddled a cushion and smiled gratefully. Her big eyes seemed to fill with

He caught himself wanting to kiss the softness of her shoulder, but he said only, "Well, I ain't much of a

"Tell me, did you ever have a fight? When you were a boy? Were you _such_ a bad boy?"

"I never did when I was a boy, butwellI did have a couple of fights when I was on the cattleboat and in

England. Neither of them amounted to very much, though, I guess. I was scared stiff!"

"You stop making fun of yourself! I _like_ it when you're earnestlike when you saw that beautiful snowfall

last night.... Oh dear, isn't it hard to have to miss so many beautiful things here in the citythere's just the

parks, and even there there aren't any birds, real wild birds, like we used to have in Pennsylvania."

"I'm afraid I'm getting gushy. Miss Hartensteinshe's in my departmentshe'd laugh at me.... But I do love

birds and squirrels and pussywillows and all those things. In summer I love to go on picnics on Staten Island

"Would you go on a picnic with me some day next spring?" Hastily, "I mean with Miss Proudfoot and Mrs.

"I should be pleased to." She was prim but trusting about it. "Oh, listen, Mr. Wrenn; did you ever tramp along

the Palisades as far as Englewood? It's lovely therethe woods and the river and all those funny little tugs

puffing along, way _way_ down below youwhy, I could lie on the rocks up there and just dream and

dream for hours. After I've spent Sunday up there"she was dreaming now, he saw, and his heart was

passionately tender toward her"I don't hardly mind a bit having to go back to the store Monday morning....

"Me? Why, I guess I'm the guy that discovered the Palisades!... Yes, it is _won_derful up there!"

"Oh, you are, are you? I read about that in American history!... But honestly, Mr. Wrenn, I do believe you

care for tramps and thingsnot like that Teddem or Mr. Duncanthey always want to just stay in townor

Mr. Wrenn looked jealous, with a small hot jealousy. She hastened on with: "Of course, I mean he's just like

It was sweet to both of them, to her to declare and to him to hear, that neither Tom nor any other possessed

her heart. Their shy glances were like an outreach of tenderly touching hands as she confided, "Mrs. Arty and

he get up picnics, and when we're out on the Palisades he says to meyou know, sometimes he almost

makes me think he _is_ sleepy, though I do believe he just sneaks off under a tree and talks to Mrs. Arty or

reads a magazinebut I was saying: he always says to me, ` Well, sister, I suppose you want to mousey

round and dream by yourselfyou won't talk to a growly old bear like me. Well, I'm glad of it. I want to

sleep. I don't want to be bothered by you and your everlasting chatter. Get out!' I b'lieve he just says that

'cause he knows I wouldn't want to run off by myself if they didn't think it was proper."

As he heard her lively effort to imitate Tom's bass Mr. Wrenn laughed and pounded his knee and agreed:

"Yes, Tom's an awfully fine fellow, isn't he!... I love to get out some place by myself, too. I like to wander

round places and make up the doggondest fool little stories to myself about them; just as bad as a kiddy, that

"And you read such an awful lot, Mr. Wrenn! My! Oh, tell me, have you ever read anything by Harold Bell

He had not, but he expressed an unconquerable resolve so to do, and with immediateness. She went on:

"Mrs. Arty told me you had a real big librarynearly a hundred books and Do you mind? I went in

"No, course I don't mind! If there's any of them you'd like to borrow any time, Miss Nelly, I would be awful

"That's why you haven't wasted any time learning Five Hundred and things, isn't it? Because you've been so

Mr. Wrenn felt excitedly sure of that, and imparted: "Yes, I guess I have.... And I've always wanted to travel

"Yes, _isn't_ it!" he breathed. "It was great to be in Englandthough the people there are kind of chilly some

ways. Even when I'm on a wharf here in New York I feel just like I was off in China or somewheres. I'd like

to see China. And India.... Gee! when I hear the waves down at Coney Island or some placeyou know how

the waves sound when they come in. Well, sometimes I almost feel like they was talking to a guyyou

knowtelling about ships. And, oh say, you know the whitecapsaren't they just like the waves was

motioning at youthey want you to come and beat it with youover to China and places."

"Honest; I'm not teasing you; you are a poet. And I think it's fine that Mr. Teddem was saying that nobody

could be a poet or like that unless they drank an awful lot anduhoh, not be honest and be on a job. But

"But I am going to make you go to church. You'll be a socialist or something like that if you get to be too

"WhyuhI guess I'm kind of a Congregationalist; but still, they're all so much alike."

"Yes, they really are. And besides, what does it matter if we all believe the same and try to do right; and

"Ohnothing.... My, you'll have to get up awful early Sunday morning if you'd like to go with me. My

"Stupid! Now you're just trying to jolly me; you _are_; because you men aren't as fond of church as all that, I

know you aren't. You're real lazy Sunday mornings, and just want to sit around and read the papers and leave

"Well, I'll be all ready to go at ninethirty.... I don't know; why, I haven't done much reading. But I would

like to travel and Say, wouldn't it be great toI suppose I'm sort of a kid about it; of course, a guy has

to tend right to business, but it would be great Say a man was in Europe withwitha friend, and

they both knew a lot of historysay, they both knew a lot about Guy Fawkes (he was the guy that tried to

blow up the English Parliament), and then when they were there in London they could almost think they saw

him, and they could go round together and look at Shelley's windowhe was a poet at Oxford Oh, it

"Yes, wouldn't it?... I wanted to work in the book department one time. It's so nice your being"

"Ready for Five Hundred?" bellowed Tom Poppins in the hall below. "Ready partneryou, Wrenn?"

Tom was to initiate Mr. Wrenn into the game, playing with him against Mrs. Arty and Miss Mary Proudfoot.

Mrs. Arty sounded the occasion's pitch of high merriment by delivering from the doorway the sacred old

"Like to smash windows? Let's seeit's red fours, black fives up?" remarked Tom, as he prepared the pack

"Yes, I would! It makes me so tired," asseverated Mrs. Arty, "to think of the old goats that men put up for

candidates when they _know_ they're solemn old fools! I'd just like to get out and vote my head off."

"Well, I think the woman's place is in the home," sniffed Miss Proudfoot, decisively, tucking away a doily

They settled themselves about the glowing, glancing, glittering, goldenoak centertable. Miss Proudfoot

shuffled sternly. Mr. Wrenn sat still and frightened, like a shipwrecked professor on a raft with two gamblers

and a pressagent, though Nelly was smiling encouragingly at him from the couch where she had started her

embroiderya large Christmas lamp mat for the wife of the Presbyterian pastor at Upton's Grove.

"Don't you wish your little friend Horatio Hood Teddem was here to play with you?" remarked Tom.

"I _do_ not," declared Mrs. Arty. "Still, there was one thing about Horatio. I never had to look up his account

to find out how much he owed me. He stopped calling me, Little Buttercup, when he owed me ten dollars,

and he even stopped slamming the front door when he got up to twenty. O Mr. Wrenn, did I ever tell you

"Gerty!" protested Miss Proudfoot, while Nelly, on the couch, ejaculated mechanically, "That story!" but

"I asked him if he wanted me to have Annie sweep his nightshirt when she swept his room. He changed it

"First, I want to tell Wrenn how to play. You see, Wrenn, here's the schedule. We play Avondale Schedule,

"Oh yes," said Mr. Wrenn, timorously.... He had once heard of Carbondalein New Jersey or Pennsylvania

"Well, you see, you either make or go back," continued Tom. "Plus and minus, you know. Joker is high, then

right bower, left, and ace. Thenuhlet's see; high bid takes the catwiddie, you knowand discards.

Ten tricks. Follow suit like whist, of course. I guess that's allthat ought to give you the hang of it, anyway.

don'taskmeanymorefoolquestions manner, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was choking. He craned up his

neck, trying to ease his stiff collar. So, then, he was a failure, a social outcast already.

So, then, he couldn't learn Five Hundred! And he had been very proud of knowing one card from another

perfectly, having played a number of games of twohanded poker with Tim on the cattleboat. But what the

Thus he reflected while Mrs. Arty and Tom were carrying on the following brilliant but cryptic

Behind Mr. Wrenn, Nelly Croubel whispered to him: "Bid seven on no suit. You've got the joker." Her

delicate forefinger, its nail shining, was pointing at a curious card in his hand.

Nelly drew up a chair behind Mr. Wrenn's. He listened to her soft explanations with the desperate respect and

Tom and he won the hand. He glanced back at Nelly with awe, then clutched his new hand, fearfully, dizzily,

staring at it as though it might conceal one of those malevolent deceivers of which Nelly had just warned

Fifteen minutes later Mr. Wrenn felt that Tom was hoping he would lead a club. He played one, and the

On his shoulder he felt a light tap, and he blushed like a sunset as he peeped back at Nelly.

Mr. Wrenn, the society light, was Our Mr. Wrenn of the Souvenir Company all this time. Indeed, at present

he intended to keep on taking The Job seriously until that most mistily distant time, which we all await,

"when something turns up." His fondling of the Southern merchants was showing such results that he had

grown from an interest in whatever papers were on his desk to a belief in the divine necessity of The Job as a

whole. Not now, as of old, did he keep the personal letters in his desk tied up, ready for a sudden departure

for Vienna or Kamchatka. Also, he wished to earn much more money for his new career of luxury. Mr.

Guilfogle had assured him that there might be chances aheadbusiness had been prospering, two new road

salesmen and a citytrade man had been added to the staff, and whereas the firm had formerly been jobbers

only, buying their novelties from manufacturers, now they were having printed for them their own Lotsa

Through his friend Rabin, the salesman, Mr. Wrenn got better acquainted with two great menMr. L. J.

Glover, the purchasing agent of the Souvenir Company, and John Hensen, the newly engaged head of motto

manufacturing. He "wanted to get onto all the different lines of the business so's he could step right in

anywhere"; and from these men he learned the valuable secrets of business wherewith the marts of trade build

up prosperity for all of us: how to seat a selling agent facing the light, so you can see his face better than he

can see yours. How much ahead of time to telephone the mottoprinter that "we've simply got to have proof

this afternoon; what's the matter with you, down there? Don't you want our business any more?" He also

learned something of the various kinds of cardboard and inkwell glass, though these, of course, were merely

matters of knowledge, not of brilliant business tactics, and far less important than what Tom Poppins and

"Say, you're getting quite chummy latelyreg'lar society leader," Rabin informed him.

Mr. Wrenn's answer was in itself a proof of the soundness of Rabin's observation:

"SureI'm going to borrow some money from you fellows. Got to make an impression, see?"

Mouse dear, I'm so glad to hear about the simpatico boarding house. Yes indeed I would like to hear about

the people in it. And you are reading history? That's good. I'm getting sick of Paris and some day I'm going to

stop an absinthe on the boulevard and slap its face to show I'm a sturdy movingpicture Western Amurrican

and then leap to saddle and pursue the bandit. I'm working like the devil but what's the use. That is I mean

unless one is doing the job well, as I'm glad you are. My Dear, keep it up. You know I want you to be _real_

whatever you are. I didn't mean to preach but you know I hate people who aren't realthat's why I haven't

After he had read her letter for the third time he was horribly shocked and regarded himself as a traitor,

because he found that he was only pretending to be enjoyably excited over it.... It seemed so detached from

himself. "Flair" "_au recrire_." Now, what did those mean? And Istra was always so discontented. "What

'd she do if she had to be on the job like Nelly?... Oh, Istra _is_ wonderful. Butgee!I dunno"

"Whyuhit _is_ from a girl. I started to tell you about her one day. She's an artist, and once we took a

long tramp in the country. I met hershe was staying at the same place as I was in London. Butoh, gee! I

dunno; she's so blame literary. She _is_ a _fine_ person Do you think you'd like a girl like that?"

His hand stole secretly, craftily skirting a cushion, to touch herswhich she withdrew, laughing:

The hero of the oneact play at Hammerstein's Victoria vaudeville theater on that December evening was, it

appeared, a wealthy young mineowner in disguise. He was working for the "fake mine promoter" because

he loved the promoter's daughter with a love that passed all understanding except that of the girls in the

gallery. When the postal authorities were about to arrest the promoter our young hero saved him by giving

him a real mine, and the ensuing kiss of the daughter ended the suspense in which Mr. Wrenn and Nelly, Mrs.

Sighing happily, Nelly cried to the group: "Wasn't that grand? I got so excited! Wasn't that young miner a

"Awfully nice," said Mr. Wrenn. "And, gee! wasn't that great, that office scenewith that safe and the rest of

the stuffjust like you was in a real office. But, say, they wouldn't have a copyingpress in an office like

that; those fake mine promoters send out such swell letters; they'd use carbon copies and not muss the letters

"By gosh, that's right!" and Tom nodded his chin toward his right shoulder in approval. Nelly cried, "That's

so; they would"; while Mrs. Arty, not knowing what a copyingpress was, appeared highly commendatory,

During the moving pictures that followed, Mr. Wrenn felt proudly that he was taken seriously, though he had

known them but little over a month. He followed up his conversational advantage by leading the chorus in

wondering, "which one of them two actors the heroine was married to?" and "how much a week they get for

acting in that thing?" It was Tom who invited them to Miggleton's for coffee and fried oysters. Mr. Wrenn

was silent for a while. But as they were stamping through the rivulets of wheel tracks that crisscrossed on a

slushy streetcrossing Mr. Wrenn regained his advantage by crying, "Say, don't you think that play 'd have

been better if the promoter 'd had an awful grouch on the young miner and 'd had to crawfish when the miner

"Wouldn't wonder if it would," agreed Tom, kicking the December slush off his feet and patting Mr. Wrenn's

"Well, look here," said Mr. Wrenn, as they left Broadway, with its crowds betokening the approach of

Christmas, and stamped to the quieter side of Fortysecond, "why wouldn't this make a slick play: say there's

an awfully rich old guy; say he's a railway president or something, d' you see? Well, he's got a secretary there

in the officeon the stage, see? The scene is his office. Well, this guy's the rich old guy'sdaughter

comes in and says she's married to a poor man and she won't tell his name, but she wants some money from

her dad. You see, her dad's been planning for her to marry a marquise or some kind of a lord, and he's sore as

can be, and he won't listen to her, and he just cusses her out something fierce, see? Course he doesn't really

cuss, but he's awful sore; and she tells him didn't he marry her mother when he was a poor young man; but he

won't listen. Then the secretary butts inmy idea is he's been kind of keeping in the background, seeand

_he's_ the daughter's husband all the while, see? and he tells the old codger how he's got some of hissome

of the old fellow'spapers that give it away how he done something that was crookedsome kind of

dealrebates and stuff, see how I mean?and the secretary's going to spring this stuff on the newspapers if

the old man don't come through and forgive them; so of course the president has to forgive them, see?"

"You mean the secretary was the daughter's husband all along, and he heard what the president said right

there?" Nelly panted, stopping outside Miggleton's, in the light from the oysterfilled window.

"Why, I think that's just a _fine_ idea," declared Nelly, as they entered the restaurant. Though her little

manner of dignity and even restraint was evident as ever, she seemed keenly joyous over his genius.

"Say, that's a corking idea for a play, Wrenn," exclaimed Tom, at their table, gallantly removing the ladies'

"Why, sure you could, Bill," insisted Tom. "Straight; you ought to write it. (Hey, waiter! Four fries and

coffee!) You ought to write it. Why, it's a wonder; it 'd make a dev 'Scuse me, ladies. It'd make a

The renewed warmth of their wet feet on the redtile floor, the scent of fried oysters, the din of "Any Little

Girl" on the piano, these added color to this moment of Mr. Wrenn's great resolve. The four stared at one

another excitedly. Mr. Wrenn's eyelids fluttered. Tom brought his hand down on the table with a soft flat

"plob" and declared: "Say, there might be a lot of money in it. Why, I've heard that Harry Smithwrites the

"Mr. Poppins ought to help you in ithe's seen such a lot of plays," Mrs. Arty anxiously advised.

"That's a good idea," said Mr. Wrenn. It had, apparently, been ordained that he was to write it. They were

now settling important details. So when Nelly cried, "I think it's just a fine idea; I knew you had lots of

"No; you write it, Bill. I'll help you all I can, of course.... Tell you what you ought to do: get hold of

Teddemhe's had a lot of stage experience; he'd help you about seeing the managers. That 'd be the hard

partyou can write it, all right, but you'd have to get next to the guys on the inside, and Teddem Say,

"Heard about a fellow," continued Tom " fellow named Gene Wolf, I think it wasthat was so broke he

was sleeping in Bryant Park, and he made a _hundred thousand dollars_ on his first playor, no; tell you

how it was: he sold it outright for ten thousandsomething like that, anyway. I got that right from a fellow

"Still, an author's got to go to college and stuff like that." Mr. Wrenn spoke as though he would be pleased to

Crunching oysters in a brown jacket of flour, whose every lump was a crisp delight, hearing his genius lauded

and himself called Bill thrice in a quarterhour, Mr. Wrenn was beatified. He asked the waiter for some

paper, and while the four hotly discussed things which "it would be slick to have the president's daughter do"

he drew up a list of characters on a sheet of paper he still keeps. It is headed, "Miggleton's Fortysecond

Nelly Croubel blushed. Mrs. Arty and Tom glanced at each other. Mr. Wrenn realized that he had, even at

"She was fine to me when I was a kid, "Mr. Wrenn added, trying to remember whether it was right to lie

"Oh, it's a horrid name," declared Nelly. "Why don't you call her something nice, like

He walked with Nelly behind the others, along Fortysecond Street. To the outsider's eye he was a small

respectable clerk, slightly stooped, with a polite mustache and the dignity that comes from knowing well a

narrow world; wearing an overcoat too light for winter; too busily edging out of the way of people and

guiding the nice girl beside him into clear spaces by diffidently touching her elbow, too pettily busy to cast a

glance out of the crowd and spy the passing poet or king, or the iron night sky. He was as undistinguishable a

bit of the evening street life as any of the file of streetcars slashing through the wet snow. Yet, he was the

chivalrous squire to the greatest lady of all his realm; he was a society author, and a man of great prospective

"Say, we'll have the grandest dinner you ever saw if I get away with the play," he was saying. "Will you

"Indeed you were! Oh, we'll have a reg'lar feast at the Astorartichokes and truffles and all sorts of stuff....

"So he came to relate all those intimacies of The Job; and he was overwhelmed at the ease with which she

He paced Tom's room till twelvethirty, consulting as to whether he had to plan the stagesetting; smoking

cigarettes in attitudes on chair arms. Next morning in the office he made numerous plans of the setting on

waste halfsheets of paper. At noon he was telephoning at Tom regarding the question of whether there ought

He skipped the evening meal at Mrs. Arty's, dining with literary pensiveness at the Armenian, for he had

subtle problems to meditate. He bought a dollar fountainpen, which had large goldlike bands and a rather

scratchy penpoint, and a box of fairly large sheets of paper. Pressing his literary impedimenta tenderly under

his arm, he attended four movingpicture and vaudeville theaters. By eleven he had seen three more oneact

His room was quiet. The lamplight on the delicately green walls was like that of a regular author's den, he

was quite sure. He happily tested the fountainpen by writing the names Nelly and William Wrenn on a bit of

wrappingpaper (which he guiltily burned in an ashtray); washed his face with water which he let run for a

minute to cool; sat down before his table with a grunt of content; went back and washed his hands; fiercely

threw off the bourgeois encumbrances of coat and collar; sat down again; got up to straighten a picture;

picked up his pen; laid it down, and glowed as he thought of Nelly, slumbering there, near at hand, her

exquisite cheek nestling silkenly against her arm, perhaps, and her white dreams

Suddenly he roared at himself, "Get on the job there, will yuh?" He picked up the pen and wrote:

_John Warrington_, a railway president; quite rich. _Nelty Warrington_, Mr. Warrington's daughter.

He was jubilant. His pen whined at top speed, scattering a shower of tiny drops of ink.

_Stage Scene: An office. Very expensive. Mr. Warrington and Mr. Thorne are sitting there. Miss Warrington

He stopped. He thought. He held his head. He went over to the stationary bowl and soaked his hair with

water. He lay on the bed and kicked his heels, slowly and gravely smoothing his mustache. Fifty minutes

He hadn't been able to think of what Miss Warrington says beyond "I have come to tell you that I am married,

papa," and that didn't sound just right; not for a first line it didn't, anyway.

At dinner next nightSaturdayTom was rather inclined to make references to "our author," and to remark:

"Well, I know where somebody was last night, but of course I won't tell. Say, them authors are a wild lot."

Mr. Wrenn, who had permitted the teasing of even Tim, the hatter, "wasn't going to stand for no kidding from

nobodynot when Nelly was there," and he called for a glass of water with the air of a Harvard assistant

When he had, with a detached grandeur of which he was immediately ashamed, vouchsafed that he was

already "getting right down to brass tacks on it," that he had already investigated four more plays and begun

At ninethirty that evening he combed and tightly brushed his hair, which he had been pawing angrily for an

hour and a half, went down the hall to Nelly's hall bedroom, and knocked with: "It's Mr. Wrenn. May I ask

He waited, panting softly, his lips apart. This was to be the first time he had ever seen Nelly's room. She

opened the door part way, smiling shyly, timidly, holding her paleblue dressinggown close. The pale

blueness was a modestly brilliant spot against the whiteness of the roomwhite bureau, hung with dance

programs and a yellow Upton's Grove High School banner, white tiny rocker, paleyellow matting,

"I'm kind of stuck on the first part of the play, Miss Nelly. Please tell me how you think the heroine would

"Yes, that's so. Why, I should think she'd say `sir.' Maybe oh, what was it I heard in a play at the Academy of

"Saaay, that's a fine line! That'll get the crowd going right from the first.... I _told_ you you'd help me a

"I'm awfully glad if I _have_ helped you," she said, earnestly. Good nightand good, "awfully glad, but luck

"Good night. Thank you a lot, Miss Nelly. Church in the morning, remember! Good night."

As it is well known that all playwrights labor with toy theaters before them for working models, Mr. Wrenn

ran to earth a fine unbroken pasteboard box in which a ninetyeightcent alarmclock had recently arrived.

He went out for some glue and three small corks. Setting up his box stage, he glued a pillbox and a

matchbox on the floorthe side of the box it had always been till nowand there he had the mahogany

desks. He thrust three matches into the corks, and behold three graceful actorsgraceful for corks, at least.

There was fascination in having them enter, through holes punched in the back of the box, frisk up to their

desks and deliver magic emotional speeches that would cause any audience to weep; speeches regarding

which he knew everything but the words; a detail of which he was still quite ignorant after half an hour of

Before he went despairingly to bed that Saturday night he had added to his manuscript:

_Mr. Thorne_ says: Here are the papers, sir. As a great railway president you should

The rest of that was to be filled in later. How the dickens could he let the public know how truly great his

Breakfast at Mrs. Arty's was always an inspiration. In contrast to the lonely dingy meal at the Hustler Dairy

Lunch of his Zapp days, he sat next to a trimly shirtwaisted Nelly, fresh and enthusiastic after nine hours'

sleep. So much for ordinary days. But Sunday morningthat was paradise! The oilstove glowed and purred

like a large tin pussy cat; it toasted their legs into dreamy comfort, while they methodically stuffed

themselves with toast and waffles and coffee. Nelly and he always felt gently superior to Tom Poppins, who

would be asleeping late, as they talked of the joy of not having to go to the office, of approaching

This morning was to be Mr. Wrenn's first attendance at church with Nelly. The previous time they had

planned to go, Mr. Wrenn had spent Sunday morning in unreligious fervor at the Chelsea Dental Parlors with

This was also the first time that he had attended a church service in nine years, except for mass at St.

Patrick's, which he regarded not as church, but as beauty. He felt tremendously reformed, set upon new paths

of virtue and achievement. He thought slightingly of those lonely bachelors, Morton and Mittyford, Ph. D.

They just didn't know what it meant to a fellow to be going to church with a girl like Miss Nelly, he reflected,

He walked proudly beside her, and made much of the gentility of entering the church, as one of the

welltodo and intensely bathed congregation. He even bowed to an almost painfully washed and brushed

young usher with goldrimmed eyeglasses. He thought scornfully of his salad days, when he had bowed to

The church interior was as comfortable as Sundaymorning toast and marmaladehalf a block of red carpet

in the aisles; shiny solidoak pews, gorgeous stainedglass windows, and a general polite creaking of ladies'

best stays and gentlemen's stiff shirtbosoms, and an odor of the best cologne and mothballs.

It lacked but six days till Christmas. Mr. Wrenn's heart was a little garden, and his eyes were moist, and he

peeped tenderly at Nelly as he saw the holly and ivy and the frosted Christmas mottoes, "Peace on Earth,

Christmashappy homeslaughter.... Since, as a boy, he had attended the Christmas festivities of the Old

Church Sundayschool at Parthenon, and got highly colored candy in a net bag, his holidays had been

celebrated by buying himself plum pudding at lonely Christmas dinners at large cheap restaurants, where

there was no one to wish him "Merry Christmas" except his waiter, whom he would quite probably never see

But this Christmashe surprised himself and Nelly suddenly by hotly thrusting out his hand and touching

During the sermon he had an idea. What was it Nelly had told him about "Peter Pan"? Oh yes; somebody in it

had said "Do you believe in fairies?" _Say_, why wouldn't it be great to have the millionaire's daughter say to

"Gee, _I_ believe in love!" he yearned to himself, as he felt Nelly's arm unconsciously touch his.

Tom Poppins had Horatio Hood Teddem in that afternoon for a hot toddy. Horatio looked very boyish, very

confiding, and borrowed five dollars from Mr. Wrenn almost painlessly, so absorbed was Mr. Wrenn in

learning from Horatio how to sell a play. To know the address of the firm of Wendelbaum Schirtz,

playbrokers, located in a Broadway theater building, seemed next door to knowing a Broadway manager.

When Horatio had gone Tom presented an idea which he had ponderously conceived during his Sunday

"Why not have three of ussay me and you and Mrs. Artytalk the play, just like we was acting it?"

He enthusiastically forced the plan on Mr. Wrenn. He pounded downstairs and brought up Mrs. Arty. He

dashed about the room, shouting directions. He dragged out his bureau for the railroadpresident's desk, and

a table for the secretary, and, after some consideration and much rubbing of his chin, with two slams and a

The play was on. Mr. T. Poppins, in the role of the president, entered, with a stern high expression on his

face, threw a "Good morning, Thorne," at Wrenn, his secretary, and peeled off his gloves. (Mr. Wrenn noted

Mr. Wrenn approached diffidently, his face expressionless, lest Mrs. Arty laugh at him. "Here

"Say, what do you think would be a good way for the secretary to tell the crowd that the other guy is the

president? Say, how about this: `The vicepresident of the railway would like to have you sign these, sir, as

"That's fine!" exclaimed Mrs. Arty, whose satin dress was carefully spread over her swelling knees, as she sat

in the oak rocker, like a cheerful bronze monument to Sunday propriety. "But don't you think he'd say, `when

It ended at seven. Mr. Wrenn took but fifteen minutes for Sunday supper, and wrote till one of the morning,

Revision was delightful, for it demanded many conferences with Nelly, sitting at the parlor table, with

shoulders confidentially touching. They were the more intimate because Tom had invited Mr. Wrenn, Nelly,

and Mrs. Arty to the Grand Christmas Eve Ball of the CigarMakers' Union at Melpomene Hall. Nelly asked

of Mr. Wrenn, almost as urgently as of Mrs. Arty, whether she should wear her new white mull or her older

Two days before Christmas he timidly turned over the play for typing to a haughty public stenographer who

looked like Lee Theresa Zapp. She yawned at him when he begged her to be careful of the manuscript. The

gloriously pinkbound and redunderlined typed manuscript of the play was mailed to Messrs. Wendelbaum

The four walked down Sixth Avenue to the CigarMakers' Ball. They made an Indian file through the

Christmas shopping crowds, and stopped frequently and noisily before the streetbooths' glamour of tinsel

and teddybears. They shrieked all with one rotund mad laughter as Tom Poppins capered over and bought

for seven cents a pink bisque doll, which he pinned to the lapel of his plaid overcoat. They drank hot

chocolate at the Olympic Confectionery Store, pretending to each other that they were shivering with cold.

It was here that Nelly reached up and patted Mr. Wrenn's paleblue tie into better lines. In her hair was the

scent which he had come to identify as hers. Her white furs brushed against his overcoat.

The cigarmakers, with seven of them in full eveningdress and two in dinnercoats, were already dancing

on the waxy floor of Melpomene Hall when they arrived. A full orchestra was pounding and scraping itself

into an hysteria of merriment on the platform under the red stuccofronted balcony, and at the bar behind the

Mr. Wrenn embarrassedly passed large groups of pretty girls. He felt very light and insecure in his new

gunmetalfinish pumps now that he had taken off his rubbers and essayed the slippery floor. He tried

desperately not to use his handkerchief too conspicuously, though he had a cold.

It was not till the choosing of partners for the next dance, when Tom Poppins stood up beside Nelly, their

arms swaying a little, their feet tapping, that Mr. Wrenn quite got the fact that he could not dance.

He had casually said to the others, a week before, that he knew only the square dances which, as a boy, he

had learned at parties at Parthenon. But they had reassured him: "Oh, come onwe'll teach you how to

dance at the ballit won't be formal. Besides, we'll give you some lessons before we go." Playwriting and

playing Five Hundred had prevented their giving him the lessons. So he now sat terrified as a twostep began

and he saw what seemed to be thousands of glittering youths and maidens whirling deftly in a most involved

course, getting themselves past each other in a way which he was sure he could never imitate. The orchestra

yearned over music as rich and smooth as milk chocolate, which made him intensely lonely for Nelly, though

Tom Poppins immediately introduced Nelly to a facetious cigar salesman, who introduced her to three of the

beaux in evening clothes, while Tom led out Mrs. Arty. Mr. Wrenn, sitting in a row of persons who were not

at all interested in his sorrows, glowered out across the hall, and wished, oh! so bitterly, to flee home. Nelly

came up, glowing, laughing, with blackmustached and pearlwaistcoated men, and introduced him to them,

but he glanced at them disapprovingly; and always she was carried off to dance again.

She found and hopefully introduced to Mr. Wrenn a wallflower who came from Yonkers and had never heard

of Tom Poppins or aeroplanes or Oxford or any other topic upon which Mr. Wrenn uneasily tried to discourse

as he watched Nelly waltz and smile up at her partners. Presently the two sat silent. The wallflower excused

Mr. Wrenn sat sulking, hating his friends for having brought him, hating the sweetness of Nelly Croubel, and

saying to himself, "Oh_sure_she dances with all those other menme, I'm only the poor fool that talks

He did not answer when Tom came and told him a new story he had just heard in the barroom.

Once Nelly landed beside him and bubblingly insisted on his coming out and trying to learn to dance. He

brightened, but shyly remarked, "Oh no, I don't think I'd better." Just then the blackestmustached and

pearlwaistcoatedest of all the cigar salesmen came begging for a dance, and she was gone, with only: "Now

At the intermission he watched her cross the floor with the hateful cigar salesman, slender in her tight crisp

new white mull, flourishing her fan and talking with happy rapidity. She sat down beside him. He said

nothing; he still stared out across the glassy floor. She peeped at him curiously several times, and made a low

She sighed a little. Cautiously, but very casually, she said, "Aren't you going to take me out for some

Poor Mr. Wrenn; he had not gone to enough parties in Parthenon, and he hadn't gone to any in New York. At

nearly forty he was just learning the drab sulkiness and churlishness and black jealousy of the lover.... To her:

"Why didn't you go out with that guy with the black mustache?" He still stared straight ahead.

He clenched his hands to keep from bursting out with all the pitiful tears which were surging in his eyes. But

"Oh, I'm a beast," he said, rapidly, low, his undertone trembling to her ears through the laughter of a group

next to them. "I didn't mean that, but I wasI felt like such a muttnot being able to dance. Oh, Nelly, I'm

awfully sorry. You know I didn't mean _Come on!_ Let's go get something to eat!"

As they consumed icecream, fudge, doughnuts, and chicken sandwiches at the refreshment counter they

were very intimate, resenting the presence of others. Tom and Mrs. Arty joined them. Tom made Nelly light

her first cigarette. Mr. Wrenn admired the shy way in which, taking the tiniest of puffs, she kept drawing out

her cigarette with little pouts and nose wriggles and pretended sneezes, but he felt a lofty gladness when she

threw it away after a minute, declaring that she'd never smoke again, and that she was going to make all three

of her companions stop smoking, "now that she knew how horrid and sneezy it was, so there!"

With what he intended to be deep subtlety Mr. Wrenn drew her away to the barroom, and these two children,

over two glasses of gingerale, looked their innocent and rustic love so plainly that Mrs. Arty and Tom

sneaked away. Nelly cut out a dance, which she had promised to a cigarmaker, and started homeward with

"Let's not take a carI want some fresh air after that smoky place," she said. "But it _was_ grand.... Let's

"NellyI'm so sorryI didn't really have the chance to tell you in there how sorry I was for the way I spoke

"Why, I didn't think you were so very nice about itwhen I'd tried so hard to have you have a good

There was tragedy in his voice. His shoulders, which he always tried to keep as straight as though they were

She touched his glove. "Oh don't, Billy; it's all right now. I understand. Let's forget"

As they crossed Twentythird on Fifth Avenue she took his arm. He squeezed her hand. Suddenly the world

was all young and beautiful and wonderful. It was the first time in his life that he had ever walked thus, with

the arm of a girl for whom he cared cuddled in his. He glanced down at her cheap white furs. Snowflakes,

tremulous on the fur, were turned into diamond dust in the light from a streetlamp which showed as well a

tiny place where her collar had been torn and mended ever so carefully. Then, in a millionth of a second, he

who had been a wanderer in the lonely gray regions of a detached man's heart knew the pity of love, all its

emotion, and the infinite care for the beloved that makes a man of a rusty salesclerk. He lifted a face of

adoration to the misty wonder of the bare trees, whose tracery of twigs filled Madison Square; to the

Metropolitan Tower, with its vast upward stretch toward the ruddy sky of the city's winter night. All these

"Gee, those trees look like a reg'lar picture!... The Tower just kind of fades away. Don't it?"

Then they talked like a summertime brook, planning that he was to buy a Christmas bough of evergreen,

which she would smuggle to breakfast in the morning. Through their chatter persisted the new intimacy

On January 10th the manuscript of "The Millionaire's Daughter" was returned by playbrokers Wendelbaum

DEAR SIR,We regret to say that we do not find play available. We inclose our reader's report on the same.

Also inclose bill for ten dollars for readingfee, which kindly remit at early convenience.

He stood in the hall at Mrs. Arty's just before dinner. He reread the letter and slowly opened the reader's

"Millionaire's Daughter." Oneact vlle. Utterly impos. Amateurish to the limit. Dialogue sounds like

Nelly was coming downstairs. He handed her the letter and report, then tried to stick out his jaw. She read

them. Her hand slipped into his. He went quickly toward the basement and made himself read the

letterthough not the reportto the tableful. He burned the manuscript of his play before going to bed. The

next morning he waded into The Job as he never had before. He was gloomily certain that he would never get

away from The Job. But he thought of Nelly a hundred times a day and hoped that sometime, some spring

night of a burning moon, he might dare the great adventure and kiss her. Istra Theoretically, he

remembered her as a great experience. But what nebulous bodies these theories are!

That slow but absolutely accurate FiveHundred player, Mr. William Wrenn, known as Billy, glanced

triumphantly at Miss Proudfoot, who was his partner against Mrs. Arty and James T. Duncan,the

travelingman, on that night of late February. His was the last bid in the crucial hand of the rubber game. The

And he did. He arose a victor. There was no uneasiness, but rather all the social polish of Mrs. Arty's at its

best, in his manner, as he crossed to Mrs. Ebbitt's chair and asked: "How is Mr. Ebbitt tonight? Pretty

rheumatic?" Miss Proudfoot offered him a lime tablet, and he accepted it judicially. "I believe these tablets

are just about as good as Park Tilford's," he said, cocking his head. "Say, Dunk, I'll match you to see who

rushes a growler of beer. Tom'll be here pretty soonstore ought to be closed by now. We'll have some

Mr. Wrenn lost. He departed, after secretively obtaining not one, but two pitchers, in one of which he got a

"pint of dark" and in the other a surprise. He bawled upstairs to Nelly, "Come on down, Nelly, can't you? Got

It is true that when Tom arrived and fell to conversational blows with James T. Duncan over the merits of a

Tom Collins Mr. Wrenn was not brilliant, for the reason that he took Tom Collins to be a man instead of the

Yet, as they went upstairs Miss Proudfoot said to Nelly: "Mr. Wrenn is quiet, but I do think in some ways

he's one of the nicest men I've seen in the house for years. And he is so earnest. And I think he'll make a good

"I think he was a little shy at first.... _I_ was always shy.... But he likes us, and I like folks that like folks."

"He was blown by the whirlwind and followed a wandering flame through perilous seas to a happy

On an April Monday evening, when a small moon passed shyly over the city and the streets were filled with

the sound of hurdygurdies and the spring cries of dancing children, Mr. Wrenn pranced down to the

basement diningroom early, for Nelly Croubel would be down there talking to Mrs. Arty, and he gaily

wanted to make plans for a picnic to occur the coming Sunday. He had a shy unacknowledged hope that he

might kiss Nelly after such a picnic; he even had the notion that he might some daywell, other fellows had

Miss Mary Proudfoot was mending a rent in the current tablecloth with delicate swift motions of her

silveryskinned hands. She informed him: "Mr. Duncan will be back from his Southern trip in five days.

We'll have to have a grand closing progressive Five Hundred tournament." Mr. Wrenn was too much

absorbed in wondering whether Miss Proudfoot would make some of her celebratedand justly

celebratedmincedham sandwiches for the picnic to be much interested. He was not much more interested

Then, as dinner began, Mrs. Ferrard rushed in dramatically and said, "There's a telegram for you, Mr.

Was it death? Whose death? The table panted, Mr. Wrenn with them.... That's what a telegram meant to them.

Their eyes were like a circle of charging bayonets as he opened and read the messagea ship's wireless.

"It's justaa business message," he managed to say, and splashed his soup. This was not the place to take

Dinner was begun. Picnics were conversationally considered in all their more important phaseshistorical,

dietetical, and social. Mr. Wrenn talked much and a little wildly. After dinner he galloped out to buy a paper.

It was an evening of frightened confusion. He tottered along Lexington Avenue on a furtive walk. He knew

only that he was very fond of Nelly, yet pantingly eager to see Istra. He damned himself"damned" is

literalevery other minute for a cad, a doublefaced traitor, and all the other horrifying things a man is

likely to declare himself to be for making the discovery that two women may be different and yet equally

likable. And every other minute he reveled in an adventurous gladness that he was going to see

Istraactually, incredibly going to see her, just the next day! He returned to find Nelly sitting on the steps of

Both good sound observations, and all they could say for a time, while Mr. Wrenn examined the under side of

"No, it was Miss Nash, the artist I told you about, asked me to meet her at the boat. I suppose she wants

me to help her with her baggage and the customs and all them things. She's just coming from Paris."

So lacking in jealousy was Nelly that Mr. Wrenn was disappointed, though he didn't know why. It always

"I wonder if you would like to meet her. She's awful well educated, but I dunnomaybe she'd strike you as

kind of snobbish. But she dresses I don't think I ever seen anybody so elegant. In dressing, I mean.

Course"hastily"she's got money, and so she can afford to. But she'soh, awful nice, some ways. I hope

"Oh, I sha'n't mind if she's a snob. Of course a lady gets used to that, working in a department store," she said,

chillily; then repented swiftly and begged: "Oh, I _didn't_ mean to be snippy, Billy. Forgive me! I'm sure

"Wellwellhummm. I'm getting _so_ sleepy. I guess I'd better go up to bed. Good night."

Uneasy because he was away from the office, displeased because he had to leave his beloved letters to the

Southern trade, angry because he had had difficulty in getting a pass to the wharf, and furious, finally,

because he hadn't slept, Mr. Wrenn nursed all these cumulative emotions attentively and waited for the

coming of the _Hesperida_. He was wondering if he'd want to see Istra at all. He couldn't remember just how

The great steamer swung sideto and was coaxed alongside the wharf. Peering out between rows of crowding

shoulders, Mr. Wrenn coldly inspected the passengers lining the decks. Istra was not in sight. Then he knew

The smallish man who had been edging into the crowd so politely suddenly dashed to the group forming at

the gangplank and pushed his way rudely into the front rank. His elbow dug into the proper waistcoat of a

proper plump old gentleman, but he didn't know it. He stood grasping the rope rail of the plank, gazing

goggleeyed while the plank was lifted to the steamer's deck and the long line of smiling and waving

passengers disembarked. Then he saw hertall, graceful, nonchalant, uninterested, in a smart check suit with

She saw him, and their smiles of welcome made them one. She came from the plank and hastily kissed him.

"Don't ask me about it! There was a married man _sans_ wife who persecuted me all the way over. I'm glad

"Let's hustle over and get through the customs as soon as we can. Where's N? Oh, how clever of it, it's right

But she didn't seem really to care so very much, and the old bewilderment she always caused was over him.

"It is good to get back after all, andMouse dear, I know you won't mind finding me a place to live the next

few days, will you?" She quite took it for granted. "We'll find a place this morning, _n'estce pas?_ Not too

Man fashion, he saw with acute clearness the pile of work on his desk, and, man fashion, responded, "No; be

"How about the place where you're living? You spoke about its being so clean and all."

"Mouse dear!" Istra plumped down on a trunk in the confused billows of incoming baggage, customs

officials, and indignant passengers that surged about them on the rough floor of the vast dockhouse. She

"Why, Mouse! I thought you'd be glad to see me. I've never rowed with you, have I? I've tried not to be

temperamental with you. That's why I wired you, when there are others I've known for years."

"Oh, I didn't mean to seem grouchy; I didn't! I just wondered if you'd like the house."

He could have knelt in repentance before his goddess, what time she was but a lonely girl in the clatter of

"And we've got kind of separated, and I didn't know But I guess I'll alwaysohkind of worship

Now Istra Nash knew perfectly that the customs persons were not ready to examine her baggage as yet. But

"Yes." So did they testify to fixity of friendship till they reached the house and Istra was welcomed to "that

Dinner began with the ceremony due Mrs. Arty. There was no lack of the sacred old jokes. Tom Poppins did

not fail to bellow "Bring on the dishwater," nor Miss Mary Proudfoot to cheep demurely "Don't y' knaow"

in a tone which would have been recognized as fascinatingly English anywhere on the American stage. Then

the talk stopped dead as Istra Nash stood agaze in the doorwaypale and intolerant, her red hair twisted high

on her head, tall and slim and uncorseted in a gray tightfitting gown. Every head turned as on a pivot, first to

Istra, then to Mr. Wrenn. He blushed and bowed as if he had been called on for a speech, stumblingly arose,

and said: "Uhuhuhyou met Mrs. Ferrard, didn't you, Istra? She'll introduce you to the rest."

He sat down, wondering why the deuce he'd stood up, and unhappily realized that Nelly was examining Istra

and himself with cool hostility. In a flurry he glowered at Istra as she nonchalantly sat down opposite him,

beside Mrs. Arty, and incuriously unfolded her napkin. He thought that in her cheerful face there was an

He blushed. He furiously buttered his bread as Mrs. Arty remarked to the assemblage:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I want you all to meet Miss Istra Nash. Miss Nashyou've met Mr. Wrenn; Miss

Nelly Croubel, our baby; Tom Poppins, the great FiveHundred player; Mrs. Ebbitt, Mr. Ebbitt, Miss

Istra Nash lifted her bowed eyes with what seemed shyness, hesitated, said "Thank you" in a clear voice with

a precise pronunciation, and returned to her soup, as though her pleasant communion with it had been

The others began talking and eating very fast and rather noisily. Miss Mary Proudfoot's thin voice pierced the

Nelly and Miss Proudfoot and Tom Poppins began discussing shoestores, all at once and very rapidly, while

hot and uncomfortable Mr. Wrenn tried to think of something to say.... Good Lord, suppose Istra "queered"

him at Mrs. Arty's!... Then he was angry at himself and all of them for not appreciating her. How exquisite

As the soupplates were being removed by Annie, the maid, with an elaborate confusion and a general

passing of plates down the line, Istra Nash peered at the maid petulantly. Mrs. Arty frowned, then grew

"Miss Nash has just come back from Paris. She's a regular European traveler, just like Mr. Wrenn."

Miss Nash waited for the end of this interruption as though it were a noise which merely had to be endured,

Twice she drew in her breath to speak, and the whole table laid its collective knife and fork down to listen.

"Oh, will you pardon me if I speak of it now, Mrs. Ferrard, but would you mind letting me have my breakfast

in my room tomorrow? About nine? Just something simplea canteloupe and some shirred eggs and

"Oh no; why, yes, certainly, "mumbled Mrs. Arty, while the table held its breaths and underneath them

All this was very terrible to Mr. Wrenn. He found himself in the position of a man scheduled to address the

Brewers' Association and the W. C. T. U. at the same hour. Valiantly he attempted:

"Miss Nash oughta be a good person for our picnics. She's a regular shark for outdoor tramping."

"Oh yes, Mr. Wrenn and I tramped most all night in England one time," said Istra, innocently.

The eyes of the table asked Mr. Wrenn what he meant by it. He tried to look at Nelly, but something hurt

Then they were all silent, and the rest of the dinner Mr. Wrenn alternately discussed Olympia Johns with Istra

and picnics with Nelly. There was an undertone of pleading in his voice which made Nelly glance at him and

even become kind. With quiet insistence she dragged Istra into a discussion of rue de la Paix fashions which

After dessert Istra slowly drew a plain gold cigarettecase from a brocade bag of silvery gray. She took out a

match and a thin Russian cigarette, which she carefully lighted. She sat smoking in one of her best attitudes,

pointed elbows on the table, coolly contemplating a huge picture called "Hunting the Stag" on the wall

Mrs. Arty snapped to the servant, "Annie, bring me _my_ cigarettes." But Mrs. Arty always was penitent

when she had been nasty, andthough Istra did not at once seem to know that the landlady _had_ been

nastyMrs. Arty invited her up to the parlor for afterdinner so cordially that Istra could but grant "Perhaps

I will," and she even went so far as to say, "I think you're all to be envied, having such a happy family."

"I'm sure"Istra smiled at Mrs. Arty"that it's because a woman is running things. Now think what

They applauded. They felt that she had been humorous. She was again and publicly invited up to the parlor,

and she came, though she said, rather shortly, that she didn't play Five Hundred, but only bumblepuppy

bridge, a variety of whist which Mr. Wrenn instantly resolved to learn. She reclined ("reclined" is perfectly

accurate) on the redleather couch, among the pillows, and smoked two cigarettes, relapsing into "No?"'s for

Mr. Wrenn said to himself, almost spitefully, as she snubbed Nelly, "Too good for us, is she?" But he couldn't

keep away from her. The realization that Istra was in the room made him forget most of his melds at

pinochle; and when Miss Proudfoot inquired his opinion as to whether the coming picnic should be held on

Staten island or the Palisades he said, vaguely, "Yes, I guess that would be better."

For he was wanting to sit down beside Istra Nash, just be near her; he _had_ to be! So he ventured over and

was instantly regarding all the rest as outsiders whom his wise comrade and himself were studying.

"Tell me, Mouse dear, why do you like the people here? The peepul, I mean. They don't seem so very

"Well, they're awful kind. I've always lived in a house where the folks didn't hardly know each other at all,

except Mrs. Zappshe was the landladyand I didn't like her very much. But here Tom Poppins and Mrs.

Arty andthe restthey really like folks, and they make it just like a home.... Miss Croubel is a very nice

girl. She works for Wanamacy'sshe has quite a big job there. She is assistant buyer in the"

He stopped in horror. He had nearly said "in the lingery department." He changed it to "in the clothing

department," and went on, doubtfully: "Mr. Duncan is a travelingman. He's away on a trip."

"Oh, I watched her looking at you. I think she's a terribly nice pinkface. And just now you're comparing her

She was immensely pleased with herself. "Tell me, what do these people think about; at least, what do you

"Say, I know how you mean. You feel something like what I did in England. You can't get next to what the

Just then Tom Poppins rolled jovially up to the couch. He had carried his many and perspiring pounds over to

Third Avenue because Miss Proudfoot reflected, "I've got a regular sweet tooth tonight." He stood before

Istra and Mr. Wrenn theatrically holding out a bag of chocolate drops in one hand and peanut brittle in the

"Which shall it be, your Highness? Nobody loves a fat man, so he has to buy candy so's they'll let him stick

around. Le's see; you take chocolates, Bill. Name your drink, Miss Nash." She looked up at him, gravely and

politelytoo gravely and politely. She didn't seem to consider him a nice person.

"Neither, thank you," sharply, as he still stood there. He moved away, hurt, bewildered.

Istra was going on, "I haven't been here long enough to be lonely yet, but in any case" when Mr. Wrenn

"You've hurt Tom's feelings by not taking any candy; and, gee, he's awful kind!"

"Oh, I do want some of those chocolates. Will you let me change my mind? Please do."

"Yes _ma'am_, you sure can!" said broad Tom, all one pleased chuckle, poking out the two bags.

Istra stopped beside the FiveHundred table to smile in a lordly way down at Mrs. Arty and say, quite

"I'm so sorry I can't play a decent game of cards. I'm afraid I'm too stupid to learn. You are very lucky, I

She was. She detached herself from the hubbub of invitations to learn to play Five Hundred and wandered

back to the couch, murmuring: "Was bad Istra good? Am I forgiven? Mouse dear, I didn't mean to be rude to

As the bubbles rise through water in a cookingpot, as the surface writhes, and then, after the long wait,

suddenly the water is aboil, so was the emotion of Mr. Wrenn now that Istra, the lordly, had actually done

Her glance back was as frank as hisonly it had more of the mother in it; it was like a kindly pat on the

"Did you think of me after you came here? Oh, I knowI was forgotten; poor Istra abdicates to the pretty

"Oh, gee!there's so many people around.... Golly! when I came back to Americagee!I couldn't hardly

From across the room came the boisterous, somewhat coarsetimbred voice of Tom, speaking to Nelly:

"Oh yes, of course you think you're the only girl that ever seen a vodville show. _We_ ain't never seen a

Mr. Wrenn gazed at them, detached; these were not his people, and with startled pride he glanced at Istra's

"Yes. Souvenir and Art Novelty Company. And I got awfully on the job there, and so I managed to forget for

"Oh, that wasn't nothing.... But I was always thinking of you, even when I was on the job"

"It's gratifying to have some one continue taking me seriously.... Really, dear, I do appreciate it. But you

"Oh, gee! I just can't get over ityou here by me ain't it curious!... "Then he persisted with the tale of his

longing, which she had so carefully interrupted: "The people here are _awful_ kind and good, and you can

From across the room,Tom's pretended jeers, lighted up with Miss Proudfoot's giggles, as paper lanterns

"Yes, you're a hot dancer, all right. I suppose you can do the Boston and all them swell dances.

"but Istra, oh, gee! you're like poetrylike all them things a feller can't get but he tries to when he

"Oh, dear boy, you mustn't! We will be good friends. I do appreciate having some one care whether I'm alive

or not. But I thought it was all understood that we weren't to take playing together seriously; that it was to be

"But, anyway, you will let me play with you here in New York as much as I can? Oh, come on, _let's_ go for

"I'm awf'ly sorry, but I promiseda man's going to call for me, and we're going to a stupid studio party on

Bryant Park. Bore, isn't it, the day of landing? And poor Istra dreadfully landsick."

"I'm sorry, Mouse dear, but I'm afraid I can't break the date.... Fact, I must go up and primp now"

"Why, yes, of course. But you wouldn't have Istra disappoint a nice Johnny after he's bought him a cunnin'

new weskit, would you?... Good night, dear." She smiledthe mother smileand was gone with a lively

Nelly went up to bed early. She was tired, she said. He had no chance for a word with her. He sat on the steps

outside alone a long time. Sometimes he yearned for a sight of Istra's ivory face. Sometimes, with a fierce

compassion that longed to take the burden from her, he pictured Nelly working all day in the rushing

They did have their walk the next night, Istra and Mr. Wrenn, but Istra kept the talk to laughing burlesques of

their tramp in England. Somehowhe couldn't tell exactly whyhe couldn't seem to get in all the remarks

WednesdayThursdayFriday; he saw her only at one dinner, or on the stairs, departing volubly with

Nelly was very pleasant; just thatpleasant. She pleasantly sat as his partner at Five Hundred, and pleasantly

declined to go to the moving pictures with him. She was getting more and more tired, staying till seven at the

store, preparing what she called "special stunts" for the summer white sale. Friday evening he saw her soft

fresh lips drooping sadly as she toiled up the front steps before dinner. She went to bed at eight, at which time

Istra was going out to dinner with a thin, hatchetfaced sarcasticlooking man in a Norfolk jacket and a

fluffy black tie. Mr. Wrenn resented the Norfolk jacket. Of course, the kingly men in evening dress would be

expected to take Istra away from him, but a Norfolk jacket He did not call it that. Though he had worn

one in the fair village of Aengusmere, it was still to him a "coat with a belt."

He thought of Nelly all evening. He heard herthere on the same floor with himtalking to Miss

Proudfoot, who stood at Nelly's door, three hours after she was supposed to be asleep.

"No," Nelly was saying with evidently fictitious cheerfulness, "no, it was just a little headache.... It's much

Nelly hadn't told Mr. Wrenn that she had a severe headacheshe who had once, a few weeks before, run to

him with a cut in her soft small finger, demanding that he bind it up.... He went slowly to bed.

He had lain awake half an hour before his agony so overpowered him that he flung out of bed. He crouched

low by the bed, like a child, his legs curled under him, the wooden sideboard pressing into his chest in one

"O God, O God, forgive me, forgive me, oh, forgive me! Here I been forgetting Nelly (and I _love_ her) and

comparing her with Istra and not appreciating her, and Nelly always so sweet to me and trusting me so

He huddled there many minutes, praying, the scorching pressure of the bedside growing more painful. All the

while the campfire he had shared with Istra was burning within his closed eyes, and Istra was visibly lording

it in a London flat filled with clever people, and he was passionately aware that the line of her slim breast was

like the lip of a shell; the line of her pallid cheek, defined by her flamecolored hair, something utterly fine,

"Oh," he groaned, "she is like that poetry stuff in Shakespeare that's so hard to get.... I'll be extra nice to Nelly

at the picnic Sunday.... Her trusting me so, and then me O God, keep me away from wickedness!"

As he was going out Saturday morning he found a note from Istra waiting in the hall on the hatrack:

Do you want to play with poor Istra tomorrow Sat. afternoon and perhaps evening, Mouse? You have

Saturday afternoon off, don't you? Leave me a note if you can call for me at 1.30. I. N.

He didn't have Saturday afternoon off, but he said he did in his note, and at onethirty he appeared at her

door in a new spring suit (purchased on Tuesday), a new spring hat, very fuzzy and gay (purchased Saturday

noon), and the walkingstick he had bought on Tottenham Court Road, but decently concealed from the

Istra took him to what she called a "futurist play." She explained it all to him several times, and she stood him

tea and muffins, and recalled Mrs. Cattermole's establishment with full attention to Mrs. Cattermole's bulbous

but earnest nose. They dined at the Brevoort, and were back at ninethirty; for, said Istra, she was "just a bit

They stood at the door of Istra's room. Istra said, "You may come injust for a minute."

It was the first time he had even peeped into her room in New York. The old shyness was on him, and he

Nelly was just coming upstairs, staring at him where he stood inside the door, her lips apart with

He wanted to rush out, to explain, to invite her in, toto He stuttered in his thought, and by now Nelly

Uneasily he tilted on the front of a caneseated rockingchair, glaring at a pile of books before one of Istra's

"O Mouse dear, I'm so bored by everybodyevery sort of everybody.... Of course I don't mean you; you're a

good pal.... OhParis is _too_ complexespecially when you can't quite get the nasal vowelsand New

York is too youthful and earnest; and Dos Puentes, California, will be plain hell.... And all my little

partiesI start out on them happily, always, as naive as a kiddy going to a birthday party, and then I get

there and find I can't even dance square dances, as the kiddy does, and go home Oh damn it, damn it,

Her slim pliant length was flung out along the bed, and she was crying. Her beautiful hands clutched the

He crept over to the bed, patting her shoulder, slowly and regularly, too frightened of her mood even to want

She looked up, laughing tearfully. "Please say, `There, there, there; don't cry.' It always goes with pats for

Her long strong arms reached up and drew him down. It was his head that rested on her shoulder. It seemed to

both of them that it was he who was to be petted, not she. He pressed his cheek against the comforting hollow

of her curving shoulder and rested there, abandoned to a forlorn and growing happiness, the happiness of

getting so far outside of his tight world of Wrennishness that he could give comfort and take comfort with no

Istra murmured: "Perhaps that's what I needsome one to need me. Only" She stroked his hair. "Now

"You It's better now? I'm afraid I ain't helped you much. It's kinda t' other way round."

"Oh yes, indeed, it's all right now! Just nerves. Nothing more. Now, good night."

"No, no, no, no, dear! You go and forget me and enjoy yourself and be good to your pinkfaceNelly, isn't

it? She seems to be terribly nice, and I know you two will have a good party. You must forget me. I'm just a

teacher of playing games who hasn't been successful at any game whatever. Not that it matters. I don't care. I

Nelly and Mr. Wrenn, Mrs. Arty and Tom, Miss Proudfoot and Mrs. Samuel Ebbitt, the last of whom kept

ejaculating: "Well! I ain't run off like this in ten years!" They squatted about a redcotton tablecloth spread

on a rock, broadly discussing the sandwiches and cold chicken and lemonade and stuffed olives, and laughing

almost to a point of distress over Tom's accusation that Miss Proudfoot had secreted about her person a bottle

Nelly was very pleasant to Mr. Wrenn, but she called him neither Billy nor anything else, and mostly she

talked to Miss Proudfoot, smiling at him, but saying nothing when he managed to get out a jest about Mrs.

Arty's chewinggum. When he moved to her side with a wooden plate of creamcheese sandwiches (which

Tom humorously termed "coldcream wafers") Mr. Wrenn started to explain how he had come to enter Istra's

"She doesn't seem to care much," he reflected, relieved and stabbed in his humble vanity and reattracted to

Nelly, all at once. He was anxious about her opinion of Istra and her opinion of himself, and slightly defiant,

as she continued to regard him as a respectable person whose name she couldn't exactly remember.

Hadn't he the right to love Istra if he wanted to? he desired to know of himself. Besides, what had he _done?_

Just gone out walking with his English hotel acquaintance Istra! He hadn't been in her room but just a few

minutes. Fine reason that was for Nelly to act like a blooming iceberg! Besides, it wasn't as if he were

engaged to Nelly, or anything like that. Besides, of course Istra would never care for him. There were several

other besideses with which he harrowed himself while trying to appear picnically agreeable. He was getting

very much confused, and was slightly abrupt as he said to Nelly, "Let's walk over to that high rock on the

A dusky afterglow filled the sky before them as they silently trudged to the rock and from the top of the sheer

cliff contemplated the smooth and steelygray Hudson below. Nelly squeaked her fear at the drop and

He groaned within, "I haven't the right to help her." He took her arm as she hesitatingly climbed from the

"Miss Nash took me in her room yesterday and showed me her things. My, she's got such be_yoo_tiful

jewels! La V'lieres and pearls and a swell amethyst brooch. My! She told me all about how the girls used to

study in Paris, and how sorry she would be to go back to California and keep house."

Nelly let him suffer for a moment before she relieved him with, "For her father."

For the first time that day he was perfectly sincere. He was trying to confide in her. But the shame of having

He tried hard to be gallant. "Yes, she is interesting, but of course she ain't anywheres near as nice as you are,

The quick agony in her voice almost set them both weeping. The shared sorrow of separation drew them

together for a moment. Then she started off, with short swift steps, and he tagged after. He found little to say.

He tried to comment on the river. He remarked that the apartmenthouses across in New York were bright in

the sunset; that, in fact, the upper windows looked "like there was a fire in there." Her sole comment was

When they rejoined the crowd he was surprised to hear her talking volubly to Miss Proudfoot. He rejoiced

that she was "game," but he did not rejoice long. For a frightened feeling that he had to hurry home and see

Istra at once was turning him weak and cold. He didn't want to see her; she was intruding; but he had to

gogo at once; and the agony held him all the way home, while he was mechanically playing the part of

stern reformer and agreeing with Tom Poppins that the horrors of the recent Triangle shirtwaistfactory fire

He trembled on the ferry till Nelly, with a burst of motherly tenderness in her young voice, suddenly asked:

Naturally, he wanted the credit of being known as an invalid, and pitied and nursed, but he reluctantly smiled

He went resolutely down and found Nelly alone, sitting on a round paleyellow straw mat on the steps.

He sat by her. He was very quiet; not at all the jovial young man of the picnic properly following the

boardinghousedistrict rule that males should be jocular and show their appreciation of the ladies by

"kidding them." And he spoke with a quiet graciousness that was almost courtly, with a note of weariness and

spiritual experience such as seldom comes into the boardinghouses, to slay joy and bring wisdom and give

He had, as he sat down, intended to ask her to go with him to a movingpicture show. But inspiration was on

When Mr. Wrenn returned from the office, two evenings later, he found this note awaiting him:

DEAR MOUSE,Friend has asked me to join her in studio have beat it. Sorry not see you say goodby.

Come see me sometimephone before and see if I'm inSpring xxxaddress xx South Washington Sq. In

He spent the evening in not going to the studio. Several times he broke away from a pinochle game to rush

Then for a week he awaited a more definite invitation from her, which did not come. He was uneasily polite

to Nelly these days, and tremulously appreciative of her gentleness. He wanted to brood, but he did not take

to his old habit of long solitary walks. Every afternoon he planned one for the evening; every evening found

He had a sort of youthful defiant despair, so he jested much at the cardtable, by way of practising his new

game of keeping people from knowing what he was thinking. He took sophisticated pleasure in noting that

Mrs. Arty no longer condescended to him. He managed to imitate Tom's writing on a card which he left with

a bunch of jonquils in Nelly's room, and nearly persuaded even Tom himself that Tom was the donor.

Probably because he didn't much care what happened he was able to force Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle to raise

his salary to twentythree dollars a week. Mr. Guilfogle went out of his way to admit that the letters to the

John Henson, the head of the Souvenir Company's manufacturing department, invited Mr. Wrenn home to

dinner, and the account of the cattleboat was much admired by Mrs. Henson and the three young Hensons.

A few days later, in midJune, there was an unusually cheerful dinner at the boardinghouse. Nelly turned to

Mr. Wrennyes, he was quite sure about it; she was speaking exclusively to him, with a lengthy and most

merry account of the manner in which the floor superintendent had "called down" the unkindest of the

He longed to give his whole self in his answer, to be in the absolute community of thought that lovers know.

But the image of Istra was behind his chair. Istrahe had to see hernow, this evening. He rushed out to

Yess, admitted Istra, a little grudgingly, she was going to be at the studio that evening, though shewell,

there was going to be a little partysome friendsbutyes, she'd be glad to have him come.

Since this scientific treatise has so exhaustively examined Mr. Wrenn's reactions toward the esthetic, one

need give but three of his impressions of the studio and people he found on Washington Squarenamely:

(a) That the big room was bare, ill kept, and not comparable to the redplush splendor of Mrs. Arty's, for all

its pretension to superiority. Why, a lot of the pictures weren't framed! And you should have seen the giltness

(b) That the people were brothersintalk to the inmates of the flat on Great James Street, London, only far

Istra was always across the room from him somehow. He found himself glad. It made their parting definite.

As he rose with elaborate boardinghouse apologies to the room at large for going, and a cheerful but not

intimate "Good night" to Istra, she followed him to the door and into the dark long hallway without.

"Good night, Mouse dear. I'm glad you got a chance to talk to the Silver Girl. But was Mr. Hargis rude to

you? I heard him talking Single Taxor was it Matisse?and he's usually rude when he talks about them."

"Matissethe guy you just spoke aboutand these artists here tonight in bobtail dresssuitsI wouldn't

know when to wear one of them things, and when a swallowtailif I had one, evenor when a Prince

"Sure. That's what I mean. It's like that Matisse guy. I don't know about none of the things you're interested

in. While you've been away from Mrs. Arty'sLord, I've missed you so! But when I try to train with your

bunch, or when you spring Matisse" (he seemed peculiarly to resent the unfortunate French artist) "on me I

sort of get onto myselfand now it ain't like it was in England; I've got a bunch of my own I can chase

around with. Anyway, I got onto myself tonight. I s'pose it's partly because I been thinking you didn't care

"But, Mouse dear, all this isn't news to me. Surely you, who've gipsied with me, aren't going to be so obvious,

"Oh no, no, no! I didn't mean to do that. I just wantedoh, gee! I dunnowell, I wanted to have things

"Then goodby. And sometime when I'm back in New YorkI'm going to California in a few daysI think

I'll be able to get back hereI certainly hope sothough of course I'll have to keep house for friend father

for a while, and maybe I'll marry myself with a local magnate in desperationbut, as I was saying, dear,

She stood at the top of the stairs looking down. He slowly clumped down the wooden treads, boiling with the

amazing discoveries that he had said goodby to Istra, that he was not sorry, and that now he could offer to

She darted like a swallow. She threw her arm about his shoulder and kissed his cheek. Instantly she was

Mr. William Wrenn was walking rapidly up Riverside Drive, thinking about his letters to the Southern

While he was leaving the studio building he had perfectly seen himself as one who was about to go through a

tumultuous agony, after which he would be free of all the desire for Istra and ready to serve Nelly sincerely

But he found that the agony was all over. Even to save his dignity as one who was being dramatic, he couldn't

Every time he thought of Nelly his heart was warm and he chuckled softly. Several times out of nothing came

pictures of the supercilious persons whom he had heard solving the problems of the world at the studio on

Washington Square, and he muttered: "Oh, hope they choke. Istra's all right, though; she learnt me an awful

lot. Butgee! I'm glad she ain't in the same house; I suppose I'd ag'nize round if she was."

Suddenly, at no particular street corner on Riverside Drive, just _a_ street, he fled over to Broadway and the

Subway. He had to be under the same roof with Nelly. If it were only possible to see her that night! But it was

midnight. However, he formulated a plan. The next morning he would leave the office, find her at her

department store, and make her go out to Manhattan Beach with him for dinner that night.

He dashed down the hall and stood shyly scratching at the straw of his newest hat.

"No I was awful foolish, of course, but I saw you when you went out this evening, and you looked so

"Oh nolistenplease do! I went over to the place Miss Nash is living at, because I was pretty sure that I

ain't hipped on hersort of hypnotized by herany more. And I found I ain't! _I ain't!_ I don't know what

to say, I want toI want you to know that from going to try and see if I can't get you to care for me." He was

dreadfully earnest, and rather quiet, with the dignity of the man who has found himself. "I'm scared," he went

on, "about saying this, because maybe you'll think I've got an idea I'm kind of a little tin god, and all I've got

to do is to say which girl I'll want and she'll come arunning, but it isn't that; _it isn't_. It's just that I want you

to know I'm going to give _all_ of me to you now if I can get you to want me. And I _am_ glad I knew

Istrashe learnt me a lot about books and all, so I have more to me, or maybe will have, for you. It's

Nellypromise you'll bemy friendpromise If you knew how I rushed back here tonight to see

She held out her hand, and he grasped it as though it were the sacred symbol of his dreams.

"Tomorrow," she smiled, with a hint of tears, "I'll be a reg'lar lady, I guess, and make you explain and

explain like everything, but now I'm just glad. Yes," defiantly, "I _will_ admit it if I want to! I _am_ glad!"

Upon an evening of November, 1911, it chanced that of Mrs. Arty's flock only Nelly and Mr. Wrenn were at

home. They had finished two hot games of pinochle, and sat with their feet on a small amiable oilstove. Mr.

Wrenn laid her hand against his cheek with infinite content. He was outlining the situation at the office.

The business had so increased that Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle, the manager, had told Rabin, the head

travelingsalesman, that he was going to appoint an assistant manager. Should he, Mr. Wrenn queried, try to

get the position? The other candidates, Rabin and Henson and Glover, were all good friends of his, and,

"Why, of course you can, Billy. I remember when you came here you were sort of shy. But now you're 'most

the star boarder! And won't those others be trying to get the job away from you? Of course!"

"Say, that would be great, wouldn't it! But hones', Nell, do you think I might have a chance to land the

"Mr. Guilfogle," stated Mr. Wrenn, next day, "I want to talk to you about that assistant managership."

The manager, in his new office and his new flowered waistcoat, had acted interested when Our steady and

"I've been here longer than any of the other men, and I know every line of the business now, even the

"Now will you kindly 'low _me_ to talk a little, Wrenn? I know a _little_ something about how things go in

the office myself! I don't deny you're a good man. Maybe some day you may get to be assistant manager. But

I'm going to give the first try at it to Glover. He's had so much more experience with meeting people

"Yes, I've heard that before, but I'll be goldarned if I'll stick at one desk all my life just because I save you

"Now, now, now, now! Calm down; hold your horses, my boy. This ain't a melodrama, you know."

"Well, now I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to make you head of the manufacturing department

instead of getting in a new man, and shift Henson to purchasing. I'll put Jake on your old job, and expect you

to give him a lift when he needs it. And you'd better keep up the most important of the jollyingletters, I

"Well, I like that all right. I appreciate it. But of course I expect more paytwo men's work"

"Well, that's a good deal, you know. The overhead expenses have been increasing a lot faster than our profits,

"got to see where new business is coming in to justify the liberal way we've treated you men before we

can afford to do much salaryraisingthough we're just as glad to do it as you men to get it; but"

"if we go to getting extravagant we'll go bankrupt, and then we won't any of us have jobs.... Still, I

Mr. Wrenn stood straight. The manager tried to stare him down. Panic was attacking Mr. Wrenn, and he had

to think of Nelly to keep up his defiance. At last Mr. Guilfogle glared, then roared: "Well, confound it,

Wrenn, I'll give you twentyninefifty, and not a cent more for at least a year. That's final. _Understand?_"

"Gee!" he was exulting to himself, "never thought I'd get anything like that. Twentyninefifty! More 'n

"Married five months ago tonight, honey," said Mr. Wrenn to Nelly, his wife, in their Bronx flat, and thus

"Oh, I _know_ it, Billy. I wondered if you'd remember. You just ought to see the dessert I'm makingbut

He opened a parcel and displayed a pair of redworsted bedslippers, a creation of one of the greatest

redworsted artists in the whole land. Yes, and he could afford them, too. Was he not making thirtytwo

dollars a weekhe who had been poor! And his chances for the assistant managership "looked good."

"Oh, they'll be so comfy when it gets cold. You're a dear! Oh, Billy, the janitress says the Jewish lady across

"Yes, but her husband is laid off again. I was talking to her quite a while this afternoon.... Oh, dear, I do get

so lonely for you, sweetheart, with nothing to do. But I did read some _Kim_ this afternoon. I liked it."

"But it's kind of hard. Maybe I'll Oh, I don't know. I guess I'll have to read a lot."

He patted her back softly, and hoped: "Maybe some day we can get a little house out of town, and then you

can garden.... Sorry old Siddons is laid off again.... Is the gasstove working all right now?"

"Say, let me make the coffee, Nell. You'll have enough to do with setting the table and watching the

"All rightee, hun. But, oh, Billy, I'm so, shamed. I was going to get some potato salad, and I've just

remembered I forgot." She hung her head, with a fingertip to her pretty lips, and pretended to look dreadfully

ashamed. "Would you mind so veree much skipping down to Bachmeyer's for some? Ahh, is it just fearful

Nelly turned to him and, as he held her, her head bent far back. She lay tremblingly inert against his arms,

staring up at him, panting. With her head on his shouldera soft burden of love that his shoulder rejoiced to

bearthey stood gazing out of the narrow kitchen window of their sixthstory flat and noticed for the

hundredth time that the trees in a vacant lot across were quite as red and yellow as the millionaire trees in

"Sometime," mused Mr. Wrenn, "we'll live in Jersey, where there's trees and trees and treesand maybe

there'll be kiddies to play under them, and then you won't be lonely, honey; they'll keep you some busy!"

"You skip along now, and don't be talking nonsense, or I'll not give you one single wee bit of dinner!" Then

He hastened out of the kitchen, with the happy glance he never failed to give the livingroomits

redpapered walls with shiny imitationoak woodwork; the rows of steins on the platerack; the

imitationoak diningtable, with a vase of newly dusted paper roses; the Morris chair, with Nelly's sewing on

a tiny wicker table beside it; the large giltframed oleograph of "Pike's Peak by Moonlight."

He clattered down the slate treads of the stairs. He fairly vaulted out of doors. He stopped, startled.

Across the ragged vacant lots to the west a vast sunset processional marched down the sky. It had not been

visible from their flat, which looked across East River to the tame grassy shore of a realestate boomer's

suburb. "Gee!" he mourned, "it's the first time I've noticed a sunset for a month! I used to see knights' flags

Wistfully the exile gazed at his lost kingdom, till the October chill aroused him.

But he learned a new way to cook eggs from the proprietor of the delicatessen store; and his plans for

spending the evening playing pinochle with Nelly, and reading the evening paper aloud, set him chuckling

softly to himself as he hurried home through the brisk autumn breeze with seven cents' worth of potato salad.