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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Mr. Wrenn, by Sinclair Lewis
+#3 in our series by Sinclair Lewis
+
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+
+Title: Our Mr. Wrenn
+       The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man
+
+Author: Sinclair Lewis
+
+Release Date: January, 2004 [EBook #4961]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on April 4, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR MR. WRENN ***
+
+
+
+
+This eBook was edited by Charles Aldarondo (www.aldarondo.net).
+
+
+
+
+OUR MR. WRENN
+
+THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A GENTLE MAN
+
+BY
+
+SINCLAIR LEWIS
+
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+
+MCMXIV
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+GRACE LIVINGSTONE HEGGER
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+MR. WRENN IS LONELY
+
+
+
+
+
+The ticket-taker of the Nickelorion Moving-Picture Show is a
+public personage, who stands out on Fourteenth Street, New York,
+wearing a gorgeous light-blue 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 evenings, and for
+daytime a tedious job that always made his head stuffy.
+
+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 thirty-four Mr. Wrenn was the sales-entry clerk of the
+Souvenir Company.  He was always bending over bills and columns
+of figures at a desk behind the stock-room.  He was a meek little
+bachlor--a person of inconspicuous blue ready-made suits, and a
+small unsuccessful mustache.
+
+To-day--historians have established the date as April 9,
+1910--there 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 ticket-taker.  He found
+Fourteenth Street, after office hours, swept by a dusty
+wind that whisked the skirts of countless plump Jewish girls,
+whose V-necked 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 leading-strings; and a newsstand was heaped
+with the orange and green and gold of magazine covers.
+
+"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 ticket-taker.  But the latter was thinking about buying
+Johnny's pants.  Should he get them at the Fourteenth Street
+Store, or Siegel-Cooper'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 plate-glass
+gullet of the grinder without the taker's even seeing the
+clerk's bow and smile.
+
+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 shine--but he wouldn't stand for being cut.  Wasn't he making
+nineteen dollars a week, as against the ticket-taker's ten
+or twelve?  He shook his head with the defiance of a cornered
+mouse, fussed with his mustache, and regarded the moving
+pictures gloomily.
+
+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 cow-punchers and
+sage-brush, but himself, defying the office manager's surliness
+and revolting against the ticket-man's rudeness.  Now he was
+ready for the nearly overpowering delight of travel-pictures.
+He bounced slightly as a Gaumont film presented Java.
+
+He was a connoisseur of travel-pictures, 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 domestic-minded 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 and--and--uh, well--places!"  The scent of Oriental
+spices was in his broadened nostrils as he scampered out of the
+Nickelorion, without a look at the ticket-taker, and headed for
+"home"--for his third-floor-front 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 basement dining-room to inquire how she is.
+
+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
+griddle-cakes, 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 rocking-chair, 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 nigger-lovin' Yankee, who couldn't appreciate the subtle
+sorrows of a Zapp of Zapp's Bog, allied to all the First Families
+of Virginia.
+
+Mr. Wrenn did nothing more presumptuous than sit still, in the
+stuffy furniture-crowded basement room, which smelled of dead
+food and deader pride in a race that had never existed.  He sat
+still because the chair was broken.  It had been broken now for
+four years.
+
+For the hundred and twenty-ninth 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 nothing Ah tell her."
+
+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 paradise--his third-floor-front.
+
+It was an abjectly respectable room--the bedspread patched;
+no two pieces of furniture from the same family; half-tones
+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 finger-tips.
+He picked out a P. & O. circular, and hastily left for fairyland.
+
+
+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 red-brick
+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 double-breasted 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
+Twenty-eighth Street near Sixth Avenue.  In the office he
+chuckled at his ink-well and the untorn blotters on his
+orderly desk.  Though he sat under the weary unnatural brilliance
+of a mercury-vapor 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 ten-thirty 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 "Bur-r-r-r-r" 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 sun-bright
+room, ornate with rugs and souvenirs.  Seven Novelties glittered
+on the desk alone, including a large rococo Shakespeare-style
+glass ink-well containing cloves and a small iron Pittsburg-style
+one containing ink.  Mr. Wrenn blinked like a noon-roused 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 filled twice, they
+write me."
+
+"They ordered twice, sir.  By 'phone," smiled Mr. Wrenn, in an
+agony of politeness.
+
+"They ordered hell, sir!  Twice--the same order?"
+
+"Yes, sir; their buyer was prob--"
+
+"They say they've looked it up.  Anyway, they won't pay twice.
+I know, em.  We'll have to crawl down graceful, and all because
+you--I want to know why you ain't more careful!"
+
+The announcement that Mr. Wrenn twice wriggled his head, and
+once tossed it, would not half denote his wrath.  At last!
+It was here--the 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 thudding so that he felt sick he declared:
+
+"I'm _sure_, sir, about that order.  I looked it up.  Their buyer
+was drunk!"
+
+It was done.  And now would he be discharged?  The manager
+was speaking:
+
+"Probably.  You looked it up, eh?  Um!  Send me in the two
+order-records.  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 the same order, cause of
+your carelessness?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn found himself outside in the dark corridor.
+The manager hadn't seemed much impressed by his revolt.
+
+The manager wasn't.  He called a stenographer and dictated:
+
+"Bronx Emporium:
+
+"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 on both--"
+
+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 his desire to resign from The Job.
+
+
+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 cross-lines of
+order-lists, with the narrow cement blocks at the curb standing
+for unfilled column-headings.  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 path was a ruler.
+
+He went clear up to the branch post-office 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 acquaintance--Cousin John, of Parthenon, New York, the
+boy-who-comes-to-play of Mr. Wrenn's back-yard days in Parthenon.
+Without opening the letter Mr. Wrenn tucked it into his inside coat
+pocket, threw away his toothpick, and turned to Sunday wayfaring.
+
+He jogged down Twenty-third 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 sales-lists in the clouds, at least.  And with them Mr. Wrenn's
+soul swept along, while his half-soled Cum-Fee-Best $3.80 shoes
+were ambling past warehouses.  Only once did he condescend to
+being really on Twenty-third 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 alien beauty.
+
+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 smoking-cabin.  He didn't
+smoke--the habit used up travel-money.  Once seated on the upper
+deck, he knew that at last he was outward-bound 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 life-preservers 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 morning of history when the joy of
+adventure possessed the Argonauts.
+
+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, but--where couldn't he go if he were pulling out
+for Arcady on the _Campagnia!_ Gee!  What were even the
+building-block towers of the Metropolitan and Singer buildings
+and the _Times's_ cream-stick 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 years he had
+been a citizen of that demesne.
+
+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 organ-recital (see the English Baedeker); then an express
+for London and--Gee!
+
+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 into place.  He was carried by the herd
+on into the station.
+
+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 stay-at-home.
+
+That is a washed-out 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 mining-camps!),
+Washington, and the magic Southland--thither 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 the
+Southland; just as soon as he got ready.
+
+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
+all-promising Sometime.  He had never done anything so reckless
+as actually to ask a skipper for the chance to go a-sailing, but
+he had once gone into a mission society's free shipping-office
+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 to palm-bordered lagoons.
+
+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 gun-runner, 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 training-ship and carelessly
+went to sea as the President's guest in the admiral's barge and
+was frightened by the stare of a sauntering shop-girl and
+arrived home before dusk, to Mrs. Zapp's straitened approval.
+
+Dusk made incantations in his third-floor-front.  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, "Well-l-l, Willum, guess
+it's time to crawl into the downy."
+
+He undressed and smoothed his ready-made suit on the
+rocking-chair back.  Sitting on the edge of his bed, quaint in
+his cotton night-gown, like a rare little bird of dull plumage,
+he rubbed his head sleepily.  Um-m-m-m-m!  How tired he was!
+He went to open the window.  Then his tamed heart leaped into a
+waltz, and he forgot third-floor-fronts and sleepiness.
+
+Through the window came the chorus of fog-horns on North River.
+"Boom-m-m!" 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.  "Whawn-n-n!"  Another liner.  The tumultuous
+chorus repeated to him all the adventures of the day.
+
+He dropped upon the bed again and stared absently at his
+clothes.  Out of the inside coat pocket stuck the unopened
+letter from Cousin John.
+
+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 stomach-sinking and a chill shaking.  Then he
+laughed and wanted to--but didn't--rush into the adjacent hall
+room and tell the total stranger there of this world-changing 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 be--very much--afraid 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 world-wanderings,
+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,
+against steamship fares on a waste half-sheet of paper.
+
+The noon-hour was not The Job's, but his, for exploration of the
+parlous lands of romance that lie hard by Twenty-eighth 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
+personally the tyrannous ways of the office manager, Mr. Guilfogle.
+
+Mr. Wrenn and Charley chose (that is to say, Charley chose)
+a table at Drubel's Eating House.  Mr. Wrenn timidly hinted,
+"I've got some big news to tell you."
+
+But Charley interrupted, "Say, did you hear old Goglefogle light
+into me this morning?  I won't stand for it.  Say, did you hear
+him--the old--"
+
+"What was the trouble, Charley?"
+
+"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 adding-machine,
+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 exercise--I was the goat.  He calls me in, and he
+calls me _down_, and me--well, just lemme tell you, Wrenn,
+I calls his bluff!"
+
+Charley Carpenter stopped his rapid tirade, delivered with quick
+head-shakes 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 cheaply
+handsome smooth face more flushed than usual:
+
+"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 cross-eyed double-jointed
+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 messy wife
+of mine--I ought to desert her, and I will some day, and--"
+
+"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, this lunch is on me.  Let me pay for it, Charley."
+
+Charley promised to let him pay, quite readily.  And, expanding, said:
+
+"Great, Wrenn!  Great!  Lemme congratulate you.  Don't know
+anybody I'd rather've had this happen to.  You're a meek little
+baa-lamb, 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
+duck-lined 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."
+
+"Gogie--square?  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 stock-keeper's work, sides your own.
+Tell you what you do.  You go to old Goglefogle and tell him you
+want a raise to twenty-five, 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 some!"
+
+"Yes, but, Charley, then if Guilfogle feels he can't pay me that
+much--you know he's responsible to the directors; he can't do
+everything he wants to--why, 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 busy season."
+
+"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 at--trying to
+break in a man right in the busy season.  Here's your chance.
+Come on, kid; don't pass it up."
+
+"Oh gee, Charley, I can't do that.  You wouldn't want me to try
+to _hurt_ the Souvenir Company after being there for--lemme see,
+it must be seven years."
+
+"Well, maybe you _like_ to get your cute little nose rubbed on
+the grindstone! I suppose you'd like to stay on at nineteen per
+for the rest of your life."
+
+"Aw, Charley, don't get sore; please don't!  I'd like to get off,
+all right--like to go traveling, and stuff like that. Gee!  I'd
+like to wander round.  But I can't cut out right in the bus--"
+
+"But can't you see, you poor nut, you won't be _leaving_
+'em--they'll either pay you what they ought to or lose you."
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that, Charley.
+
+"Charley was making up for some uncertainty as to his own
+logic by beaming persuasiveness, and Mr. Wrenn was afraid
+of being hypnotized.  "No, no!" he throbbed, rising.
+
+"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 before I go back."
+
+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 globe-trotting; perhaps for months he
+would remain in slavery, and he had hoped just that morning--
+One dreadful quarter-hour with Mr. Guilfogle and he might be free.
+He grinned to himself as he admitted that this was like
+seeing Europe after merely swimming the mid-winter Atlantic.
+
+Well, he had nine minutes more, by his two-dollar watch; nine
+minutes of vagabondage.  He gazed across at a Greek restaurant
+with signs in real Greek letters like "ruins at--well, at Aythens."
+A Chinese chop-suey den with a red-and-yellow 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 about jungles?  Anyway:
+
+
+"'Them garlicky smells,
+And the sunshine and the palms and the bells.'"
+
+
+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 wander?  Le's beat it together.
+You can't, eh?  Poor old fella!"
+
+At three-thirty, 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 efficiency theories for
+inefficient employers.
+
+At five-twenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on
+nothing in particular, and suggested that he stay late with
+Charley Carpenter and the stock-keeper to inventory a line of
+desk-clocks which they were closing out.
+
+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
+glass-inclosed layer-like upper floors.  He wanted to be out
+there in the streets with the shopping crowds.  Old Goglefogle
+didn't consider him; why should he consider the firm?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+HE WALKS WITH MISS THERESA
+
+
+
+
+
+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 ticket-taker.  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
+stair-climbing--and he dashed at the ticket-booth 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 Brass-button Man.  For one-
+nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned.  It turned
+back of itself; he stared full at the man, half bowed--and
+received a hearty absent-minded 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 though he were accustomed to laugh easily with
+many friends.
+
+The train-robbery film was--well, 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 spirit-stirring roll of the
+snare-drum.  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
+hawk-faced 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 see the train robbery again.
+
+As he started to go out he found the ticket-taker changing his
+long light-blue robe of state for a highly commonplace sack-coat
+without brass buttons.  In his astonishment at seeing how a
+Highness could be transformed into an every-day man, Mr. Wrenn
+stopped, and, having stopped, spoke:
+
+"Uh--that was quite a--quite a picture--that train robbery.
+Wasn't it."
+
+"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 crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat?  Ain't he the
+cut-up, mister! Ain't both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads,
+though!  Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office.
+_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 going-home shoes?... Why, I don't
+know whether the train did any robbing or not!"
+
+He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk's heart
+bounded in comradeship.  He was surprised into declaring:
+
+"Say--uh--I bowed to you the other night and you--well, 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 she-girl and a tom-cat.  Sure, I couldn't
+'ve seen you.  Me, I was probably that busy with fambly cares--I
+was probably thinking who was it et the lemon pie on me--was it Pete
+or Johnny, or shall I lick 'em both together, or just bite me wife."
+
+Mr. Wrenn knew that the ticket-taker had never, never really
+considered biting his wife.  _He_ knew!  His nod and grin and
+"That's the idea!" were urbanely sophisticated.  He urged:
+
+"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 buy you a drink."
+
+He was aghast at this abyss of money-spending into which he had
+leaped, and the Brass-button 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
+foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn placed his
+Cum-Fee-Best shoe.
+
+"Uh?" said the bartender.
+
+"Rye, Jimmy," said the Brass-button Man.
+
+"Uh-h-h-h-h," said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now
+that--wealthy citizen though he had become--he was in danger of
+exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn't choose his drink properly.
+"Stummick been hurting me.  Guess I'd better just take a lemonade."
+
+"You're the brother-in-law to a wise one," commented the
+Brass-button 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 your pick, which would you take?' And what 'd yuh think
+I answers her?"
+
+"The beer," said the bartender.  "She had your number, all right."
+
+"Not on your tin-type," declared the ticket-taker.
+
+"`Me?' I says to her.  `Me?  I'd pinch the harp and pawn it for
+ten growlers of Dutch beer and some man-sized rum!'"
+
+"Hee, hee hee!" grinned Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" grumbled the bartender.
+
+"Well-l-l," yawned the ticket-taker, "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 gaily.
+
+He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn.  His landlady stood
+on the bottom step of the hall stairs in a bunchy Mother
+Hubbard, groaning:
+
+"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."
+
+He slunk up-stairs behind Mrs. Zapp's lumbering gloom.
+
+
+"There's something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zapp--something
+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.
+
+"Yes," dryly, "Ah noticed you was out late, Mist' Wrenn."
+
+"You see, Mrs. Zapp, I--uh--my father left me some land, and
+it's been sold for about one thousand plunks."
+
+" 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, the factory
+forewoman, who had just thumped down-stairs.
+
+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 to-night.  I'm getting
+just about tired of having a bunch of Jews and Yankees think I'm
+a nigger.  Uff!  I hate them!"
+
+"T'resa, Mist' Wrenn's just inherited two thousand dollars, and
+he's going to take that upper hall room."  Mrs. Zapp beamed with
+maternal fondness at the timid lodger.
+
+But the gallant friend of Pinkertons faced her--for the first
+time.  "Waste his travel-money?" he was inwardly exclaiming as
+he said:
+
+"But I thought you had some one in that room.  I heard som--"
+
+"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."
+
+"Co'se you'll keep your room if you do, Mist' Wrenn?"
+
+"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
+come--I'll want to come back here when I get back to New York.
+I won't be gone for more than, oh, probably not more than a year
+anyway, and--"
+
+"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 and made all mah plans--"
+
+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 wish--uh--I
+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 answer
+the door and--"
+
+Even the rooming-house worm was making small worm-like 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 notice we can expect.  He said he mightn't be going
+for a long time."
+
+"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
+up-stairs with a train of sighs.
+
+Mr. Wrenn looked as though sudden illness had overpowered him.
+But Theresa laughed, and remarked:  "You don't want to let Ma
+get on her high horse, Mr. Wrenn.  She's a bluff."
+
+With much billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her
+garments, she sailed to the cloudy mirror over the
+magazine-filled 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 woman as Miss Lee Theresa.
+
+"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 seem like a
+mean trick.  I s'pose I ought to pay her something extra."
+
+"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 to-night....
+I wish all those men wouldn't stare at a girl so.  I'm sure I
+don't see why they should stare at me."
+
+Mr. Wrenn nodded, but that didn't seem to be the right comment,
+so he shook his head, then looked frightfully embarrassed.
+
+"I went by that Armenian restaurant you were telling me about,
+Mr. Wrenn.  Some time I believe I'll go dine there."  Again she paused.
+
+He said only, "Yes, it is a nice place."
+
+Remarking to herself that there was no question about it,
+after all, he _was_ a little fool, Theresa continued the siege.
+"Do you dine there often?"
+
+"Oh yes.  It is a nice place."
+
+"Could a lady go there?"
+
+"Why, yes, I--"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"I should think so," he finished.
+
+"Oh!...  I do get so awfully tired of the greasy stuff Ma and
+Goaty dish up.  They think a big stew that tastes like
+dish-water 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 sadly.
+
+He had an inspiration.  Perhaps Miss Theresa could be persuaded
+to go out to dinner with him some time.  He begged:
+
+"Gee, I wish you'd let me take you up there some evening, Miss Zapp."
+
+"Now, didn't I tell you to call me `Miss Theresa'?  Well, I
+suppose you just don't want to be friends with me.  Nobody
+does."  She brooded again.
+
+"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 you
+`Miss Theresa,' and so I--"
+
+"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 I--um--let's see, I think I could go to-morrow evening."
+
+"Let's do it!  Shall I call for you, Miss--uh--Theresa?"
+
+"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
+Brass-button Man that he was "feeling pretty good 's evening."
+
+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 messenger-boy for having thus
+hinted, but hastily grimaced as the youngster showed signs of
+loud displeasure.
+
+
+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 semi-liquid 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 alligator-pears, 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
+_vis-a-vis_, a pale slithey lady in black, with the lines of a
+torpedo-boat:  "Try some of the stuffed vine-leaves, 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 vine-leaves, wheat _p'laf,
+bourm'_--twice on the order and hustle it."
+
+"When you get through listening to that man--he talks like a bar
+of soap--tell me what there is on this bill of fare that's safe
+to eat," snorted Theresa.
+
+"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
+any--oh, I thought they'd have stuff they call `Turkish Delight'
+and things like that."
+
+"`Turkish Delights' is cigarettes, I think."
+
+"Well, I know it isn't, because I read about it in a story in a
+magazine.  And they were eating it.  On the terrace....  What is
+that _shish kibub_?"
+
+"_Kebab_....  It's lamb roasted on skewers.  I know you'll like it."
+
+"Well, I'm not going to trust any heathens to cook my meat.
+I'll take some eggs and some of that--what was it the idiot was
+talking about--_berma_?"
+
+"_Bourma_....  That's awful nice.  With honey.  And do try some
+of the stuffed peppers and rice."
+
+"All right," said Theresa, gloomily.
+
+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 blue-gum 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 murmured to Theresa:
+
+"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 does he make you think--"
+
+"He's got on a dirty collar....  That waiter's awful slow....
+Would you please be so kind and pour me another glass of water?"
+
+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 resumed:
+
+"Have you been to `The Gold Brick' yet?"
+
+"No, I--uh--I don't go to the theater much."
+
+"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 go--this
+evening!"  He quivered with the adventure of it.
+
+"Why, I don't know; I didn't tell Ma I was going to be out.
+But--oh, I guess it would be all right if I was with you."
+
+"Let's go right up and get some tickets."
+
+"All right."  Her assent was too eager, but she immediately
+corrected that error by yawning, "I don't suppose I'd ought to
+go, but if you want to--"
+
+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 alive--that'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 ticket-seller, he demanded dollar seats just as
+though he had not been doing sums all the way up to prove that
+seventy-five-cent seats were the best he could afford.
+
+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
+money-making.  The swindlers were supermen--blonde 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?"
+
+"Sh-h-h-h-h-h!" said Theresa.
+
+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 some place
+and have something to eat."
+
+"All right."
+
+"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
+walking-stick.  His parting with Miss Theresa was intimate; he
+shook her hand warmly.
+
+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 hand-clasp; of polished desks and florid gentlemen who
+curtly summoned bank-presidents and who had--he tossed the
+bedclothes about in his struggle to get the word--who had a
+_punch!_
+
+He would do that Great Traveling of his in the land of Big
+Business!
+
+The five thousand princes of New York to protect themselves
+against the four million ungrateful slaves had devised the
+sacred symbols of dress-coats, 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 twenty-nine; those sermons on content; articles on
+"building up the rundown store by live advertising"; Kiplingesque
+stories about playing the game; and correspondence-school
+advertisements that shrieked, "Mount the ladder to thorough
+knowledge--the path to power and to the fuller pay-envelope."
+
+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 peril of his imagination.
+
+
+The eight-o'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 late.
+
+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 toward the door, with a scowl prepared.
+
+Mr. Wrenn seemed weary, and not so intimidated as usual.
+
+"Look here, Wrenn; you were just about two hours late this
+morning.  What do you think this office is?  A club or a
+reading-room 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 baby-shoe office pin-cushion on the manager's
+desk.  Mr. Wrenn eyed this, and said nothing.  The manager:
+
+"Hear what I said?  D'yuh think I'm talking to give my throat exercise?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn was stubborn.  "I couldn't help it."
+
+"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 necessary to us, and not simply an
+expense--"
+
+"Oh no, Mr. Guilfogle; honest, I didn't think--"
+
+"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 then, we can good and plenty get
+along without you."
+
+An old tale, oft told and never believed; but it interested Mr.
+Wrenn just now.
+
+"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 now!"
+
+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 eye-glasses
+slipped off his poor perspiring nose.  He begged, in sudden
+tones of old friendship:
+
+"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 thinking of leaving us!  There's no
+end of possibilities here."
+
+"Sorry," said the dogged soldier of dreams.
+
+"Why--" wailed that hurt and astonished victim of ingratitude,
+Mr. Guilfogle.
+
+"I'll leave the middle of June.  That's plenty of notice,"
+chirruped Mr. Wrenn.
+
+At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brass-button Man
+at his station before the Nickelorion, crying:
+
+"Say!  You come from Ireland, don't you?"
+
+"Now what would you think?  Me--oh no; I'm a Chinaman from Oshkosh!"
+
+"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?"
+
+"Donegal, o' course.  I was born there."
+
+Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn
+joyously added the new point of interest to a list ranging from
+Delagoa Bay to Denver.
+
+He skipped up-town, 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.
+Stars--steamer--temples, all these were his.  He owned them now.
+He was free.
+
+Lee Theresa sat waiting for him in the basement livingroom till
+ten-thirty 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.
+
+
+He stood before the manager's god-like desk on June 14, 1910.  Sadly:
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Guilfogle.  Leaving to-day.  I wish--Gee!
+I wish I could tell you, you know--about how much I appreciate--"
+
+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
+ink-well; glanced at the point of an indelible pencil with a
+manner of startled examination; tapped his desk-blotter 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 well-satisfied victim, with the imagination clean gone out
+of him, so that he took follow-up letters and the celerity of
+office-boys as the only serious things in the world.  He was
+strong, alive, not at all a bad chap, merely efficient.
+
+"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 need it, but gee!  I sure do
+appreciate it."
+
+"Say, I don't believe you're so plumb crazy about leaving us,
+after all, now that the cards are all dole out.  Straight now,
+are you?"
+
+"Yes, sir, it does make me feel a little blue--been here so
+long.  But it'll be awful good to get out at sea."
+
+"Yuh, I know, Wrenn.  I'd like to go traveling myself--I
+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, good-by, 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, good-by 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 eraser-dust from under his iron ink-well
+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 stupid guy like him."
+
+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
+green-and-crimson-paper label.
+
+"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. Gugglegiggle of the Graft Trust
+and--
+
+"Say, old man, joking aside, we're mighty sorry you're going
+and--uh--well, we'd like to give you something to show
+we're--uh--mighty 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 red-and-green label, Mr. Wrenn began to cry.
+
+
+He was lying abed at eight-thirty 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 given up.
+So there are men whom the fear of death has driven to suicide.
+
+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 week-day
+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 careful, to win the divine favor of
+Mortimer R. Guilfogle?
+
+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 abominably dangerous
+beasts in the Guatemala bush.
+
+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 wandering.
+
+He was always influenced by a sentence he had read somewhere
+about "one of those globe-trotters you meet carrying a
+monkey-wrench 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 battle-ships 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 glib persons wishing ten cents "for a place to sleep."
+
+When he had dallied through breakfast that particular morning he
+sat about.  Once he had pictured sitting about reading
+travel-books 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 gray-and-brown-patched coverlet seemed to trail all
+about the disordered room.
+
+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
+too blame much of the blame wharves."
+
+Early in the afternoon he went to a moving-picture show, but the
+first sight of the white giant figures bulking against the gray
+background was wearily unreal; and when the inevitable
+large-eyed black-braided Indian maiden met the canonical
+cow-puncher 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
+dashed into camp and summoned his braves to the war-path.
+
+Perhaps he could hide from thought at home.
+
+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 she moved slightly and groaned.
+
+Guiltily he tiptoed down-stairs 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
+humorous drawings.
+
+He casually noticed the "Help Wanted" advertisements.
+
+They suggested an uninteresting idea that somehow he might find
+it economical to go venturing as a waiter or farm-hand.
+
+And so he came to the gate of paradise:
+
+
+MEN WANTED.  Free passage on cattle-boats to Liverpool feeding
+cattle.  Low fee.  Easy work.  Fast boats.  Apply International
+and Atlantic Employment Bureau,--Greenwich Street.
+
+
+"Gee!" he cried, "I guess Providence has picked out my first
+hike for me."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HE STARTS FOR THE LAND OF ELSEWHERE
+
+
+
+
+
+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 junk-heap of nationalities with interested wonder.
+M. Baraieff rubbed his smooth wicked hands together and bowed a
+number of times.
+
+Confidentially leaning across the counter, Mr. Wrenn murmured:
+"Say, I read your ad. about wanting cattlemen.  I want to make
+a trip to Europe.  How--?"
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, yes, Mistaire.  I feex you up right away.
+Ten dollars pleas-s-s-s."
+
+"Well, what does that entitle me to?"
+
+"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.  Right away it goes.  Ten
+dollars pleas-s-s-s."
+
+"But when does the boat start?  Where does it start from?"  Mr.
+Wrenn was a bit confused.  He had never met a man who grimaced
+so politely and so rapidly.
+
+"Next Tuesday I send you right off."
+
+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 copper-plate
+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 servant-girls curtsied as though
+they were a hedge swayed by the wind, while Mr. Wrenn
+self-consciously hurried to get past them.
+
+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 pig-pen, "merely increased his joy in moving his belongings
+to a storage warehouse.
+
+Tuesday morning, clad in a sweater-jacket, tennis-shoes, an old
+felt hat, a khaki shirt and corduroys, carrying a suit-case
+packed to bursting with clothes and Baedekers, with one hundred
+and fifty dollars in express-company drafts craftily concealed,
+he dashed down to Baraieff's hole.  Though it was only
+eight-thirty, he was afraid he was going to be late.
+
+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
+shipping-office:  "Give bearer Ren as per inclosed receet one
+trip England catel boat charge my acct.  SYLVESTRE BARAIEFF, N. Y."
+
+
+Standing on the hurricane-deck of the Joy Line boat, with his
+suit-case 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 state-room, but was entitled to a place in a
+twelve-berth 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 sea-fabric of frosty blue that was shot through with
+golden threads when they passed lighthouses or ships.  At dawn
+he was weary, peppery-eyed, but he viewed the flooding light
+with approval.
+
+At last, Boston.
+
+The front part of the shipping-office on Atlantic Avenue was a
+glass-inclosed 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
+red-headed 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 suit-case, ready to skip out and go aboard a
+cattle-boat immediately.
+
+The shipping-agent glanced through the letter, then snapped:
+
+"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 late--or 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, Friday--you'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 off on a good boat
+Saturday instead, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Oh yes; I _would_.  I--"
+
+"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 rah-rah boys wanting to cross, and
+Canadians wanting to get back to England, and Jews beating it to
+Poland--to 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
+to--uh--make 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 cattle-boats.  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 of the
+cattlemen out there."
+
+"Yes, I see," Mr. Wrenn observed, as though he were ill, and
+toed an old almanac about the floor.  "Uh--Mr.--Trubiggs, is it?"
+
+"Yump.  Yump, my boy.  Trubiggs.  Tru by name and true by
+nature.  Heh?"
+
+This last was said quite without conviction.  It was evidently
+a joke which had come down from earlier years.  Mr. Wrenn
+ignored it and declared, as stoutly as he could:
+
+"You see, Mr. Trubiggs, I'd be willing to pay you--"
+
+"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, just a couple of days' wait?"
+
+"Oh yes, I _do_, Mr. Trubiggs."
+
+"Well, my list is really full--men waiting, too--but if it 'd be
+worth five dollars to you to--"
+
+"Here's the five dollars."
+
+The shipping-agent was disgusted.  He had estimated from Mr.
+Wrenn's cheap sweater-jacket and tennis-shoes that he would be
+able to squeeze out only three or four dollars, and here he
+might have made ten.  More in sorrow than in anger:
+
+"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 you want me to slip a little
+something extra to the agents--"
+
+Mr. Wrenn was too head-achy 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.  There!"  He almost snarled, so weary and discouraged
+was he.
+
+Now, Trubiggs was a warm-hearted rogue, and he liked the society
+of what he called "white people."  He laughed, poked a Pittsburg
+stogie at Mr. Wrenn, and consented:
+
+"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
+cattle-boat.  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
+lodging-house for his two nights in Boston.  "Tell the clerk
+that red-headed Trubiggs sent you, and he'll give you the best
+in the house.  Tell him you're a friend of mine."
+
+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 him for a thirty-five-cent bed.
+S' long."
+
+The caravan of Trubiggs's cattlemen who left for Portland by
+night steamer, Friday, was headed by a bulky-shouldered boss, who
+wore no coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open.  A
+motley troupe were the cattlemen--Jews with small trunks,
+large imitation-leather valises and assorted bundles, a stolid
+prophet-bearded procession of weary men in tattered derbies and
+sweat-shop clothes.
+
+There were Englishmen with rope-bound pine chests.  A
+lewd-mouthed American named Tim, who said he was a hatter out of
+work, and a loud-talking tough called Pete mingled with a
+straggle of hoboes.
+
+The boss counted the group and selected his confidants for the
+trip to Portland--Mr. Wrenn and a youth named Morton.
+
+Morton was a square heavy-fleshed 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
+soft-brown hair.  He was always wielding a pipe and artfully
+blowing smoke through his nostrils.
+
+Mr. Wrenn and he smiled at each other searchingly as the
+Portland boat pulled out, and a wind swept straight from the
+Land of Elsewhere.
+
+After dinner Morton, smoking a pipe shaped somewhat like a
+golf-stick head and somewhat like a toad, at the rail of the
+steamer, turned to Mr. Wrenn with:
+
+"Classy bunch of cattlemen we've got to go with.  Not!...  My
+name's Morton."
+
+"I'm awful glad to meet you, Mr. Morton.  My name's Wrenn."
+
+"Glad to be off at last, ain't you?"
+
+"Golly! I should say I _am!_"
+
+"So'm I.  Been waiting for this for years.  I'm a clerk for the
+P. R. R. in N' York."
+
+"I come from New York, too."
+
+"So?  Lived there long?"
+
+"Uh-huh, I--" began Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"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 second-class ticket
+back from Glasgow.  But I'm going to see England and France just
+the same.  Prob'ly Germany, too."
+
+"Second class?  Why don't you go steerage, and save?"
+
+"Oh, got to come back like a gentleman.  You know.  You're from
+New York, too, eh?"
+
+"Yes, I'm with an art-novelty company on Twenty-eighth Street.
+I been wanting to get away for quite some time, too....  How are
+you going to travel on ten dollars?"
+
+"Oh, work m' way.  Cinch.  Always land on my feet.  Not on my
+uppers, at that.  I'm only twenty-eight, but I've been on my
+own, like the English fellow says, since I was twelve....  Well,
+how about you?  Traveling or going somewhere?"
+
+"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 the Joy Line saying his prayers--I suppose he
+was--in a kind of shawl."
+
+"Well, well! You don't say so!"
+
+Distinctly, Mr. Wrenn felt that he was one of the gentlemen who,
+in Kipling, stand at steamer rails exchanging observations on
+strange lands.  He uttered, cosmopolitanly:
+
+"Gee! Look at that sunset.  Ain't that grand!"
+
+"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 thing--gets me going--I imagine I'm all
+sorts of places--on the Nile and so on."
+
+"Sure! That's just it.  Everything's so peaceful and natural.
+Just _is_.  Gives the imagination enough to do, even by itself,
+without having to have religion."
+
+"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 tacks--ain'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 high-browed, Mr. Morton."
+
+"Why, no.  Cer'nly not.  I understand.  Gwan."
+
+"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 robes--they
+look so--so way up--oh, I dunno just how to say it--so kind of
+_uplifted_."
+
+"Sure, I know.  Just the esthetic end of the game.  Esthetic,
+you know--the 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 though I
+believed in all sorts of things."
+
+"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
+gangs--don't stand for anything except the name.  But this comrade
+business--good stunt.  Brotherhood of man--real 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 fine flame of shared hope.
+
+"I wish I knew something about this socialism stuff," mused Mr.
+Wrenn, with tilted head, examining the burnt-umber edges of the
+sunset.
+
+"Great stuff.  Not working for some lazy cuss that's inherited
+the right to boss you.  And _international_ brotherhood, not just
+neighborhoods.  New thing."
+
+"Gee! I surely would like that, awfully," sighed Mr. Wrenn.
+
+He saw the processional of world brotherhood tramp steadily
+through the paling sunset; saffron-vestured Mandarin marching by
+flax-faced Norseman and languid South Sea Islander--the diverse
+peoples toward whom he had always yearned.
+
+"But I don't care so much for some of these ranting street-corner
+socialists, though," mused Morton.  "The kind that holler `Come
+get saved _our_ way or go to hell!  Keep off scab guides to prosperity.'"
+
+"Yuh, sure.  Ha! ha! ha!"
+
+"Huh! huh!"
+
+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 rah-rah boys that wear eye-glasses 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 you got to hand it to the street-corner
+shouters."
+
+"Yes, that's _so_.  Y' right there, I guess, all right."
+
+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 lunch-room by
+the boss, who cheerfully smoked his corn-cob and ejaculated to
+Mr. Wrenn and Morton such interesting facts as:
+
+"Trubiggs is a lobster.  You don't want to let the bosses bluff
+you aboard the _Merian_.  They'll try to chase you in where the
+steers'll gore you.  The grub'll be--"
+
+"What grub do you get?"
+
+"Scouse and bread.  And water."
+
+"What's scouse?"
+
+"Beef stew without the beef.  Oh, the grub'll be rotten.
+Trubiggs is a lobster.  He wouldn't be nowhere if 't wa'n't for me."
+
+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 pipe-valiant 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 trip and led, whooping, to the deck of the S.S. _Merian_.
+
+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 and rude passageways, as though
+they were prophesying death.
+
+But Mr. Wrenn, standing sturdily beside his suit-case 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 handkerchief-waving or tears than attends a ferry's leaving
+he mumbled:
+
+"Free, free, out to sea.  Free, free, that's _me!_"
+
+Then, "Gee!...  Gee whittakers!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HE BECOMES THE GREAT LITTLE BILL WRENN
+
+
+
+
+
+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 gunny-sacking, both
+could and would become daily a thicker smell, a stronger smell,
+a smell increasingly diverse and deadly.
+
+Though it was so late as eight bells of the evening, Pete, the
+tough factory hand, and Tim, the down-and-out hatter, were still
+playing seven-up at the dirty fo'c'sle table, while McGarver,
+under-boss of the Morris cattle gang, lay in his berth, heavily
+studying the game and blowing sulphurous fumes of Lunch Pail
+Plug Cut tobacco up toward Wrennie.
+
+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 loud-talking weakling, under
+Pete's domination.  Tim wore a dirty rubber collar without a
+tie, and his soul was like his neckware.
+
+McGarver, the under-boss, 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 thick-skinned deeply wrinkled low forehead.  He never
+undressed, but was always seen, as now, in heavy shoes and
+blue-gray woolen socks tucked over the bottoms of his overalls.
+He was gruff and kind and tyrannical and honest.
+
+Wrennie shook and drew his breath sharply as the foghorn yawped
+out its "Whawn-n-n-n" again, reminding him that they were
+still in the Bank fog; that at any moment they were likely to be
+stunned by a heart-stopping crash as some liner's bow burst
+through the fo'c'sle's walls in a collision.  Bow-plates
+buckling in and shredding, the in-thrust 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 They take all sorts of pains on Their own account as
+well as on his?
+
+But--just 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 up--up--up, like this, then down--down--down, as though
+it were going to sink?
+
+"How do yuh like de fog-horn, Wrennie?"
+
+Pete, the tough, spit the question up at him from a corner of
+his mouth.  "Hope we don't run into no ships."
+
+He winked at Tim, the weakling hatter, who took the cue and
+mourned:
+
+"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 down-stairs and tie up a bull in a storm.  Hully gee!
+Youse'll last quick on de game, Birdie!"
+
+"Oh, shut up," snapped Wrennie's friend Morton.
+
+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
+cattle-pen, of the gray-and-scarlet sweater-jacket which he had
+proudly and gaily purchased in New York for his work on the
+ship.  And the card-players assured him that his suit-case,
+which he had intrusted to the Croac ship's carpenter, would
+probably be stolen by "Satan."
+
+Satan!  Wrennie shuddered still more.  For Satan, the gaunt-jawed
+hook-nosed rail-faced head foreman, diabolically smiling when
+angry, sardonically sneering when calm, was a lean human
+whip-lash.  Pete sniggered.  He dilated upon Satan's wrath at
+Wrennie for not "coming across" with ten dollars for a bribe
+as he, Pete, had done.
+
+(He lied, of course.  And his words have not been given
+literally.  They were not beautiful words.)
+
+McGarver, the straw-boss, would always lie awake to enjoy a good
+brisk indecent story, but he liked Wrennie's admiration of him,
+so, lunging with his bull-like head out of his berth, he snorted:
+
+"Hey, you, Pete, it's time to pound your ear.  Cut it out."
+
+Wrennie called down, sternly, "I ain't no theological student,
+Pete, and I don't mind profanity, but I wish you wouldn't talk
+like a garbage-scow."
+
+"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 the wrist?"
+
+"Dry up!" irritatedly snapped a Canadian.
+
+"Aw, cut it out, you--," groaned another.
+
+"Shut up," added McGarver, the straw-boss.  "Both of you."
+Raging:  "Gwan to bed, Pete, or I'll beat your block clean off.
+I mean it, see?  _Hear me?_"
+
+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 sickening motion kept up,
+Wrennie had to take to a boat with Satan.
+
+The fingers of Wrennie curled into shape for strangling some one.
+
+When Pete was asleep he worried off into thin slumber.
+
+Then, there was Satan, the head boss, jerking him out of his
+berth, stirring his cramped joints to another dawn of
+drudgery--two hours of work and two of waiting before the daily
+eight-o'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 whom he did not in the least like.
+
+Through the damp gray sea-air he staggered hungrily along the
+gangway to the hatch amidships, and trembled down the iron
+ladder to McGarver's crew 'tween-decks.
+
+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 water-butt, 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
+reformed character.
+
+McGarver cheered, for such kicks were a rule of the game.
+
+"Good work," ironically remarked Tim, the weakling hatter.
+
+"You go to hell," snapped Wrennie, and Tim looked much more
+respectful.
+
+But Wrennie lost this credit before they had finished feeding
+out the hay, for he grew too dizzy to resent Tim's remarks.
+
+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 close-wound choking shroud and the
+darkness was made only a little pale by light coming through
+dust-caked port-holes, he sneezed and coughed and grunted till
+he was exhausted.  The floating bits of hay-dust 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 wabbled on until he finished the
+work, fifteen minutes after Tim had given out.
+
+He crawled up to the main deck and huddled in the shelter of a
+pile of hay-bales where Pete was declaring to Tim and the rest
+that Satan "couldn't never get nothing on him."
+
+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?  Watson, the needle, quick!"  [Applause
+and laughter.]
+
+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 once.  To the north was a liner bound for home.
+
+Home!  Gee!  That _was_ rubbing it in!  While at work, whether
+he was sick or not, he could forget--things.  But the liner,
+fleeting on with bright ease, made the cattle-boat seem about
+as romantic as Mrs. Zapp's kitchen sink.
+
+Why, he wondered--"why had he been a chump?  Him a wanderer?
+No; he was a hired man on a sea-going dairy-farm.  Well, he'd get
+onto this confounded job before he was through with it, but
+then--gee! back to God's Country!"
+
+
+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 after-deck, 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 name--Tim, the hatter, who had become weakly alarmed and
+admiring as Wrennie learned to rise feeling like a boy in early
+vacation-time, and to find shouting exhilaration in sending a
+forkful of hay fifteen good feet.
+
+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 quite systematically.
+
+To McGarver he had been "Bill Wrenn" since the fifth day, when
+he had kept a hay-bale from slipping back into the hold on the
+boss's head.  Satan and Pete still called him "Wrennie," but he
+was not thinking about them just now with Tim listening
+admiringly to his observations on socialism.
+
+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 hills--his first foreign land--whose 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 Street.  But now he had seen them
+beckoning in Wanderland.
+
+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 Goity."
+
+"You shut up!" commanded Bill Wrenn.
+
+"Say, be careful!" the awakened Tim implored of him.
+Pete snorted:  "Who says to `shut up,' hey?  Who was it, Satan?"
+
+From the capstan, where he was still smoking, the head foreman
+muttered:  "What's the odds?  The little man won't say it again."
+
+Pete stood by Bill Wrenn's mattress.  "Who said `shut up'?"
+sounded ominously.
+
+Bill popped out of bed with what he regarded as a vicious
+fighting-crouch.  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 want to sleep."
+
+"Oh!  You want to sleep.  Little mollycoddle wants to sleep,
+does he?  Come here!"
+
+The tough grabbed at Bill's shirt-collar 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 pounding him.
+
+Morton and honest McGarver, the straw-boss, 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."
+
+"Right," commended Morton.
+
+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
+fellow-bruiser.
+
+They circled.  Pete stuck out his foot gently.  Morton sprang
+in, bawling furiously, "None o' them rough-and-tumble tricks."
+
+"Right-o," added McGarver.
+
+Pete scowled.  He was left powerless.  He puffed and grew dizzy
+as Bill Wrenn danced delicately about him, for he could do
+nothing without back-street 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 jaw.
+
+Pete sent his opponent spinning with a back-hander 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 strength.
+
+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 whirlwind of fists.
+
+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 hoss--Bill, old
+hoss," groaned Pete.
+
+He was permitted to sneak off into oblivion.
+
+Bill Wrenn went below.  In the dark passage by the fidley he
+fell to tremorous weeping.  But the brackish hydrant water that
+stopped his nose-bleed saved him from hysterics.  He climbed to
+the top deck, and now he could again see his brother pilgrim,
+the moon.
+
+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."
+
+"Git out," said Satan.
+
+Tim fled.
+
+Morton came up, looked at Bill Wrenn, pounded him on the shoulder,
+and went off to his mattress.  The other stiffs slouched away,
+but McGarver and Satan were still discussing the fight.
+
+Snuggling on the hard black pile of tarpaulins, Bill talked to
+them, warmed to them, and became Mr. Wrenn.  He announced his
+determination to wander adown every shining road of Europe.
+
+"Nice work."  "Sure."  "You'll make a snappy little ole
+globe-trotter."  "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 irony.  "Sure.
+Go ahead.  Like to hear your plans."
+
+McGarver broke in:  "Cut that out, Marvin.  You're a `Satan' all
+right.  Quit your kidding the little man.  He's all right.  And
+he done fine on the job last three-four days."
+
+Lying on his mattress, Bill stared at the network of the
+ratlines against the brilliant sky.  The crisscross lines made
+him think of the ruled order-blanks of the Souvenir Company.
+
+"Gee!" he mused, "I'd like to know if Jake is handling my work
+the way we--they--like 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 to-night!
+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 landing-stage at
+Birkenhead, Liverpool's Jersey City, resting in the sunshine
+after her voyage, while the cattle were unloaded.  They had
+encountered fog-banks 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 fog-wet
+deck unearthily glancing with mist-lights.
+
+Now he was seeing his first foreign city, and to Morton,
+stolidly curious beside him, he could say nothing save "Gee!"
+With church-tower and swarthy dome behind dome, Liverpool lay
+across the Mersey.  Up through the Liverpool streets that ran
+down to the river, as though through peep-holes slashed straight
+back into the Middle Ages, his vision plunged, and it wandered
+unchecked through each street while he hummed:
+
+"Free, free, in Eu-ro-pee, that's _me!_"
+
+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 hay-bales.  Tim, the hatter,
+danced a limber foolish jig upon the deck, and McGarver
+bellowed, "The bon-nee bon-nee banks of Loch Lo-o-o-o-mond."
+
+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, see?
+Gotta do what I say, savvy?  Tim, walk on your ear."
+
+The hatter laid his head on the deck and waved his anemic legs
+in accordance with directions from Colonel Armour (late Wrenn).
+
+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 water-butts, dragged out their
+luggage, and descended to the dock-house.
+
+As the cattlemen passed Bill Wrenn and Morton, shouting
+affectionate good-bys 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 sea-motion 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
+sign, "Cocoa House.  Tea _Id_."
+
+England!
+
+"Now for some real grub!" cried Morton.  "No more scouse and
+willow-leaf tea."
+
+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 whose hunger for dreams and hunger for meat-pies are
+satisfied together.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HE FINDS MUCH QUAINT ENGLISH FLAVOR
+
+
+
+
+
+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 where you get the
+real quaint flavor."
+
+Thus Morton, to the glowing Mr. Wrenn, as they turned into St.
+George's Square, noting the Lipton's Tea establishment.  _Sir_
+Thomas Lipton--wasn't he a friend of the king?  Anyway, he was
+some kind of a lord, and he owned big society racing-yachts.
+
+In the grandiose square Mr. Wrenn prayerfully remarked, "Gee!"
+
+"Greek temple.  Fine," agreed Morton.
+
+"That's St. George's Hall, where they have big organ concerts,"
+explained Mr. Wrenn.  "And there's the art-gallery across the
+Square, and here's the Lime Street Station."  He had studied his
+Baedeker as club women study the cyclopedia.  "Let's go over and
+look at the trains."
+
+"Funny little boxes, ain't they, Wrenn, them cars!  Quaint
+things.  What is it they call 'em--carriages?  First, second,
+third class...."
+
+"Just like in books."
+
+"Booking-office.  That's tickets....  Funny, eh?"
+
+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. Wrenn begged:
+
+"What's the matter, old man?"
+
+"Oh, nothing.  Just thinking." Morton smiled artificially.
+He added, presently:  "Well, old Bill, got to make the break.
+Can't go on living on you this way."
+
+"Aw, thunder!  You ain't living on me.  Besides, I want you to.
+Honest I do.  We can have a whole lot better time together, Morty."
+
+"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 says."
+
+"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.  Honest, I want you to."
+
+"Hunka.  Don't believe you'd care for the kind of knockabout
+jobs I'll have to get."
+
+"Sure I would.  Aw, come on, Morty.  I--"
+
+"You're too level-headed 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 thing--see
+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 had--you ain't neither too highbrow or
+too lowbrow.  And this friendship business--it means such an
+awful lot.  It's like what I was reading about--something by
+Elbert Hubbard or--thunder, 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's--this friendship business is just like those old crusaders--
+you know--they'd start out on a fine morning--you 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 alone--not
+knowing many folks.  You know how it is in a New York
+rooming-house.  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 floors!"
+
+Morton patted his arm and did not answer for a while.  Then:
+
+"Yuh, I know how you mean.  And it's good of you to like beating
+it around with me.  But you sure got the exaggerated idee of me.
+And you'd get sick of the holes I'm likely to land in."
+
+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 to--oh, St. Petersburg....  You made good on the _Merian_,
+all right.  But you do like things shipshape."
+
+"Oh, I'd--"
+
+"We might stay friends if we busted up now and met in New York
+again.  But not if you get into all sorts of bum places w--"
+
+"Why, look here, Morty--"
+
+"--with me....  However, I'll think it over.  Let's not talk
+about it till to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, please do think it over, Morty, old man, won't you?  And
+to-night you'll let me take you to a music-hall, won't you?"
+
+"Uh--yes," Morton hesitated.
+
+A music-hall--not 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
+nine-thirty.  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 respectable--also cheap.
+
+"No, no!" frowned Morton.  "Tell you what you do, Bill.  You go
+to a hotel, and I'll beat it down to a lodging-house on Duke
+Street....  Juke Street!...  Remember how I ran onto Pete on the
+street?  He told me you could get a cot down there for fourpence."
+
+"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 sleep a bit
+if--"
+
+"Say, for the love of Mike, Wrenn, get wise!  Get wise, son!
+I'm not going to sponge on you, and that's all there is to it."
+
+Bill Wrenn strode into their company for a minute, and quoth the
+terrible Bill:
+
+"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 lodging-house, or even walk the streets."
+
+"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, but always rejecting, nooks by lodge gates.
+
+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 seats.  Then the bobby can go
+soak his head."
+
+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 comfortable books.  All
+the while his chilled back was aching in new places.
+
+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 shoulder-blades.
+
+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 Waldorf-Astoria, 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 of the lot:
+
+"I say, you chaps, what are you doing there?"
+
+A reflective carter, who had been twisting two straws, ambled
+out of the shadow of the stable and prepared to do battle.
+
+"Say, old man, can't we sleep in your hay just to-night?" argued
+Morton.  "We're Americans.  Came over on a cattle-boat.  We
+ain't got only enough money to last us for food," while Mr.
+Wrenn begged, "Aw, please let us."
+
+"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 chaps been in Minnesota?"
+
+"Sure," lied Morton; "I've hunted bear there."
+
+"Oh, I say, bear now!  My brother's never written m--"
+
+"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 had never done:
+
+Alone.  Among the pines.  Dead o' winter.  Only one shell in his
+rifle.  Cold of winter.  Snow--deep snow.  Snow-shoes.  Hiking
+along--reg'lar mushing--packing grub to the lumber-camp.  Way up
+near the Canadian border.  Cold, terrible cold.  Stars looked
+like little bits of steel.
+
+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 shoe-packs.  Saw a bear loping along.  He had--Morton had--a
+.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 snow-shoes.  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--
+
+"What's a shoe-pack?"  the Englishman stolidly interjected.
+
+"Kind of a moccasin....  Great place, those woods.  Hope your
+brother gets the chance to get up there."
+
+"I say, I wonder did you ever meet him?  Scrabble is his name,
+Jock Scrabble."
+
+"Jock Scrabble--no, 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 chances there."
+
+The Englishman meditatively accepted a bad cigar from Mr. Wrenn.
+Suddenly:  "You chaps can sleep in the stable-loft if you'd
+like.  But you must blooming well stop smoking."
+
+So in the dark odorous hay-mow 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 was gone.  This note was pinned to his
+sleeve:
+
+
+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 hay-loft he glowered in a manner which was decidedly
+surly even for Bill Wrenn at a middle-aged 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 a cockroach in the
+salad-bowl.
+
+Mr. Wrenn was bored.  This seemed a very poor sort of man; a
+bloated Cockney, with a dirty neck-cloth, vile cuffs of grayish
+black, and a waistcoat cut foolishly high.
+
+"The owner said I could sleep here," he snapped.
+
+"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 punch this
+fellow as he'd punched Pete, as soon as not--or even sooner.
+
+"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 nowse."
+
+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 absent-minded 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
+grain-sack, 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 the stable with a
+jarring bump, and walked away, whistling:
+
+
+               "Come, oh come to our Sunday-school,
+               Ev-v-v-v-v-v-ry Sunday morn-ing."
+
+
+"Gee!" mourned Mr. William Wrenn, "and I thought I was getting
+this hobo business down pat....  Gee!  I wonder if Pete _was_ so
+hard to lick?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+HE IS AN ORPHAN
+
+
+
+
+
+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 red-brick
+house-rows, almost shocking in their lack of high front stoops.
+Along the country road he reflected:  "Wouldn't Morty enjoy
+this!  Farm-yard 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 garden-party, 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 Hoboken.
+
+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 staying--or at least
+two of its chimneys--and, marking it with a heavy cross and the
+announcement "This is my hotel where I am staying," he sent it
+to Charley Carpenter.
+
+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 of it.  He wasn't in the office.  He
+was in an English cathedral close!
+
+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 tap-room 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, be-spelled 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."
+Lonely--the word obsessed him.  Doubtless he was a bit mad, as
+are all the isolated men who sit in distant lands longing for
+the voices of friendship.
+
+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 dutifully stared out of
+the door till they reached Oxford.
+
+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 Fear--fear of
+all this alien world that didn't care whether he loved it or not.
+
+He sat thinking of the cattle-boat 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 same boat.
+
+No!  He was going to "stick it out somehow, and get onto the
+hang of all this highbrow business."
+
+Then he said:  "Oh, darn it all.  I feel rotten.  I wish I was dead!"
+
+
+"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.  But--oh
+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, the cultured
+American, severely.
+
+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 eye-glasses, a fair family income, a chatty good-fellowship
+at the Faculty Club, and a chilly contemptuousness in his
+rhetoric class-room at Leland Stanford, Jr., University.  He
+wrote poetry, which he filed away under the letter "P" in his
+letter-file.
+
+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 was drowned."
+
+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 old book.
+
+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 thanks.
+
+"Pretty book," said Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"And did you note who used it?"
+
+"Uh--yes."  He hastily glanced at the placard.  "Mr. Fitzgerald.
+Say, I think I read some of that Rubaiyat.  It was something
+about a Persian kitten--I don't remember exactly."
+
+Dr. Mittyford walked bitterly to the other end of the room.
+
+
+About eight in the evening Mr. Wrenn's landlady knocked with,
+"There's a gentleman below to see you, sir."
+
+"Me?" blurted Mr. Wrenn.
+
+He galloped down-stairs, panting to himself that Morton had at
+last found him.  He peered out and was overwhelmed by a
+motor-car, with Dr. Mittyford waiting in awesome fur coat,
+goggles, and gauntlets, centered in the car-lamplight that
+loomed in the shivery evening fog.
+
+"Gee! just like a hero in a novel!" reflected Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"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 Brempton--one of the few untouched old inns?"
+
+"That would be nice," said Mr. Wrenn, unenthusiastically.
+
+His chilliness impressed Dr. Mittyford, who promptly told one of
+the best of his well-known whimsical yet scholarly stories.
+
+"Ha! ha!" remarked Mr. Wrenn.
+
+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 just going to be
+_me_, and if he don't like it he can go to the dickens."
+
+So he was gentle and sympathetic and talked West Sixteenth
+Street slang, to the rhetorician's lofty amusement.
+
+The tap-room 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 wriggled and excitedly murmured,
+"Gee!...  Gee whittakers!"
+
+The shadows slipped in arabesques over the dust-gray 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
+ear-ringed peddler with his beetle-black 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 old-time settle, looked
+devil-may-care, 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
+gipsy--you know--sneaking through the hedges around the
+manner-house to steal the earl's daughter, huh?"
+
+"Yes....  You're a romanticist, then, I take it?"
+
+"Yes, I guess I am.  Kind of.  Like to read romances and stuff."
+He stared at Mittyford beseechingly.  "But, say--say, 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 plesaunces--avenues and
+plesuances.  There must be a certain portion of the tripper
+class which really has the ability `for to admire and for to see.'"
+
+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.
+
+"But--what 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 glimmering of what this difficile thing `culture'
+really is."
+
+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 friends--a "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.  Homey--that was what _he_ was going to be!
+He happily and thoughtfully ran his finger about the rim of his
+glass ten times.
+
+"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 shirt-front 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 good-naturedly
+picked a path among them, and fell asleep in the motor-car.  All
+the ride back he made soft mouse-like sounds of snoring.
+
+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 crow-tracks.
+
+He packed his suit-case 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 Strand roared with lively traffic.
+
+But the gray stonework and curtained windows of the
+Anglo-Southern 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:
+
+"Please--uh--please will you be so kind and tell me where I can
+ship as a steward for the Med--"
+
+"None needed."
+
+"Or Spain?  I just want to get any kind of a job at first.
+Peeling potatoes or--It don't make any difference--"
+
+"None needed, I said, my man." The porter examined the hall
+clock extensively.
+
+Bill Wrenn suddenly popped into being and demanded:  "Look here,
+you; I want to see somebody in authority.  I want to know what
+I _can_ ship as."
+
+The porter turned round and started.  All his faith in mankind
+was destroyed by the shock of finding the fellow still there.
+"Nothing, I told you.  No one needed."
+
+"Look here; can I see somebody in authority or not?"
+
+The porter was privately esteemed a wit at his motherin-law'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 zig-zagged 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 down to the docks and try to ship there.
+Prob'ly.  Gee!  I feel rotten!"
+
+
+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
+meat-pies and St. Paul's and aeroplanes and Shelley and fog and
+tan shoes.  In fact, she supposed him to be a gentleman and
+scholar, not an American.
+
+He went to the cocoa-house daily.
+
+She let him know that he was a man and she a woman, young and
+kindly, clear-skinned and joyous-eyed.  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 intrigue.
+
+That opinion of his actions did not keep him from tingling one
+lunch-time when he suddenly understood that she was expecting to
+be tempted.  He tempted her without the slightest delay,
+muttering,  "Let's take a walk this evening?"
+
+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 history--"kings and gwillotines and
+stuff"--demanded real Wrenn thrills.
+
+They were to meet on a street-corner at eight.  At seven-thirty
+he was waiting for her.  At eight-thirty he indignantly walked
+away, but he hastily returned, and stood there another
+half-hour.  She did not come.
+
+When he finally fled home he was glad to have escaped the great
+mystery of life, then distressingly angry at the waitress, and
+desolate in the desert stillness of his room.
+
+
+He sat in his cold hygienic uncomfortable room on Tavistock
+Place trying to keep his attention on the "tick, tick, tick,
+tick" of his two-dollar watch, but really cowering before the
+vast shadowy presences that slunk in from the hostile city.
+
+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 suit-case
+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 move his cramped legs.
+
+The tension could not last. For a time he was able to laugh at
+himself, and he made pleasant pictures--Charley 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 brown-eyed 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 brown-eyed girl.
+
+"Friends, that's what I want.  You bet!"  That was the work
+he was going to do--make acquaintances.  A girl who would
+understand him, with whom he could trot about, seeing
+department-store windows and moving-picture shows.
+
+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 one to work with and work for."
+
+It seemed to him that he had mapped out his whole life.  He sat
+back, satisfied, and caught the sound of emptiness in his room,
+emphasized by the stilly tick of his watch.
+
+"Oh--Morton--" he cried.
+
+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 street-lamp cast
+on the wet pavement.  A cat gray as dish-water, 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 window.
+
+He smoothed the sides of his suit-case 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
+withdraw with sinister alertness till he sprang up and opened
+the door wide.
+
+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 wholesome scorn of his
+nervousness.
+
+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 away, to get back to America, where
+he would be safe.
+
+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 hair--as 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 prison-land.
+
+This was the morning of August 3, 1910, two weeks after his
+arrival in London, and twenty-two days after victoriously
+reaching England, the land of romance.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+HE MEETS A TEMPERAMENT
+
+
+
+
+
+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 rooming-house on Tavistock Place.
+After his night of fear and tragic portents he resented the
+general flowered-paper-napkin aspect of Mrs. Cattermole's
+establishment.  "Hungh!" he grunted, as he jabbed at the fringed
+doily under the silly pink-and-white tea-cup on the
+green-and-white 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 and cathedrals and little duckies
+on Mrs. Cattermole's pink-and-white wall.
+
+He wished it were possible--which, of course, it was not--to go
+back to the St. Brasten Cocoa House, where he could talk to the
+honest flat-footed galumping waitress, and cross his feet under
+his chair.  For here he was daintily, yes, daintily, studied by
+the tea-room habitues--two bouncing and talkative daughters of an
+American tourist, a slender pale-haired English girl student of
+Assyriology with large top-barred eye-glasses 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, startled.
+
+Mr. Wrenn gasped.  With his head solemnly revolving, his eyes
+followed the young woman about his table to a table opposite.
+"A freak!  Gee, what red hair!" was his private comment.
+
+A slender girl of twenty-eight or twenty-nine, clad in a
+one-piece gown of sage-green, its lines unbroken by either belt
+or collar-brooch, fitting her as though it had been pasted on,
+and showing the long beautiful sweep of her fragile thighs and
+long-curving 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 dead-white
+skin of her bored sensitive face.  Bored blue-gray eyes, with
+pathetic crescents of faintly violet-hued 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.
+
+Such was the new patron of Mrs. Cattermole.
+
+She stared about the tea-room 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 deep-cleft wrinkle
+of ennui over her nose, and two little indentations, like the
+impressions of a box corner, in her forehead over her brows.
+
+Mr. Wrenn's gaze ran down the line of her bosom again, and he
+wondered at her hands, which touched the heavy bread-and-butter
+knife as though it were a fine-point 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 finger-nails in my life."  Instead of such
+smoothly rounded nails as Theresa Zapp displayed, the new young
+lady had nails narrow and sharp-pointed, the ends like little
+triangles of stiff white writing-paper.
+
+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 trolley-car, yawned delicately, and forgot him.
+
+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.  For--the freak girl wasn't wearing corsets!
+
+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
+sage-green crash gown.
+
+"Golly!" he said to himself; "of all the doggone cloth for a
+dress!  Reg'lar gunny-sacking.  She's skinny, too.  Bright-red
+hair.  She sure is the prize freak.  Kind of good-looking,
+but--get a brick!"
+
+He hated to rule so clever-seeming a woman quite out of court.
+But he remembered her scissors glance at him, and his soft
+little heart became very hard.
+
+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's-meat-man 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
+that red-headed lady would be interestin' to know."
+
+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 lately.
+
+A man came, an Englishman in a high offensively well-fitting
+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 in the path.
+
+As half-dusk made the quiet street even more detached, he sat on
+the steps of his rooming-house on Tavistock Place, keeping
+himself from the one definite thing he wanted to do--the thing
+he keenly imagined a happy Mr. Wrenn doing--dashing over to the
+Euston Station to find out how soon and where he could get a
+train for Liverpool and a boat for America.
+
+A girl was approaching the house.  He viewed her carelessly,
+then intently.  It was the freak lady of Mrs. Cattermole's Tea
+House--the corsetless young woman of the tight-fitting crash gown
+and flame-colored hair.  She was coming up the steps of his house.
+
+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
+incognito, seeing the sights.  She was a noble.  She was--
+
+Above him a window opened.  He glanced up.  The countess incog.
+was leaning out, scanning the street uncaringly.  Why--her
+windows were next to his! He was living next room to an unusual
+person--as unusual as Dr. Mittyford.
+
+He hurried up-stairs 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 friends--well, not started, but started
+starting--then he got confused, but the idea was a flame to warm
+the fog-chilled spaces of the London street.
+
+At his Cattermole breakfast he waited long.  She did not come.
+Another day--but 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 down with her back to him.
+
+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
+Englishwoman--prob'ly a bloomin' stoodent" he scorned, and so
+settled _her!_  Also he told her, by telepathy, that her new
+gown was freakier than ever--a pale-green thing, with large
+white buttons.
+
+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 gas-light over her
+head as she moved back against the wall and stood waiting for
+him to pass.  She smiled very doubtfully, distantly--the 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 such a huge heavy fringed Turkish bath-towel as he
+had never seen before.
+
+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 of his dreams.
+
+Napping in his room in the afternoon, Mr. Wrenn heard slight
+active sounds from her, next room.  He hurried down to the stoop.
+
+She stood behind him on the door-step, 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 me--I'm an American; I'm a stranger in London--I
+want to go to a good play or something and what would I--what
+would be good--"
+
+"I don't know, reahlly," she said, with much hauteur.
+"Everything's rather rotten this season, I fancy."  Her voice
+ran fluting up and down the scale.  Her a's were very broad.
+
+"Oh--oh--y-you _are_ English, then?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Why--uh--"
+
+"_Yes!_"
+
+"Oh, I just had a fool idea maybe you might be French."
+
+"Perhaps I am, y' know.  I'm not reahlly English," she said, blandly.
+
+"Why--uh--"
+
+"What made you think I was French?  Tell me; I'm interested."
+
+"Oh, I guess I was just--well, it was almost make-b'lieve--how
+you had a castle in France--just a kind of a fool game."
+
+"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 hand and observed
+him curiously.
+
+"Oh, nothing much more.  You were a countess--"
+
+"Please!  Not just `were.'  Please, sir, mayn't I be a countess now?"
+
+"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 treasure-chamber--you
+see, your dad--your father, I should say--he was a cranky old
+Frenchman--just in the story, you know.  He didn't think you
+could do anything yourself about him being mysteriously sick.
+So one night you--"
+
+"Oh, was it dark?  Very _very_ dark?  And silent?  And my
+footsteps rang on the hollow flagstones?  And I swiped the gold
+and went forth into the night?"
+
+"Yes, _yes!_  That's it."
+
+"But why did I swipe it?"
+
+"I'm just coming to that," he said, sternly.
+
+"Oh, please, sir, I'm awful sorry I interrupted."
+
+"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, so I can
+marry the _maire?_"
+
+"Nope," firmly, "you got to--Say, _gee!_ I didn't expect to
+tell you all this make-b'lieve....  I'm afraid you'll think
+it's awful fresh of me."
+
+"Oh, I loved it--really I did--because 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 me--you live in this same house, don't you?
+Please tell me that you're not an interesting Person.  Please!"
+
+"I--gee! I guess I don't quite get you."
+
+"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."
+
+"No, I'm afraid not; I'm just a kind of clerk."
+
+"Good!  Good!  My dear sir--whom I've never seen before--have 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 talk--they're
+just like Kipling's bandar-log--What is it?
+
+
+               "See us rise in a flung festoon
+               Half-way up to the jealous moon.
+               Don't you wish you--
+
+
+could know all about art and economics as we do?'  That's what
+they say.  Umph!"
+
+Then she wriggled her fingers in the air like white butterflies,
+shrugged her shoulders elaborately, rose from the rail, and sat
+down beside him on the steps, quite matter-of-factly.
+
+He gould feel his temple-pulses beat with excitement.
+
+She turned her pale sensitive vivid face slowly toward him.
+
+"When did you see me--to make up the story?"
+
+"Breakfasts.  At Mrs. Cattermole's."
+
+"Oh yes....  How is it you aren't out sight-seeing?  Or is it
+blessedly possible that you aren't a tripper--a tourist?"
+
+"Why, I dunno."  He hunted uneasily for the right answer.
+"Not exactly.  I tried a stunt--coming over on a cattle-boat."
+
+"That's good.  Much better."
+
+She sat silent while, with enormous and self-betraying pains to
+avoid detection, he studied her firm thin brilliantly red lips.
+At last he tried:
+
+"Please tell me something about London.  Some of you English--
+Oh, I dunno.  I can't get acquainted easily."
+
+"My dear child, I'm not English!  I'm quite as American as
+yourself.  I was born in California.  I never saw England till two
+years ago, on my way to Paris.  I'm an art student....  That's
+why my accent is so perishin' English--I can't afford to be just
+_ordinary_ British, y' know."
+
+Her laugh had an October tang of bitterness in it.
+
+"Well, I'll--say, what do you know about that!" he said, weakly.
+
+"Tell me about yourself--since apparently we're now
+acquainted....  Unless you want to go to that music-hall?"
+
+"Oh no, no, no! Gee, I was just _crazy_ to have somebody to talk
+to--somebody nice--I was just about nutty, I was so lonely," all
+in a burst.  He finished, hesitatingly, "I guess the English are
+kinda hard to get acquainted with."
+
+"Lonely, eh?" she mused, abrupt and bluffly kind as a man, for
+all her modulating woman's voice.  "You don't know any of the
+people here in the house?"
+
+"No'm.  Say, I guess we got rooms next to each other."
+
+"How romantic!" she mocked.
+
+"Wrenn's my name; William Wrenn.  I work for--I used to work for
+the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company.  In New York."
+
+"Oh.  I see.  Novelties?  Nice little ash-trays with `Love from
+the Erie Station'?  And woggly pin-cushions?"
+
+"Yes!  And fat pug-dogs with black eyes."
+
+"Oh no-o-o! Please not black!  Pale sympathetic blue eyes--nice
+honest blue eyes!"
+
+"Nope.  Black.  Awful black....  Say, gee, I ain't talking too
+nutty, am I?"
+
+"`Nutty'?  You mean `idiotically'?  The slang's changed
+since--Oh yes, of course; you've succeeded in talking quite
+nice and `idiotic.'"
+
+"Oh, say, gee, I didn't mean to--When you been so nice and
+all to me--"
+
+"Don't apologize!" Istra Nash demanded, savagely.  "Haven't they
+taught you that?"
+
+"Yes'm," he mumbled, apologetically.
+
+She sat silent again, apparently not at all satisfied with the
+architecture of the opposite side of Tavistock Place.
+Diffidently he edged into speech:
+
+"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 school-teacher.  I think he teaches in Leland
+Stamford College."
+
+"Leland Stanford?  You know him?"  She dropped into interested
+familiarity.
+
+"I met him at Oxford."
+
+"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; rather--oh, how shall I
+express it?--oh, shall we put it, finicky about things people
+have just told him to be finicky about."
+
+"Yes!" glowed Mr. Wrenn.
+
+To the luxury of feeling that he knew the unusual Miss Istra
+Nash he sacrificed Dr. Mittyford, scholarship and eye-glasses
+and Shelley and all, without mercy.
+
+"Yes, he was awfully funny.  Gee! I didn't care much for him."
+
+"Of course you know he's a great man, however?"  Istra was as
+bland as though she had meant that all along, which left Mr.
+Wrenn nowhere at all when it came to deciding what she meant.
+
+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 striking-lookin'!  Gee whittakers!"
+
+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 be careful."
+
+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
+suit-case:  "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 suit-case and, much relieved, went to bed to dream
+that he was a rabbit making enormously amusing jests, at which
+he laughed rollickingly in half-dream, till he realized that he
+was being awakened by the sound of long sobs from the room of
+Istra Nash.
+
+
+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 finger-tips rubbing nervously
+back and forth over the rough under-surface of the wood.
+He wanted to help her--the wonderful lady who had been sobbing
+in the night.  He had a plan, in which he really believed,
+to say to her, "Please let me help you, princess, jus' like I
+was a knight."
+
+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 fabric.
+
+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 they were sharing a secret, and said, quietly:
+
+"I thought quite a bit about you last evening.  I believe you
+really have an imagination, even though you are a salesman--I
+mean so many don't; you know how it is."
+
+"Oh yes."
+
+You see, Mr. Wrenn didn't know he was commonplace.
+
+"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
+Sunday-school and gave it a nice fresh frock.  It seemed that a
+gentleman-tabby 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 always keeps her nails clean?"
+
+"Yes!  That's _so!_"
+
+"So he turned nasty, and of course the nephew and ward clinched
+till death did them part--which, 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 with everybody's funeral I should have
+called it a real happy ending."
+
+Mr. Wrenn laughed gratefully, though uncertainly.  He knew that she
+had made jokes for him, but he didn't exactly know what they were.
+
+"The imaginative butler, he was rather good.  But the rest--Ugh!"
+
+"That must have been a funny play," he said, politely.
+
+She looked at him sidewise and confided,  "Will you do me a favor?"
+
+"Oh yes, I--"
+
+"Ever been married?"
+
+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 fingers carelessly on
+her slim exquisite knee had ever sobbed in the night.
+
+"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
+do--chloroform 'em quite cruelly and pin their poor little
+corpses out on nice clean corks....  You live alone in New York,
+do you?"
+
+"Y-yes."
+
+"Who do you play with--know?"
+
+"Not--not 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 intimate.
+
+"What do--oh, you know--people in New York who don't go to
+parties or read much--what do they do for amusement?  I'm so
+interested in types."
+
+"Well--" said he.
+
+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 know--just talk about--oh, cards and jobs and folks
+and things and--oh, you know; go to moving pictures and
+vaudeville and go to Coney Island and--oh, sleep."
+
+"But you--?"
+
+"Well, I read a good deal.  Quite a little.  Shakespeare and
+geography and a lot of stuff.  I like reading."
+
+"And how do you place Nietzsche?" she gravely desired to know.
+
+"?"
+
+"Nietzsche.  You know--the German humorist."
+
+"Oh yes--uh--let me see now; he's--uh--"
+
+"Why, you remember, don't you?  Haeckel and he wrote the great
+musical comedy of the century.  And Matisse did the
+music--Matisse and Rodin."
+
+"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 Company--he's
+a German Jew, I guess--learnt 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 there--you know, all
+those magicians and so on....  Readin's wonderful, ain't it!"
+
+"Um.  Yes."
+
+"I bet you read an awful lot."
+
+"Very little.  Oh--D'Annunzio and some Turgenev and a little
+Tourgenieff....  That last was a joke, you know."
+
+"Oh yes," disconcertedly.
+
+"What sorts of plays do you go to, Mr. Wrenn?"
+
+"Moving pictures mostly," he said, easily, then bitterly wished
+he hadn't confessed so low-life a habit.
+
+"Well--tell 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's--she's one of the Interesting People I
+spoke of--but you see you have been much more amusing.  Good night.
+You're lonely in London, aren't you?  We'll have to go sightseeing
+some day."
+
+"Yes, I am lonely!" he exploded.  Then, meekly:  "Oh, thank you!
+I sh'd be awful pleased to....  Have you seen the Tower, Miss Nash?"
+
+"No.  Never.  Have you?"
+
+"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 there, too?"
+
+"My dear man, I see I shall have to educate you.  Shall I?  I've
+been taken in hand by so many people--it would be a pleasure to
+pass on the implied slur.  Shall I?"
+
+"Please do."
+
+"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
+assembly-room and the G. A. R. hall.  I'll take you to the Tate
+Gallery." Then, very abruptly, "G' night," and she was gone.
+
+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 hers--I
+never knew there was such red lips.  And an artist--paints
+pictures!...  Read a lot--Nitchy--German musical comedy.  Wonder
+if that's that `Merry Widow' thing?...  That gray dress of hers
+makes me think of fog.  Cur'ous."
+
+In her room Istra Nash inspected her nose in a mirror, powdered,
+and sat down to write, on thick creamy paper:
+
+
+Skilly dear, I'm in a fierce Bloomsbury boarding-house--bores
+--except for a Phe-nomenon--little man of 35 or 40 with
+embryonic imagination & a virgin soul.  I'll try to keep from
+planting radical thoughts in the virgin soul, but I'm tempted.
+
+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 eye-glasses & your beatific Oxonian ignorance of poor
+eager America.
+
+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 cook--paint you cannot."
+
+He wins.  I can't sell a single thing to the art editors here or
+get one single order.  One horrid eye-glassed 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 picture.  I did.  Though you don't deserve it.
+
+Oh damn it, am I getting sentimental?  You'll read this at Petit
+Monsard over your drip & grin at your poor unnietzschean barbarian.
+                                                       I. N.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+HE TIFFINS
+
+
+
+
+
+Mr. Wrenn, chewing and chewing and chewing the cud of thought in
+his room next evening, after an hour had proved two things; thus:
+
+(a) The only thing he wanted to do was to go back to America at
+once, because England was a country where every one--native or
+American--was 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 somehow--he
+didn't know how--he was going to be her most intimate friend,
+because they were both Americans in a strange land and because
+they both could make-believe.
+
+Then he was proving that Istra would, and would not, be the
+perfect comrade among women when some one knocked at his door.
+
+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.]
+
+"Thank you.  S' good o' you," she said, hurriedly.  "G' night."
+
+She turned away, but he followed her into the hall, bashfully
+urging:  "Have you been to another show?  Gee! I hope you draw
+a better one next time 'n the one about the guy with the nephew."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+She glanced back in the half dark hall from her door--some
+fifteen feet from his.  He was scratching at the wall-paper
+with a diffident finger, hopeful for a talk.
+
+"Won't you come in?" she said, hesitatingly.
+
+"Oh, thank you, but I guess I hadn't better."
+
+Suddenly she flashed out the humanest of smiles, her blue-gray
+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't--do 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 woman smoke.
+
+With embarrassed politeness he glanced away from her as she
+threw back her head and inhaled deeply.  He blushingly
+scrutinized the room.
+
+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 black-and-gold 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
+chocolates.
+
+On the plain kitchen-ware table was spread a cloth of Reseda
+green, like a dull old leaf in color.  On it lay a gold-mounted
+fountain-pen, huge and stub-pointed; a medley of papers and torn
+envelopes, a bottle of Creme Yvette, and a silver-framed portrait
+of a lean smiling man with a single eye-glass.
+
+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:
+
+"So you were lonely when I knocked?"
+
+"Why, how--"
+
+"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 are--why, they're interesting.  Savvy--you
+see I _am_ an American--savvy?"
+
+"Why--uh--uh--uh--I d-don'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 now--and that I
+apparently can't do without--they 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 get sick of the
+game of being on intellectual heights as soon as New-Yorkers do.
+
+"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 growler--I hope
+you know growler-rushing--and 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 two--a talker and an audience--or
+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 then--oof!...  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 cattlemen--the
+cattle-ier they are, the more romantic they look, and then when
+you get to know them the chief trouble with them is that they're
+cattlemen."
+
+"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 have a small fire, shall we?  In the fireplace."
+
+"Yes!"
+
+She pulled the old-fashioned bell-cord, and the old-fashioned
+North Country landlady came--tall, thin, parchment-faced,
+musty-looking 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
+Christmas-story-book 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, Turk-wise, 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 always done."
+
+He slumped down by her, clasping his knees and trying to appear
+the dignified American business man in his country-house.
+
+She smiled at him intimately, and quizzed:
+
+"Tell me about the last time you sat with a girl by the fire.
+Tell poor Istra the dark secret.  Was she the perfect among
+pink faces?"
+
+"I've--never--sat--before--any--fireplace--with
+--any--one!  Except when I was about nine--one Hallowe'en--at a
+party in Parthenon--little town up York State."
+
+"Really?  Poor kiddy!"
+
+She reached out her hand and took his.  He was terrifically
+conscious of the warm smoothness of her fingers playing a soft
+tattoo on the back of his hand, while she said:
+
+"But you have been in love?  Drefful in love?"
+
+"I never have."
+
+"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 shop-girl in a flowered hat?
+She'd drag you to moving-picture shows....  Oh!  You didn't tell
+me that you went to moving pictures, did you?"
+
+"No!" he lied, fervently, then, feeling guilty, "I used to, but
+no more."
+
+"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
+broken-colorists 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 believe.  The very first one, really."
+
+"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
+thumb-tip 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 hand, he pantingly assured himself.
+
+Suddenly she gave his hand a parting pressure and sprang up.
+
+"Come.  We'll have tiffin, and then I'll send you away, and
+to-morrow 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 chair--just 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 course if Miss Nash used the word for evening supper, then he
+had been wrong.
+
+Istra whisked the writing-table with the Reseda-green 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 inches forward.
+
+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 narrow-minded, like Mrs. Zapp.  He worked so hard at not
+being narrow-minded like Mrs. Zapp that he started when he was
+called out of his day-dream by a mocking voice:
+
+"But you might look at the cakes.  Just once, anyway.  They are
+very nice cakes."
+
+"Uh--"
+
+"Yes, I know the wine is wine.  Beastly of it."
+
+"Say, Miss Nash, I did get you this time."
+
+"Oh, don't tell me that my presiding goddessship is over already."
+
+"Uh--sure!  Now I'm going to be a cruel boss."
+
+"Dee-lighted!  Are you going to be a caveman?"
+
+"I'm sorry.  I don't quite get you on that."
+
+"That's too bad, isn't it.  I think I'd rather like to meet a caveman."
+
+"Oh say, I know about that caveman--Jack London's guys.  I'm
+afraid I ain't one.  Still--on the cattle-boat--Say, I wish
+you could of seen it when the gang were tying up the bulls,
+before starting.  Dark close place 'tween-decks, with the steers
+bellowin' and all parked tight together, and the stiffs gettin'
+seasick--so 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'sle--men 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 Irish coast hills, and the comradeship
+of Morton.
+
+She interrupted only once, murmuring,  "My dear, it's a good
+thing you're articulate, anyway--" which didn't seem to have
+any bearing on hay-bales.
+
+She sent him away with a light  "It's been a good party, hasn't
+it, caveman?  (If you _are_ a caveman.)  Call for me tomorrow at
+three.  We'll go to the Tate Gallery."
+
+She touched his hand in the fleetingest of grasps.
+
+"Yes.  Good night, Miss Nash," he quavered.
+
+
+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
+stories in the pictures of Millais, that Istra suddenly demanded:
+
+"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 to play.  Come.
+I shall teach you.  I don't know why I should, either.  But--come."
+
+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 flower-girls and the gr-r-rand 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?"
+
+"Oh, Ceylon and English Breakfast and--oh--Chinese."
+
+"B--"
+
+"And golf tees!" he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in
+front atop the bus.
+
+"Puns are a beginning at least," she reflected.
+
+"But how many kinds of tea _are_ there, Istra?...  Oh say, I
+hadn't ought to--"
+
+"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
+Chinatown?  Being a New-Yorker, I don't suppose you do."
+
+"Oh yes.  And Italiantown.  I used to wander round there."
+
+"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 `cloud-covered mountain-tops.'  I suppose when the tops
+aren't cloud-covered they only charge three dollars a cup....
+But, serious-like, there's really only two kinds of teas--those
+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 to--hate!  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 last--not saying _anything!_  It's one of the rules in
+playing that mustn't be broken."
+
+He understood that better than most of the things she said.
+"Why," he exclaimed, "it's kind of talking sideways."
+
+"Why, yes.  Of course.  Talking sideways.  Don't you see now?"
+
+Gallant gentleman as he was, he let her think she had invented
+the phrase.
+
+She said many other things; things implying such vast learning
+that he made gigantic resolves to "read like thunder."
+
+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
+tea-room behind a candy-shop on Tottenham Court Road, a low room
+with white wicker chairs, colored tiles set in the wall, and
+green Sedji-ware jugs with irregular bunches of white roses.
+A waitress with wild-rose 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 cinnamon buns.
+
+"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 butter-measuring rod to test your
+skill, why, he always wears knee-breeches 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 least follow her when she observed:
+
+"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' outre-mer._
+
+
+               "Where, where are the hatter and hare,
+               And where is the best butter gone?"
+
+
+Presently:  "Come on.  Let's beat it down to Soho for dinner.
+Or--no!  Now you shall lead me.  Show me where you'd go for
+dinner.  And you shall take me to a music-hall, and make me
+enjoy it.  Now _you_ teach _me_ to play."
+
+"Gee! I'm afraid I don't know a single thing to teach you."
+
+"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 more.  I don't know how long we'll
+play or--Shall we?"
+
+"Oh yes!"
+
+"Now show me how you play."
+
+"I don't believe I ever did much, really."
+
+"Well, you shall take me to your kind of a restaurant."
+
+"I don't believe you'd care much for penny meat-pies."
+
+"Little meat-pies?"
+
+"Um-huh."
+
+"Little _crispy_ ones?  With flaky covers?"
+
+"Um-huh."
+
+"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 side-splitting 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 after-theater supper he talked of Theresa and South Beach, of
+Charley Carpenter and Morton--Morton--Morton.
+
+They sat, at midnight, on the steps of the house in Tavistock Place.
+
+"I do know you now, "she mused.  "It's curious how any two babes
+in a strange-enough woods get acquainted.  You _are_ a lonely
+child, aren't you?"  Her voice was mother-soft.  "We will play
+just a little--"
+
+"I wish I had some games to teach.  But you know so much."
+
+"And I'm a perfect beauty, too, aren't I?" she said, gravely.
+
+"Yes, you are!" stoutly.
+
+"You would be loyal....  And I need some one's admiration....
+Mostly, Paris and London hold their sides laughing at poor Istra."
+
+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 surface--down deep we're alike in being desperately
+unhappy because we never know what we're unhappy about.  Well--"
+
+He wanted to put his head down on her knees and rest there.  But
+he sat still, and presently their cold hands snuggled together.
+
+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 mind about that juggler!"
+
+"Nope.  Sorry.  Can't paint at all."
+
+"Ah, stuff!" with a rudeness quite masterful.  "I'll bet your
+pictures are corkers."
+
+"Um."
+
+"Please, would you let me see some of them some time.  I suppose
+it would bother--"
+
+"Come up-stairs.  I feel inspired.  You are about to hear some
+great though nasty criticisms on the works of the unfortunate
+Miss Nash."
+
+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 green-veined black
+paper and yanked out a dozen unframed pastels and wash-drawings
+which she scornfully tossed on the bed, saying, as she pointed to
+a mass of Marseilles roofs:
+
+"Do you see this sketch?  The only good thing about it is the
+thing that last art editor, that red-headed youth, probably
+didn't like.  Don't you hate red hair?  You see these
+ridiculous glaring purple shadows under the _clocher?_"
+
+She stared down at the picture interestedly, forgetting him,
+pinching her chin thoughtfully, while she murmured:  "They're
+rather nice.  Rather good.  Rather good."
+
+Then, quickly twisting her shoulders about, she poured out:
+
+"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 seventh-grade drawing-class in Dos
+Puentes.  And regard the bunch of lombardies in this other
+picture.  They look like umbrellas upside down in a silly
+wash-basin.  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 they're hideously out of drawing?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn's fancy was walking down a green lane of old France
+toward a white cottage with orange-trees gleaming against its
+walls.  In her pictures he had found the land of all his
+forsaken dreams.
+
+"I--I--I--" was all he could say, but admiration pulsed in it.
+
+"Thank you....  Yes, we _will_ play.  Good night.  To-morrow!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+HE ENCOUNTERS THE INTELLECTUALS
+
+
+
+
+
+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
+door-step, 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 door-step.  Sending for money--gee, he groaned, that
+was pretty dangerous.
+
+Besides, he didn't wish to go away.  Istra might come down and
+play with him.
+
+For three hours he writhed on that door-step, 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 truck-driver hates a motorman, so did he
+hate a pudgy woman across the street who peeped out from a
+second-story 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 been intending to go
+to all the time, and stalked away, ignoring the woman.
+
+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 not
+at all the way he phrased it.
+
+Then he bumped into a knot of people standing on the walk, and
+came down from the hilltops in one swoop.
+
+A crowd was collecting before Rothsey Hall, which bore the sign:
+
+
+GLORY--GLORY--GLORY
+
+
+SPECIAL SALVATION ARMY JUBILEE MEETING
+
+
+EXPERIENCES OF ADJUTANT CRABBENTHWAITE IN AFRICA
+
+
+He gaped at the sign.  A Salvationist in the crowd, trim and
+well set up, his red-ribboned Salvation Army cap at a jaunty
+angle, said,  "Won't you come in, brother?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn meekly followed into the hall.  Bill Wrenn was nowhere
+in sight.
+
+Now it chanced that Adjutant Crabbenthwaite told much of Houssas
+and the N'Gombi, of saraweks and week-long treks, but Mr.
+Wrenn's imagination was not for a second drawn to Africa, nor
+did he even glance at the sun-bonneted Salvationist women packed
+in the hall.  He was going over and over the Adjutant's
+denunciations of the Englishmen and Englishwomen who flirt on
+the mail-boats.
+
+Suppose it had been himself and his madness over Istra--at the
+moment he quite called it madness--that the Adjutant had denounced!
+
+A Salvationist near by was staring at him most accusingly....
+
+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 women--of all but nice
+good girls whom you could marry.  He remembered the Adjutant's
+thundered words:
+
+"Flirting you call it--flirting!  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 calling-cards and their jewels, with their hell-lighted
+talk of the sacrilegious follies of socialism and art and
+horse-racing, 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
+of kneeling in prayer like the iron men of Cromwell."
+
+Istra....  Card-playing....  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 him--the persuasive warmth of her
+perfect fingers; the curve of her backward-bent throat as she
+talked in her melodious voice of all the beautiful things made
+by the wise hands of great men.
+
+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 fresh."
+
+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 gas-fixture, and smeared the magazine covers, then cut
+the leaves and ruffled the margins to make the magazines look
+dog-eared with much reading; not because he wanted to appear to
+have read them, but because he felt that Istra would not permit
+him to buy things just for her.
+
+All this business with details so calmed him that he wondered if
+he really cared to see her at all.  Besides, it was so
+late--after half-past eight.
+
+"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 manner, but not for long enough to get
+much frightened about it.
+
+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 thirty-five or thirty-six years of stodgy environment.
+Cad or hero, filling scandal columns or histories, he would have
+been the same William Wrenn.
+
+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 and mustache he solemnly
+contemplated himself in the mirror.
+
+"I look like a damn rabbit," he scorned, and marched half-way to
+Istra's room.  He went back to change his tie to a navy-blue bow
+which made him appear younger.  He was feeling rather resentful
+at everything, including Istra, as he finally knocked and heard
+her  "Yes?  Come in."
+
+There was in her room a wonderful being lolling in a wing-chair,
+one leg over the chair-arm; 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 tortoise-shell spectacles, a soft shirt with a
+gold-plated collar-pin, and delicately gray garments.
+
+Istra was curled on the bed in a leaf-green silk kimono with a
+great gold-mounted medallion pinned at her breast.  Mr. Wrenn
+tried not to be shocked at the kimono.
+
+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 in."
+
+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 how awful glad she was to see him!
+
+"Mouse dear, this is one of our best little indecent poets, Mr.
+Carson Haggerty.  From America--California--too.  Mr. Hag'ty,
+Mr. Wrenn."
+
+"Pleased meet you," said both men in the same tone of annoyance.
+
+Mr. Wrenn implored:  "I--uh--I thought you might like to look at
+these magazines.  Just dropped in to give them to you."  He was
+ready to go.
+
+"Thank you--so good of you.  _Please_ sit down.  Carson and I
+were only fighting--he'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
+first-year art class at Berkeley."
+
+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 is getting the pickle-eye from all
+the real yearners.  What is your opinion?"
+
+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, anti-Stirner!"
+cried Carson Haggerty, kicking out each word with the assistance
+of his swinging left foot.
+
+Much relieved that the storm-center had passed over him, Mr.
+Wrenn sat on the front edge of a cane-seated chair, with the
+magazines between his hands, and his hands pressed between his
+forward-cocked 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
+jag-toothed grin of Carson Haggerty, who would laugh him out of
+the room and out of Istra's world.
+
+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 creepy-sounding words, like a bush-ape playing with
+scarlet spiders.  He talked insultingly of Yeats and the
+commutation of sex-energy and Isadora Duncan and the poetry of
+Carson Haggerty.
+
+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 till ten."
+
+Mr. Wrenn hadn't had any intention of going, so he merely smiled
+and bobbed his head to the room in general, and stammered
+"Y-yes," 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
+her--he'd sure do his best.  He'd be glad to write over to Mr.
+Guilfogle about it.  Anyway, she seemed willing to have him
+stick here.
+
+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, and he dared, "Mr. Carson is an awful well-educated man."
+
+"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 to-night.  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?  I
+won't, if you do mind."
+
+He awkwardly walked over and laid the magazines on the bed.
+"Why, it's all right....  What was it about some novelty--some
+article?  If there's anything I could do--anything--"
+
+"Article?"
+
+"Why, yes.  That you wanted to see me about."
+
+"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 eyes--even with this green kimono on--
+Come here, dear.  tell me what color my eyes are."
+
+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 gray-blue eyes of hers, but he could not calm himself
+enough to tell whether they were china-blue or basalt-black.
+
+"Tell me," she demanded; "_aren't_ they green?"
+
+"Yes," he quavered.
+
+"You're sweet," she said.
+
+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 friend's.
+
+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 her--and seeing again her white
+arms softly shadowed by her green kimono sleeves.
+
+No sight of Istra, no scent of her hair, no sound of her
+always-changing 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 marched into his room
+with the dignity of fury.
+
+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 walking-stick that he was sure
+she would like his carrying.  And it cost only two-and-six.
+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 he--the misunderstood--was 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 of her red hair.
+
+"Come," she said, abruptly.  "I want you to take me to
+Olympia's--Olympia Johns' flat.  I've been reading all the
+Balzac there is.  I want to talk.  Can you come?"
+
+"Oh, of course--"
+
+"Hurry, then!"
+
+He seized his small foolishly round hat, and he tucked his new
+walking-stick under his arm without displaying it too proudly,
+waiting for her comment.
+
+She led the way down-stairs and across the quiet streets and
+squares of Bloomsbury to Great James Street.  She did not even
+see the stick.
+
+She said scarce a word beyond:
+
+"I'm sick of Olympia's bunch--I never want to dine in Soho with
+an inhibition and a varietistic sex instinct again--_jamais de
+la vie._  But one has to play with somebody."
+
+Then he was so cheered that he tapped the pavements boldly with
+his stick and delicately touched her arm as they crossed the
+street.  For she added:
+
+"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 seltzer....  Poor
+Mouse, it shall have its play!"
+
+Olympia Johns' residence consisted of four small rooms.  When
+Istra opened the door, after tapping, the living-room 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 living-room 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 hog-like men lolling on the
+chests of workmen, which they seemed to enjoy more than the
+workmen.  By and by he ventured to scan the group.
+
+Carson Haggerty, the American poet, was there.  But the center
+of them all was Olympia Johns herself--spinster, thirty-four, 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 hands, never stopping in her machine-gun
+volley of words.
+
+"Yes, yes, yes, yes," she would pour out.  "Don't you _see?_
+We must do something.  I tell you the conditions are intolerable,
+simply intolerable.  We must _do_ something."
+
+The conditions were, it seemed, intolerable in the several
+branches of education of female infants, water rates in
+Bloomsbury, the cutlery industry, and ballad-singing.
+
+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 others.
+
+There were a Mr. and Mrs. Stettinius--she a poet; he a bleached
+man, with goatish whiskers and a sanctimonious white neck-cloth,
+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
+from Whitechapel, who loved to be shocked.
+
+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.
+
+Then came the superradicals, to confuse the radicals who
+confused Mr. Wrenn.
+
+For always there is a greater rebellion; and though you
+sell your prayer-book to buy Bakunine, and esteem yourself
+revolutionary to a point of madness, you shall find one who
+calls you reactionary.  The scorners came in together--Moe
+Tchatzsky, the syndicalist and direct actionist, and Jane
+Schott, the writer of impressionistic prose--and they sat
+silently sneering on a couch.
+
+Istra rose, nodded at Mr. Wrenn, and departed, despite Olympia's
+hospitable shrieks after them of  "Oh stay!  It's only a little
+after ten.  Do stay and have something to eat."
+
+Istra shut the door resolutely.  The hall was dark.  It was
+gratefully quiet.  She snatched up Mr. Wrenn's hand and held it
+to her breast.
+
+"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 more things incorrectly.
+You hated them, didn't you?"
+
+"Why, I don't think you ought to talk about them so severe," he
+implored, as they started down-stairs.  "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.  And that Mrs. Stettinius talked
+about Yeats so beautiful."
+
+"Oh, my dear, you make my task so much harder.  I want you to
+be different.  Can't you see your cattle-boat experience is realer
+than any of the things those half-baked thinkers have done?  I
+_know_.  I'm half-baked myself."
+
+"Oh, I've never done nothing."
+
+"But you're ready to.  Oh, I don't know.  I want--I wish Jock
+Seton--the filibuster I met in San Francisco--I 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 him, and he'll keep on
+hanging about the Greek girl.  Ungh!"
+
+"I don't know--I don't know--"
+
+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 different.  Even the
+country.  I'd like--Why couldn't we?"
+
+"Let's go out on a picnic to-morrow, Istra."
+
+"A picnic picnic?  With pickles and a pillow cushion and several
+kinds of cake?...  I'm afraid the Bois Boulogne has spoiled me
+for that....  Let me think."
+
+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_ adventure--your formula for it?...  Let's
+see; you take common roadside things seriously; you'd be dear
+and excited over a Red Lion Inn."
+
+"Are there more than one Red Li--"
+
+"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.  Shall we?"
+
+"Wh-h-h-h-y--"  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 demanded:
+
+"What?  Don't you want to?  With _me?_"
+
+He was up beside her, angry, dignified; a man.
+
+"Look here.  You know I want to.  You're the elegantest--I 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 want to do anything that would get
+people to talking about you."
+
+"Who would know?  Besides, my dear man, I don't regard it as
+exactly wicked to walk decently along a country road."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that.  Oh, please, Istra, don't look at me like
+that--like 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....  Come!  Shall
+we go?"
+
+"But wouldn't you rather wait till to-morrow?"
+
+"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 anti-smug anti-bourgeois
+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 below-stairs:  "Now wot do they want?
+It's eleven o'clock.  Aren't they ever done a-ringing and
+a-ringing?"
+
+The landlady, the tired thin parchment-faced 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 to-night.  We'll pay our rent and leave our things here."
+
+"Going off together--"
+
+"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 understand?"
+
+"Yes, miss, but--"
+
+"My good woman, do you realize that your `buts' are insulting?"
+
+"Oh, I didn't go to be insulting--"
+
+"Then that's all....  Hurry now, Mouse!"
+
+On the stairs, ascending, she whispered, with the excitement not
+of a tired woman, but of a tennis-and-dancing-mad girl:  "We're
+off!  Just take a tooth-brush.  Put on an outing suit--any old
+thing--and an old cap."
+
+She darted into her room.
+
+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
+tam-o'-shanter.
+
+"Come on.  There's a train for Chelmsford in half an hour, my
+time-table confided to me.  I feel like singing."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HE GOES A-GIPSYING
+
+
+
+
+
+They rode out of London in a third-class 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 people.
+
+"Wouldn't they stare if they knew what idiocy we're up to!"
+she suggested.
+
+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 a country tramp at midnight with an artist girl.
+
+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 caught his arm at the gate to a
+farm-yard, and cried,  "Look!"
+
+"Gee!...  Gee! we're in England.  We're abroad!"
+
+"Yes--abroad."
+
+A paved courtyard with farm outbuildings thatched and ancient
+was lit faintly by a lantern hung from a post that was thumbed to
+a soft smoothness by centuries.
+
+"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 about myself.  You don't
+know me.  Or do you?"
+
+"I dunno just how you mean."
+
+"Oh, it shall have its romance!  But some time I'll tell
+you--perhaps I will--how 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 and drowned?"
+
+"Uh--kind of.  But I been worrying about you being soaked."
+
+"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 on--just feeling the good healthy real mist on
+my skin.  But I'm afraid it isn't done."
+
+Mile after mile.  Mostly she talked of the boulevards and Pere
+Dureon, of Debussy and artichokes, in little laughing sentences
+that sprang like fire out of the dimness of the mist.
+
+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 new-born 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 he--or perhaps it was his
+smock--was 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 inn--a stone-floored
+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 really used the word "trippers" in his
+cogitations; he had it from Istra.)
+
+When he informed her of this occult fact she laughed,  "You know
+mighty well, Mouse, that you have a sneaking wish there were one
+Yankee stranger here to see our glory."
+
+"I guess that's right."
+
+"But maybe I'm just as bad."
+
+For once their tones had not been those of teacher and pupil,
+but of comrades.  They set out from the inn through the
+brightening morning like lively boys on a vacation tramp.
+
+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 straw-stack was secluded in a clump of willows Istra
+smiled and sighed:  "I'm pretty tired, dear.  I'm going to sleep
+in that straw-stack.  I've always wanted to sleep in a
+straw-stack.  It's _comme il faut_ for vagabonds in the best set,
+you know.  And one can burrow.  Exciting, eh?"
+
+She made a pillow of her khaki jacket, while he dug down to a
+dry place for her.  He found another den on the other side of
+the stack.
+
+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
+brown-yellow of her khaki jacket.  Her red hair had come down
+and shone about her shoulders.
+
+She looked so frail that he was frightened.  Surely, too, she'd
+be very angry with him for letting her come on this jaunt.
+
+He scribbled on a leaf from his address-book--religiously carried
+for six years, but containing only four addresses--this note:
+
+
+Gone to get stuff for bxfst be right back.--W. W.
+
+
+and, softly crawling up the straw, left the note by her head.
+He hastened to a farm-house.  The farm-wife was inclined to
+be curious.  O curious farm-wife, you of the cream-thick Essex
+speech and the shuffling feet, you were brave indeed to face
+Bill Wrenn the Great, with his curt self-possession, for he was
+on a mission for Istra, and he cared not for the goggling eyes
+of all England.  What though he was a bunny-faced man with an
+innocuous mustache?  Istra would be awakening hungry.  That was
+why he bullied you into selling him a stew-pan 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 tea,
+woman of Essex.
+
+When he returned to their outdoor inn the late afternoon glow
+lay along the rich fields that sloped down from their
+well-concealed nook.  Istra was still asleep, but her cheek now
+lay wistfully on the crook of her thin arm.  He looked at the
+auburn-framed 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 could only make her happy!  But he was afraid of her moods.
+
+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 the stack and called, "Istra--oh, Is-tra!"
+
+She shook her head, nestled closer into the straw, then sat up,
+her hair about her shoulders.  She smiled and called down:
+"Good morning.  Why, it's afternoon!  Did you sleep well, dear?"
+
+"Yes.  Did you?  Gee, I hope you did!"
+
+"Never better in my life.  I'm so sleepy yet.  But comfy.
+I needed a quiet sleep outdoors, and it's so peaceful here.
+Breakfast!  I roar for breakfast!  Where's the nearest house?"
+
+"Got breakfast all ready."
+
+"You're a dear!"
+
+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
+analysis--when she looked at him as he drank his tea aloud out
+of the stew-pan, 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 worried
+by bad Istra.  Let's see; we went to grammar-school together."
+
+"Yes, and we were in college.  Don't you remember when I was
+baseball captain?  You don't?  Gee, you got a bad memory!"
+
+At which she smiled properly, and they were away for Suffolk again.
+
+
+"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 quarter-mile:  "Please don't mind my being silent.
+I'm sort of stiff, and my feet hurt most unromantically.  You
+won't mind, will you?"
+
+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, and at best remarked
+"Yes, that's so," whether it was so or not.
+
+He was reflecting:  "Istra's terrible tired.  I ought to take
+care of her."  He stopped at the wood-pillared entrance of a
+temperance inn and commanded:  "Come!  We'll have something to
+eat here."  To the astonishment of both of them, she meekly
+obeyed with  "If you wish."
+
+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
+table-cloth was coarse and the water-glasses 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 family parties from
+Davenport or Omaha; I _know_ they are!"
+
+"Oh, they ain't such bad-looking people," protested Mr.
+Wrenn....  Just because he had induced her to stop for dinner
+the poor man thought his masculine superiority had been
+recognized.
+
+"Oh, they're _terrible!_  Can't you _see_ it?  Oh, you're _hopeless_."
+
+"Why, that big guy--that big man with the rimless spectacles
+looks like he might be a good civil engineer, and I think that
+lady opposite him--"
+
+"They're Americans."
+
+"So're we!"
+
+"I'm not."
+
+"I thought--why--"
+
+"Of course I was born there, but--"
+
+"Well, just the same, I think they're nice people."
+
+"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 motor--seeing every inn on the road."
+
+"Maybe it's fun for--"
+
+"Now _don't_ argue with me.  I know what I'm talking about.
+Why do I have to explain everything?  They're hopeless!"
+
+Mr. Wrenn felt a good wholesome desire to spank her, but he
+said, most politely:  "You're awful tired.  Don't you want to
+stay here tonight?  Or maybe some other hotel; and I'll stay here."
+
+"No.  Don't want to stay any place.  Want to get away from
+myself," she said, exactly like a naughty child.
+
+So they tramped on again.
+
+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 think
+of that; he had to get her to a dry place.
+
+Istra laughed:  "Oh, isn't this great!  We're real vagabonds now."
+
+"Why!  Doesn't that khaki soak through?  Aren't you wet?"
+
+"To the skin!" she shouted, gleefully.  "And I don't care!
+We're _doing_ something.  Poor dear, is it worried?  I'll race
+you to the top of the hill."
+
+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 stable--the 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
+discovered that the thatch above the horse-manger was fairly
+waterproof.
+
+"Come on!  Up on the edge of the manger, Istra," he ordered.
+
+"This is a perfectly good place for a murder," she grinned, as
+they sat swinging their legs.
+
+He could fancy her grinning.  He was sure about it, and well content.
+
+"Have I been so very grouchy, Mouse?  Don't you want to murder
+me?  I'll try to find you a long pin."
+
+"Nope; I don't think so, much.  I guess we can get along without
+it this time."
+
+"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 be one somewheres near here."
+
+"And leave me here in the darknesses and wetnesses?  Not a chance.
+The rain'll soon be over, anyway.  Really, I don't mind a bit.
+I think it's rather fun."
+
+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 thatch.
+
+But the rain was not soon over, and their dangling position was
+very much like riding a rail.
+
+"I'm so uncomfortable!" fretted Istra.
+
+"See here, Istra, please, I think I'd better go see if I can't
+find a house for you to get dry in."
+
+"I feel too wretched to go any place.  Too wretched to move."
+
+"Well, then, I'll make a fire here.  There ain't much danger."
+
+"The place will catch fire," she began, querulously.
+
+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
+bit of care of me, anyway?"
+
+"Oh, hon-ey!" he wailed, in youthful bewilderment.  "I did try
+to get you to stay at that hotel in town and get some rest."
+
+"Well, you ought to have made me.  Don't you realize that I took
+you along to take care of me?"
+
+"Uh--"
+
+"Now don't argue about it.  I can't stand argument all the time."
+
+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; here's a regular home and hearthstone for you."
+
+She slipped down from the manger edge and stood in front of him,
+looking into his eyes--which were level with her own.
+
+"You _are_ good to me," she half whispered, and smoothed his
+cheek, then slipped down on the outspread coat, and murmured,
+"Come; sit here by me, and we'll both get warm."
+
+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 background--the dark roof of
+broken thatch, the age-corroded 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
+strangest and most romantic, also the most idiotic and useless,
+in history.
+
+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 in amazement.
+
+"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 hasn't been entirely
+successful, I'm afraid."
+
+"Perhaps we'd better."
+
+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 first, Istra."
+
+With their garments wrinkled from rain, half asleep and rather
+cross, they arrived at the esthetic but respectable colony of
+Aengusmere by the noon train.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HE BUYS AN ORANGE TIE
+
+
+
+
+
+The Aengusmere Caravanserai is so unyieldingly cheerful and
+artistic that it makes the ordinary person long for a dingy
+old-fashioned 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 rain-wrinkled ready-mades.
+He was tottering through the common room, wondering whether he
+could find a clothing-shop in Aengusmere, when a shrill gurgle
+from a wing-chair by the rough-brick fireplace halted him.
+
+"Oh-h-h-h, _Mister_ Wrenn; Mr. _Wrenn!_" There sat Mrs. Stettinius,
+the poet-lady of Olympia's rooms on Great James Street.
+
+"Oh-h-h-h, 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 was like a sunset over mountain peaks--you know, as
+Yeats says:
+
+
+               "A stormy sunset were her lips,
+               A stormy sunset on doomed ships,
+
+
+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 romantic--or no, I won't say
+`romantic'--I _do_ agree with dear Olympia--_isn't_ she a
+mag_nificent_ woman--_so_ fearless and progressive--didn't you
+_adore_ meeting her?--she is our modern Joan of Arc--such a _noble_
+figure--I _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.
+But--but--where 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 Binch--of course you
+know his poetry."
+
+And then she drew a breath and flopped back into the
+wing-chair's muffling depths.
+
+During all this Mr. Wrenn had stood, frightened and unprotected
+and rain-wrinkled, 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,  "Why--uh--we just
+tramped down," till Russian-Jewish 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 accustomed to having
+men obey her.  Mr. Wrenn stammered:
+
+"Why--uh--we just walked, and we got caught in the rain.  Say,
+Miss Nash was a wonder.  She never peeped when she got soaked
+through--she just laughed and beat it like everything.  And we
+saw a lot of quaint English places along the road--got away from
+all them tourists--trippers--you know."
+
+A perfectly strange person, a heavy old man with horn spectacles
+and a soft shirt, who had joined the group unbidden, cleared his
+throat and interrupted:
+
+"Is it not a strange paradox that in traveling, the most
+observant of all pursuits, one should have to encounter the
+eternal bourgeoisie!"
+
+From the Cockney Greek chorus about the unlighted fire:
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Everywhere."
+
+"Uh--" began Mr. Gutch.  He apparently had something to say.
+But the chorus went on:
+
+"And just as swelteringly monogamic in Port Said as in Brum."
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"Mr. Wr-r-renn," thrilled Mrs. Stettinius, the lady poet, "didn't
+you notice that they were perfectly oblivious of all economic
+movements; that their observations never post-dated ruins?"
+
+"I guess they wanted to make sure they were admirin' the right
+things," ventured Mr. Wrenn, with secret terror.
+
+"Yes, that's so," came so approvingly from the Greek chorus that
+the personal pupil of Mittyford, Ph.D., made his first epigram:
+
+"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 Miss Saxonby and observed:
+
+"I fancy romance isn't quite dead yet, y' know.  Our friends
+here seem to have had quite a ro-mantic little journey." Then he
+winked again.
+
+"Say, what do you mean?" demanded Bill Wrenn, hot-eyed, fists
+clenched, but very quiet.
+
+"Oh, I'm not _blaming_ you and Miss Nash--quite the reverse!"
+tittered the Gutch person, wagging his head sagely.
+
+Then Bill Wrenn, with his fist at Mr. Gutch's nose, spoke his mind:
+
+"Say, you white-faced unhealthy dirty-minded lump, I ain't much
+of a fighter, but I'm going to muss you up so's you can't find
+your ears if you don't apologize for those insinuations."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Wrenn--"
+
+"He didn't mean--"
+
+"I didn't mean--"
+
+"He was just spoofing--"
+
+"I was just spoofing--"
+
+Bill Wrenn, watching the dramatization of himself as hero, was
+enjoying the drama.  "You apologize, then?"
+
+"Why certainly, Mr. Wrenn.  Let me explain--"
+
+"Oh, don't explain," snortled Miss Saxonby.
+
+"Yes!" from Mr. Bancock Binch, "explanations are _so_
+conventional, old chap."
+
+Do you see them?--Mr. Wrenn, self-conscious 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 sight-seeing 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 sec', Billy."
+
+She was standing with a chair-back for support, tired but smiling.
+
+"I can't get to sleep yet.  Don't you want me to show you some
+of the buildings here?"
+
+"Oh _yes!_"
+
+"If Mrs. Stettinius can spare you!"
+
+This by way of remarking on the fact that the female poet was
+staring volubly.
+
+"G-g-g-g-g-g--" said Mrs. Stettinius, which seemed to imply
+perfect consent.
+
+Istra took him to the belvedere on a little slope overlooking
+the lawns of Aengusmere, scattered with low bungalows and
+rose-gardens.
+
+"It is beautiful, isn't it?  Perhaps one could be happy here--if
+one could kill all the people except the architect," she mused.
+
+"Oh, it is," he glowed.
+
+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 windows, standing in a belvedere beside Istra
+Nash as her friend--
+
+"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
+nice girl I'll be as happy as can be."
+
+"Oh, Istra," he cried, grasping her arm, "I don't want any girl
+in the world--I mean--oh, I just want to be let go 'round with
+you when you'll let me--"
+
+"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?  And--and I don't
+want you to get too fond of me, because we're--different....
+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.  Good-by, Mouse dear.  No, don't come
+back to the Cara-advanced-serai.  Play around and see the
+animiles.  G'-by."
+
+He watched her straight swaying figure swing across the lawn and up
+the steps of the half-timbered inn.  He watched her enter the door
+before he hastened to the shops which clustered about the railway-
+station, outside of the poetic preserves of the colony proper.
+
+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 un-ankle-concealing 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, roses or carnations, but he got
+himself not to.
+
+
+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 dining-room.  Hunting up
+the stewardess of the inn, a bustling young woman who was
+reading Keats energetically at an office-like 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.
+
+"Just two.  Kind of a birthday party."  Mendacious Mr. Wrenn!
+
+"Certainly.  Of course there's a small extra charge.  I have a
+Royal Satsuma tea-service--practically Royal Satsuma, at
+least--and some special Limoges."
+
+"I think Royal Sats'ma would be nice.  And some silverware?"
+
+"Surely."
+
+"And could we get some special stuff to eat?"
+
+"What would you like?"
+
+"Why--"
+
+Mendacious Mr. Wrenn! as we have commented.  He put his head on
+one side, rubbed his chin with nice consideration, and
+condescended,  "What would you suggest?"
+
+"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 make-b'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, Suffolk."
+
+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 trying to visualize a duke
+writing a letter he produced this:
+
+
+LADY ISTRA NASH,
+          Mouse Castle.
+
+DEAR MADAM,--We hear from our friend Sir William Wrenn that some
+folks are saying that to-day is not your birthday & want to stop
+your celebration, so if you should need somebody to make them
+believe to-day 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 VERE DE VERE.
+
+
+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 golf-stockings, 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 dining-room to the common room, he passed a
+group standing in a window recess and looking away from him.
+He overheard:
+
+"Who is the remarkable new person with the orange tie and the
+rococo buckle on his jacket belt--the one that just went
+through?  Did you ever _see_ anything so funny!  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 are as jerry-built as his
+garments!"
+
+Mr. Wrenn stopped.
+
+Another voice:
+
+"And the beautiful lack of development of his legs!  It's like
+the good old cycling days, when every draper's assistant went
+bank-holidaying....  I don't know him, but I suppose he's some
+tuppeny-ha'p'ny illustrator."
+
+"Or perhaps he has convictions about fried bananas, and dines on
+a bean saute.  O Aengusmere!  Shades of Aengus!"
+
+"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 South-African 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 artist because he's dressed like a navvy
+and--"
+
+Mr. Wrenn was walking away, across the common room, quite sure
+that every one was eying him with amusement.  And it was too
+late to change his clothes.  It was six already.
+
+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 was happy.
+
+At six-fifteen he summoned a boy and sent him up with a message
+that Mr. Wrenn was waiting and high tea ready.
+
+The boy came back muttering, "Miss Nash left this note for you,
+sir, the stewardess says."
+
+Mr. Wrenn opened the green-and-white Caravanserai letter
+excitedly.  Perhaps Istra, too, was dressing for the party!
+He loved all s'prises just then.  He read:
+
+
+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 good-by--I hate good-bys, 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 thought-forms, 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 seven-fourteen 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 forget.  Got to make lots of 'em in
+New York.  Learn how to make 'em."
+
+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 cattle-boat now that--now that he had no
+friend in all the hostile world.
+
+
+In a London  A. B. C. restaurant Mr. Wrenn was talking to an
+American who had a clipped mustache, brisk manners, a
+Knight-of-Pythias pin, and a mind for duck-shooting, hardware-selling,
+and cigars.
+
+"No more England for mine," the American snapped,
+good-humoredly.  "I'm going to get out of this foggy hole and
+get back to God's country just as soon as I can.  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 country--Sleepy Eye, Brown County, Minnesota. You bet!"
+
+"You don't like England much, then?" Mr. Wrenn carefully reasoned.
+
+"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 here--why,
+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 smoke-puff of disgust the man from Sleepy Eye
+stalked out, jingling the keys in his trousers pocket, cocking
+up his cigar, and looking as though he owned the restaurant.
+
+Mr. Wrenn, picturing him greeting the Singer Tower from an
+incoming steamer, longed to see the tower.
+
+"Gee! I'll do it!"
+
+He rose and, from that table in the basement of an A. B. C.
+restaurant, he fled to America.
+
+He dashed up-stairs, fidgeted while the cashier made his change,
+rang for a bus, whisked into his room, slammed his things into
+his suit-case, 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 waiting-room and
+wrote to her, on a souvenir post-card showing the Abbey:  "Called
+back to America--will write.  Address care of Souvenir Company,
+Twenty-eighth Street."  But he didn't mail the card.
+
+Once settled in a second-class 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 work--the 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 post-box and mailed his
+card to Istra.  That ended his debate.  Of course after that he
+had to go back to America.
+
+He sailed exultantly, one month and seventeen days after leaving
+Portland.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HE DISCOVERS AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+
+In his white-painted steerage berth Mr. Wrenn lay, with a
+scratch-pad on his raised knees and a small mean pillow
+doubled under his head, writing sample follow-up 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 Corelli so much; but would her works appeal to Istra Nash?
+
+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 his New York address would be the Souvenir Company.
+
+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 thoughts than did
+Mr. William Wrenn, Our Mr. Wrenn.
+
+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 books--an English history and a
+second-hand copy of _Haunts of Historic English Writers_,
+purchased in Liverpool--and who was willing to listen to the
+steward's serial story of how his woman, Mrs. Wargle,
+faithlessly consorted with Foddle, the cat's-meat 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's-meat man.  He now leered with a fond and watery gaze upon
+Mr. Wrenn's scholarly pursuits, and announced in a whisper:
+
+"They've sighted land."
+
+"Land?"
+
+"Oh aye."
+
+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 cabin-mates as he vaulted out.
+
+The steerage promenade-deck, iron-sided, black-floored, 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 machine-shop aisle, so inclosed, so
+over-roofed, 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 white-caps
+flashing before him.
+
+Humming, he paraded down to the buffet, where small
+beer and smaller tobacco were sold, to buy another pound of
+striped candy for the offspring of the Russian Jews.
+
+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 tongue.
+
+He smiled back and made gestures, and shouted  "Land!  Land!" with
+several variations in key, to make it sound foreign.
+
+But he withdrew for the sacred moment of seeing the Land of
+Promise he was newly discovering--the Long Island shore; the
+grass-clad redouts at Fort Wadsworth; the vast pile of New York
+sky-scrapers, standing in a mist like an enormous burned forest.
+
+"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 is--good old
+dollar!  To thunder with their darn shillings.  Home!...  Gee!
+there's where I used to moon on a wharf!...  Gosh! the old town
+looks good."
+
+And all this was his to conquer, for friendship's sake.
+
+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 Brass-button Man, ejaculating:  "How are you?  Well,
+how's things going with the old show?...  I been away couple
+of months."
+
+"Fine and dandy!  Been away, uh?  Well, it's good to get back to
+the old town, heh?  Summer hotel?"
+
+"Unk?"
+
+"Why, you're the waiter at Pat Maloney's, ain't you?"
+
+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 of the office for allowing her to exist and take away
+six dollars weekly.
+
+Then into the entry-room ran Rabin, one of the traveling salesmen.
+
+"Why, hul-lo, Wrenn!  Wondered if that could be you.  Back so
+soon?  Thought you were going to Europe."
+
+"Just got back.  Couldn't stand it away from you, old scout!"
+
+"You must have been learning to sass back real smart, in the Old
+Country, heh?  Going to be with us again?  Well, see you again
+soon.  Glad see you back."
+
+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 him.
+
+He had been absently staring at the sample-tables, noting new
+novelties.  The office girl, speaking sweetly, but as to an
+outsider, inquired,  "Who did you wish to see, Mr. Wrenn?"
+
+"Why! Mr. Guilfogle."
+
+"He's busy, but if you'll sit down I think you can see him in a
+few minutes."
+
+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 entry-room he'd go into the
+bookkeeping-room, and--"talk about your surprises--"
+
+"Mr. Guilfogle will see you now," said the office girl.
+
+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."
+
+"Couldn't keep away from the office, Mr. Guilfogle," with an
+uneasy smile.
+
+"Have a good trip?"
+
+"Yes, a dandy."
+
+"How'd you happen to get back so soon?"
+
+"Oh, I wanted to--Say, Mr. Guilfogle, I really wanted to get
+back to the office again.  I'm awfully glad to see it again."
+
+"Glad see _you_.  Well, where did you go?  I got the card you
+sent me from Chesterton with the picture of the old church on it."
+
+"Why, I went to Liverpool and Oxford and London and--well--Kew
+and Ealing and places and--And I tramped through Essex and
+Suffolk--all through--on 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 said--that's
+what I had the samples made up for.  I wish you'd be a little
+more careful, d' ye hear?) You went to London, did you, Wrenn?
+Say, did you notice any novelties we could copy?"
+
+"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."
+
+"Didn't, eh?  Well, what's your plans now?"
+
+"Why--uh--I kind of thought--Honestly, Mr. Guilfogle, I'd
+like to get back on my old job.  You remember--it was to be
+fixed so--"
+
+"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.
+
+Not get the job back?  He sat down and stammered:
+
+"Gee! I hadn't thought of that.  I'd kind of banked on the
+Souvenir Company, Mr. Guilfogle."
+
+"Well, you know I told you I thought you were an idiot to go.
+I warned you."
+
+He timidly agreed, mourning:  "Yes, that so; I know you did.
+But uh--well--"
+
+"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--"
+
+"Tr-r-r-r-r-r-r," said the telephone.
+
+Mr. Guilfogle remarked into it:  "Hello.  Yes, it's me.  Well,
+who did you think it was?  The cat?  Yuh.  Sure.  No.  Well,
+to-morrow, probably.  All right.  Good-by."
+
+Then he glanced at his watch and up at Mr. Wrenn impatiently.
+
+"Say, Mr. Guilfogle, you say there'll be--when will there be
+likely to be an opening?"
+
+"Now, how can I tell, my boy?  We'll work you in if we can--you
+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 that?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir."
+
+"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 good job!...  You didn't
+get on the Continent, did you?"
+
+"No, I--"
+
+"Well....  Oh, say, how's the grub in London?  Cheaper than it
+is here?  The wife was saying this morning we'd have to stop
+eating if the high cost of living goes on going up."
+
+"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 a place if one--"
+
+"Didn't I _say_ I would?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"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
+in--the 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."
+
+Rabin, the salesman, waylaid Mr. Wrenn in the corridor.
+
+"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 about--I was
+saying you're a good man and hoping you were having a good
+time--and 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,
+anyway--he'll do better work--vacation at his own expense--save
+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.  You want to watch out for him."
+
+"Oh, I will; indeed I will--"
+
+"Did he spring any of this fairy tale just now?"
+
+"Well, kind of.  Say, thanks, I'm awful obliged to--"
+
+"Say, for the love of Mike, don't let him know I told you."
+
+"No, no, I sure won't."
+
+They parted.  Eager though he was for the great moment of again
+seeing his comrade, Charley Carpenter, Mr. Wrenn dribbled toward
+the bookkeeping-room mournfully, planning to tell Charley of
+Guilfogle's wickedness.
+
+The head bookkeeper shook his head at Mr. Wrenn's inquiry:
+
+"Charley ain't here any longer."
+
+"Ain't _here?_"
+
+"No.  He got through.  He got to boozing pretty bad, and one
+morning about three weeks ago, when he had a pretty bad
+hang-over, he told Guilfogle what he thought of him, so of
+course Guilfogle fired him."
+
+"Oh, that's too _bad_.  Say, you don't know his address, do you?"
+
+"--East a Hundred and Eighteenth....  Well, I'm glad to see
+you back, Wrenn.  Didn't expect to see you back so soon, but
+always glad to see you.  Going to be with us?"
+
+"I ain't sure," said Mr. Wrenn, crabbedly, then shook hands
+warmly with the bookkeeper, to show there was nothing personal
+in his snippishness.
+
+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 out-thrust 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 salary and pretend to be frightened, but when he got the
+chance--
+
+He did not proclaim even to himself what dreadful thing he was
+going to do, but as he left the Elevated he said over and over,
+shaking his closed fist inside his coat pocket:
+
+"When I get the chance--when I _get_ it--"
+
+
+The flat-building where Charley Carpenter lived was one of
+hundreds of pressed-brick 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 ice-wagon in the
+street to say:
+
+"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, it's bill-collectors
+that--"
+
+"Yes, it is hot."
+
+Superior in manner, but deeply dejected, Mr. Wrenn rang the
+down-stairs bell long enough to wake Charley, pantingly got
+himself up the interminable stairs, and kicked the door till
+Charley's voice quavered inside:
+
+"Who zhat?"
+
+"It's me, Charley.  Wrenn."
+
+"You're in Yurp.  Can't fool me.  G' 'way from there."
+
+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 curiosity, and again demanded:
+
+"Lemme in, I say."
+
+"Tell you it ain't you.  I know you!"
+
+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 of virulent pink, its
+cuffs grimy and limp.
+
+"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 whisky-flasks,
+collars, torn sensational newspapers, dirty plates and
+coffee-cups.  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 rinds which covered the green-and-yellow
+carpet-rug.
+
+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 an awful
+hang-over, ain't I?  You don't care, do you, ol' Wrenn?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn stared at him weakly, but only for a minute.
+Perhaps it was his cattle-boat experience which now made
+him deal directly with such drunkenness as would have
+nauseated him three months before; perhaps his attendance
+on a weary Istra.
+
+"Come now, Charley, you got to buck up," he crooned.
+
+"_All_ ri'."
+
+"What's the trouble?  How did you get going like this?"
+
+"Wife left me.  I was drinking.  You think I'm drunk, don't you?
+But I ain't.  She went off with her sister--always hated me.  She
+took my money out of savings-bank--three 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 one-die of
+thirst.  Bourbon.  Get--"
+
+"I'll go and get you a drink, Charley--just one drink,
+savvy?--if you'll promise to get cleaned up, like I tell
+you, afterward."
+
+"_All_ ri'."
+
+Mr. Wrenn hastened out with a whisky-flask, 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 put it?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn went to the bathroom, turned on the cold-water 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 bath-room 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.  Wholesomely vexed, he
+turned off the water and slammed the bathroom door.
+
+In the bedroom he found an unwrinkled winter-weight suit and one
+clean shirt.  In the living-room 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 center-table to the kitchen, shook and
+beat and folded the table-cover, stuck the chairs atop the table,
+and began to sweep.
+
+At the door a shining wet naked figure stood, bellowing:
+
+"Hey!  What d' yuh think you're doing?  Cut it out."
+
+"Just sweeping, Charley," from Mr. Wrenn, and an uninterrupted
+"Tuff, tuff, tuff" from the broom.
+
+"Cut it out, I said.  Whose house _is_ this?"
+
+"Gwan back in the bath-tub, Charley."
+
+"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
+deserted by his only friend.
+
+"Oh, shut up," remarked Bill Wrenn, and swept the bathroom floor.
+
+Charley stopped swashing about to sneer:
+
+"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 on sweeping.  "Get out, you----."
+
+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 out, helped him dry himself,
+and drove him to bed.
+
+He went out and bought dish-towels, soap, washing-powder, and
+collars of Charley's size, which was an inch larger than his own.
+He finished sweeping and dusting and washing the dishes--all
+of them.  He--who had learned to comfort Istra--he 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 new."
+
+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 folded newspaper.
+
+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.
+
+"Now, Charley," he said, cheerfully, "your bat's over, ain't it,
+old man?"
+
+"Say, you been darn' decent to me, old man.  Lord! how you've
+been sweeping up!  How was I--was I pretty soused?"
+
+"Honest, you were fierce.  You will sober up, now, won't you?"
+
+"Well, it's no wonder I had a classy hang-over, 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 sa-a-a-ay, 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."
+
+"Well, you h--"
+
+"But I guess I have now, old Wrennski."
+
+"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 broke?"
+
+"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 `holierthan-thou' stunt I'd
+have to go right out and get soused on general principles....
+Yuh--I'll try to get a job."
+
+"Here's ten dollars.  Please take it--aw--please, Charley."
+
+"_All_ right; anything to oblige."
+
+"What 've you got in sight in the job line?"
+
+"Well, there's a chance at night clerking in a little hotel
+where I was a bell-hop long time ago.  The night clerk's going to
+get through, but I don't know just when--prob'ly in a week or two."
+
+"Well, keep after it.  And _please_ come down to see me--the old
+place--West Sixteenth Street."
+
+"What about the old girl with the ingrowing grouch?  What's her
+name?  She ain't stuck on me."
+
+"Mrs. Zapp?  Oh--hope she chokes.  She can just kick all she
+wants to.  I'm just going to have all the visitors I want to."
+
+"All right.  Say, tell us something about your trip."
+
+"Oh, I had a great time.  Lots of nice fellows on the cattle-boat.
+I went over on one, you know.  Fellow named Morton--awfully
+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 cattle-boat, though."
+
+"Hard work?"
+
+"Yuh--kind of hard.  Oh, not so very."
+
+"What did you see in England?"
+
+"Oh, a lot of different places.  Say, I seen some great vaudeville
+in Liverpool, Charley, with Morton--he'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 sofa-pillows 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
+college--he hired an automobubble and took me down to a reg'lar
+old inn--"
+
+"Well, well!"
+
+"--like you read about; sanded floor!"
+
+"Get to London?"
+
+"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."
+
+"Oh, you sport!...  Say, didn't get over to gay Paree, did you?"
+
+"Nope....  Well, I guess I'd better beat it now.
+Got to move in--I'm at a hotel.  You will come down and see
+me to-night, won't you?"
+
+"So you thought of me, eh?...  Yuh--sure, old socks.
+I'll be down to-night.  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 suit-case down West Sixteenth,
+broiling by degrees in the sunshine, he felt like rushing
+up to Charley's and telling him to come to the hotel instead.
+
+Lee Theresa, taking the day off with a headache,
+answered the bell, and ejaculated:
+
+"Well!  So it's you, is it?"
+
+"I guess it is."
+
+"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 full-blown curves and empty eyes with rebellion,
+though he says, ever so meekly:
+
+"Yes, I guess it is about that, Miss Theresa."
+
+"Well, I just knew you couldn't stand it away from us.
+I suppose you'll want your room back.  Ma, here's Mr. Wrenn
+back again--Mr. Wrenn!  _Ma!_"
+
+"Oh-h-h-h!" sounded Goaty Zapp's voice, in impish
+disdain, below.  "Mr. Wrenn's back.  Hee, hee!  Couldn't
+stand it.  Ain't that like a Yankee!"
+
+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 lodgers.
+
+"Back already, Mist' Wrenn?  Ah declare, Ah was
+saying to Lee Theresa just yest'day, Ah just knew you'd
+be wishing you was back with us.  Won't you come in?"
+
+He edged into the parlor with, "How is the sciatica, Mrs. Zapp?"
+
+"Ah ain't feeling right smart."
+
+"My room occupied yet?"
+
+He was surveying the airless parlor rather heavily, and
+his curt manner was not pleasing to the head of the house
+of Zapp, who remarked, funereally:
+
+"It ain't taken just now, Mist' Wrenn, but Ah dunno.
+There was a gennulman a-looking 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 gennulmen just get up and
+go without giving me notice."
+
+Lee Theresa scowled at her.
+
+Mr. Wrenn retorted, "I _did_ give you notice."
+
+"Ah know, but--well, 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 late nights.  But Ah reckon Ah can accommodate you."
+
+"It's a good deal of a favor, isn't it, Mrs. Zapp?"
+
+Mr. Wrenn was dangerously polite.  Let gentility look out for
+the sharp practices of the Yankee.
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+It was our hero, our madman of the seven and seventy seas, our
+revolutionist friend of Istra, who leaped straight from the
+salt-incrusted decks of his laboring steamer to the musty parlor
+and declared, quietly but unmovably-practically
+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 unoccupied room and--
+Oh!  You poor white trash--you--"
+
+"_Ma!_  You shut up and go down-stairs-s-s-s-s!" Theresa hissed.
+"Go on."
+
+Mrs. Zapp wabbled regally out.  Lee Theresa spoke to Mr. Wrenn:
+
+"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 would."
+
+"Well, I will, but--"
+
+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 room and put on fresh sheets."
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+HE IS "OUR MR. WRENN"
+
+
+
+
+
+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,
+                                             WILLIAM WRENN.
+
+
+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 remembered--and he cried,  "Oh, I want to see her so
+much."  Her gallant dash through the rain--and again the cry.
+
+At last he cursed himself, "Why don't you _do_ something that 'd
+count for her, and not sit around yammering for her like a fool?"
+
+He worked on his plan to "bring the South into line"--the
+Souvenir Company's line.  Again and again he sprang up from the
+writing-table in his hot room when the presence of Istra came
+and stood compellingly by his chair.  But he worked.
+
+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 Ink-well, 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 ink-well was to be followed by a series
+of letters, sent on the slightest provocation, on order or
+re-order, 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 Southem route.
+
+He drew up his letters; he sketched his ink-well; 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 it over,"
+said Mr. Guilfogle.
+
+That same afternoon the manager enthusiastically O. K.'d the
+plan.  To enthusiastically--O. 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 careful, and let me see any
+letters you send out."
+
+So Mr. Wrenn dictated a letter to each of their Southern
+merchants, sending him a Dixieland Ink-well 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 the next word with cynical amusement.
+
+"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 high-class martyrdom.
+
+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 lunch-hour.
+
+When October came--October of the vagabond, with the leaves
+brilliant out on the Palisades, and Sixth Avenue moving-picture
+palaces cool again and gay--Mr. Wrenn stayed late, under the
+mercury-vapor lights, making card cross-files 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' 'em--gettin' '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 cursed each other before Mr. Wrenn was allowed to
+use his own judgment.
+
+It's not at all certain that Mr. Guilfogle should have yielded.
+What's the use of a manager if his underlings use judgment?
+
+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 employee to
+follow his own selfish and stubborn desires.
+
+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 tissue-paper of a copy-book.  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 red-headed 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 twenty-two 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 about sixty dollars minus whatever salary he got.]
+
+Not only that.  Mr. Guilfogle slapped him on the back and said:
+"You're doing good work, old man.  It's fine.  I just don't want
+you to be too reckless."
+
+That night Wrenn worked till eight.
+
+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 approve--a Paris
+Baedeker and the second volume of Tolstoi's _War and Peace_,
+which he bought at a second-hand book-stall 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 rush-lights and the divine right of kings.
+He thought almost every night about making friends, which he
+intended--just as much as ever--to do as soon as Sometime arrived.
+
+On the day on which one of the Southern merchants wrote him about
+his son--"fine young fellow, sir--has 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 Ink-wells and a Yale football banner and sent
+them to the cripple for his brothers, who were in the
+Agricultural College.
+
+The orders--yes, 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 smoking-room stories.  He still
+had not found the friends he desired.
+
+
+Miggleton's restaurant, on Forty-second Street, was a romantic
+discovery.  Though it had "popular prices"--plain omelet,
+fifteen cents--it had red and green bracket lights,
+mission-style 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
+Silk-Hat-Harry humorous pictures in the _Journal_, which he
+always propped up against an oil-cruet.  [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 of--well, he hadn't the
+slightest idea what--something 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 be
+jotted down on envelope backs, from that music.
+
+At last comes the historic match-box incident.
+
+On that October evening in 1910 he dined early at Miggleton's.
+The thirty-cent table d'hote was perfect.  The cream-of-corn soup
+was, he went so far as to remark to the waitress, "simply slick";
+the Waldorf salad had two whole walnuts in his portion alone.
+
+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 two sleek bangs which decorated the front of his
+nearly bald head.
+
+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 five-hundred-dollar order on one of his letters.
+
+The _Journal_ contained an editorial essay on "Friendship" which
+would have been, and was, a credit to Cicero.
+
+He laid down the paper, stirred his large cup of coffee, and
+stared at the mother-of-pearl 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 must!"
+
+"Nice night," said the fat man.
+
+"Yuh--it sure is," brightly agreed Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"Reg'lar Indian-Summer weather."
+
+"Yes, isn't it! I feel like taking a walk on Riverside
+Drive--b'lieve I will."
+
+"Wish I had time.  But I gotta get down to the
+store--cigar-store.  I'm on nights, three times a week."
+
+"Yuh.  I've seen you here most every time I eat early,"
+Mr. Wrenn purred.
+
+"Yuh.  The rest of the time I eat at the boarding-house."
+
+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.
+
+"Wonder when they'll get the Grand Central done?" asked the fat man.
+
+"I s'pose it'll take quite a few years," said Mr. Wrenn,
+conversationally.
+
+"Yuh.  I s'pose it will."
+
+Silence.
+
+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.
+
+Silence.
+
+Then the fat man went on:
+
+"Wonder what Wolgast will do in his mill?  Don't believe he can
+stand up."
+
+Wolgast was, Mr. Wrenn seemed to remember, a pugilist.  He
+agreed vaguely:
+
+"Pretty hard, all right."
+
+"Go out to the areoplane meet?" asked the fat man.
+
+"No.  But I'd like to see it.  Gee! there must be kind of--kind
+of adventure in them things, heh?"
+
+"Yuh--sure is.  First machine I saw, though--I 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 biplane--I think it was--and 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 the--the handgars--handsome young chap, not over
+twenty-eight or thirty, built like a half-miler.  And then I see
+Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxey--"
+
+"Gee!" Mr. Wrenn was breathing.
+
+"--dipping and doing the--what do you call it?--Dutch
+sausage-roll or something like that.  Yelled my head off."
+
+"Oh, it must have been great to see 'em, and so close, too."
+
+"Yuh--it sure was."
+
+There seemed to be no other questions to settle.  Mr. Wrenn
+slowly folded up his paper, pursued his check under three plates
+and the menu-card to its hiding-place beyond the catsup-bottle,
+and left the table with a regretful "Good night."
+
+At the desk of the cashier, a decorative blonde, he put a cent
+in the machine which good-naturedly drops out boxes of matches.
+No box dropped this time, though he worked the lever noisily.
+
+"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 to work.
+
+"Let me try it," caroled Mr. Wrenn, and pounded the lever with
+the enthusiasm of comradeship.
+
+"Nothing doing, lady," crowed the fat man to the cashier.
+
+"I guess _I_ draw two boxes, too, eh?  And I'm in a cigar-store.
+How's that for stinging your competitors, heh?  Ho, ho, ho!"
+
+The cashier handed him two boxes, with an embarrassed simper,
+and the fat man clapped Mr. Wrenn's shoulder joyously.
+
+"My turn!" shouted a young man in a fuzzy green hat and a
+bright-brown suit, who had been watching with the sudden
+friendship which unites a crowd brought together by an accident.
+
+Mr. Wrenn was glowing.  "No, it ain't--it'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
+floor-walker.  He stood beside the fat man as a friend of sorts,
+a person to be taken perfectly seriously.
+
+It is true that he didn't add to this spiritual triumph the
+triumph of getting two more boxes of matches, for the
+cashier-girl 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, "I guess we get stung, eh?"
+
+"Yuh!" gurgled the fat man.
+
+Walking down to your store?"
+
+"Yuh--sure--won't you walk down a piece?"
+
+"Yes, I would like to.  Which way is it?"
+
+"Fourth Avenue and Twenty-eighth."
+
+"Walk down with you."
+
+"Fine!"
+
+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 cigar-store; 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 cigars--great 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 them matches."
+
+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 smoking-room 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
+ignited one of the "slick new Manila cigars."
+
+As he left the store he knew that the golden age had begun.
+He had a friend!
+
+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 Thirty-fourth Street looked self-conscious 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 evening--the 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 cattle-boat.  But that was
+forgotten in the wonder of Tom Poppins's account of Mrs. Arty's,
+a boarding-house "where all the folks likes each other."
+
+"You've never fed at a boarding-house, 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. Arty--Mrs. R.
+T. Ferrard is her name, but we always call her Mrs. Arty--if 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
+twelve-thirty, and talk and laugh and rush the growler and play
+Five Hundred.  Just like home!
+
+"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 Teddem--he's one of these here Willy-boy actors,
+always out of work; I guess Mrs. Arty is kind of sorry for him.
+Say, Wrenn--you seem to me like a good fellow--why 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 Monday evening?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"Come on up then----East Thirtieth."
+
+"Gee, I'd like to!"
+
+"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."
+
+"By jiminy, I will!" Mr. Wrenn slapped the table, socially.
+
+
+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 now--he 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 one-half minute heard:
+
+"Yes?  This is Harry Morton."
+
+"Hullo, Mr. Morton! I'll just bet you can't guess who this is."
+
+"I guess you've got me."
+
+"Well, who do you think it--"
+
+"Jack?"
+
+"Hunka."
+
+"Uncle Henry?"
+
+"Nope."  Mr. Wrenn felt lonely at finding himself so completely
+outside Morton's own world that he was not thought of.
+He hastened to claim a part in that world:
+
+"Say, Mr. Morton, I wonder if you've ever heard of a cattle-boat
+called the _Merian?_"
+
+"I--Say!  Is this Bill Wrenn?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, well, well!  Where areyou?  When'd you get back?"
+
+"Oh, I been back quite a little while, Morty.  Tried to get hold
+of you--almost called up couple of times.  I'm in my
+office--Souvenir Company--now.  Back on the old job.  Say, I'd
+like to see you."
+
+"Well, I'd like to see _you_, old Bill!"
+
+"Got a date for dinner this evening, Morty?"
+
+"N-no.  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 meet me, Morty?"
+
+"Y-yes, I guess I can.  Yes, I'll do it.  Where'll I meet you?"
+
+"How about Twenty-eighth and Sixth Avenue?"
+
+"That'll be all right, Bill.  'Bout six o'clock?"
+
+"Fine!  Be awful nice to see you again, old Morty."
+
+"Same here.  Goo'-by."
+
+
+Gazing across the table at Miggleton's, Mr. Wrenn saw, in the
+squat familiar body and sturdy face of Morton of the cattle-boat,
+a stranger, slightly uneasy and very quiet, wearing garments that
+had nothing whatever to do with the cattle-boats--a crimson scarf
+with a horseshoe-pin of "Brazilian diamonds," and sleek brown
+ready-made clothes with ornately curved cuffs and pocket flaps.
+
+Morton would say nothing of his wanderings after their parting
+in Liverpool beyond:  "Oh, I just bummed around.  Places....
+Warm to-night.  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 had not been "sore," then ceased trying to make himself
+understood.
+
+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
+haste, and each agreed hectically with any opinion the other
+advanced.
+
+Mr. Wrenn surprised himself in the thought that Morton hadn't
+anything very new to say, which made him feel so disloyal that
+he burst out, effusively:
+
+"Say, come on now, old man; I just got to hear about what you
+did after you left Liverpool."
+
+"I--"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"I never got out of Liverpool!  Worked in a restaurant....  But
+next time--!  I'll go clean to Constantinople!"  Morton
+exploded.  "And I did see a lot of English life in Liverpool."
+
+Mr. Wrenn talked long and rapidly of the world's baseball
+series, and Regal _vs._  Walkover shoes.
+
+He tried to think of something they could do.  Suddenly:
+
+"Say, Morty, I know an awful nice guy down here in a
+cigar-store.  Let's go down and see him."
+
+"All right."
+
+Tom Poppins was very cordial to them.  He dragged brown canvas
+stools out of the tobacco-scented 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, cigar-wrappers, and Jews.
+Morton was aroused to tell the time-mellowed 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."
+
+From Mr. Wrenn:  "Oh, Morty!  So early?"
+
+Tom:  "What's the big hurry?"
+
+"I've got to run clear over to Jersey City."  Morton was cordial,
+but not convincing.
+
+"Say--uh--Morton," 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 boarding-house next Monday.  Like to
+have you come along.  It's a fine place--Mrs. Arty--she's the
+landlady--she's a wonder.  There's going to be a vacant room
+there--maybe you two fellows could frame it up to take it, heh?
+Understand, I don't get no rake-off on this, but we all like to
+do what we can for M--"
+
+"No, no!" said Morton.  "Sorry.  Couldn't do it.  Staying with
+my brother-in-law--costs 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 to-night."
+
+"Glad.  Great stuff about you fellows on the cattle-ship," said Tom.
+
+Morton hastened on, protectively, a bit critically:  "You fellows
+sport around a good deal, don't you?...  I can't afford to....
+Well, good night.  Glad to met you, Mr. Poppins.  G' night, old Wr--"
+
+"Going to the ferry?  For Jersey?  I'll walk over with you,"
+said Mr. Wrenn.
+
+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 adventurousness of Bill Wrenn.  And he was
+parting with his first friend.
+
+At the ferry-house 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 parted with Morton.
+The cigar-store was closed.
+
+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
+black-walnut Zapp hat-rack a letter from Paris, in a gray
+foreign-appearing envelope with Istra's intensely black scrawl
+on it.
+
+He put off the luxury of opening the letter till after the rites
+of brushing his teeth, putting on his slippers, pounding his
+rocking-chair cushion into softness.  Panting with the joy to
+come, he stared out of the window at a giant and glorious figure
+of Istra--the laughing Istra of breakfast camp-fire--which
+towered from the street below.  He sighed joyously and read:
+
+
+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 you'll keep on writing me.  In
+haste,
+                                                       I. N.
+Longer letter next time.
+
+
+He came to the end so soon.  Istra was gone again.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HE ENTERS SOCIETY
+
+
+
+
+
+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 of houses on Thirtieth Street near
+Lexington Avenue.
+
+It is a block where the citizens have civic pride.  A newspaper
+has not the least chance of lying about on the asphalt--some
+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 tight-fitting
+gowns of black, and light scarfs over their heads.  A Middle
+Western college fraternity has a club-house in the block, and four
+of the houses are private--one of them belonging to a police
+inspector and one to a school principal who wears spats.
+
+It is a block that is satisfied with itself; as different from
+the Zapp district, where landladies in gingham run out to squabble
+with berry-venders, as the Zapp district is from the Ghetto.
+
+Mrs. Arty Ferrard's house is a poor relation to most of the
+residences there.  The black areaway rail is broken, and the
+basement-door grill is rusty.  But at the windows are
+red-and-white-figured chintz curtains, with a $2.98 bisque
+figurine of an unclothed lady between them; the door is of
+spotless white, with a bell-pull of polished brass.
+
+Mr. Wrenn yanked this bell-pull 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 eight years.
+
+The woman of thirty-five or thirty-eight who opened the door to
+him was very fat, two-thirds 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 be sure and welcome you.  Come
+right in."
+
+Her indolence turned to energy as she charged down the hall to
+the large double door on the right and threw it open, revealing
+to him a scene of splendor and revelry by night.
+
+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 furnishings--red paper and worn red
+carpet and a high ceiling with circular moldings tinted in pink.
+Hand-painted pictures of old mills and ladies brooding over
+salmon sunsets, and an especially hand-painted Christmas scene
+with snow of inlaid mother-of-pearl, animated the walls.  On a
+golden-oak center-table was a large lamp with a mosaic shade, and
+through its mingled bits of green and red and pearl glass
+stormed the brilliance of a mantle-light.
+
+The room was crowded with tufted plush and imitation-leather
+chairs, side-tables 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 black-marble mantel of the
+fireplace.  The glaring gas raced the hearth-fire 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 overwhelmingly magnified
+by the laughter and singing about the piano.
+
+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 two--a 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 well-shaped hand, and said,
+"So pleased meet you, Mr. Wrenn."
+
+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 patent-leather belt encircled her sleek waist.  Thin black
+lisle stockings showed a modestly arched and rather small foot
+in a black pump.
+
+She looked as though she were trained for business; awake,
+self-reliant, self-respecting, expecting to have to get things
+done, all done, yet she seemed indestructibly gentle,
+indestructibly good and believing, and just a bit shy.
+
+Nelly Croubel was twenty-four or twenty-five 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 Sunday-school.  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 sales-totals had gained her a permanent
+place in the store.
+
+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 the piano at Mr. Wrenn's entrance.
+
+Just now Horatio was playing ragtime with amazing rapidity,
+stamping his foot and turning his head to smirk at the others.
+
+Mrs. Arty led her chattering flock to the basement dining-room,
+which had pink wall-paper 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
+red-glass pickle-dish were the elderly Ebbitts--Samuel 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 real-estate office; he was gray, ill-tempered,
+impatiently honest, and addicted to rheumatism and the
+newspapers.  Mrs. Ebbitt was addicted only to Mr. Ebbitt.
+
+Across the table was felt the presence of James T. Duncan, who
+looked like a dignified red-mustached Sunday-school
+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.
+
+Which is all of them.
+
+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. Morton had gone
+clear across the Atlantic on a cattle-boat?  It really was?
+
+"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 old Samuel Ebbitt state:
+
+"Uh-h-h-h--back in 18--uh--1872 the vessel _Prissie_--no, it was
+1873; no, it must have been '72--"
+
+"It was 1872, father," said Mrs. Ebbitt.
+
+"1873.  I was on a coasting-vessel, 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 nonsense.
+
+With occasional witty interruptions from the actor, Mr. Wrenn
+told of pitching hay, of the wit of Morton, and the wickedness
+of Satan, the boss.
+
+"But you haven't told us about the brave things _you_ did," cooed
+Mrs. Arty.  She appealed to Nelly Croubel:  "I'll bet he was a
+cool one.  Don't you think he was, Nelly?"
+
+"I'm sure he was."  Nelly's voice was like a flute.
+
+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 cattle-boaty places.  He tried to think of
+something modest yet striking to say, while Tom was arguing with
+Miss Mary Proudfoot, the respectable spinster, about the ethics
+of giving away street-car transfers.
+
+As they finished their floating custard Mr. Wrenn achieved,
+"Do you come from New York, Miss Croubel?" and listened to the
+tale of sleighing-parties in Upton's Grove, Pennsylvania.  He was
+absolutely happy.
+
+"This is like getting home," he thought.  "And they're classy
+folks to get home to--now that I can tell 'em apart.  Gee!
+Miss Croubel is a peach.  And brains--golly!"
+
+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 moving-picture 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 molly-coddle 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 room to be vacated.
+
+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 they had known each other always.
+
+He wanted to do something to entertain his friends beyond taking
+them out for a drink.  He invited them down to his room, and
+they came.
+
+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 up-stairs and lighted the gas.
+But Teddem so imitated Colonel Roosevelt, with two water-glasses
+for eye-glasses and a small hat-brush 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?"
+
+"Fine," said Tom and Teddem together.
+
+Not only did Mr. Wrenn buy a large newspaper-covered bundle of
+bottles of beer and Swiss-cheese 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 water-glasses and a shaving-mug for cups.
+
+Horatio Hood Teddem, spreading caviar on a sandwich, and loudly
+singing his masterpiece, "Waal I swan," stopped short and fixed
+amazed eyes on the door of the room.
+
+Mr. Wrenn hastily turned.  The light fell--as on a cliff of
+crumbly gray rock--on Mrs. Zapp, in the open door, vast in her
+ungirdled gray wrapper, her arms folded, glowering speechlessly.
+
+"Mist' Wrenn," she began, in a high voice that promised to burst
+into passion.
+
+But she was addressing the formidable adventurer, Bill Wrenn.
+He had to protect his friends.  He sprang up and walked across
+to her.
+
+He said, quietly, "I didn't hear you knock, Mrs. Zapp."
+
+"Ah _didn't_ knock, and Ah want you should--"
+
+"Then please do knock, unless you want me to give notice."
+
+He was quivering.  His voice was shrill.
+
+From the hall below Theresa called up, "Ma, come down here.  _Ma!_"
+
+But Mrs. Zapp was too well started.  "If you think Ah'm going
+to stand for a lazy sneaking little drunkard keeping the whole
+street awake, and here it is prett' nearly midnight--"
+
+Just then Mr. William Wrenn saw and heard the most astounding
+thing of his life, and became an etemal slave to Tom Poppins.
+
+Tom's broad face became hard, his voice businesslike.  He
+shouted at Mrs. Zapp:
+
+"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 him--and 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
+monkey-shines.  Get out.  This ain't your room; he's rented
+it--he's paid the rent--it's his room.  Get out!"
+
+Kindly Tom Poppins worked in a cigar-store 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 "glaring speechless."
+
+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 up-stairs and screeched over her mother's
+shoulder:
+
+"You will pick on a lady, will you, you drunken scum--you--you
+cads--I'll have you arrested so quick you--"
+
+"Look here, lady," said Tom, gently.  "I'm a plain-clothes man,
+a detective."  His large voice purred like a tiger-tabby'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 in--for breaking Code 2762 of the
+Penal Law!  Trespass and flotsam--that's what it is!"
+
+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."
+
+"But, gee! it's nearly a quarter to eleven."
+
+"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's--though not noisily on his part.
+
+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 three-handed 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
+land-lubber, 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 were only tolerating him.  And Nelly Croubel was
+nowhere in sight.
+
+Suddenly said Mrs. Arty,  "And now you would like to look at that
+room, Mr. Wrenn, unless I'm wrong."
+
+"Why--uh--yes, I guess I would like to."
+
+"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 hat-rack in the hall.  "The third-floor-back 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 nights--he's
+some kind of a head waiter at Rector's, or something like that,
+and he's out till three or four.  Come."
+
+When he saw that third-floor-back, 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
+green--grass-green matting, pale-green walls, chairs of white
+wicker with green cushions; the bed, a couch with a denim cover
+and four sofa pillows.  It gave him the impression of being a
+guest on Fifth Avenue.
+
+"It's kind of a plain room," Mrs. Arty said, doubtfully.  "The
+furniture is kind of plain.  But my head-waiter man--it was
+furnished for a friend of his--he says he likes it better than
+any other room in the house.  It _is_ comfortable, and you get
+lots of sunlight and--"
+
+"I'll take--How much is it, please, with board?"
+
+She spoke with a take-it-or-leave-it defiance.  "Eleven-fifty a week."
+
+It was a terrible extravagance; much like marrying a sick woman
+on a salary of ten a week, he reflected; nine-teen minus
+eleven-fifty left him only seven-fifty for clothes and savings
+and things and--but--" 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 wondered.
+
+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 cigarette-rolling chaffing
+card-player 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
+to--and I swore I never would to anybody!...  Do
+you--uh--drink--drink much, I mean?"
+
+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
+any--hardly 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
+and--and I do try to keep--er--straight--and all that sort of thing."
+
+"That's good."
+
+"I work for the Souvenir and Art Novelty Company on
+Twenty-eighth Street.  If you want to call them up I guess the
+manager'll give me a pretty good recommend."
+
+"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 out--don't tell
+him, but I am--because he gets too fresh with her."
+
+"Yes!"
+
+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 love-letters!
+Now let's go down by the fire, where it's comfy."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HE STUDIES FIVE HUNDRED, SAVOUIR FAIRE, AND LOTSA-SNAP OFFICE MOTTOES
+
+
+
+
+
+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 wore a new light-blue tie, and his trousers were pressed like
+sheet steel.
+
+"Yes, I suppose you're engaged to some one, Miss Nelly, and
+you'll go off and leave us--go off to that blamed Upton's Grove
+or some place."
+
+"I am _not_ engaged.  I've told you so.  Who would want to marry
+me?  You stop teasing me--you're mean as can be; I'll just have
+to get Tom to protect me!"
+
+"Course you're engaged."
+
+"Ain't."
+
+"Are."
+
+"Ain't.  Who would want to marry poor little me?"
+
+"Why, anybody, of course."
+
+"You _stop_ teasing me....  Besides, probably you're in love with
+twenty girls."
+
+"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
+twice--she 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!"
+
+quoted Nelly, out of the treasure-house of literature.
+
+"Sure.  That's it.  But I bet you--"
+
+"Who was the other girl?"
+
+"Oh!  She....  She was a--an artist.  I liked her--a lot.
+But she was--oh, awful highbrow.  Gee! if--But--"
+
+A sympathetic silence, which Nelly broke with:
+
+"Yes, they're funny people.  Artists....  Do you have your
+lesson in Five Hundred tonight?  Your very first one?"
+
+"I think so.  Say, is it much like this here bridge-whist?  Oh
+say, Miss Nelly, why do they call it Five Hundred?"
+
+"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 haven't ever
+played bridge. .  My! it must be a nice game, though."
+
+"Oh, I thought prob'ly you could play it.  You can do 'most
+everything.  Honest, I've never seen nothing like it."
+
+"Now you stop, Mr. Wrenn.  I know I'm a--what was it Mr. Teddem
+used to call me?  A minx.  But--"
+
+"Miss _Nelly!_  You _aren't_ a minx!"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Or a mink, either.  You're a--let's see--an antelope."
+
+"I am not!  Even if I can wriggle my nose like a rabbit.
+Besides, it sounds like a muskmelon.  But, anyway, the head
+buyer said I was crazy to-day."
+
+"If I heard him say you were crazy--"
+
+"Would you beat him for me?"  She cuddled a cushion and smiled
+gratefully.  Her big eyes seemed to fill with light.
+
+He caught himself wanting to kiss the softness of her shoulder,
+but he said only,  "Well, I ain't much of a scrapper, but I'd try
+to make it interesting for him."
+
+"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, but--well--I did have a couple of
+fights when I was on the cattle-boat and in England.  Neither of
+them amounted to very much, though, I guess.  I was scared stiff!"
+
+"Don't believe it!"
+
+"Sure I was."
+
+"I don't believe you'd be scared.  You're too earnest."
+
+"Me, Miss Nelly?  Why, I'm a regular cut-up."
+
+"You stop making fun of yourself! I _like_ it when you're
+earnest--like 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 city--there's just the parks, and
+even there there aren't any birds, real wild birds, like we used
+to have in Pennsylvania."
+
+"Yes, isn't it!  Isn't it hard!"  Mr. Wrenn drew nearer and looked
+sympathy.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm getting gushy.  Miss Hartenstein--she's in my
+department--she'd laugh at me....  But I do love birds and
+squirrels and pussy-willows and all those things.  In summer
+I love to go on picnics on Staten Island or tramp in Van
+Cortlandt Park."
+
+"Would you go on a picnic with me some day next spring?"
+Hastily, "I mean with Miss Proudfoot and Mrs. Arty and me?"
+
+"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 there--the woods and the river
+and all those funny little tugs puffing along, way _way_ down
+below you--why, 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....  You've been up along there, haven't you?"
+
+"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
+things--not like that Teddem or Mr. Duncan--they always want
+to just stay in town--or even Tom, though he's an old dear."
+
+Mr. Wrenn looked jealous, with a small hot jealousy.  She
+hastened on with:  "Of course, I mean he's just like a big
+brother.  To all of us."
+
+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 me--you 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
+magazine--but I was saying: he always says to me, 'Well, sister,
+I suppose you want to mousey round and dream by yourself--you
+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 way."
+
+"And you read such an awful lot, Mr. Wrenn!  My!  Oh, tell me,
+have you ever read anything by Harold Bell Wright or Myrtle
+Reed, Mr. Wrenn?  They write such sweet stories."
+
+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 library--nearly a
+hundred books and--Do you mind?  I went in your room and peeked
+at them."
+
+"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 glad to lend them
+to you....  But, rats!  Why, I haven't got hardly any books."
+
+"That's why you haven't wasted any time learning Five Hundred and
+things, isn't it?  Because you've been so busy reading and so on?"
+
+"Yes, kind of."  Mr. Wrenn looked modest.
+
+"Haven't you always been lots of--oh, haven't you always
+'magined lots?"
+
+She really seemed to care.
+
+Mr. Wrenn felt excitedly sure of that, and imparted:  "Yes, I
+guess I have....  And I've always wanted to travel a lot."
+
+"So have I!  Isn't it wonderful to go around and see new places!"
+
+"Yes, _isn't_ it!" he breathed.  "It was great to be in
+England--though 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 place--you know how the waves sound when they come in.
+Well, sometimes I almost feel like they was talking to a
+guy--you know--telling about ships.  And, oh say, you know the
+whitecaps--aren't they just like the waves was motioning at
+you--they want you to come and beat it with you--over to China
+and places."
+
+"Why, Mr. Wrenn, you're a regular poet!"
+
+He looked doubtful.
+
+"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 and--uh--oh, not be
+honest and be on a job.  But you aren't like that.  _Are_ you?"
+
+He looked self-conscious and mumbled, earnestly, "Well, I try
+not to be."
+
+"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 much of a poet and
+don't--"
+
+"Miss Nelly, please _may_ I go to church with you?"
+
+"Why--"
+
+"Next Sunday?"
+
+"Why, yes, I should be pleased.  Are you a Presbyterian, though?"
+
+"Why--uh--I 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 sometimes that's hard,
+when you're poor, and it seems like--like--"
+
+"Seems like what?" Mr. Wrenn insisted.
+
+"Oh--nothing....  My, you'll have to get up awful early Sunday
+morning if you'd like to go with me.  My church starts at
+ten-thirty."
+
+"Oh, I'd get up at five to go with you."
+
+"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 the poor women--But
+please tell me some more about your reading and all that."
+
+"Well, I'll be all ready to go at nine-thirty....  I don't know;
+why, I haven't done much reading.  But I would like to travel
+and--Say, wouldn't it be great to--I 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 with--with--a
+friend, and they both knew a lot of history--say, 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 window--he was a poet at
+Oxford--Oh, it would be great with a--with a friend."
+
+"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 partner--you, 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 saying,  "Well, the
+ladies against the men, eh?"
+
+A general grunt that might be spelled "Hmmmmhm" assented.
+
+"I'm a good suffragette," she added.  "Watch us squat the men, Mary."
+
+"Like to smash windows?  Let's see--it's red fours, black fives
+up?" remarked Tom, as he prepared the pack of cards for playing.
+
+"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 she was finishing
+for the Women's Exchange and jabbing at her bangs.
+
+They settled themselves about the glowing, glancing, glittering,
+golden-oak center-table.  Miss Proudfoot shuffled sternly.  Mr.
+Wrenn sat still and frightened, like a shipwrecked professor on
+a raft with two gamblers and a press-agent, though Nelly was
+smiling encouragingly at him from the couch where she had
+started her embroidery--a 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 about the time I asked him if he wanted to have Annie
+sweep--"
+
+"Gerty!" protested Miss Proudfoot, while Nelly, on the couch,
+ejaculated mechanically, "That story!" but Mrs. Arty chuckled
+fatly, and continued:
+
+"I asked him if he wanted me to have Annie sweep his nightshirt
+when she swept his room.  He changed it next day."
+
+"Your bid, Mr. Poppins, "said Miss Proudfoot, severely.
+
+"First, I want to tell Wrenn how to play.  You see, Wrenn,
+here's the schedule.  We play Avondale Schedule, you know."
+
+"Oh yes," said Mr. Wrenn, timorously....  He had once heard of
+Carbondale--in New Jersey or Pennsylvania or somewhere--but that
+didn't seem to help much.
+
+"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.  Then--uh--let's see; high bid takes the
+cat--widdie, you know--and discards.  Ten tricks.  Follow suit
+like whist, of course.  I guess that's all--that ought to give
+you the hang of it, anyway.  I bid six on no trump."
+
+As Tom Poppins finished these instructions, given in the
+card-player's rapid don't-ask-me-any-more-fool-questions 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 two-handed poker with Tim on the cattle-boat.
+But what the dickens did "left--cat--follow suit" mean?
+
+And to fail with Nelly watching him!  He pulled at his collar again.
+
+Thus he reflected while Mrs. Arty and Tom were carrying on the
+following brilliant but cryptic society-dialogue:
+
+_Mrs. Arty:_  Well, I don't know.
+
+_Tom:_  Not failure, but low bid is crime, little one.
+
+_Mrs. Arty:_  Mary, shall I make--
+
+_Tom:_  Hey!  No talking 'cross table!
+
+_Mrs. Arty:_  Um--let--me--see.
+
+_Tom:_  Bid up, bid up!  Bid a little seven on hearts?
+
+_Mrs. Arty:_  Just for that I _will_ bid seven on hearts, smarty!
+
+_Tom:_  Oh, how we will squat you!...  What you bidding, Wrenn?
+
+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.
+
+"Seven nosut," he mumbled.
+
+"Eight hearts," snapped Miss Proudfoot.
+
+Nelly drew up a chair behind Mr. Wrenn's.  He listened to her
+soft explanations with the desperate respect and affection which
+a green subaltern would give to a general in battle.
+
+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 him--a left bower.
+
+"Good!  Spades--see," said Nelly.
+
+Fifteen minutes later Mr. Wrenn felt that Tom was hoping he
+would lead a club.  He played one, and the whole table said:
+"That's right.  Fine!"
+
+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 ahead--business had been
+prospering, two new road salesmen and a city-trade 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-Snap Cardboard Office
+Mottoes, which were making a big hit with the trade.
+
+Through his friend Rabin, the salesman, Mr. Wrenn got better
+acquainted with two great men--Mr. 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 motto-printer 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
+ink-well glass, though these, of course, were merely matters of
+knowledge, not of brilliant business tactics, and far less
+important than what Tom Poppins and Rabin called "handing out a
+snappy line of talk."
+
+"Say, you're getting quite chummy lately--reg'lar society
+leader," Rabin informed him.
+
+Mr. Wrenn's answer was in itself a proof of the soundness of
+Rabin's observation:
+
+"Sure--I'm going to borrow some money from you fellows.  Got to
+make an impression, see?"
+
+A few hours after this commendation came Istra's second letter:
+
+
+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 moving-picture
+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
+real--that's why I haven't much of a flair for myself.
+                         _Au recrire_,
+                                                  I. N.
+
+
+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.  But--gee!--I dunno--"
+
+And when he who has valorously loved says "But--gee!--I
+dunno--" love flees in panic.
+
+He walked home thoughtfully.
+
+After dinner he said abruptly to Nelly, "I had a letter from
+Paris to-day."
+
+"Honestly?  Who is she?"
+
+"G-g-g-g--"
+
+"Oh, it's always a she."
+
+"Why--uh--it _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 her--she was staying at the same place as I
+was in London.  But--oh, gee!  I dunno; she's so blame literary.
+She _is_ a _fine_ person--Do you think you'd like a girl like that?"
+
+"Maybe I would."
+
+"If she was a man?"
+
+"Oh, yes-s!  Artists are so romantic."
+
+"But they ain't on the job more 'n half the time," he said, jealously.
+
+"Yes, that's _so_."
+
+His hand stole secretly, craftily skirting a cushion, to touch
+hers--which she withdrew, laughing:
+
+"Hump-a!  You go hold your artist's hand!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Nelly!  When I _told_ you about her _myself!_"
+
+"Oh yes, of course."
+
+She was contrite, and they played Five Hundred animatedly all evening.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+HE BECOMES MILDLY RELIGIOUS AND HIGHLY LITERARY
+
+
+
+
+
+The hero of the one-act play at Hammerstein's Victoria
+vaudeville theater on that December evening was, it appeared, a
+wealthy young mine-owner 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. Arty and Tom had
+watched the play from the sixth row of the balcony.
+
+Sighing happily, Nelly cried to the group:  "Wasn't that grand?
+I got so excited!  Wasn't that young miner a dear?"
+
+"Awfully nice," said Mr. Wrenn.  "And, gee! wasn't that great,
+that office scene--with that safe and the rest of the
+stuff--just like you was in a real office.  But, say, they
+wouldn't have a copying-press in an office like that; those fake
+mine promoters send out such swell letters; they'd use carbon
+copies and not muss the letters all up."
+
+"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 copying-press was,
+appeared highly commendatory, and said nothing at all.
+
+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
+street-crossing 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 saved him?"
+
+"Why, yes; it would!" Nelly glowed at him.
+
+"Wouldn't wonder if it would," agreed Tom, kicking the December
+slush off his feet and patting Mr. Wrenn's back.
+
+"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 Forty-second, "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 office--on the stage, see?  The scene is
+his office.  Well, this guy's--the rich old guy's--daughter
+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 in--my idea is he's been kind
+of keeping in the background, see--and _he's_ the daughter's
+husband all the while, see?  and he tells the old codger how
+he's got some of his--some of the old fellow's--papers that give
+it away how he done something that was crooked--some kind of
+deal--rebates 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
+oyster-filled window.
+
+"Yes; and he heard it all."
+
+"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' wraps.
+
+"It surely is," agreed Mrs. Arty.
+
+"Why don't you write it?" asked Nelly.
+
+"Aw--I couldn't write it!"
+
+"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 howling hit.  You might make a
+lot of money out of it."
+
+The renewed warmth of their wet feet on the red-tile 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 Smith--writes the
+words for these musical comedies--makes a _mint_ of money."
+
+"Mr. Poppins ought to help you in it--he'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 imagination," Tom interrupted
+her with:
+
+"No; you write it, Bill.  I'll help you all I can, of course....
+Tell you what you ought to do: get hold of Teddem--he's had a
+lot of stage experience; he'd help you about seeing the managers.
+That 'd be the hard part--you can write it, all right, but you'd
+have to get next to the guys on the inside, and Teddem--Say,
+you cer_tain_ly ought to write this thing, Bill.  Might make a lot
+of money."
+
+"Oh, a lot!" breathed Nelly.
+
+"Heard about a fellow," continued Tom--" fellow named Gene
+Wolf, I think it was--that was so broke he was sleeping in
+Bryant Park, and he made a _hundred thousand dollars_ on his
+first play--or, no; tell you how it was: he sold it outright for
+ten thousand--something like that, anyway.  I got that right
+from a fellow that's met him."
+
+"Still, an author's got to go to college and stuff like that."
+Mr. Wrenn spoke as though he would be pleased to have the
+objection overruled at once, which it was with a universal:
+
+"Oh, rats!"
+
+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 quarter-hour, 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
+Forty-second Street Branch."  At the bottom appear numerous
+scribblings of the name Nelly.
+
+
+
+{the full page is covered with doodling as well}
+
+
+
+"I think I'll call the heroine `Nelly,'" he mused.
+
+Nelly Croubel blushed.  Mrs. Arty and Tom glanced at each other.
+Mr. Wrenn realized that he had, even at this moment of social
+triumph, "made a break."
+
+He said, hastily; "I always liked that name.  I--I had an aunt
+named that!"
+
+"Oh--" started Nelly.
+
+"She was fine to me when I was a kid, "Mr. Wrenn added, trying
+to remember whether it was right to lie when in such need.
+
+"Oh, it's a horrid name," declared Nelly.  "Why don't you call
+her something nice, like Hazel--or--oh--Dolores."
+
+"Nope; Nelly's an elegant name--an _elegant_ name."
+
+He walked with Nelly behind the others, along Forty-second
+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 street-cars 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 wealth and power over mankind!
+
+"Say, we'll have the grandest dinner you ever saw if I get away
+with the play," he was saying.  "Will you come, Miss Nelly?"
+
+"Indeed I will!  Oh, you sha'n't leave me out!  Wasn't I there when--"
+
+"Indeed you were!  Oh, we'll have a reg'lar feast at the
+Astor--artichokes and truffles and all sorts of stuff....
+Would--would you like it if I sold the play?"
+
+"_Course_ I would, silly!"
+
+"I'd buy the business and make Rabin manager--the Souvenir Company.
+
+So he came to relate all those intimacies of The Job; and he was
+overwhelmed at the ease with which she "got onto old Goglefogle."
+
+His preparations for writing the play were elaborate.
+
+He paced Tom's room till twelve-thirty, consulting as to whether
+he had to plan the stage-setting; smoking cigarettes in
+attitudes on chair arms.  Next morning in the office he made
+numerous plans of the setting on waste half-sheets of paper.
+At noon he was telephoning at Tom regarding the question of
+whether there ought to be one desk or two on the stage.
+
+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 fountain-pen, which had large
+gold-like bands and a rather scratchy pen-point, and a box of
+fairly large sheets of paper.  Pressing his literary impedimenta
+tenderly under his arm, he attended four moving-picture and
+vaudeville theaters.  By eleven he had seen three more one-act
+plays and a dramatic playlet.
+
+He slipped by the parlor door at Mrs. Arty's.
+
+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 fountain-pen by writing the names Nelly and
+William Wrenn on a bit of wrapping-paper (which he guiltily
+burned in an ash-tray); 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:
+
+              THE MILLIONAIRE'S DAUGHTER
+
+              A ONE ACT DRAMATIC PLAYLET
+                         by
+
+                   WILLIAM WRENN
+
+                   CHARACTERS
+
+_John Warrington_, a railway president; quite rich.
+_Nelty Warrington_, Mr. Warrington's daughter.
+_Reginald Thorne_, his secretary.
+
+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 comes in.  She says:_
+
+
+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 later he gave a portentous groan and
+went to bed.
+
+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 night--Saturday--Tom 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 nobody--not
+when Nelly was there," and he called for a glass of water with
+the air of a Harvard assistant professor forced to eat in a
+lunch-wagon and slapped on the back by the cook.
+
+Nelly soothed him.  "The play _is_ going well, _isn't_ it?"
+
+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 the actual writing,
+every one looked awed and asked him assorted questions.
+
+At nine-thirty 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 you something about the play?"
+
+"Just a moment," he heard her say.
+
+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 pale-blue
+dressing-gown close.  The pale blueness was a modestly brilliant
+spot against the whiteness of the room--white bureau, hung with
+dance programs and a yellow Upton's Grove High School banner,
+white tiny rocker, pale-yellow matting, white-and-silver
+wall-paper, and a glimpse of a white soft bed.
+
+He was dizzy with the exaltation of that purity, but he got
+himself to say:
+
+"I'm kind of stuck on the first part of the play, Miss Nelly.
+Please tell me how you think the heroine would speak to her dad.
+Would she call him `papa' or `sir,' do you think?"
+
+"Why--let me see--"
+
+"They're such awful high society--"
+
+"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 Music?
+`Father, I have come back to you!'"
+
+"Sa-a-ay, that's a fine line!  That'll get the crowd going right
+from the first....  I _told_ you you'd help me a lot."
+
+"I'm awfully glad if I _have_ helped you," she said, earnestly.
+Good night--and good, "awfully glad, but luck with the play.
+Good night."
+
+"Good night.  Thank you a lot, Miss Nelly.  Church in the
+morning, remember!  Good night."
+
+"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 ninety-eight-cent alarm-clock
+had recently arrived.  He went out for some glue and three small
+corks.  Setting up his box stage, he glued a pill-box and a
+match-box on the floor--the side of the box it had always been
+till now--and there he had the mahogany desks.  He thrust three
+matches into the corks, and behold three graceful
+actors--graceful 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 playing with his marionettes.
+
+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 president was?
+
+(_Daughter, Miss Nelly, comes in._)
+
+_Miss Nelly:_  Father, I have come back to you, sir.
+
+_Mr. Warrington:_  My Daughter!
+
+_Nelly:_  Father, I have something to tell you; something--
+
+
+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 morning--that was paradise!  The oil-stove
+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
+a-sleeping late, as they talked of the joy of not having to go
+to the office, of approaching Christmas, and of the superiority
+of Upton's Grove and Parthenon.
+
+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 a young man in a white jacket instead of at
+church with Nelly.
+
+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, as he re brushed his hair after breakfast.
+
+He walked proudly beside her, and made much of the gentility of
+entering the church, as one of the well-to-do and intensely
+bathed congregation.  He even bowed to an almost painfully
+washed and brushed young usher with gold-rimmed eye-glasses.
+He thought scornfully of his salad days, when he had bowed to
+the Brass-button Man at the Nickelorion.
+
+The church interior was as comfortable as Sunday-morning toast
+and marmalade--half a block of red carpet in the aisles; shiny
+solid-oak pews, gorgeous stained-glass windows, and a general
+polite creaking of ladies' best stays and gentlemen's stiff
+shirt-bosoms, and an odor of the best cologne and moth-balls.
+
+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, Good Will to Men," and the rest, that
+brightened the spaces between windows.
+
+Christmas--happy homes--laughter....  Since, as a boy, he had
+attended the Christmas festivities of the Old Church
+Sunday-school 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 again, nor
+ever wish to see.
+
+But this Christmas--he surprised himself and Nelly suddenly by
+hotly thrusting out his hand and touching her sleeve with the
+searching finger-tips of a child comforted from night fears.
+
+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 her father, "Do you believe in love?"
+
+"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, play-brokers,
+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 noon-hour at the
+cigar-store.
+
+"Why not have three of us--say me and you and Mrs. Arty--talk
+the play, just like we was acting it?"
+
+He enthusiastically forced the plan on Mr. Wrenn.  He pounded
+down-stairs and brought up Mrs. Arty.  He dashed about the room,
+shouting directions.  He dragged out his bureau for the
+railroad-president's desk, and a table for the secretary, and,
+after some consideration and much rubbing of his chin, with two
+slams and a bang he converted his hard green Morris-chair into
+an office safe.
+
+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 the gloves; they were a Touch.)
+
+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 vice-president of the railway would like to
+have you sign these, sir, as president'?"
+
+"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's convenient to you, sir'?"
+
+"Gee, that's dandy!"
+
+The play was on.
+
+It ended at seven.  Mr. Wrenn took but fifteen minutes for
+Sunday supper, and wrote till one of the morning, finishing the
+first draft of his manuscript.
+
+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 Cigar-Makers' 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
+rose-colored China silk.
+
+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 pink-bound and
+red-underlined typed manuscript of the play was mailed to
+Messrs.  Wendelbaum & Schirtz, play-brokers, at 6.15 P.M.,
+Christmas Eve.
+
+
+The four walked down Sixth Avenue to the Cigar-Makers' Ball.
+They made an Indian file through the Christmas shopping crowds,
+and stopped frequently and noisily before the street-booths'
+glamour of tinsel and teddy-bears.  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
+pale-blue 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 cigar-makers, with seven of them in full evening-dress and
+two in dinner-coats, 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 stucco-fronted balcony, and at the bar
+behind the balcony there was a spirit of beer and revelry by night.
+
+Mr. Wrenn embarrassedly passed large groups of pretty girls.
+He felt very light and insecure in his new gun-metal-finish
+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
+on--we'll teach you how to dance at the ball--it 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 two-step 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 she was only across the room from him.
+
+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
+black-mustached and pearl-waistcoated 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 herself and went back to her mama from Yonkers.
+
+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 men--me,
+I'm only the poor fool that talks to her when she's tired and
+tries to cheer her up."
+
+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
+blackest-mustached and pearl-waistcoatedest of all the cigar
+salesmen came begging for a dance, and she was gone, with only:
+"Now get up your courage.  I'm going to _make_ you dance."
+
+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 tapping with her fan on the side of her chair.
+
+She sighed a little.  Cautiously, but very casually, she said,
+"Aren't you going to take me out for some refreshments, Mr. Wrenn?"
+
+"Oh sure--I'm good enough to buy refreshments for her!" he said
+to himself.
+
+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.
+
+She was big-eyed, a tear showing.  "Why, Billy--" was all she
+answered.
+
+He clenched his hands to keep from bursting out with all the
+pitiful tears which were surging in his eyes.  But he said nothing.
+
+"Billy, what--"
+
+He turned shyly around to her; his hand touched hers softly.
+
+"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 was--I felt like such a
+mutt--not 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 ice-cream, 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
+ginger-ale, 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 cigar-maker, and started homeward
+with Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"Let's not take a car--I want some fresh air after that smoky
+place," she said.  "But it _was_ grand....  Let's walk up
+Fifth Avenue."
+
+"Fine....  Tired, Nelly?"
+
+"A little."
+
+He thought her voice somewhat chilly.
+
+"Nelly--I'm so sorry--I didn't really have the chance to tell
+you in there how sorry I was for the way I spoke to you.
+Gee! it was fierce of me--but I felt--I couldn't dance, and--oh--"
+
+No answer.
+
+"And you did mind it, didn't you?"
+
+"Why, I didn't think you were so very nice about it--when I'd
+tried so hard to have you have a good time--"
+
+"Oh, Nelly, I'm so sorry--"
+
+There was tragedy in his voice.  His shoulders, which he always
+tried to keep as straight as though they were in a vise when he
+walked with her, were drooping.
+
+She touched his glove.  "Oh don't, Billy; it's all right now.
+I understand.  Let's forget--"
+
+"Oh, you're too good to me!"
+
+Silence.
+
+As they crossed Twenty-third 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 street-lamp 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 sales-clerk.
+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 mysteries he
+knew and sang.  What he _said_ was:
+
+"Gee, those trees look like a reg'lar picture!...  The Tower
+just kind of fades away.  Don't it?"
+
+"Yes, it is pretty," she said, doubtfully, but with a pressure
+of his arm.
+
+Then they talked like a summer-time 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 which had been born in the pain of their
+misunderstanding.
+
+
+On January 10th the manuscript of "The Millionaire's Daughter"
+was returned by play-brokers Wendelbaum & Schirtz with this letter:
+
+
+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 reading-fee, 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 report,
+which announced:
+
+
+"Millionaire's Daughter."  One-act vlle.  Utterly impos.
+Amateurish to the limit.  Dialogue sounds like burlesque of
+Laura Jean Libbey.  Can it.
+
+
+Nelly was coming down-stairs.  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 letter--though not the report--to 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 Five-Hundred player, Mr.
+William Wrenn, known as Billy, glanced triumphantly at Miss
+Proudfoot, who was his partner against Mrs. Arty and James
+T. Duncan, the traveling-man, on that night of late February.
+His was the last bid in the crucial hand of the rubber game.
+The others waited respectfully.  Confidently, he bid "Nine
+on no trump."
+
+"Good Lord, Billl" exclaimed James T. Duncan.
+
+"I'll make it."
+
+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 to-night?  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 soon--store
+ought to be closed by now.  We'll have some ready for him."
+
+"Right, Bill," agreed James T. Duncan.
+
+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 a growler of ice-cream
+soda for the ladies!"
+
+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 drink he really is.
+
+Yet, as they went up-stairs 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 pinochle player, besides Five Hundred."
+
+"Yes," said Nelly.
+
+"I think he was a little shy at first....  _I_ was always
+shy....  But he likes us, and I like folks that like folks."
+
+"_Yes!_" said Nelly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+HE IS BLOWN BY THE WHIRLWIND
+
+
+
+
+
+"He was blown by the whirlwind and followed a wandering flame
+through perilous seas to a happy shore."--_Quoth Francois._
+
+
+On an April Monday evening, when a small moon passed shyly over
+the city and the streets were filled with the sound of
+hurdy-gurdies and the spring cries of dancing children, Mr.
+Wrenn pranced down to the basement dining-room 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
+day--well, other fellows had been married; why not?
+
+Miss Mary Proudfoot was mending a rent in the current
+table-cloth with delicate swift motions of her silvery-skinned
+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 celebrated--and justly celebrated--minced-ham sandwiches
+for the picnic to be much interested.  He was not much more
+interested when she said, "Mrs. Ferrard's got a letter or
+something for you."
+
+Then, as dinner began, Mrs. Ferrard rushed in dramatically and
+said, "There's a telegram for you, Mr. Wrenn!"
+
+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 message--a ship's wireless.
+
+
+Meet me _Hesperida._--ISTRA.
+
+
+"It's just--a--a business message," he managed to say, and
+splashed his soup.  This was not the place to take the feelings
+out of his thumping heart and examine them.
+
+Dinner was begun.  Picnics were conversationally considered in
+all their more important phases--historical, dietetical, and
+social.  Mr. Wrenn talked much and a little wildly.  After
+dinner he galloped out to buy a paper.  The S.S. _Hesperiida_ was
+due at ten next morning.
+
+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 literal--every other minute for a cad, a
+double-faced 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 Istra--actually, incredibly going to see her, just
+the next day!  He returned to find Nelly sitting on the steps of
+Mrs. Arty's.
+
+"Hello."
+
+"Hello."
+
+Both good sound observations, and all they could say for a time,
+while Mr. Wrenn examined the under side of the iron steps rail
+minutely.
+
+"Billy--was it something serious, the telegram?"
+
+"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."
+
+"Oh yes, I see."
+
+So lacking in jealousy was Nelly that Mr. Wrenn was
+disappointed, though he didn't know why.  It always hurts to
+have one's thunderous tragedies turn out realistic dialogues.
+
+"I wonder if you would like to meet her.  She's awful well
+educated, but I dunno--maybe 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's--oh, awful nice,
+some ways.  I hope you like--I hope she won't--"
+
+"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 Miss Nash will be real
+nice.  Does she live here in New York?"
+
+"No--in California....  I don't know how long she's going to
+stay here."
+
+"Well--well--hum-m-m.  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 she looked.  Would
+he like her?
+
+The great steamer swung side-to 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 that he was wildly agitated
+about her.  Suppose something had happened to her!
+
+The smallish man who had been edging into the crowd so politely
+suddenly dashed to the group forming at the gang-plank 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 goggle-eyed while the plank was lifted to the steamer's
+deck and the long line of smiling and waving passengers
+disembarked.  Then he saw her--tall, graceful, nonchalant,
+uninterested, in a smart check suit with a lively hat of black
+straw, carrying a new Gladstone bag.
+
+He stared at her.  "Gee!" he gasped.  "I'm crazy about her.
+I am, all right."
+
+She saw him, and their smiles of welcome made them one.
+She came from the plank and hastily kissed him.
+
+"Really here!" she laughed.
+
+"Well, well, well, well! I'm so glad to see you!"
+
+"Glad to see you, Mouse dear."
+
+"Have good tr--"
+
+"Don't ask me about it!  There was a married man _sans_ wife who
+persecuted me all the way over.  I'm glad _you_ aren't going to
+fall in love with me."
+
+"Why--uh--"
+
+"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 by M.
+There's one of my trunks already.  How are you, Mouse dear?"
+
+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, and--Mouse 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'est-ce pas?_  Not too expensive.  I've got just about
+enough to get back to California."
+
+Man fashion, he saw with acute clearness the pile of work on his
+desk, and, man fashion, responded,  "No; be glad tuh."
+
+"How about the place where you're living?  You spoke about its
+being so clean and all."
+
+The thought of Nelly and Istra together frightened him.
+
+"Why, I don't know as you'd like it so very much."
+
+"Oh, it'll be all right for a few days, anyway.  Is there a
+room vacant."
+
+He was sulky about it.  He saw much trouble ahead.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose there is."
+
+"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
+dock-house.  She stared up at him with real sorrow in her fine eyes.
+
+"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 New York.  He went on:
+
+"And we've got kind of separated, and I didn't know--But I guess
+I'll always--oh--kind of worship you."
+
+"It's all right, Mouse.  It's--Here's the customs men."
+
+Now Istra Nash knew perfectly that the customs persons were not
+ready to examine her baggage as yet.  But the discussion was
+ended, and they seemed to understand each other.
+
+"Gee, there's a lot of rich Jew ladies coming back this time!"
+said he.
+
+"Yes.  They had diamonds three times a day," she assented.
+
+"Gee, this is a big place!"
+
+"Yes." So did they testify to fixity of friendship till they
+reached the house and Istra was welcomed to "that Teddem's" room
+as a new guest.
+
+
+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 dish-water," 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 doorway--pale and intolerant, her red hair twisted high on
+her head, tall and slim and uncorseted in a gray tight-fitting
+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:  "Uh--uh--uh--you 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 expression of devilish amusement.
+
+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 Nash--you've met Mr. Wrenn; Miss Nelly Croubel, our baby;
+Tom Poppins, the great Five-Hundred player; Mrs. Ebbitt, Mr.
+Ebbitt, Miss Proudfoot."
+
+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 unpleasantly interrupted.
+
+The others began talking and eating very fast and rather noisily.
+Miss Mary Proudfoot's thin voice pierced the clamor:
+
+"I hear you have just come to New York, Miss Nash."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Is this your first visit to--"
+
+"No."
+
+Miss Proudfoot rancorously took a long drink of water.
+
+Nelly attempted, bravely:
+
+"Do you like New York, Miss Nash?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Nelly and Miss Proudfoot and Tom Poppins began discussing
+shoe-stores, 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 she looked, with her tired
+white face!
+
+As the soup-plates 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 artificially pleasant and said:
+
+"Miss Nash has just come back from Paris.  She's a regular
+European traveler, just like Mr. Wrenn."
+
+Mrs. Samuel Ebbitt piped:  "Mr. Ebbitt was to Europe.  In 1882."
+
+"No 'twa'n't, Fannie; 'twas in 1881," complained Mr. Ebbitt.
+
+Miss Nash waited for the end of this interruption as though it
+were a noise which merely had to be endured, like the Elevated.
+
+Twice she drew in her breath to speak, and the whole table laid
+its collective knife and fork down to listen.  All she said was:
+
+"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
+to-morrow?  About nine?  Just something simple--a canteloupe
+and some shirred eggs and chocolate?"
+
+"Oh no; why, yes, certainly, "mumbled Mrs. Arty, while the table
+held its breaths and underneath them gasped:
+
+"Chocolate!"
+
+"A canteloupe!"
+
+"Shirred eggs!"
+
+"_In her room--at nine!_"
+
+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 inside him.
+
+"Yes," he mumbled.  "Quite a long walk."
+
+Miss Mary Proudfoot tried again:
+
+"is it pleasant to study in Paris?  Mrs. Arty said you were an artist."
+
+"No."
+
+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 nearly united the shattered table and won Mr.
+Wrenn's palpitating thankfulness.
+
+After dessert Istra slowly drew a plain gold cigarette-case 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 behind Mr. Wrenn.
+
+Mrs. Arty snapped to the servant, "Annie, bring me _my_ cigarettes."
+But Mrs. Arty always was penitent when she had been nasty,
+and--though Istra did not at once seem to know that the
+landlady _had_ been nasty--Mrs. Arty invited her up to the parlor
+for after-dinner 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."
+
+"Yes, that's so," reflected Mrs. Arty.
+
+"Yes," added Mr. Wrenn.
+
+And Nelly:  "That's so."
+
+The whole table nodded gravely, "Yes, that's so."
+
+"I'm sure"--Istra smiled at Mrs. Arty--"that it's because a
+woman is running things.  Now think what cat-and-dog lives you'd
+lead if Mr. Wrenn or Mr.--Popple, was it?--were ruling."
+
+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 red-leather couch, among the
+pillows, and smoked two cigarettes, relapsing into "No?"'s for
+conversation.
+
+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 remarkable.  Enlighten
+poor Istra."
+
+"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.
+Zapp--she was the landlady--and I didn't like her very much.
+But here Tom Poppins and Mrs. Arty and--the rest--they really
+like folks, and they make it just like a home....  Miss Croubel
+is a very nice girl.  She works for Wanamacy's--she 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 traveling-man.  He's
+away on a trip."
+
+"Which one do you play with?  So Nelly likes to--well, make
+b'lieve--'magine?"
+
+"How did you--"
+
+"Oh, I watched her looking at you.  I think she's a terribly
+nice pink-face.  And just now you're comparing her and me."
+
+"Gee!" he said.
+
+She was immensely pleased with herself.  "Tell me, what do these
+people think about; at least, what do you talk about?"
+
+"_Say!_"
+
+"'S-s-s-h!  Not so loud, my dear."
+
+"Say, I know how you mean.  You feel something like what I did
+in England.  You can't get next to what the folks are thinking,
+and it makes you sort of lonely."
+
+"Well, I--"
+
+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 to-night."  He stood before Istra and Mr. Wrenn
+theatrically holding out a bag of chocolate drops in one hand
+and peanut brittle in the other; and grandiloquently:
+
+"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 politely--too 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 interrupted:
+
+"You've hurt Tom's feelings by not taking any candy; and, gee,
+he's awful kind!"
+
+"Have I?" mockingly.
+
+"Yes, you _have_.  And there ain't any too many kind people in
+this world."
+
+"Oh yes, of course you' re right.  I _am_ sorry, really I am."
+
+She dived after Tom's retreat and cheerfully addressed him:
+
+"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 Five-Hundred table to smile in a lordly
+way down at Mrs. Arty and say, quite humanly:
+
+"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 think."
+
+Mr. Wrenn on the couch was horribly agitated....  Wasn't Istra
+coming back?
+
+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 your friends."
+
+As the bubbles rise through water in a cooking-pot, 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 something he suggested.
+
+"Istra--" That was all he could say, but from his eyes had
+gone all reserve.
+
+Her glance back was as frank as his--only it had more of the
+mother in it; it was like a kindly pat on the head; and she was
+the mother as she mused:
+
+"So you _have_ missed me, then?"
+
+"Missed you--"
+
+"Did you think of me after you came here?  Oh, I know--I was
+forgotten; poor Istra abdicates to the pretty pink-face."
+
+"Oh, Istra, _don't_.  I--can't we just go out for a little walk
+so--so we can talk?"
+
+"Why, we can talk here."
+
+"Oh, gee!--there's so many people around....  Golly! when I
+came back to America--gee!--I couldn't hardly sleep nights--"
+
+From across the room came the boisterous, somewhat
+coarse-timbred 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 vodville show.  Oh no!"
+
+Nelly and Miss Proudfoot dissolved in giggles at the wit.
+
+Mr. Wrenn gazed at them, detached; these were not his people,
+and with startled pride he glanced at Istra's face, delicately
+carven by thought, as he stumbled hotly on.
+
+"--just couldn't sleep nights at all....  Then I got on the job...."
+
+"Let's see, you're still with that same company?"
+
+"Yes.  Souvenir and Art Novelty Company.  And I got awfully on
+the job there, and so I managed to forget for a little while
+and--"
+
+"So you really do like me even after I was so beastly to you in
+England."
+
+"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
+mustn't--you mustn't--"
+
+"Oh, gee! I just can't get over it--you 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 bank on 'em.  But--oh--"
+
+
+From across the room, Tom's pretended jeers, lighted up with Miss
+Proudfoot's giggles, as paper lanterns illumine Coney Island.
+From Tom:
+
+"Yes, you're a hot dancer, all right.  I suppose you can do the
+Boston and all them swell dances.  Wah-h-h-h-h!"
+
+
+"--but Istra, oh, gee! you're like poetry--like all them
+things a feller can't get but he tries to when he reads
+Shakespeare and all those poets."
+
+"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 merely
+playing--nothing more."
+
+"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 a walk--let's--let's
+go to a show."
+
+"I'm awf'ly sorry, but I promised--a 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."
+
+"Oh, then," hopefully, "don't go.  Let's--"
+
+"I'm sorry, Mouse dear, but I'm afraid I can't break the
+date....  Fact, I must go up and primp now--"
+
+"Don't you care a bit?" he said, sulkily.
+
+"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 smiled--the mother smile--and
+was gone with a lively good night to the room in general.
+
+
+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 department store on which the fetid city summer would
+soon descend.
+
+
+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.  Somehow--he couldn't tell exactly why--he couldn't
+seem to get in all the remarks he had inside him about how much
+he had missed her.
+
+Wednesday--Thursday--Friday; he saw her only at one dinner, or
+on the stairs, departing volubly with clever-looking men in
+evening clothes to taxis waiting before the house.
+
+Nelly was very pleasant; just that--pleasant.  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,
+hatchet-faced sarcastic-looking 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 her--there on the
+same floor with him--talking 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 better.  I
+think I can sleep now.  Thank you very much for coming."
+
+Nelly hadn't told Mr. Wrenn that she had a severe headache--she
+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 long line of hot pain, while he prayed:
+
+"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--O God, keep me away from wickedness!"
+
+He huddled there many minutes, praying, the scorching pressure
+of the bedside growing more painful.  All the while the
+camp-fire 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 flame-colored hair, something
+utterly fine, something he could not express.
+
+"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 hat-rack:
+
+
+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 one-thirty 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 walking-stick he had
+bought on Tottenham Court Road, but decently concealed from the
+boarding-house.
+
+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 nine-thirty; for, said
+Istra, she was "just a bit tired, Mouse."
+
+They stood at the door of Istra's room.  Istra said,  "You may
+come in--just 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 glanced back.
+
+Nelly was just coming up-stairs, staring at him where he stood
+inside the door, her lips apart with amazement.
+
+Ladies distinctly did not entertain in their rooms at Mrs. Arty's.
+
+He wanted to rush out, to explain, to invite her in, to--to--
+He stuttered in his thought, and by now Nelly had hastened past,
+her face turned from them.
+
+Uneasily he tilted on the front of a cane-seated rocking-chair,
+glaring at a pile of books before one of Istra's trunks.  Istra
+sat on the bedside nursing her knee.  She burst out:
+
+"O Mouse dear, I'm so bored by everybody--every sort of
+everybody....  Of course I don't mean you; you're a good pal....
+Oh--Paris is _too_ complex--especially when you can't quite get
+the nasal vowels--and New York is too youthful and earnest; and
+Dos Puentes, California, will be plain hell....  And all my
+little parties--I 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, damn it!  Am I shocking you?  Well,
+what do I care if I shock everybody!"
+
+Her slim pliant length was flung out along the bed, and she was
+crying.  Her beautiful hands clutched the corners of a pillow
+bitterly.
+
+He crept over to the bed, patting her shoulder, slowly and
+regularly, too frightened of her mood even to want to kiss her.
+
+She looked up, laughing tearfully.  "Please say, `There, there,
+there; don't cry.'  It always goes with pats for weepy girls, you
+know....  O Mouse, you will be good to some woman some day."
+
+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
+prim worried thoughts of Wrenn.
+
+Istra murmured:  "Perhaps that's what I need--some one to need
+me.  Only--"  She stroked his hair.  "Now you must go, dear."
+
+"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."
+
+"Please, won't you come to the picnic to-morrow?  It's--"
+
+"No.  Sorry, but can't possibly."
+
+"Please think it over."
+
+"No, no, no, no, dear!  You go and forget me and enjoy yourself
+and be good to your pink-face--Nelly, 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 don't, really.  Now, good night."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+AND FOLLOWS A WANDERING FLAME THROUGH PERILOUS SEAS
+
+
+
+
+
+They had picnic dinner early up there on the Palisades:
+
+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
+red-cotton table-cloth 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 of
+rye whisky.
+
+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 chewing-gum.  When he moved to her side
+with a wooden plate of cream-cheese sandwiches (which Tom
+humorously termed "cold-cream wafers") Mr. Wrenn started to
+explain how he had come to enter Istra's room.
+
+"Why shouldn't you?" Nelly asked, curtly, and turned to Miss
+Proudfoot.
+
+"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 edge."
+
+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 steely-gray Hudson below.  Nelly
+squeaked her fear at the drop and clutched his arm, but suddenly
+let go and drew back without his aid.
+
+He groaned within, "I haven't the right to help her."  He took her
+arm as she hesitatingly climbed from the rock down to the ground.
+
+She jerked it free, curtly saying,  "No, thank you."
+
+She was repentant in a moment, and, cheerfully:
+
+"Miss Nash took me in her room yesterday and showed me her
+things.  My, she's got such be-_yoo_-ti-ful 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."
+
+"Keep house?"
+
+Nelly let him suffer for a moment before she relieved him with,
+"For her father."
+
+"Oh....  Did she say she was going back to California soon?"
+
+"Not till the end of the summer, maybe."
+
+"Oh....  Oh, Nelly--"
+
+For the first time that day he was perfectly sincere.  He was
+trying to confide in her.  But the shame of having emotions was
+on him.  He got no farther.
+
+To his amazement, Nelly mused,  "She is very nice."
+
+He tried hard to be gallant.  "Yes, she is interesting, but of
+course she ain't anywheres near as nice as you are, Nelly, be--"
+
+"Oh, don't, Billy!"
+
+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 apartment-houses 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 "Yes."
+
+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 go--go 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 shirt-waist-factory fire showed that "something
+oughta be done--something sure oughta be."
+
+He trembled on the ferry till Nelly, with a burst of motherly
+tenderness in her young voice, suddenly asked:  "Why, you're
+shivering dreadfully!  Did you get a chill?"
+
+Naturally, he wanted the credit of being known as an invalid,
+and pitied and nursed, but he reluctantly smiled and said, "Oh
+no, it ain't anything at all."
+
+Then Istra called him again, and he fumed over the slowness of
+their landing.
+
+And, at home, Istra was out.
+
+He went resolutely down and found Nelly alone, sitting on a
+round pale-yellow 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 boarding-house-district
+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
+boarding-houses, to slay joy and bring wisdom and give words shyness.
+
+He had, as he sat down, intended to ask her to go with him to a
+moving-picture show.  But inspiration was on him.  He merely sat
+and talked.
+
+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 good-by.  Come see me
+sometime--phone before and see if I'm in--Spring xxx--address xx
+South Washington Sq.  In haste,                        ISTRA.
+
+
+He spent the evening in not going to the studio.  Several times
+he broke away from a pinochle game to rush upstairs and see if
+the note was as chilly as he remembered.  It always was.
+
+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 that he "wanted to be around with folks."
+
+He had a sort of youthful defiant despair, so he jested much at
+the card-table, 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 twenty-three dollars a week.
+Mr. Guilfogle went out of his way to admit that the letters to
+the Southern trade had been "a first-rate stunt, son."
+
+John Henson, the head of the Souvenir Company's manufacturing
+department, invited Mr. Wrenn home to dinner, and the account of
+the cattle-boat was much admired by Mrs. Henson and the three
+young Hensons.
+
+A few days later, in mid-June, there was an unusually cheerful
+dinner at the boarding-house.  Nelly turned to Mr. Wrenn--yes,
+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
+aislesmen.
+
+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.  Istra--he had to see her--now,
+this evening.  He rushed out to the corner drug-store and
+reached her by telephone.
+
+Yes-s, admitted Istra, a little grudgingly, she was going to be
+at the studio that evening, though she--well, there was going to
+be a little party--some friends--but--yes, she'd be glad to have
+him come.
+
+Grimly, Mr. Wrenn set out for Washington Square.
+
+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 Square--namely:
+
+(a) That the big room was bare, ill kept, and not comparable to
+the red-plush 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 and fruit-borderness of the frames
+at Mrs. Arty's!
+
+(b) That the people were brothers-in-talk to the inmates of the
+flat on Great James Street, London, only far less, and friendly.
+
+(c) That Mr. Wrenn was now a man of friends, and if the
+"blooming Bohemians," as he called them, didn't like him they
+were permitted to go to the dickens.
+
+Istra was always across the room from him somehow.  He found
+himself glad.  It made their parting definite.
+
+He was going back to his own people, he was deciding.
+
+As he rose with elaborate boarding-house 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 Tax--or was it Matisse?--and he's usually rude
+when he talks about them."
+
+"No.  He was all right."
+
+"Then what _is_ worrying you?"
+
+"Oh--nothing.  Good ni--"
+
+"You _are_ going off angry.  _Aren't_ you?"
+
+"No, but--oh, there ain't any use of our--of me being--
+_Is_ there?"
+
+"N-no--"
+
+"Matisse--the guy you just spoke about--and these artists here
+tonight in bobtail dress-suits--I wouldn't know when to wear one
+of them things, and when a swallow-tail--if I had one, even--or
+when a Prince Albert or--"
+
+"Oh, not a Prince Albert, Mouse dear.  Say, a frock-coat."
+
+"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's--Lord, 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 myself--and 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 much for _my_ friends."
+
+"But, Mouse dear, all this isn't news to me.  Surely you, who've
+gipsied with me, aren't going to be so obvious, so banal, as to
+blame _me_ because you've cared for me, are you, child?"
+
+"Oh no, no, no! I didn't mean to do that.  I just wanted--oh,
+gee!  I dunno--well, I wanted to have things between us definite."
+
+"I do understand.  You're quite right.  And now we're just
+friends, aren't we?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then good-by.  And sometime when I'm back in New York--I'm
+going to California in a few days--I think I'll be able to get
+back here--I certainly hope so--though 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 desperation--but, as I was
+saying, dear, when I get back here we'll have a good dinner,
+_nicht wahr?_"
+
+"Yes, and--good-by."
+
+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 good-by to Istra, that he was not
+sorry, and that now he could offer to Nelly Croubel everything.
+
+Istra suddenly called,  "O Mouse, wait just a moment."
+
+She darted like a swallow.  She threw her arm about his shoulder
+and kissed his cheek.  Instantly she was running up-stairs
+again, and had disappeared into the studio.
+
+
+Mr. William Wrenn was walking rapidly up Riverside Drive,
+thinking about his letters to the Southern merchants.
+
+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 and humbly.
+
+But he found that the agony was all over.  Even to save his
+dignity as one who was being dramatic, he couldn't keep his
+thoughts on Istra.
+
+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.  But--gee!  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 was home.  He went happily up the stairs.  He would dream of
+Nelly, and--
+
+Nelly's door opened, and she peered out, drawing her _peignoir_
+about her.
+
+"Oh," she said, softly, "is it you?"
+
+"Yes.  My, you're up late."
+
+"Do you--Are you all right?"
+
+He dashed down the hall and stood shyly scratching at the straw
+of his newest hat.
+
+"Why yes, Nelly, course.  Poor--Oh, don't tell me you have a
+headache again?"
+
+"No--I was awful foolish, of course, but I saw you when you
+went out this evening, and you looked so savage, and you didn't
+look very well."
+
+"But now it's all right."
+
+"Then good night."
+
+"Oh no--listen--please do!  I went over to the place Miss Nash is
+living at, because I was pretty sure that I ain't hipped on
+her--sort of hypnotized by her--any more.  And I found I ain't!
+_I ain't!_  I don't know what to say, I want to--I 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 a-running, 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 Istra--she learnt me a lot about books and all,
+so I have more to me, or maybe will have, for you.  It's
+--Nelly--promise you'll be--my friend--promise--If you knew how
+I rushed back here tonight to see you!"
+
+"Billy--"
+
+She held out her hand, and he grasped it as though it were the
+sacred symbol of his dreams.
+
+"To-morrow," 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!"
+
+Her door closed.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TO A HAPPY SHORE
+
+
+
+
+
+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 oil-stove.  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 traveling-salesman, 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,
+furthermore, could he "run a bunch of guys if he was over them?"
+
+"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!"
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"Why, Billy, some day you might be manager!"
+
+"Say, that would be great, wouldn't it!  But hones', Nell, do you
+think I might have a chance to land the assistant's job?"
+
+"I certainly do."
+
+"Oh, Nelly--gee! you make me--oh, learn to bank on myself--"
+
+He kissed her for the second time in his life.
+
+"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 reliable Mr. Wrenn came
+in.  But now he tried to appear dignified and impatient.
+
+"That--" he began.
+
+"I've been here longer than any of the other men, and I know
+every line of the business now, even the manufacturing.  You
+remember I held down Henson's job when his wife was sick."
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"And I guess Jake thinks I can boss all right, and Miss
+Leavenbetz, too."
+
+"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
+directly--personally.  But you're a good man--"
+
+"Yes, I've heard that before, but I'll be gol-darned if I'll
+stick at one desk all my life just because I save you all the
+trouble in that department, Guilfogle, and now--"
+
+"Now, now, now, now!  Calm down; hold your horses, my boy.  This
+ain't a melodrama, you know."
+
+"Yes, I know; I didn't mean to get sore, but 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
+jollying-letters, I guess."
+
+"Well, I like that all right.  I appreciate it.  But of course
+I expect more pay--two men's work--"
+
+"Let's see; what you getting now?"
+
+"Twenty-three."
+
+"Well, that's a good deal, you know.  The overhead expenses have
+been increasing a lot faster than our profits, and we've--"
+
+"Huh!"
+
+"--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 salary-raising--though we're just as glad to do it as you
+men to get it; but--"
+
+"Huh!"
+
+"--if we go to getting extravagant we'll go bankrupt, and then
+we won't any of us have jobs....  Still, I _am_ willing to raise
+you to twenty-five, though--"
+
+"Thirty-five!"
+
+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 twenty-nine-fifty, and not
+a cent more for at least a year.  That's final.  _Understand?_"
+
+"All right," chirped Mr. Wrenn.
+
+"Gee!" he was exulting to himself, "never thought I'd get
+anything like that.  Twenty-nine-fifty! More 'n enough to marry
+on now!  I'm going to get _twenty-nine-fifty!_"
+
+
+"Married five months ago to-night, honey," said Mr. Wrenn to
+Nelly, his wife, in their Bronx flat, and thus set down October
+17, 1913, as a great date in history.
+
+"Oh, I _know_ it, Billy.  I wondered if you'd remember.  You just
+ought to see the dessert I'm making--but that's a s'prise."
+
+"Remember!  Should say I did!  See what I've got for somebody!"
+
+He opened a parcel and displayed a pair of red-worsted
+bed-slippers, a creation of one of the greatest red-worsted
+artists in the whole land.  Yes, and he could afford them, too.
+Was he not making thirty-two dollars a week--he 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 the court in
+number seventy is so lazy she wears her corsets to bed!"
+
+"Did the janitress get the coal put in, Nell?"
+
+"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."
+
+"That's fine!"
+
+"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 gas-stove working all
+right now?"
+
+"Um-huh, honey.  I fixed it."
+
+"Say, let me make the coffee, Nell.  You'll have enough to do
+with setting the table and watching the sausages."
+
+"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 ver-ee
+much skipping down to Bachmeyer's for some?  Ah-h, is it just
+fearful neglected when it comes home all tired out?"
+
+"No, indeedy.  But you got to kiss me first, else I won't go at all."
+
+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 shoulder--a soft burden of love
+that his shoulder rejoiced to bear--they stood gazing out of the
+narrow kitchen window of their sixth-story 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 Central Park
+along Fifth Avenue.
+
+"Sometime," mused Mr. Wrenn, "we'll live in Jersey, where
+there's trees and trees and trees--and 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 she blushed adorably,
+with infinite hope.
+
+He hastened out of the kitchen, with the happy glance he never
+failed to give the living-room--its red-papered walls with shiny
+imitation-oak woodwork; the rows of steins on the plate-rack;
+the imitation-oak dining-table, with a vase of newly dusted
+paper roses; the Morris chair, with Nelly's sewing on a tiny
+wicker table beside it; the large gilt-framed 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 real-estate 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 and Mandalay and all sorts of stuff in
+sunsets!"
+
+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.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Mr. Wrenn, by Sinclair Lewis
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR MR. WRENN ***
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