Cream of the jug
Author: Unknown
Date: 2026-03-27T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Humorous stories; American; Short stories

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Cream of the jug

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Title: Cream of the jug

An anthology of humorous stories

Editor: Grant M. Overton

Release date: March 27, 2026 [eBook #78305]
Most recently updated: May 4, 2026

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78305

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CREAM OF THE JUG ***

Cream of the Jug

An Anthology of
Humorous Stories

EDITED BY

GRANT OVERTON

HARPER & BROTHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1927

COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY HARPER
& BROTHERS. PRINTED IN THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FIRST EDITION
H-B

FOREWORD

A good many harsh things are likely to be said about this collection of humorous stories and I may as well get in first by saying a few of them right here. Not all of them are likely to strike any given reader as being humorous; certainly not all of them are humorous in the same sense nor in anything like the same degree. Humor, from the writer's standpoint, can hardly be defined except as a method of presenting material; from a reader's standpoint, as anything and everything conducive to good-natured laughter. Humor may be brief; perhaps is better so; nevertheless I have aimed to include only humorous writing which also tells a fully-rounded story—writing in which the humor is incidental to the story unless you, the reader, find it otherwise.

There is plenty of evidence that I have had further formulas. Some of it is misleading. I did not, for example, consciously select a humorous negro story, a humorous animal story, a humorous Jewish story, and so on. With more truth it can be alleged that I made this book by culling a specimen of the work of this well-known writer of humorous yarns, and that one. Still, there are one or two stories by less well-known writers. And it is perhaps natural in any department to think of a few who are outstanding and to say, "The collection won't be representative without a story by Blank." In the end you match Blank's tale against one by somebody else and are not thunderstruck if Blank's is the better. It is his faculty for being better that has got him his fame.

That there is only one story by a woman is as much of a surprise to me as it can be to anybody. Probably, if my task were perfectly done, there would be not less than three.

I have, however, failed to include only one story which I wished to put in. This failure was due to the author's refusal of permission, for no given reason.

Of course there are hundreds and probably thousands of stories I have not read, and there must be omissions which, apart from the element of individual appraisement, are mistakes. I shall be glad to know about these. But in suggesting them it is fair to ask you to bear in mind that I have been concerned only with American writers or those who, like P. G. Wodehouse, have as it were adopted us and been adopted by us; and that I have dealt almost exclusively with stories of the last two years. I have also avoided in the majority of cases stories already published in book form.

Should this book meet with favor, another collection of the sort is not impossible, and for that I shall value suggestions to improve on the present volume. They should generally be:

Fully-rounded "stories" of usual length.

By Americans; especially by women.

Published in a magazine in 1926 or 1927.

As yet unpublished in book form.

I can think of no other specification except the fundamental one—that the story should have made you laugh, early and often. I hope some of these may do that.

GRANT OVERTON

1 July, 1927

CONTENTS

I'M IN A HURRY
William Hazlett Upson

THE CUSTODY OF THE PUMPKIN
P. G. Wodehouse

THE MILKY WAY
Stewart Edward White

LA BELLA GINA
Eleanor Mercein Kelly

CLASSICS IN SLANG: ROBINSON CRUSOE
H. C. Witwer

THE PUSHER-IN-THE-FACE
F. Scott Fitzgerald

ALMOST A GENTLEMAN
Edward Hope

ARABIAN KNIGHTS
Octavus Roy Cohen

THE SIXTH MCNALLY
Montague Glass

ZONE OF QUIET
Ring W. Lardner

I'M IN A HURRY

By William Hazlett Upson

WILLIAM HAZLETT UPSON

William Hazlett Upson was born at Glen Ridge, N.J., on September 20, 1891, the son of a lawyer practicing in New York City. After graduating from the agricultural college at Cornell University he tried farming for three years and was glad to quit to become a soldier. He was a private in the field artillery and saw service in the latter half of the Marne-Aisne offensive and in the St. Mihiel and Argonne operations. After the Armistice he spent the winter in Germany as one of the Army of Occupation.

He returned from abroad to pick up a job as a service mechanic with a tractor company and in the next few years he learned all about tractors and a good deal about how to sell them.

A long convalescence from illness set him to writing. William Almon Wolff showed him how to revise a story that was getting rejections and then sold it for him. Upson was very busy marrying, and writing more stories, which also sold. He went back to work for the tractor company and for almost a year did that job in the daytime and wrote at night. He has been writing since 1922 and said good-by to tractors, except in his stories, a long while ago.

Upson has written nearly all his stories from material that he accumulated in his years as a farmer, his months as a soldier, and his time with the tractor industry. Often a humorist, it is improbable that he will ever write a funnier story than "I'm in a Hurry," which has generally been adjudged one of the most perfect humorous stories in recent years. "I'm in a Hurry" was first published in Collier's for May 2, 1925.

I'M IN A HURRY[1]

[1] Copyright, 1925, by William Hazlett Upson.

DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS
October 1, 1924

To The Farmers Friend Tractor Company
Earthworm City, Illinois

Dear Sir: I'm in a hurry I want a new main drive gear for my tractor. This tractor was formerly owned by Joe Banks of Llano, Texas, and bought by me at the auction after he died. The main drive gear in the tractor has busted and I just been over and asked the widow Banks where Joe used to buy parts for his tractors and she said she aint sure but she thinks it was The Farmers Friend Tractor Company, Earthworm City, Illinois. So please let me know if you are the folks, and if so please send the gear at once. As I am in a hurry. It is the main drive gear. It is the big bull gear in the back end of the transmission that goes round and round and drives the tractor excuse this paper as my regular business letter paper has not come yet yours truly,

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS

EARTHWORM CITY, ILL.
October 3, 1924

Mr. David Crockett Suggs
Dry River Junction, Tex.

Dear Sir: This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of October 1, in which we note that you request us to send you a gear for your tractor.

In this connection we are pleased to advise that an inspection of our files reveals the fact that Mr. Joseph Banks of Llano, Tex., was the owner of one of our old-style Model 45 Earthworm Tractors. Mr. Banks acquired this tractor on June 3, 1915. We are changing our records to indicate that this tractor has been purchased by yourself, and we are most happy to assure you that all the resources of the Farmers' Friend Tractor Company are at your service and that we can supply you promptly with everything you may need in the way of spare parts, service and information.

We regret, however, that your description of the gear which you desire is not sufficient for us to identify same, as there are a number of gears in the transmission to which the description "main drive gear" might conceivably apply. Kindly look up this gear in the parts book and advise us the proper part number and name as given therein. When necessary information is received, immediate shipment will be made.

In the meantime, we wish to extend you a most cordial welcome into the happy family of Earthworm users, to congratulate you upon selecting an Earthworm Tractor—even though it be of such an old model—and to assure you of our constant interest and desire to coöperate with you to the fullest extent.

Very truly yours,
FREDERICK R. OVERTON,
Parts Department.

DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS
October 6, 1924

To The Farmers Friend Tractor Company
Earthworm City, Illinois.

Dear Sir: I got your letter I got no parts book. I asked the widow of Joe Banks, who is the man that owned the tractor before I bought it at the auction after he died, I asked her did they have a parts book for the tractor and she said they once had a parts book but it is lost. I would look up the gear in the parts book if I could, but you can understand that I cant look up the gear in the parts book if I got no parts book. What I want is the big bull gear way at the back. The great big cog wheel with 44 cogs on it that goes round and round and drives the tractor.

I'm in a hurry because the tractor is unfortunately broke down right while I'm doing a very important job for Mr. Rogers of this city. The tractor run fine until 3 P.M. October 1, when there came a loud and very funny noise in the back and the tractor would no longer pull. We took the cover off the transmission case, and this big cog wheel was busted. Six cogs was busted off of it, and the tractor will not pull, only make a funny noise.

I am a young man 24 years of age just starting in business and expect to get married soon, so please send the gear at once as I'm in a hurry and oblige,

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS

EARTHWORM CITY, ILL.
October 9, 1924

Mr. David Crockett Suggs
Dry River Junction, Tex.

Dear sir: This will acknowledge your valued letter of October 6, stating that you desire a gear for your tractor, but are unable to give us the parts number of same owing to the fact that you have no parts book. We have carefully gone over your description of the gear, but we regret that we have been unable positively to identify what gear it is that you desire. We note that you state the gear has 44 teeth and we feel sure that some mistake has been made, as there is no 44-tooth gear in the tractor.

We are therefore mailing you under separate cover a parts book for the Model 45 Earthworm Tractor, Year 1915, and would suggest that you look up the gear in this book, and let us know the part number so that we can fill your order.

Unfortunately we are not able to supply you with a parts book printed in English.

Nearly all of the old-style Model 45 tractors were sold to the French Government in 1915 to be used in pulling artillery on the western front. As only a few of these tractors were sold in America, the edition of English parts books was very limited and has been exhausted. We are, however, sending you one of the French parts books.

We regret exceedingly that we are obliged to give you a parts book printed in a foreign language; and we realize, of course, that possibly you may be unable to understand it. However, you should be able to find the desired gear in the pictures, which are very plain.

Kindly give us the part number which is given under the picture of the gear, and we will make immediate shipment.

Very truly yours,
FREDERICK R. OVERTON,
Parts Department.

DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS
October 12, 1924

To the Farmers Friend Tractor Company
Earthworm City, Illinois

Dear Sir: Your letter has come your book has come you was right when you said I might not understand it. I cant understand the Dago printing and I been looking at the pictures all evening and I cant understand the pictures they dont look like nothing I ever seen. So I cant give you no part number, but I'm in a hurry so please send the gear anyway. It is the one way at the back. You cant miss it. Its not the one that lays down its the one that sets up on edge and has 44 teeth and meshes with the little one with 12 teeth. The little one goes round and round and drives the big one. And the big one is keyed on the main shaft and goes round and round and drives the tractor. Or I should say used to go round and round, but now it has six teeth busted out and wont go round—only makes a funny noise when it gets to the place where the teeth are busted out.

I'm in a hurry and to show you that I need this gear quick, I will explain that the tractor is laid up right in the middle of an important job I'm doing for Mr. Rogers of this city. I'm a young man, age 24 years, and new at the house moving business and I want to make a good impression and also expect to get married soon.

When Mr. Rogers of this city decided to move his house from down by the depot up to the north end of town, and give me the job, I thought it was a fine chance to get started in business and make a good impression. I got the house jacked up, and I put heavy timbers underneath, and trucks with solid wheels that I bought from a contractor at Llano. And I bought this second-hand tractor from Joe Banks at Llano at the auction after he died, and all my money is tied up in this equipment and on October 1, at 3 P.M. we had the house moved half way to where they want it, when the tractor made a funny noise and quit. And if I don't get a new gear pretty soon and move the house the rest of the way I'll be a blowed up sucker.

I'm just starting in business and want to make a good impression and I'm expecting to get married so please hurry with the gear. Excuse paper as my regular business paper has not come yet and oblige,

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS

EARTHWORM CITY, ILL.
October 14, 1924

Mr. David Crockett Suggs
Dry River Junction, Tex.

Dear Sir: This will acknowledge your valued favor of October 12, and we regret exceedingly that you have been unable to locate the part which you desire in the parts book, and that consequently you have been subject to annoying delay. As it is always our desire to render the greatest possible service to Earthworm Tractor owners, we have gone into this matter with the greatest of care; and after checking over very thoroughly the descriptions given in your latest letter, and also in former letters, we have come to the conclusion that the gear you desire is the 45-tooth intermediate spur gear, symbol No. 6843, as illustrated on page 16 of the parts book. We note that you state that the gear has 44 teeth, but as there is no such gear in your model tractor, and as No. 6843 gears fits the description in other particulars, we can only assume that you made a mistake in counting the number of teeth in the gear.

Accordingly we are shipping you by express this afternoon one No. 6843 gear, which we trust will prove to be the part desired. Assuring you of our constant desire to render you every possible service, efficiently and promptly, I remain,

Very truly yours,
FREDERICK R. OVERTON,
Parts Department.

DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS
October 18, 1924

To The Farmers Friend Tractor Company
Earthworm City, Illinois

Dear Sir: Your letter come yesterday your gear come to-day C.O.D. $41.26 and not only that, but it is no good and it wont fit. It is not like the old gear. It looks like a well made gear but there is nothing like it on my tractor so it is no good to me it is too big it wont go on it wont fit on the shaft. And if it did fit on the shaft, it would not work because it is too big and the teeth would not mesh with the teeth on the little gear, and it ought to have 44 teeth like I said, not 45. So will you look this up again more carefully and send me the right gear and send it as quick as possible? I'm in a hurry, and I will explain to you how things stand so you can see I am no liar when I say I got to have this gear right off or I am a blowed up sucker.

I am new in the house moving business and I am moving a house for Mr. Rogers of this city, and Mr. Rogers is a very stubborn old cuss and he insisted that the house be moved all together—which includes the main part which is two stories high and built very strong and solid, and also the front porch which sticks out in front and is built pretty weak, and also the one-story kitchen which sticks out behind. The kitchen is very frail.

But Mr. Rogers did not listen to me when I wanted to move the kitchen and front porch separate from the house. So, as I am a young man and new at the house moving business and anxious to make a good impression, I tried to do it like he wanted. I jacked up the whole works all together, and put timbers underneath, and heavy trucks that I bought from a contractor at Llano, and we came up from the depot fine—the tractor pulling good and the little old house rolling along smooth and quiet and beautiful. But at 3 P.M. October 1, just as we was going past Jim Ferguson's Drug Store on the main street of this city, there come a funny noise in the tractor, and we have been stuck ever since waiting for a new gear because the tractor will not run with six teeth busted out of the old gear.

So you can see that it is no lie that I am in a hurry, and I will explain that for 2 and ½ weeks, no traffic has been able to go past Jim Ferguson's Drug Store. All traffic on the main street of this city has been detoured—turning to the right through the field next to Johnson's Garage, following the back lane past the shed where Harvey Jenkins keeps his cow, and then around Wilson's Hardware Store and back to the main street, and all this owing to the stubbornness of old man Rogers making me take the porch and the kitchen along at the same time.

The porch is now resting two feet from the drug store and the kitchen just three feet from the post office on the other side of the street. If old man Rogers had listened to me and we had taken the kitchen off, there would have been room for traffic to get past, but now we cant take the kitchen off on account of being so jammed up against the post office, but people dont figger on that and everybody in town blames it on me that traffic is held up, which is very wrong as I am doing the best I can.

And now old man Rogers says I contracted to move his house, and I had better hurry up, and he says why dont I hire some horses but I say horses would be unsafe, because when they get to pulling something very heavy they get to jerking and they would be liable to jerk the house and injure it, owing to the fact that Mr. Rogers was so stubborn as to make me leave the kitchen and the porch on the house, thus weakening it. And besides I got no money to waste hiring horses when I got a tractor already, so you can see why I'm in a hurry being anxious to make a good impression and get married.

Please send at once the right gear which has FORTY-FOUR TEETH (44), because the old gear has 38 good teeth, and 6 busted off, making 44 like I said, not 45. And the right gear is an inch narrower than the one you sent, and the hole through the middle is smaller. I am making a picture so you can see just what gear it is, so please send it at once and oblige,

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS

EARTHWORM CITY, ILL.
October 21, 1924

Mr. David Crockett Suggs
Dry River Junction, Tex.

Dear Sir: This will acknowledge receipt of your letter of October 18, from which we note that you are having trouble in installing in your tractor gear No. 6843, which we shipped you on October 14.

We regret exceedingly that you have had this trouble, and to the end that the basis of the difficulty might be discovered, we have carefully checked over your former correspondence and have at length come to the conclusion that gear No. 6843, which we sent you, is the proper gear. We are therefore at a loss to understand why you have been unable to use it, and can only suggest that you may possibly have made some error in installing it.

To obviate this difficulty we are to-day mailing you, under separate cover, a copy of our latest instruction book on the care, operation and repair of Earthworm Tractors. We regret that this book was prepared for the new-style tractors, but as the method of installing transmission gears is essentially the same in both old- and new-style tractors, we feel sure that you will have no trouble in applying the instructions to your old-style tractor. Please study carefully the pictures and full descriptions on page 34, and if you proceed as directed we feel sure you will experience no further difficulty in installing the gear.

In case, however, there still remains some minor trouble to interfere with the perfect operation of the tractor, we shall appreciate it if you will notify us, as we are always anxious to give owners of Earthworm Tractors the fullest possible coöperation.

Very truly yours,
FREDERICK R. OVERTON,
Parts Department.

DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS
October 25, 1924

To The Farmers Friend Tractor Company
Earthworm City, Illinois

Dear Sir: Your letter come yesterday your book come to-day they are no good to me. It takes more than a book for a new tractor to put onto an entirely different old tractor a gear wheel that don't belong to it. I tell you again—you have sent me the wrong gear.

What I want is the big bull gear on the back that has 44 teeth. FORTY-FOUR. Not 45. And it goes round and round and makes the tractor go. It is the great big cog wheel that meshes with the little cog wheel. I bet you have sent me a gear for one of your new-style tractors—how do I know? You told me you had looked it up what model tractor I got, so why don't you send me the gear that will fit?

If you people knew what I was up against, you would get busy, and you would send me that gear in a hurry. The whole town is sore at me. And I will explain that this is a big place with trolley cars and everything.

The trolleys here run on a track, but they are not electric, they are run by gasoline motors inside, and are very modern and up-to-date like everything else in this city. And for over three weeks now the trolley from the depot has been coming up almost as far as Jim Ferguson's Drug Store, and then it has to stop and the conductor will give the people transfers. And they will get out and squeeze past old man Rogers's house, and get on the other trolley and ride on. And it is lucky they have two cars. A few years ago they only had one.

And old man Rogers says if I dont get action by the first of the week, he is going to hire horses himself, and pull the house where he wants it. And if I expect to get a cent for it I can just sue him, and he says he is tired of living in a house sitting in the middle of the street with the front porch poking into the drug store window and the people kidding him all the time. But its all on account of his own foolishness and stubborness, because I told him he had better go live with his brother in Llano while the house was being moved, but he is a guy that you cant tell him nothing and so he is living there with Mrs. Rogers and daughter Mildred, and Mrs. Rogers is cooking on an oil stove on account they dont know coal is safe in moving, and now they blame it on me because the oil stove smokes up the whole house. So you can see I'm in a hurry, and everybody is sore because the traffic is detoured, and me having to hang red lanterns on the house every night so people wont run into it, and the Police Department has served notice on me that I got until next Thursday to move the house or get pinched. And they had given me a permit to move the house. But they say a permit aint no 99-year lease. And that just shows how it is—they all try to make mean cracks like that.

And this afternoon, old Mr. Rogers came up to me and he said, "Dave, I hope you aint still thinking of getting married?"

And I said, "I sure am," because, as I told you in another letter, I'm expecting to get married.

Then Mr. Rogers said, "I may have something to say about that, young man." And I will explain that it is possible that old Mr. Rogers—whose house I am moving with my tractor—may have some influence in the matter, owing to the fact that the girl I expect to marry is named Mildred Rogers, and unfortunately happens to be the daughter of old Mr. Rogers.

So you see, I want that gear, and I want it quick. I am sending back the new gear please credit me with the $41.26 I paid on the C.O.D. I am also sending you the old busted gear. Please look over the old busted gear and send me one just like it, only with the six teeth not busted out. Please hurry and remember FORTY-FOUR TEETH, and oblige yours truly,

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

P.S. Not 45 teeth.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS

EARTHWORM CITY, ILL.
October 29, 1924

Mr. David Crockett Suggs
Dry River Junction, Tex.

Dear Sir: This will acknowledge your valued favor of October 26 in reference to the trouble you are having with your tractor. We regret exceedingly that the misunderstanding in regard to the gear which you need has caused you the annoying delay which you mention.

As soon as your old gear arrives, it will be checked up and every possible effort will be made to supply you promptly with a duplicate of it.

Very truly yours,
FREDERICK R. OVERTON,
Parts Department.

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS
CONTRACTOR

HOUSES MOVED SAFELY, SPEEDILY AND SURELY

DRY RIVER JUNCTION, TEXAS
October 31, 1924

To The Farmers Friend Tractor Company
Earthworm City, Illinois

Dear Sir: My new letter paper has come your letter has come please send me the gear as quick as possible. I'm in a hurry more than at any time before and unless I can get this mess straightened out I'll be more of a blowed up sucker than anybody you ever seen, and in order that you may see what a rush I am in and send the gear as quick as possible, I will explain 2 very unfortunate events which has took place since my last letter. The first was last night.

Being Thursday night and my regular night to call, I went around to see Miss Mildred Rogers, who, as I have explained before, I had expected to marry very soon, and who used to live down by the depot, but is now located temporarily on Main Street just in front of Ferguson's Drug Store. It is not as much fun as it used to be to call at the Rogers's house. Formerly it was possible to sit in the hammock on the front porch, and as the house set back from the street and there was trees around and no street lights, a very pleasant evening could be had.

But at present the front porch is located in a most unfortunate way just two feet from the windows of Ferguson's Drug Store, which is all lighted up—you know how drug store windows is—lots of big white lights, and all kinds of jars full of colored water with more lights shining through. And people squeezing past between the porch and the drug store and going in to get ice cream sodas or stopping to crack bum jokes about me, which I will not repeat. So you can see that it would not be any fun for me and Mildred to sit in the hammock in the evening, even if it was possible to sit in the hammock which it is not, owing to the fact that the porch pillar to which the hammock is fastened has become so weakened by the jacking up of the house that it would take very little to pull it over and let the whole porch roof down with a bang.

So we decided that we better sit in the parlor and we had no sooner entered and I was not doing any harm in any way when old Mr. Rogers came in and there was a very painful scene which I wont describe only to say that he used such expressions as "Get to Hell out of here," and "I dont want my daughter keeping company with any moron," which is a word he got out of the Dallas News.

So after he had hollered around and Mildred had cried, I left the house in a dignified manner. Being a gentleman and always respectful to old age, I did not talk back to him, the dirty crook. But you can see why it is I am in a hurry for the gear.

The other unfortunate event was just this A.M., when old man Rogers went out and hired twelve horses from all over town and also one small flivver tractor to move his house up to where he wants it. He tried to get a big tractor, but there is none in town or nearby except mine which is broke down. But there is plenty of horses and there is this little flivver tractor that would not be big enough to pull the house all by itself.

So this morning they wheeled my poor old tractor out of the way, and they hooked up to the house and there was about a hundred people from the town and from round about that was helping with advice and hollering and yelling and telling Mr. Rogers how to do it. And there was I—the only practical and professional house-mover in the whole city—and none of them asked my advice about anything and so it is not my fault what happened.

When they was all ready, Mr. Rogers he stands up and hollers out, "All ready,—Go!" And the six drivers yelled at the twelve horses, and all the people standing around began to cheer and shout. And the feller on the little flivver tractor started up the motor so quick it made a big noise and scared the horses and all the horses began jumping and heaving and they jerked the house sidewise, and some of the timbers slipped, and the kitchen that I told you about,—it give a little lurch and fell off the house. Just let go, and fell off.

So that scared them, and they unhooked the horses and the flivver tractor and didnt try no more moving, and the house is still there all except the kitchen which was busted up so bad that they finished the job and knocked it to pieces and took it away in wheel barrows.

One good thing is that now the traffic can get in between the house and the post office so they dont have to detour any more. But one very unfortunate thing was that Mrs. Rogers happened to be in the kitchen when it fell off being shaken up considerable but not seriously injured so you can see that I got to have the tractor running again so I can move the house and I hope you will send the gear at once yours truly and oblige,

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY
MAKERS OF EARTHWORM TRACTORS

EARTHWORM CITY, ILL.
November 2, 1924

Mr. David Crockett Suggs
Dry River Junction, Tex.

Dear Sir: This will acknowledge your valued favor of October 31 requesting that we use all possible haste in sending you a gear which you need to repair your tractor. We are also pleased to report the receipt of one No. 6843 gear which we shipped you on October 14 and which you returned unused owing to the fact that it will not fit your tractor. We are crediting your account with $41.26 C.O.D. which you paid on this shipment.

The broken gear which you sent as a sample has been carefully checked over by our Engineering Department. They report that they have been unable to identify this gear, and they are of the opinion that no gear similar to this has ever been manufactured by this company. We are, therefore, at a loss to understand how this gear ever came to be in your tractor. We do not make gears similar to the one you have sent in, and it will therefore be impossible for us to supply you with one. However, it is always our policy to be of the greatest possible service to Earthworm owners, and we would suggest that the best thing to do in the circumstances would be for one of our service mechanics to inspect your machine.

Fortunately, it happens that Dry River Junction is the nearest railroad point to the Canyon Ranch, which has just purchased a Ten-Ton Earthworm Tractor. Consequently, Mr. Luke Torkle, one of our service men, will be at Dry River Junction in a few days to unload this tractor and drive it overland to the ranch. If you desire, we will have Mr. Torkle stop off and inspect your machine, advising you what steps to take to put it into first-class running condition; or, if this is impossible, to confer with you in regard to turning in your old machine and purchasing one of our new models. Kindly let us know what you wish us to do in this matter.

Very truly yours,
FREDERICK R. OVERTON,
Parts Department.

TELEGRAM

DRY RIVER JUNC TEX Nov 4 1924

FARMERS FRIEND TRACTOR Co
EARTHWORM CY, ILLS

Have the guy come quick in a hurry.

DAVID CROCKETT SUGGS.

FARMERS' FRIEND TRACTOR COMPANY

SERVICE MAN'S REPORT

WRITTEN AT: Dry River Junction, Tex.
DATE: November 7, 1924
WRITTEN BY: Luke Turkle, Service Man
SUBJECT: Tractor belonging to D. C. Suggs

Reached here 7 A.M. Unloaded tractor for Canyon Ranch, and will drive it over to-morrow.

Before I had a chance to look up D.C. Suggs, the mayor and prominent citizens urgently requested me to use the new tractor to move a house that was blocking the main street. This looked like good advertising for us, especially as the county commissioner here is expecting to buy a tractor for road work. Accordingly, I spent the morning moving the house to where they wanted it, and then looked up Mr. Suggs.

Found he has left town. It is reported that he was shot at three times yesterday by a man called Rogers, but escaped. Last night he sold his entire property, consisting of a second-hand tractor, an old fliv, one radio set and the good will in a house-moving business for $450. He then took the train north with a girl called Mildred Rogers of this place.

I inspected the tractor formerly owned by Mr. Suggs. No wonder we couldn't supply him with repairs for it. It is not one of our tractors. It has no name plate, but I was able to identify it as a 1920 Model, Steel Elephant Tractor, made by the S.E. Tractor Company of Indianapolis. I talked on the phone with Mrs. Joseph Banks, whose husband formerly owned the tractor. She says her husband sold the old Earthworm Tractor three years ago to a man in Dallas. Mr. Banks owned four or five different kinds of tractors. Mrs. Banks remembered he had once bought tractor parts from the Farmers' Friend Tractor Company.

In regard to your suggestion that Mr. Suggs might be persuaded to buy a new tractor, I think this is hardly possible. It is reported that before he left, Mr. Suggs stated that he and Miss Rogers would be married and would locate in Chicago. He was uncertain what business he would take up, but said very emphatically it would be nothing in any way connected with house moving, or with tractors or any kind of machinery.

THE CUSTODY OF THE PUMPKIN

By P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. WODEHOUSE

P. G. Wodehouse—the initials stand for Pelham Grenville—is an Englishman who divides his time between England and America and whose audience unites the two countries more effectually than most conscious fraternalizing. He writes short stories and novels with equal success and he, Guy Bolton, and Jerome Kern have been responsible for some of the pleasantest musical shows on Broadway. Wodehouse is a consistent purveyor of light entertainment, but sometimes, in one or two of his novels, he has shown serious emotion touching for a moment some depth of character—to rise, the next, to a surface of sparkle. His touch is usually exquisitely deft and no one alive can make the farcically absurd situation more laughable. And this he manages by restraint and understatement; as golfers say, he never "presses" his stroke.

"The Custody of the Pumpkin," which was first published in the Saturday Evening Post for November 29, 1924, is not only a typical Wodehouse story, but concerns two of the principal characters in Wodehouse's most popular novel, Leave It to Psmith. It is an earlier episode in the saga of the amiably boneheaded Earl of Blandings Castle and his heir.

THE CUSTODY OF THE PUMPKIN[1]

[1] Copyright, 1924, by The Curtis Publishing Company.

The pleasant morning sunshine descended like an amber shower bath on Blandings Castle, that stately home of England which so adorns the county of Shropshire, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied walls, its rolling parks, its gardens, out-houses and messuages and such of its inhabitants as chanced at the moment to be taking the air. It fell on green lawns and wide terraces, on noble trees and bright flower beds. It fell on the baggy trousers seat of Angus McAllister, head gardener to the Earl of Emsworth, as he bent with dour Scottish determination to pluck a coy snail from its reverie beneath the leaf of a lettuce. It fell on the white flannels of the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's second son, hurrying across the water meadows. It also fell on Lord Emsworth himself, for the proprietor of this fair domain was standing on the turret above the west wing, placidly surveying his possessions through a powerful telescope.

The Earl of Emsworth was a fluffy-minded and amiable old gentleman with a fondness for new toys. Although the main interest of his life was his garden, he was always ready to try a side line; and the latest of these side lines was this telescope of his—the outcome of a passion for astronomy which had lasted some two weeks.

For some minutes Lord Emsworth remained gazing with a pleased eye at a cow down in the meadows. It was a fine cow, as cows go, but, like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest; and his lordship, surfeited after a while by the spectacle of it chewing the cud and staring glassily at nothing, was about to swivel the apparatus round in the hope of picking up something a trifle more sensational, when into the range of his vision there came the Honorable Freddie. White and shining, he tripped along over the turf like a Theocritean shepherd hastening to keep an appointment with a nymph; and for the first time that morning a frown came to mar the serenity of Lord Emsworth's brow. He generally frowned when he saw Freddie, for with the passage of the years that youth had become more and more a problem to an anxious father.

The Earl of Emsworth, like so many of Britain's aristocracy, had but little use for the Younger Son. And Freddie Threepwood was a particularly trying younger son. There seemed, in the opinion of his nearest and dearest, to be no way of coping with the boy. If he was allowed to live in London he piled up debts and got into mischief; and when hauled back home to Blandings he moped broodingly. It was possibly the fact that his demeanor at this moment was so mysteriously jaunty, his bearing so inexplicably free from the crushed misery with which he usually mooned about the place that induced Lord Emsworth to keep a telescopic eye on him. Some inner voice whispered to him that Freddie was up to no good and would bear watching.

The inner voice was absolutely correct. Within thirty seconds its case had been proved up to the hilt. Scarcely had his lordship had time to wish, as he invariably wished on seeing his offspring, that Freddie had been something entirely different in manners, morals, and appearance and had been the son of somebody else living a considerable distance away, when out of a small spinney near the end of the meadow there bounded a girl. And Freddie, after a cautious glance over his shoulder, immediately proceeded to fold this female in a warm embrace.

Lord Emsworth had seen enough. He tottered away from the telescope, a shattered man. One of his favorite dreams was of some nice eligible girl, belonging to a good family and possessing a bit of money of her own, coming along some day and taking Freddie off his hands; but that inner voice, more confident now than ever, told him that this was not she. Freddie would not sneak off in this furtive fashion to meet eligible girls; nor could he imagine any eligible girl in her right senses rushing into Freddie's arms in that enthusiastic way. No, there was only one explanation. In the cloistral seclusion of Blandings, far from the metropolis with all its conveniences for that sort of thing, Freddie had managed to get himself entangled. Seething with anguish and fury, Lord Emsworth hurried down the stairs and out onto the terrace. Here he prowled like an elderly leopard waiting for feeding time, until in due season there was a flicker of white among the trees that flanked the drive and a cheerful whistling announced the culprit's approach.

It was with a sour and hostile eye that Lord Emsworth watched his son draw near. He adjusted his pince-nez, and with their assistance was able to perceive that a fatuous smile of self-satisfaction illuminated the young man's face, giving him the appearance of a beaming sheep. In the young man's buttonhole there shone a nosegay of simple meadow flowers, which, as he walked, he patted from time to time with a loving hand.

"Frederick!" bellowed his lordship.

The villain of the piece halted abruptly. Sunk in a roseate trance, he had not observed his father. But such was the sunniness of his mood that even this encounter could not damp him. He gamboled happily up.

"Hullo, guv'nor," said Freddie. He searched in his mind for a pleasant topic of conversation, always a matter of some little difficulty on these occasions. "Lovely day, what?"

His lordship was not to be diverted into a discussion of the weather. He drew a step nearer, looking like the man who smothered the young princes in the Tower.

"Frederick," he demanded, "who was that girl?"

The Honorable Freddie started convulsively. He appeared to be swallowing with difficulty something large and jagged.

"Girl?" he quavered. "Girl? Girl, guv'nor?"

"That girl I saw you kissing ten minutes ago down in the water meadows."

"Oh!" said the Honorable Freddie. He paused. "Oh, ah!" He paused again. "Oh, ah, yes! I've been meaning to tell you about that, guv'nor."

"You have, have you?"

"All perfectly correct, you know. Oh yes, indeed! All most absolutely correct-o! Nothing fishy, I mean to say, or anything like that. She's my fiancée."

A sharp howl escaped Lord Emsworth, as if one of the bees humming in the lavender beds had taken time off to sting him in the neck.

"Who is she?" he boomed. "Who is this woman?"

"Her name's Donaldson."

"Who is she?"

"Aggie Donaldson. Aggie's short for Niagara. Her people spent their honeymoon at the Falls, she tells me. She's American, and all that. Rummy names they give kids in America," proceeded Freddie with hollow chattiness. "I mean to say! Niagara! I ask you!"

"Who is she?"

"She's most awfully bright, you know. Full of beans. You'll love her."

"Who is she?"

"And can play the saxophone."

"Who," demanded Lord Emsworth for the sixth time, "is she? And where did you meet her?"

Freddie coughed. The information, he perceived, could no longer be withheld, and he was keenly alive to the fact that it scarcely fell into the class of tidings of great joy.

"Well, as a matter of fact, guv'nor, she's a sort of cousin of Angus McAllister's. She's come over to England for a visit, don't you know, and is staying with the old boy. That's how I happened to run across her."

Lord Emsworth's eyes bulged and he gargled faintly. He had had many unpleasant visions of his son's future, but they had never included one of him walking down the aisle with a sort of cousin of his head gardener.

"Oh!" he said. "Oh, indeed?"

Lord Emsworth threw his arms up as if calling on Heaven to witness a good man's persecution, and shot off along the terrace at a rapid trot. Having ranged the grounds for some minutes, he ran his quarry to earth at the entrance of the yew alley.

The head gardener turned at the sound of his footsteps. He was a sturdy man of medium height with eyebrows that would have fitted better a bigger forehead. These, added to a red and wiry beard, gave him a formidable and uncompromising expression. Honesty Angus McAllister's face had in full measure, and also intelligence; but it was a bit short on sweetness and light.

"McAllister," said his lordship, plunging without preamble into the matter of his discourse. "That girl. You must send her away." A look of bewilderment clouded such of Mr. McAllister's features as were not concealed behind his beard and eyebrows.

"Gurrul?"

"That girl who is staying with you. She must go!"

"Gae where?"

Lord Emsworth was not in the mood to be finicky about details.

"Anywhere," he said. "I won't have her here a day longer."

"Why?" inquired Mr. McAllister, who liked to thresh these things out.

"Never mind why. You must send her away immediately."

Mr. McAllister mentioned an insuperable objection.

"She's payin' me twa poon' a week," he said simply.

Lord Emsworth did not grind his teeth, for he was not given to that form of displaying emotion; but he leaped some ten inches into the air and dropped his pince-nez. And, though normally a fair-minded and reasonable man, well aware that modern earls must think twice before pulling the feudal stuff on their employees, he took on the forthright truculence of a large landowner of the early Norman period ticking off a serf.

"Listen, McAllister! Listen to me! Either you send that girl away today or you can go yourself."

A curious expression came into Angus McAllister's face—always excepting the occupied territories. It was the look of a man who has not forgotten Bannockburn, a man conscious of belonging to the country of William Wallace and Robert Bruce. He made Scotch noises at the back of his throat.

"Y'r lorrudsheep will accept ma notis," he said with formal dignity.

"I'll pay you a month's wages in lieu of notice and you will leave this afternoon," retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit.

"Mphm!" said Mr. McAllister.

Lord Emsworth left the battlefield with a feeling of pure exhilaration, still in the grip of the animal fury of conflict. No twinge of remorse did he feel at the thought that Angus McAllister had served him faithfully for ten years. Nor did it cross his mind that he might miss McAllister.

But that night, as he sat smoking his after-dinner cigarette, Reason, so violently expelled, came stealing timidly back to her throne, and a cold hand seemed suddenly placed upon his heart.

With Angus McAllister gone, how would the pumpkin fare?

The importance of this pumpkin in the Earl of Emsworth's life requires, perhaps, a word of explanation. Every ancient family in England has some little gap in its scroll of honor, and that of Lord Emsworth was no exception. For generations back his ancestors had been doing notable deeds; they had sent out from Blandings Castle statesmen and warriors, governors and leaders of the people; but they had not—in the opinion of the present holder of the title—achieved a full hand. However splendid the family record might appear at first sight, the fact remained that no Earl of Emsworth had ever won a first prize for pumpkins at the Shrewsbury Flower and Vegetable Show. For roses, yes. For tulips, true. For spring onions, granted. But not for pumpkins; and Lord Emsworth, who lived for his garden, felt it deeply.

For many a summer past he had been striving indefatigably to remove this blot on the family escutcheon, only to see his hopes go tumbling down. But this year at last victory had seemed in sight, for there had been vouchsafed to Blandings a competitor of such amazing parts that his lordship, who had watched it grow practically from a pip, could not envisage failure. Surely, he told himself as he gazed on its golden roundness, even Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Badgwick Hall, winner for three successive years, would never be able to produce anything to challenge this superb vegetable.

And it was this supreme pumpkin whose welfare he feared he had jeopardized by dismissing Angus McAllister. For Angus was its official trainer. He understood the pumpkin. Indeed, in his reserved Scottish way he even seemed to love it. With Angus gone, what would the harvest be?

Such were the meditations of Lord Emsworth as he reviewed the position of affairs. And though, as the days went by, he tried to tell himself that Angus McAllister was not the only man in the world who understood pumpkins and that he had every confidence, the most complete and unswerving confidence, in Robert Barker, recently Angus's second in command, now promoted to the post of head gardener and custodian of the Blandings Hope, he knew that this was but shallow bravado. When you are a pumpkin owner with a big winner in your stable, you judge men by hard standards, and every day it became plainer that Robert Barker was only a makeshift. Within a week Lord Emsworth was pining for Angus McAllister.

It might be purely imagination, but to his excited fancy the pumpkin seemed to be pining for Angus too. It appeared to be drooping and losing weight. Lord Emsworth could not rid himself of the horrible idea that it was shrinking. And on the tenth night after McAllister's departure he dreamed a strange dream. He had gone with King George to show His Gracious Majesty the pumpkin, promising him the treat of a lifetime; and, when they arrived, there in the corner of the frame was a shriveled thing the size of a pea. He woke, sweating, with his sovereign's disappointed screams ringing in his ears; and Pride gave its last quiver and collapsed. To reinstate Angus would be a surrender, but it must be done.

"Beach," he said that morning at breakfast, "do you happen to—er—to have McAllister's address?"

"Yes, your lordship," replied the butler. "He is in London, residing at Number 11 Buxton Crescent."

"Buxton Crescent? Never heard of it."

"It is, I fancy, your lordship, a boarding house or some such establishment off the Cromwell Road. McAllister was accustomed to make it his headquarters whenever he visited the metropolis on account of its handiness for Kensington Gardens. He liked," said Beach with respectful reproach, for Angus had been a friend of his for nine years, "to be near the flowers, your lor'ship."

Two telegrams, passing through it in the course of the next twelve hours, caused some gossip at the post office of the little town of Market Blandings.

The first ran: "McAllister, 11 Buxton Crescent, Cromwell Road, London. Return immediately. Emsworth."

The second: "Lord Emsworth, Blandings Castle, Shropshire. I will not. McAllister."

Lord Emsworth had one of those minds capable of accommodating but one thought at a time—if that; and the possibility that Angus McAllister might decline to return had not occurred to him. It was difficult to adjust himself to this new problem, but he managed it at last. Before nightfall he had made up his mind. Robert Barker, that broken reed, could remain in charge for another day or so, and meanwhile he would go up to London and engage a real head gardener, the finest head gardener that money could buy.

It was the opinion of Doctor Johnson that there is in London all that life can afford. A man, he held, who is tired of London is tired of life itself. Lord Emsworth, had he been aware of this statement, would have contested it warmly. He hated London. He loathed its crowds, its smells, its noises, its omnibuses, its taxis, and its hard pavements. And, in addition to all its other defects, the miserable town did not seem able to produce a single decent head gardener. He went from agency to agency, interviewing candidates, and not one of them came within a mile of meeting his requirements. He disliked their faces, he distrusted their references. It was a harsh thing to say of any man, but he was dashed if the best of them was even as good as Robert Barker.

It was, therefore, in a black and soured mood that his lordship, having lunched frugally at the Senior Conservative Club on the third day of his visit, stood on the steps in the sunshine, wondering how on earth he was to get through the afternoon. He had spent the morning rejecting head gardeners, and the next batch was not due until the morrow. And what—besides rejecting head gardeners—was there for a man of reasonable tastes to do with his time in this hopeless town?

And then there came into his mind a remark which Beach the butler had made at the breakfast table about flowers in Kensington Gardens. He could go to Kensington Gardens and look at the flowers.

He was about to hail a taxicab from the rank down the street when there suddenly emerged from the Hotel Magnificent, over the way, a young man. This young man proceeded to cross the road, and as he drew near it seemed to Lord Emsworth that there was about his appearance something oddly familiar. He stared for a long instant before he could believe his eyes, then with a wordless cry bounded down the steps just as the other started to mount them.

"Oh, hullo, guv'nor!" ejaculated the Honorable Freddie, plainly startled.

"What—what are you doing here?" demanded Lord Emsworth.

He spoke with heat, and justly so. London, as the result of several spirited escapades which still rankled in the mind of a father who had had to foot the bills, was forbidden ground to Freddie.

The young man was plainly not at his ease. He had the air of one who is being pushed toward dangerous machinery in which he is loath to become entangled. He shuffled his feet for a moment, then raised his left shoe and rubbed the back of his right calf with it. "The fact is, guv'nor——"

"You know you are forbidden to come to London."

"Absolutely, guv'nor, but the fact is——"

"And why anybody but an imbecile should want to come to London when he could be at Blandings——"

"I know, guv'nor, but the fact is——" Here Freddie, having replaced his wandering foot on the pavement, raised the other and rubbed the back of his left calf. "I wanted to see you," he said. "Yes. Particularly wanted to see you."

This was not strictly accurate. The last thing in the world which the Honorable Freddie wanted was to see his parent. He had come to the Senior Conservative Club to leave a carefully written note. Having delivered which, it had been his intention to bolt like a rabbit. This unforeseen meeting had upset his plans.

"To see me?" said Lord Emsworth. "Why?"

"Got—er—got something to tell you. Bit of news."

"I trust it is of sufficient importance to justify your coming to London against my express wishes."

"Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. Oh, rather. It's dashed important. Yes—not to put too fine a point upon it—most dashed important. I say, guv'nor, are you in fairly good form to stand a bit of a shock?"

A ghastly thought rushed into Lord Emsworth's mind. Freddie's mysterious arrival—his strange manner—his odd hesitation and uneasiness—— Could it mean? He clutched the young man's arm feverishly.

"Frederick! Speak! Tell me! Have the cats got at it?"

It was a fixed idea of Lord Emsworth, which no argument would have induced him to abandon, that cats had the power to work some dreadful mischief on his pumpkin and were continually lying in wait for the opportunity of doing so; and his behavior on the occasion when one of the fast sporting set from the stables, wandering into the kitchen garden and, finding him gazing at the Blandings Hope, had rubbed itself sociably against his leg, lingered long in that animal's memory.

Freddie stared.

"Cats? Why? Where? Which? What cats?"

"Frederick! Is anything wrong with the pumpkin?"

In a crass and materialistic world there must inevitably be a scattered few here and there in whom pumpkins touch no chord. The Hon. Freddie Threepwood was one of these. He was accustomed to speak in mockery of all pumpkins, and had even gone so far as to allude to the Hope of Blanding as Percy. His father's anxiety, therefore, merely caused him to giggle.

"Not that I know of," he said.

"Then what do you mean," thundered Lord Emsworth, stung by the giggle—"what do you mean, sir, by coming here and alarming me—scaring me out of my wits, by gad!—with your nonsense about giving me shocks?"

The Honorable Freddie looked carefully at his fermenting parent. His fingers, sliding into his pocket, closed on the note which nestled there. He drew it forth.

"Look here, guv'nor," he said nervously, "I think the best thing would be for you to read this. Meant to leave it for you with the hall porter. It's—well, you just cast your eyes over it. Good-by, guv'nor. Got to see a man."

And thrusting the note into his father's hand the Honorable Freddie turned and was gone. Lord Emsworth, perplexed and annoyed, watched him skim up the road and leap into a cab. He seethed impotently. Practically any behavior on the part of his son Frederick had the power to irritate him, but it was when he was vague and mysterious and incoherent that the young man irritated him most.

He looked at the letter in his hand, turned it over, felt it and even smelled it. Then, for it had suddenly occurred to him that if he wished to ascertain its contents he had better read it, he tore open the envelope.

The note was brief, but full of good reading matter.

DEAR GUV'NOR: Awfully sorry, and all that, but couldn't hold out any longer. I've popped up to London in the two-seater, and Aggie and I were spliced this morning. There looked like being a bit of a hitch at one time, but Aggie's guv'nor, who has come over from America, managed to wangle it all right by getting a special license or something of that order. A most capable Johnny. He's coming to see you. He wants to have a good long talk with you about the whole binge. Lush him up hospitably, and all that, would you mind, because he's a really sound egg and you'll like him. Well, cheerio!

Your affectionate son,
FREDDIE.

P.S. You won't mind if I freeze onto the two-seater for the nonce, what? It may come in useful for the honeymoon.

The Senior Conservative Club is a solid and massive building, but, as Lord Emsworth raised his eyes dumbly from the perusal of this letter, it seemed to him that it was performing a kind of whirling dance. The whole of the immediate neighborhood, indeed, appeared to be shimmying in the middle of a thick mist. He was profoundly stirred. It is not too much to say that he was shaken to the core of his being. No father enjoys being flouted and defied by his own son; nor is it reasonable to expect a man to take a cheery view of life who is faced with the prospect of supporting for the remainder of his years a younger son, a younger son's wife and possibly younger grandchildren.

For an appreciable space of time he stood in the middle of the pavement, rooted to the spot. Passers-by bumped into him or grumblingly made detours to avoid a collision. Dogs sniffed at his ankles. Seedy-looking individuals tried to arrest his attention in order to speak of their financial affairs. Lord Emsworth heeded none of them. He remained where he was, gasping like a fish, until suddenly his faculties seemed to return to him.

An imperative need for flowers and green trees swept upon Lord Emsworth. The noise of the traffic and the heat of the sun on the stone pavement were afflicting him like a nightmare. He signaled energetically to a passing cab.

"Kensington Gardens," he said, and sank back on the cushioned seat.

Something dimly resembling peace crept into his lordship's soul as he paid off his cab and entered the cool shade of the gardens. Even from the road he had caught a glimpse of stimulating reds and yellows; and as he ambled up the asphalt path and plunged round the corner the flower beds burst upon his sight in all their consoling glory.

"Ah!" breathed Lord Emsworth rapturously, and came to a halt before a glowing carpet of tulips. A man of official aspect, wearing a peaked cap and a uniform, stopped as he heard the exclamation and looked at him with approval and even affection.

"Nice weather we're 'avin'," he observed.

Lord Emsworth did not reply. He had not heard. There is that about a well-set-out bed of flowers which acts on men who love their gardens, like a drug, and he was in a sort of trance. Already he had completely forgotten where he was, and seemed to himself to be back in his paradise of Blandings. He drew a step nearer to the flower bed, pointing like a setter.

The official-looking man's approval deepened. This man with the peaked cap was the park keeper, who held the rights of the high, the low, and the middle justice over that section of the gardens. He, too, loved these flowers beds, and he seemed to see in Lord Emsworth a kindred soul. The general public was too apt to pass by, engrossed in its own affairs, and this often wounded the park keeper. In Lord Emsworth he thought that he recognized one of the right sort.

"Nice——" he began.

He broke off with a sharp cry. If he had not seen it with his own eyes he would not have believed it. But, alas! there was no possibility of a mistake. With a ghastly shock he realized that he had been deceived in this attractive stranger. Decently if untidily dressed, clean, respectable to the outward eye, the stranger was in reality a dangerous criminal, the blackest type of evildoer on the park keeper's index. He was a Kensington Gardens flower picker.

For, even as he uttered the word "nice," the man had stepped lightly over the low railing, had shambled across the strip of turf, and before you could say "knife" was busy on his dark work. In the brief instant in which the park keeper's vocal cords refused to obey him, he was two tulips ahead of the game and reaching out to scoop in a third.

"Hi!" roared the park keeper, suddenly finding speech. "'I there!"

Lord Emsworth turned with a start.

"Bless my soul!" he murmured reproachfully.

He was in full possession of his senses now, such as they were, and understood the enormity of his conduct. He shuffled back onto the asphalt, contrite.

"My dear fellow——" he began remorsefully.

The park keeper began to speak rapidly and at length. From time to time Lord Emsworth moved his lips and made deprecating gestures, but he could not stem the flood. Louder and more rhetorical grew the park keeper, and denser and more interested the rapidly assembling crowd of spectators. And then through the stream of words another voice spoke.

"Wot's all this?"

The force had materialized in the shape of a large, solid constable.

The park keeper seemed to understand that he had been superseded. He still spoke, but no longer like a father rebuking an erring son. His attitude now was more that of an elder brother appealing for justice against a delinquent junior. In a moving passage he stated his case.

"'E Says," observed the constable judicially, speaking slowly and in capitals as if addressing an untutored foreigner—"'E Says You Was Pickin' The Flowers."

"I saw 'im. I was standin' as close as I am to you."

"'E Saw You," interpreted the constable.

Lord Emsworth was feeling weak and bewildered. Without a thought of annoying or doing harm to anybody, he seemed to have unchained the fearful passions of a French Revolution; and there came over him a sense of how unjust it was that this sort of thing should be happening to him, of all people—a man already staggering beneath the troubles of a Job.

"I'll 'ave to ask you for your name and address," said the constable more briskly. A stubby pencil popped for an instant into his stern mouth and hovered, well and truly moistened, over the virgin page of his notebook—that dreadful notebook before which taxi drivers shrink and hardened bus conductors quail.

"I—I, why, my dear fellow—I mean, officer—I am the Earl of Emsworth."

Much has been written of the psychology of crowds, designed to show how extraordinary and inexplicable it is, but most of such writing is exaggeration. A crowd generally behaves in a perfectly natural and intelligible fashion. When, for instance, it sees a man in a badly fitting tweed suit and a hat he ought to be ashamed of getting put through it for pinching flowers in the park and the man says he is an earl, it laughs. This crowd laughed.

"Ho?" The constable did not stoop to join in the merriment of the rabble, but his lip twitched sardonically. "Have you a card, your lordship?"

Nobody intimate with Lord Emsworth would have asked such a foolish question. His card-case was the thing he always lost second when visiting London—immediately after losing his umbrella.

"I—er—I'm afraid——"

"R!" said the constable. And the crowd uttered another happy, hyenalike laugh, so intensely galling that his lordship raised his bowed head with an indignant glance. And as he did so the hunted look faded from his eyes.

"McAllister!" he cried. "McAllister, my dear fellow, do please tell this man who I am."

Two new arrivals had just joined the throng, and, being of rugged and nobbly physique, had already shoved themselves through to the ringside seats. One was a tall, handsome, smooth-faced gentleman of authoritative appearance, who, if he had not worn rimless glasses, would have looked like a Roman emperor. The other was a shorter, sturdier man with a bristly red beard.

"McAllister!" moaned his lordship piteously.

After what had passed between himself and his late employer a lesser man than Angus McAllister might have seen in Lord Emsworth's predicament merely a judgment. A man of little magnanimity would have felt that here was where he got a bit of his own back. Not so this splendid Glaswegian.

"Aye," he said. "Yon's Lorrud Emsworruth."

"Who are you?" inquired the constable searchingly.

"I used to be head gardener at the cassel."

"Exactly," bleated Lord Emsworth. "Precisely. My head gardener."

The constable was shaken. Lord Emsworth might not look like an earl, but there was no getting away from the fact that Angus McAllister was supremely head-gardeneresque. A stanch admirer of the aristocracy, the constable perceived that zeal had caused him to make a bit of a bloomer. Yes, he had dropped a brick. In this crisis, however, he comported himself with a masterly tact. He scowled blackly upon the interested throng.

"Pass along there, please. Pass along," he commanded austerely. "Ought to know better than block up a public thoroughfare like this. Pass along!"

He moved off, shepherding the crowd before him. The Roman emperor with the rimless glasses advanced upon Lord Emsworth, extending a large hand.

"Pleased to meet you at last," he said. "My name is Donaldson, Lord Emsworth."

For a moment the name conveyed nothing to his lordship. Then its significance hit him, and he drew himself up with hauteur.

"You'll excuse us, Angus," said Mr. Donaldson. "High time you and I had a little chat, Lord Emsworth."

Lord Emsworth was about to speak, when he caught the other's eye. It was a strong, keen, level gray eye, with a curious forcefulness about it that made him feel strangely inferior. There is every reason to suppose that Mr. Donaldson had subscribed for years to those personality courses advertised in the back pages of the magazines, which guarantee to impart to the pupil who takes ten correspondence lessons the ability to look the boss in the eye and make him wilt. Mr. Donaldson looked Lord Emsworth in the eye, and Lord Emsworth wilted.

"How do you do?" he said weakly.

"Now listen, Lord Emsworth," proceeded Mr. Donaldson. "No sense in having hard feelings between members of a family. I take it you've heard by this time that your boy and my girl have gone ahead and fixed it up? Personally, I'm delighted. That boy is a fine young fellow—"

Lord Emsworth blinked.

"You are speaking of my son Frederick?" he said incredulously.

"Of your son Frederick. Now, at the moment, no doubt, you are feeling a trifle sore. I don't blame you. You have every right to be sorer than a gumboil. But you must remember—young blood, eh? It will, I am convinced, be a lasting grief to that splendid young man——"

"You are still speaking of my son Frederick?"

"Of Frederick, yes. It will, I say, be a lasting grief to him if he feels he has incurred your resentment. You must forgive him, Lord Emsworth. He must have your support."

"I suppose he'll have to have it, dash it," said his lordship unhappily. "Can't let the boy starve."

Mr. Donaldson's hand swept round in a wide grand gesture.

"Don't you worry about that. I'll look after that end of it. I am not a rich man——"

"Ah!" said his lordship resignedly. A faint hope, inspired by the largeness of the other's manner, had been flickering in his bosom.

"I doubt," continued Mr. Donaldson frankly, "if, all told, I have as much as ten million dollars in the world."

Lord Emsworth swayed like a sapling in the breeze.

"Ten million? Ten million? Did you say you had ten million dollars?"

"Between nine and ten, I suppose. Not more. But you must bear in mind that the business is growing all the time. I am Donaldson's Dog Biscuits."

"Donaldson's Dog Biscuits! Indeed! Really! Fancy that!"

"You have heard of them?" asked Mr. Donaldson eagerly.

"Never," said Lord Emsworth cordially.

"Oh! Well, that's who I am. And, with your approval, I intend to send Frederick over to Long Island City to start learning the business. I have no doubt that he will in time prove a most valuable asset to the firm."

Lord Emsworth could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of value to a dog-biscuit firm, except possibly as a taster: but he refrained from damping the other's enthusiasm by saying so.

"He seems full of keenness. But he must feel that he has your moral support, Lord Emsworth; his father's moral support."

"Yes, yes, yes!" said Lord Emsworth heartily. A feeling of positive adoration for Mr. Donaldson was thrilling him. The getting rid of Freddie, which he himself had been unable to achieve in twenty-six years, this godlike dog-biscuit manufacturer had accomplished in less than a week. "Oh, yes, yes, yes! Most decidedly!"

"They sail on Wednesday."

"Splendid!"

"Early in the morning."

"Capital!"

"I may give them a friendly message from you?"

"Certainly! Certainly, certainly, certainly! Inform Frederick that he has my best wishes."

"I will."

"Mention that I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest."

"Exactly."

"Say that I hope he will work hard and make a name for himself."

"Just so."

"And," concluded Lord Emsworth, speaking with a fatherly earnestness well in keeping with this solemn moment, "tell him—er—not to hurry home."

He pressed Mr. Donaldson's hand with feelings too deep for further speech. Then he galloped swiftly to where Angus McAllister stood brooding over the tulip bed.

"McAllister!"

The other's beard waggled grimly. He looked at his late employer with cold eyes.

"McAllister," faltered Lord Emsworth humbly, "I wish—I wonder—— What I want to say is, have you accepted another situation yet?"

"I am conseederin' twa."

"Come back to me!" pleaded his lordship, his voice breaking. "Robert Barker is worse than useless. Come back to me!"

Angus McAllister gazed woodenly at the tulips. "A' weel," he said at length.

"You will?" cried Lord Emsworth joyfully. "Splendid! Capital! Excellent!"

"A' didna say I wud."

"I thought you said 'I will,'" said his lordship, dashed.

"I didna say 'A' weel'; I said 'A' weel,'" said Mr. McAllister stiffly. "Meanin', mebbe I might, mebbe not."

Lord Emsworth laid a trembling hand upon his arm.

"McAllister, I will raise your salary."

The beard twitched.

"Dash it, I'll double it!"

The eyebrows flickered.

"McAllister—Angus," said Lord Emsworth in a low voice. "Come back! The pumpkin needs you."

In an age of rush and hurry like that of today, an age in which there are innumerable calls on the leisure time of everyone, it is possible that here and there throughout the ranks of the public who have read this chronicle there may be one or two who for various reasons found themselves unable to attend the annual Flower and Vegetable Show at Shrewsbury. Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Badgwick Hall was there, of course, but it would not have escaped the notice of a close observer that his mien lacked something of the haughty arrogance which had characterized it in other years. From time to time, as he paced the tent devoted to the exhibition of vegetables, he might have been seen to bite his lip, and his eye had something of that brooding look which Napoleon's must have worn after Waterloo.

But there is the right stuff in Sir Gregory. He is a gentleman and a sportsman. In the Parsloe-Parsloe tradition there is nothing small or mean. Halfway down the tent he stopped, and with a quick manly gesture thrust out his hand.

"Congratulate you, Emsworth," he said huskily.

Lord Emsworth looked up with a start. He had been deep in his thoughts.

"Thanks, my dear fellow. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you very much." He hesitated. "Er—can't both win, if you understand me."

Sir Gregory puzzled it out.

"No," he said. "No. See what you mean. Can't both win."

He nodded and walked on, with who knows what vultures gnawing at his broad bosom? And Lord Emsworth—with Angus McAllister, who had been a silent witness of the scene, at his side—turned once more to stare reverently at that which lay on the strawy bottom of one of the largest packing cases ever seen in Shrewsbury town.

Inside it, something vast and golden beamed up at him.

A card had been attached to the exterior of the packing case. It bore the simple legend:

PUMPKINS. FIRST PRIZE.

THE MILKY WAY

By Stewart Edward White

STEWART EDWARD WHITE

Stewart Edward White, one of the best-known of American authors, was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., on March 12, 1873, grew up in lumber camps, and has been an adventurer, explorer, and hunter all his life. At his home, Little Hill, Burlingame, Calif., a separate building houses his trophies from Alaska and elsewhere, including three African expeditions. Readers will scarcely require to be reminded of such novels as The Blazed Trail, The Silent Places, The Riverman, The Leopard Woman, the California trilogy, Gold, The Gray Dawn and The Rose Dawn, The Glory Hole, etc., or of such stories as Arizona Nights.

For some years Mr. White has owned a yacht on which during the summer months he has cruised off the coast of British Columbia; and it will be apparent to readers of this story that it may be based on an actual occurrence only slightly varnished. I have refrained from asking Mr. White as to the facts, if any. The story, which first appeared in Collier's for June 6, 1925, was read at one-thirty in the morning by an editor who had spent the whole evening with manuscripts and was intolerably weary. After he had got over laughing he found himself quite rested and decided that perhaps others might experience the same beneficial result.

THE MILKY WAY[1]

[1] Copyright, 1925, by Stewart Edward White.

Somewhere along the British Columbia coast a well-found schooner yacht moved in a thick, lazy mist. Glenn Walker, the owner thereof, Aline, his comparatively recent wife, and Jimmy Forbes, together with the mate, were all gathered about the wheel, combining their skill and knowledge. The crow's nest aloft was occupied by a lookout man. A sailor near the after hatch at intervals worked a crank that actuated a bellows that, in turn, emitted a long, hollow groan. In addition, Walker from time to time pulled the air-whistle cord. Then the entire yacht fell silent, and everybody listened intently for an echo that should indicate the proximity of islands and rocks. Throughout all the ship's company was that nervous, intent, uneasy alertness that is aroused only by a fog in uncertain, broken, or unknown waters. Even Sam, the negro cook, had deserted his galley and, an unusual solemnity adding a quite superfluous shadow to his countenance, was gazing ahead.

"The worst of it is these confounded currents," observed Walker impatiently, breaking the silence. "You can figure out where you ought to be all right, but you can't tell where the currents may have set you! We ought to be hearing from Disaster Point about now." He pulled the whistle cord. All listened. Nothing! "Nice, cheerful optimist named this country!" he grumbled. "Disaster Point; Desolation Sound; Wreck Reef; Beware Passage; Destruction Point; Grief Point——"

Nobody replied. All understood that the skipper was merely relieving pressure.

The sailor mechanically cranked his machine. In answer to its hoarse shout a booming bellow blared through the mist dead ahead. Walker's hand jerked to the engine-room bell. The yacht came to a quivering standstill. The water fell quiet under her counter as the reverse ceased to operate. She lay gently rocking in the smooth swell. All listened.

Nothing! Walker waved his hand toward the sailor operating the fog horn.

It squawked; and almost immediately was answered from out the mists.

"No lighthouses up here, as I remember it," stated Walker, but in a note of inquiry.

"No, sir; none," rejoined the mate positively.

"Doesn't sound like any ship's foghorn I ever heard, though."

"No, sir; more like a fixed signal."

The mate took two steps to their own foghorn, thrust the sailor aside, and manipulated the crank, one long blast, followed by three short ones. After a short interval he was answered; but, as before, only by the single long-drawn-out note.

"Private signal; not in the books," he explained. "But everyone navigating this coast knows it. Either that fellow's a cod-headed fool or we're up against a fixed signal."

"Maybe it's a new establishment," suggested Jimmy Forbes.

"What I was thinking, sir. But why isn't it reported in this year's 'Information for Mariners'? They don't grow these things overnight."

Walker rang again, and the yacht's auxiliary engines fell silent.

"I don't hear any engine," he voiced the result of a short interval of listening. "I'd better start up again and keep under control." He signaled the engineer, and the yacht began to creep forward at a snail's pace.

Jimmy Forbes and Aline sauntered forward to the bitts. Jimmy clenched his pipe in his teeth, his hands were deep in his pockets, and his face was alight. She glanced up at him.

"What is it?" she asked, struck by his expression.

"My psychic antennæ are vibrating," said he. "I smell adventure."

"Fog thinning aloft, sir," came the sailor's voice from the crow's nest.

The invisible horn continued to blare at intervals, but the exact direction or distance of its source was rendered uncertain by the peculiar and baffling acoustic properties of the fog. At each repetition everybody aboard the yacht strained his ears, and at each silence exchanged low-voiced opinions, all different.

With the shattering effect of an explosion the lookout man's voice came again from aloft. The effect was of the release from a spell, a pearl-gray clogging muffled spell cast on sight and sound by the spirit of the fog.

"Cow ho!" cried he.

A moment's incredulous silence was broken by an exasperated bellow of inquiry from both Walker and his mate.

"Cow ho!" the sailor obligingly repeated.

"You triple idiot," shouted Walker, "what are you talking about?"

"It's a cow, sir," explained the lookout man.

"I can see her above the fog. She's standing on a sort of high peak of rock that sticks up. Five points to sta'board, sir. She's a spotted cow," he added after a moment, "and she's got a calf with her."

"What in the name of Peter the Hermit do you suppose I care for her color or her calf?" roared Walker, exasperated.

The mate was already eagerly searching the chart.

"It must be this little group here, sir," he indicated. "We've been set west'ard by the tides."

"No bottom at ten," sang out the leadsman, who unbidden had cast his lead.

In the bow Aline was looking at her chuckling brother. "You knew it was a cow!" she accused him.

"I told you my psychic antennæ were quivering. You see, each and every living thing has its own special aura which it emanates, or in the midst of which it lives, so to speak. When two living things come near enough to one another the auras contact or perhaps slightly intermingle. One who—like me—is sensitive or especially trained in the occult lore of the East is aware of the fact, and may even identify the nature of that aura. It's very simple." He caught her accusing eye. "And then, too," he continued, "it sounded like a cow."

The fog continued to thin overhead, while still remaining opaque below, as is often the habit of fogs. Dazzling bits of sky became visible, like blue jewels set in cotton wool. Those on deck shortly became possessed of the vision that had earlier been vouchsafed the lookout man, nearer heaven. On a flat-topped spire of rock stood a veritable spotted cow, with a smaller but gangle-legged replica of herself snuggled alongside. The spire lifted sheer from the rolling fog clouds below. Its top was perhaps ten feet across; its sides apparently almost precipitous. The cow was as though upon an altar. There needed only a few seraphim or cherubim leaning their chins over the clouds below to complete an entirely appropriate setting. The idea was put forward by Aline.

"Should the cherubim be small chubby calves' heads with wings?" she inquired. "Or perhaps little fat pigs?"

Appropriate leisure for the admiration of the spectacle was, however, denied them. The spell was broken by the sudden appearance alongside of an agitated man in a small boat. He was a stockily built person, with a round red face, a shock of brown hair, and an anxious and serious eye.

"Say," he called without preliminary, "can some of you fellows help me with my cow?"

"What's the matter with your cow?" asked Walker.

"I can't get her down. She's clumb up atop and she can't get down. I never knew a more gentle cow, but I can't do nothing with her. She never acted this way before. Something must have scared her; and then she had her calf, and now she's gone crazy. If my piston-rod bearing hadn't give out, me and my partner'd have done something, but as it is she ain't had a drop or a bite for two days except what I've got up to her, and what with a new calf—by golly, you fellers come along just right!"

"With the permission of the owner, here," struck in Jimmy, who, in common with the entire yacht's company was leaning over the rail, "I would propose that you come on deck and embroider with the glittering high lights of lucidity your suggestive but somewhat obscure narrative."

The man stared at him. "Huh?" he ejaculated.

"Come aboard and have a drink and tell us about it."

The owner of the cow, painter in hand, immediately swarmed over the side. The attentive steward dived below to reappear with a bottle and glasses.

"Better drop your hook," suggested the stranger, his eye on the bottle.

"Is there good bottom here?" queried Walker doubtfully.

"Sure. And good shelter. You're in Graveyard Cove."

"By the mark, seven!" sang out the leadsman hastily.

"Let go the anchor!" commanded Walker sharply.

"The cow," Jimmy Forbes was observing, "is, as perhaps you know, a sacred animal among the Hindus. It therefore possesses for me, as a humble Follower of the Path, a peculiar interest and significance. The sight of one of these animals elevated to a position that I can only regard as symbolical is significant of more than chance. I can see in this concatenation of circumstances an interweaving of the threads of Karma which may——"

"Give me that bottle!" Aline interrupted him severely.

She removed the cork and handed it, together with a tall glass from the tray, to the newcomer. Jimmy sighed.

"Blinded," he murmured—"not so particularly to my occult lore as to the alcoholic habits of the local native."

The glass was intended for high-balls, the soda for which was ready on the tray. The man filled it three fourths full of whisky. This he at once prepared to drink.

"Don't you take any water?" gasped Aline.

"Not if the whisky is good, ma'am."

He drank it in long gulps, set down the glass without a shudder and, thus fortified, gave an account of himself. He lived, it seems, with his partner on another small island a few miles distant. They ran a cattle ranch. Jimmy pricked up his ears at this statement.

"How many head of stock have you?" he asked.

"Eleven," said the man. "We had twelve last year, but we killed one for beef."

The spotted cow, being about to calve, and the grass becoming scant on the "ranch" the idea had occurred to him to transfer her to this island for better forage, and he did so.

"How?" asked Aline.

"In my gas boat, ma'am."

"But how?"

"I just put her in the cockpit and brought her over."

"I don't see how in the world——"

"It was easy enough, ma'am. I never knew a more gentle cow. Only trouble was, it was choppy and she got seasick some."

The crossing and the landing had been successfully accomplished. All seemed to be going well. Then trouble began.

The cow, after falling too eagerly on the new feed, had been seized by a sudden panic.

"I can't think what ailed her," complained the man. "There wa'n't nothing I could see to scare her. But she begun to run around and bellow and curl her tail, and I couldn't do nothing with her nohow. And she's the gentlest critter I ever see. I quit trying to get nigh her, because I didn't want her to run around and get het up—she with her calf, you see—but that didn't do no good. And how she done it, I don't know, but somehow she managed to scramble right up to the top of the island. Why, a goat couldn't hardly make it! Once she got up there she quieted down, but there she was! She can't get down nohow, and I can't figger no way to get her down. She's had her calf up there, and there ain't no food or water, so I had to carry up what I could, and she just stands there and bellers. And then when I started to go get my partner to figger something out, my engine breaks down; and I ain't got no small boat with me, and there I am."

"In your estimate of your cattle holdings, did you include the calf?" inquired Jimmy.

"Huh?"

"Have you eleven head counting or not counting the calf?"

"The calf makes twelve."

"What on earth has that to do with it?" demanded Aline.

"I was just figuring whether it meant a nine or an eight and a half per cent loss," submitted her brother meekly. "At any rate, a heavy loss for any large industry."

The stranger looked at Jimmy suspiciously, but otherwise ignored him.

"You can just bet I was glad to hear you fellows whistling," he concluded his narrative.

The fog was now returning into the invisible. There was no motion, just a withdrawal as though into a fourth dimension without disturbance of the three in which we live. The surroundings were becoming distinguishable.

The yacht was shortly seen to be at anchor in a crescent-shaped bight with long rocky arms on either side. A sparsely wooded shore rose close by in a series of low rocky terraces to the central spire on the top of which stood the spotted cow and her calf. The spire was perhaps ten feet high above the last terrace, and seemed to afford various small hand- or footholds in the shape of miniature ledges and crevices, but would appear to be, as the cow's owner had said, problematically scalable to even the skiptious goat.

"Do you mean to say that cow actually climbed up there?" demanded Walker, after surveying the situation.

"I don't think she flew," said the man, and he said it seriously, which pleased Aline.

"Well, let's go ashore and look things over," suggested Walker. "I expect we'll have to help out."

"Any objection to the men landing, sir?" inquired the mate. "Good chance to stretch their legs."

"None. But leave one aboard."

The small boats were put overside, and shortly the ship's crew stood on the island. They ascended by a series of broad shallow terraces, where they grouped themselves at the foot of the spire and looked up. The cow looked down.

"It's plain enough where she got up," observed Walker after a pause—"she could do it if she scrambled hard and kept scrambling. And it's equally plain why she doesn't get down. But I believe she might be led if it were done carefully."

"I figured that," agreed the cow's owner, "if she'd come down gentle; but she's all het up and excited. And she's the gentlest critter I ever see. You can do anything with her. But now I can't even get a rope on her."

A deprecating cough called attention to the steward.

"Beg pardon, sir, but, if I might try? You see, sir, I was cow hand for two years in the Argentine pampas, and I learned methods."

"A hundred and sixty-seven," murmured Aline.

Jimmy raised an inquiring eyebrow in her direction.

"It's Johnston's age," she explained to him aside, "according to the number of years he says he has done different things. He was a hundred and sixty-five yesterday."

Receiving permission, the steward procured a rope and rapidly climbed to the miniature plateau, to the farther edge of which the cow promptly retired with her calf behind her.

"You see," he said modestly, addressing the multitude from his vantage point, "it's partly confidence and partly secret master words which have been known to animal tamers from time immemorial."

"If you know any secret master words, you'd better say them quick," warned Forbes suddenly.

Without waiting for the secret words, and disregarding the confidence entirely, the cow uttered a bellow and dashed at the steward. The latter, caught unawares by this unsportsmanlike conduct, recovered his wits only in time to dodge sidewise and escape impalement by the skin of his teeth. Now ensued a brief but lively game of tag within most inadequate boundaries. The cow was It, but seemed likely not long to remain so. Before the spectators could either formulate an idea for rescue or even make a move toward it, Johnston, escaping death thrice by a hand-breadth, was seen to topple for a moment on the far edge, throw up his hands, and disappear.

Cries and movements. Above the confusion rose the roaring voice of the cow's owner:

"Can he swim?"

Several voices answered him in the affirmative.

"Then he's all right. The cliff is straight up on that side into deep water. They's no rocks there."

Two men tumbled into the dinghy and rowed madly around the nearer of the two points. Suspended action for a short interval. Shortly it reappeared, and all could see that Johnston sat now in the stern sheets, streaming sea water. His remarks could not be distinguished at the distance, but from his posture, gestures, and the sound of his voice it was evident that he was addressing the spotted cow.

"Undoubtedly the secret words, though a trifle belated," observed Jimmy. "The creature should now be quite tamed."

"I never see her act up so before," said the cow's owner. "She's the gentlest critter——"

"Well," urged Walker genially, "any more volunteers? Any more buckaroos in this outfit?"

He ran his eye over the crew, grinning cheerfully at them. They grinned back, glanced at one another, shook their heads.

"No? Well, come on, boys, let's see what we can do."

He was warming up to the situation. He had been sitting on a rock, like Aline and his brother-in-law, as a spectator. Now he rose and became the central figure—with due deference to the cow.

"Johnston has the right idea—in a way," said he. "The first thing is to get a rope on her. Got to get hold of her. I don't know much about cows, but I do know that with a rope around the base of the horns you can do most anything with them, and around the neck is no good. That right?" he asked the cow's owner. "By the way, what's your name?"

"My name's Teller. Yes, that's right."

"Any of you men throw a lariat? No? How about you? You're a ranchman."

"I ain't never tried."

"Well, I can't either—to amount to much. But I've had to catch my horse a few times down in the cow country. Get me a stout line. I think I can make a running noose."

Armed with his impromptu lasso, he started toward the rock.

"You aren't going up there?" cried Aline, alarmed.

"Don't worry; I have the greatest respect for the old girl."

He made his way to a point just below the little plateau, assured himself of a good foothold, whirled the loop around his head, cowboy fashion, and began to cast. The cow backed away to the far edge, planted her feet and snorted. The position was awkward, Walker's skill negligible, and the cow proved to be unexpectedly clever in ducking. Again and again he hurled the rope, dragged it back empty, and reformed the loop. Sometimes the loop would not spread, sometimes the rope fell short, at encouraging moments it fell across the cow, twice it actually settled over the horns and the attentive bystanders uttered a yell, but before Walker in his unfavorable position could take in the slack the cow lowered her head and flipped her horns and the wide loop slipped off. By now the sun was shining brightly. Walker took off his coat and wiped his brow.

"Gosh, this is hot work!" he remarked.

After the hundredth cast or so, he paused for a rest.

"I'm afraid I'm no Buffalo Bill," he confessed after another series of failures. "One of you row off and tell that ineffable ass, Johnston, to come back—to come ashore and have a try at this. He ought to know how to throw a lasso if he was with the Argentine Gauchos for two years."

While one of the men was gone in the dinghy Walker leaned against the rock, resting. Presently the emissary returned.

"Johnston says they didn't lasso them down where he was," reported the man, grinning. "He says they used bolos."

"Humph!" grunted Walker. "He's better read than I imagined."

He took up the rope again and hurled the loop carelessly and disgustedly in the general direction of the cow. It settled about the animal's horns.

"Stand by!" "Haul her!" "Take in your slack!" broke out a chorus of yells.

The loop tightened. Walker descended from his elevated perch, bringing with him the end of the long line.

"Now you've got her, what are you going to do with her?" murmured Forbes.

But Walker, now wholly in the spirit of solving a difficult problem, had his ideas.

"Get the calf down, and she'll follow of her own accord," he replied promptly. "Here, some of you fellows take the end of the rope and keep her from charging at me, and I'll see what can be done."

The cow securely tethered to one end of the plateau, Walker ventured to mount to the other. Then ensued a game first of blandishment—futile—then of dodge. The calf had been instructed by Mother to view all proceedings with suspicion; on no account to do anything he was expected to do; and to distrust all creatures that did not progress on four legs. Infantile as he was, the calf had understood and obeyed perfectly, a wonderful example to the young independents of other species.

"That won't work," confessed Walker at length, descending the cliff.

"If you did get the calf, probably the cow wouldn't be calm enough to pick her way down so difficult a path," consoled Aline. "Your flannels are a sight!"

"There's something in that," assented Walker. "Darn my flannels."

"She's always been the gentlest critter I ever——"

"Well, she's reformed now," Walker cut him short. "Any suggestions, anybody?"

The two groups had gradually drawn together until now master and crew were gathered close. Nobody said anything for a moment.

"How about shoving her off the side where Johnston took the high dive?" at length ventured one of the men.

"She'd bust herself wide open falling from that high up!" hastily interposed Teller in alarm.

"How about shoving her off and then lowering her down with the rope around her horns, then?" amended the author of the suggestion.

"We could all tail onto the rope on this side, run it over the top, and then slack away," interposed another.

They gathered in a close group and discussed ways and means. It was agreed that a roller of some kind would be needed to pass the rope over so it would not chafe through. Also some sort of padded poles for the shoving. Nobody seemed to fancy doing any shoving with the naked hands. Also a selected squad to shove, and another to pull. The plan gathered complications, fantastic nautical complications of men accustomed to the sea but not to cows. Teller, who had been listening with more and more bewilderment, finally dashed the whole scheme.

"With her scraping and bumping down that clift," said he, "she'd break a leg sure."

"We'll have to rig some sort of crane to sling her from," put in the mate, who had heretofore remained silent. "Then we can run her over and let her down easy."

"That's the idea!" cried Walker.

A new committee of the whole was formed. Three men held the cow back by the rope while all the rest swarmed up the cliff to examine the engineering possibilities. Cranes were more in line with a sailorman's experience. The matter of a suitable foundation and pivot was soon determined. There would need to be two stout timbers; one upright and firmly guyed; the other attached loosely to its foot like a boom. A block on the end of each through which ropes could be rove would permit manipulation either up or down or sidewise. Then reeve the cow's rope through the end of the boom, hoist her off her feet, sling her sidewise into space, and lower away!

This masterpiece of planning by a dozen eagerly interested small boys—for this is what they had all become—was no sooner rounded out in all details than an obvious and damning fact ruined it. On the little island there grew no trees big enough to furnish materials! There were no trees big enough—so Teller admitted—on any of the islands near by.

At this realization a consternation blank of everything but baffled irritation fell upon the spirits of the multitude. With one accord all stared at the cow; with one accord all cursed the cow. One or two even cursed Teller for daring to own the cow. Teller was quite meek, but very anxious and worried; and only muttered that she was the gentlest cow he had ever known. Which, of course, helped.

"Better shoot the fool and use her up for beef and be done with it!" sighed Walker wearily.

Into this lull obtruded the splash of oars. It had not been noticed that some time previous Sam had withdrawn. Now he was to be seen, in full white regalia, his bulk nearly filling the little dinghy, placidly paddling to shore. He beached his craft, deliberately shipped his oars, heaved himself on the strand, and approached.

"Lunching," he remarked with dignity, "is served. Gittin' cows down offen rocks is no job on an empty stummick."

"Good Lord! It's two o'clock!" cried Walker, glancing at his wrist watch, "Sam has the right idea. Get aboard and feed."

The cow, released from pressure, advanced to the edge of the little plateau, dragging her rope after her. She stared down at them with the unfocused bulging-eyed imbecility of the rattled bovine.

"Bla-a-a-a!" she bellowed, and in the cry there seemed to be a note of sneering scorn.

"Make it snappy!" ordered Walker. "A half hour. Teller, you go aboard and eat with the men. I'm going to get that cow down if it takes a leg!"

Lunch was, to Sam's scandal, quite devoid of customary formalities. Walker swallowed his food hastily and without further comment. Then suddenly he bellowed for Johnston.

That astonished individual, accustomed to being summoned gently and electrically as though by the lascivious pleasings of a lute, popped in with unwonted haste.

"Bring that man Teller in here—the cow man," commanded Walker.

"In here, sir?"

"I said here!"

Johnston popped out again, looking slightly scandalized.

"Sit down," invited Walker when the ranchman had been ushered in. "Tell me, how deep is the water on the other side of the island just under the cliff?"

"It's about eight or ten fathom."

"Sure?"

"Yes, I've caught cod there."

"Any rock or shoals?"

"No, she runs off sheer and clean."

"How close in could a craft like this get?"

"Lord, you could tie up to the clift if you wanted to."

Walker hit the table with satisfaction.

"All right," he cried. "I've got it! It's as simple as falling off a log. We'll take the yacht around there right under the confounded cow. We'll use our mainmast as our upright and our main boom as the spar."

"You can't raise it high enough," interposed Forbes quickly.

"Can't, eh? Well, to make sure, we'll hoist it and chock it high enough up."

"It'll mar your mast."

"Hang the mast! I wish it was taller. We can't hoist her clear, but we can pull her off sideways and catch her weight as she comes off the plateau. It'll work perfectly, if only the weather will continue calm."

He was as eager as a boy. Leaping from his seat, he ran on deck. The crew, already fed, were up from below.

"I've got it worked out," he told them rapidly, and detailed his scheme.

"They's nigh a twenty-foot tide in these waters, sir," said the mate, "so if you pull her off at high tide you'd gain that much on her."

"Good man!" cried Walker. The mate had already dived for the tide-tables. They flipped the pages. "Here we are, Port Simpson—it won't be far off Port Simpson—tides here—high water 19.7 feet at 22:48—why in blazes don't they say 10:48 P.M. and be done with it? We can't do it to-day. It's 19.5 feet to-morrow morning. We'll do it then. It'll take us the rest of the day to get rigged, anyway."

Walker underestimated the activity of sailormen at work on a job they really understand and in a cause that has enlisted their fervent interest. The boom was raised a little higher up the mast; the gaff was unshipped and lashed to the boom where it would lend most support; the necessary blocks and running gear were installed; the contraption was swung and tested and pronounced satisfactory by the middle of the first dogwatch. Satisfied that nothing more could be done until the next day, Walker went below to remove the signs of toil.

But shortly appeared Teller from the shore, where he had been thrusting some fodder and a pail of water up to the plateau. He had a new and disconcerting idea, which was that it was very possible that during the night the noose might fall loose and the cow be enabled to slip it off her horns. This horrible thought gave pause to all satisfaction. Walker retired into executive session with himself to grapple with the new problem. Finally he summoned the mate, and explained the difficulty.

"We've got to keep that noose from slipping open," said he, "and the only way to do it that I can see is to throw a half hitch, or something above it around the beast's horns. It can be done, I think, by flipping the slack of the rope in a sort of loop and giving it a twist that will cross it as it flips. See what I mean?"

The mate said that he did.

"Well, send one of the men over to try it. On no account must he get up onto the plateau with that crazy animal. I don't want any accidents."

He went below to finish his interrupted toilet, which he did leisurely. After a bath and a complete change he returned to the deck to find that he was absolutely alone on the yacht. On the last ledge below the pinnacle were closely grouped the missing ship's company intently watching a man who, head and shoulders above the level of the plateau, was painstakingly flipping in hopeful spirals the bight of the line toward a brace-legged and snortsome cow.

After a number of trials he desisted, and to an accompaniment of somewhat subdued jeers clambered down to the level of the company. Another man deposited something in a hat that lay on the ground, spat on his hands, climbed to the edge of the pinnacle, and in his turn began to flip the rope.

Walker glanced overside. At least they had had the grace to leave him his own dinghy. He dropped into it and rowed ashore.

On his appearance activities ceased, and a slight cloud of uneasy uncertainty fell upon the occasion. Jimmy Forbes took upon himself an explanation.

"It is a game," said he—"an excellent game in that it combines the elements of chance, of skill, and the hope of pecuniary gain. You deposit ten cents in the hat, and in return therefor you are allowed ten tries. If you succeed in throwing a half hitch, you are rewarded by the contents of the hat. I have myself already contributed twenty cents, which, I am bound to confess, I am beginning to believe irretrievably lost to me. Want to join? If you have not ten cents, I am sure your credit is good."

"Thanks. I've just cleaned up," replied Walker dryly. "But don't let me interrupt. I'll watch."

He went to seat himself by Aline, who was perched near by, a book in her lap. The game was renewed, at first a little deprecatingly, but soon with noisy hilarity. Walker picked up the book. It was Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea.

"I brought it as a textbook," Aline explained.

A wild cheer greeted Johnston's extremely lucky cast. He descended, emptied the hat.

"It's just a twist of the wrist," he announced loftily. "It's not unlike handling a bolo."

The next morning proved calm, so the yacht was run around to the other side of the island, moored fore and aft, and properly fended from the perpendicular cliffs. It was found that the end of the boom was just enough above the tiny plateau on which stood the marooned cow that with the six-foot rise that remained of the tide a sufficient hoist would be afforded.

But now a new complication was introduced by Teller. Where were they going to deposit the cow once she was swung clear? Walker said he had thought they would dump her into the sea and let her swim. Teller had no faith that the cow in her present condition could swim that far, and in such cold water and with so many currents. The alternative seemed to be to lower her to the deck. Walked looked a little dashed. The yacht's spick and span ultra-holystoned deck! He took the hurdle nobly, however, and the men set to work to arrange a suitable place on which to deposit her.

At last the great moment was at hand. Dispositions were carefully made. Each was assigned his job and minutely instructed as to just what he was to do. The men on the guy ropes braced themselves; those on the falls began slowly and cautiously to haul. A lookout at the foretop reported progress.

"She's afloat!" he shouted as the cow, hanging back and snorting, began to be forced, in spite of braced feet, inexorably toward the edge of the cliff. "Her bow's off bottom!" he yelled as the upward pull lifted her from her forefeet. Over the edge of the cliff, in a cloud of loose earth, the beast came into view.

"Hoist away! Smartly, men!" cried Walker.

She rose into the air; dangled. The yacht careened slightly as she took the weight so far offside and so high up.

"Hold the falls! Swing her!" shouted Walker.

The men on the guy ropes swung the boom. High in the air, kicking like a fish and uttering cries either of bovine profanity or of terror, the cow dangled by her horns.

"Oh, the poor thing!" exclaimed Aline.

"Lower away!" cried Walker.

The cow descended, swinging to and fro, rocking the yacht from side to side. The men at the falls watched their chance to catch her at center, lowering rapidly a few feet, then checking the descent. A dozen pairs of hands were outstretched to receive and guide the descending pendulum. For a moment or so there was imminent danger that the animal would either be dashed against the rocky wall or carry away some of the yacht's standing rigging. The lookout man, reaching up, managed to get hold of a hind leg. This was a mistake. He went overside and splashed into the sea as though he had been projected from a catapult. Somebody threw him a rope and he scrambled aboard dripping, against a volley of facetious remarks from those who were not too busy.

"Hurt?" snapped Walker.

"No, sir," replied the man, but he stood apart rubbing his shoulder, having had enough of cows for the moment. Some ingenious and more cautious spirit threw the loop of a small line over the beast. By means of it she was guided safely to the deck, where she stood, feet apart, blowing and rolling her eyes. The men cheered.

But the jubilation was cut short by a cry of warning from aloft. The calf was seen to be wabbling back and forth along the edge of the cliff, apparently getting ready to jump down after his parent. The lookout man waved his cap; those on deck shouted and threw up their arms and tossed up rope ends and cut antics in an effort to convince the child that in spite of appearances to the contrary cows cannot fly. Teller fell into the dinghy and began frantically to splash toward a point from which he could scale the cliff. All these maneuvers seemed doomed to failure; the calf had apparently every intention of casting itself into space. Suddenly it froze to immobility, staring fixedly straight out in front. All looked in the direction of that gaze. At the foretop crouched Johnston, humped up and gazing directly into the calf's bulging eyes. Calmly he held that calf with his glittering eye. The calf stared. For the second time Johnston had made good!

Breathless silence fell. If Teller could scale the cliff before the unprecedented spell broke! He did! Breathing heavily and perspiring freely, he was seen to creep upon the hypnotized calf, to grasp him firmly. Everybody cheered. Two of the sailors clasped each other and pulled off an impromptu dance.

But the celebration nearly proved fatal. In the excitement the two men at the falls had dropped their rope in order to do a little caper of triumph. This released the pressure on the cow. Whether her finer feelings had been outraged to the point of retaliation, or whether she was merely looking for her progeny, is obscure. At any rate, she uttered another bellow and took charge of the deck. There was no opposition. Men swarmed up the rigging. Aline and her brother dived down the hatch. The lookout man, caught unawares between wind and water, and with no other place to go, again went overside. But, then, he was already wet. Walker swung himself up on the boom, from which point he gave his view of the situation in no uncertain terms.

The flurry was, of course, momentary. The trailing rope was soon seized and the beast made fast. And at that moment the gentle and plaintive voice of Teller was heard alongside, begging for assistance in getting the calf aboard.

Excitement drained away as the sea drains from rocks, leaving the yacht and her people once more a part of the surroundings instead of a self-contained center of an unholy row. Walker looked about him. The deck was strewn with ropes and chairs and things. Rigging flapped idly at loose ends. The varnish on the masts and rails was scraped and marred. The yacht looked like a drunken harridan. Also the trip down and the excitement had made the cow seasick.

"Some job!" cried Walker, wiping his forehead. "I never expected to be skipper of a cattle ship, but I guess I am." He began to laugh. "I haven't had so much fun in a coon's age," he chuckled to Aline and her brother. "Now what?"

Teller, in his deprecating way, proffered a suggestion, or rather a request.

"You see," said he, "my gas boat is out of order and I've got to run in a new bearing; and I wouldn't dast to put the cow back on this island again, nohow; she might do the same thing again; and I thought as how it wouldn't be no more trouble for you now if you was to take her over back home again."

Walker stared at him a moment incredulously; then chuckled.

"All right, old-timer," he agreed; "anything goes. Where is it?"

Teller pointed. The other island was now in plain sight and about four miles distant.

"They's a bight with five fathom on the south side. You can't miss it. They's a good beach, and the water's still, so all you have to do is to drop her overside and let her swim. It's only about a hundred feet and she can make that. You'll find my partner across the neck. Just tell him I will be along as soon as I get my gas boat fixed up."

"All right," agreed Walker. "Here, Parks, you row him around to his boat in the dinghy and then come back. We'll wait here."

The dinghy departed.

"Good Lord, I'll be glad to be rid of her!" cried Walker, with a despairing glance toward the cow, which was now bellowing continuously and with more vigor. "How did we ever get into such a mess? What do you suppose is ailing her now?"

"It's so romantic!" pointed out Aline. "The rescue of a matron in distress! She's hungry, poor thing. What have we aboard that is fit for cows?" She approached the animal gingerly and held out something in her flattened palm. The cow smelled of it and resumed her awful racket. "She doesn't like green olives," observed Aline, regretfully throwing the rejected fruit overboard. "I thought there was no harm trying." She stopped as though thunderstruck. "Isn't there some proper thing we have neglected?" she inquired seriously. "Oughtn't we to run up the milk-white flag, for instance?"

Johnston appeared bearing a large white bowl.

"What have you there?" asked Walker.

"It's canned green peas, sir," answered Johnston. "It's all we've got in the stores that we ever used to feed cows when I was in the dairy business."

"How long were you in the dairy business, Johnston?" inquired Aline interestedly.

"Not long, madam, about a year."

"A hundred and sixty-eight," tallied Aline.

Johnston approached the rescued matron, holding out his bowl of canned peas. The cow ceased her racket and sniffed. Then she inserted her nose in the bowl. Johnston looked around in pardonable triumph. The cow apparently tasted and disapproved. Without troubling to remove her muzzle from the bowl she blew violently. Canned peas sprayed upward as from a fountain. Around both Johnston and the cow was a nimbus of green peas. They scattered over the already disgraceful deck. Johnston disappeared, spattered and discomfited. The howls of joy from all in sight were drowned by the renewed ululations of the cow. Johnston had leaned too heavily on his luck.

Sam was summoned. He suggested canned corn and dried beans and beets. A pail was produced and in it was prepared a marvelous bovine goulash. "We've got to quiet the beast somehow, or we'll go mad," said Walker. "We ought to have a vegetable garden aboard," said Aline. "It would be very simple: a foot or so of good garden soil in that flat place there just forward of that funny thingumajig." The cow accepted this; ate it; drank a pail of water; quieted down, began to lick her calf, which in turn applied itself to its own meal.

Parks and the dinghy returned. Preparations were made for getting under way.

"Two of the men will have to stand by while we're under way," Walker instructed his mate, "in case there's a swell outside or the confounded beast gets excited."

"The cow watch!" cried Aline delighted, "and it comes right before the dogwatch; and it's miles ahead of the dogwatch because the dogwatch hasn't any dog to watch, but the cow watch has a real cow to watch!"

The engine took up its rhythm; the moorings were loosed; the yacht swung slowly to the open. All was well. The cow had now apparently become the gentlest critter in the world, as so repeatedly advertised by her loving owner, and was dreamily chewing a placid cud. The calf was still in search of refreshments.

"Sweet rural scene!" murmured Aline.

But beyond the point the yacht encountered a dead swell which cradled her in long slow swoops from trough to crest. Thanks to the pen improvised for her by spare spars and canvas, the cow had no difficulty in holding her feet, but she stopped chewing her cud and into her eyes came a haunted, querying uneasiness.

"I've seen that expression before. And she's stopped chewing her cud!" cried Aline. "I believe she's going to regurgitate."

"The demoralization is complete," groaned Jimmy, "and I do not refer to the cow."

"Tell Johnston to bring a basin," suggested one of the crew.

The spirit, however, was one of hilarity. Everyone had his little joke. Some of those voiced by the crew out of hearing of the quarterdeck were not entirely decorous, having to do largely with possible safeguards of a no longer immaculate deck. Aline alone was silent, lost in a brown study. Walker noticed this most unusual condition and inquired about it.

"I'm composing a poem," she vouchsafed. "I haven't got very far with it. Only the first two lines."

"Let's have them," urged Walker.

Aline struck an attitude; her voice became deep and solemn.

"When canned goods take the place of grass and hay,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the sea,"

she declaimed in a stage-elocution voice.

The cove on the other island was found without difficulty, and after an interval of sounding the yacht came to anchor within a few hundred feet of a shelving beach. Preparations were made for the landing. The cow presented no difficulties: simply sling her overside, cast off the lines, and let her swim ashore. Teller had informed them that the cow could swim. But how about the calf? Nobody knew. It was a very young calf. Do such animals swim naturally, or do they have to be taught? Birds have to to be taught to fly, and flying is their natural mode of progression. Swimming is not a cow's natural mode of progression. Aline brought up these points, and argued them with great ability in face of much scoffing. Finally, more in disgusted yielding to feminine imbecility than from any conviction, Walker ordered life preservers to be hooked about the body of the little beast. The calf did not object. He had but one idea in his poor little head, and that was concerned solely with the meals at all hours of his conception.

"No meals will be served during the landing!" sang out one of the men.

It was finally considered advisable to lead the beasts while in the water. Walker, Jimmy and three men in the dinghy undertook this task. The other members of the ship's company lined the rail. The men beached the boat and disappeared in the small timber and brush, in search of Teller's partner. After a half hour they returned and rowed over. Jimmy was laughing.

"Did you find him?" asked Aline as soon as they had stepped on deck.

"Yes, we found him: across a little narrow peninsula. He was working in a garden. He was a long, lank, solemn individual, and he didn't even look up at us as we approached. Just grunted in answer to our greeting, and went right on working. He was planting potatoes, and he had a basket of seed potatoes and a sack of starfish. He'd lay a starfish in the hole, and put a potato on top of that, and then another starfish, and cover them up with earth."

"Probably planting a milky way for the cow," murmured Aline. "Go on."

"Finally Glenn told him his partner's boat was out of commission, so we'd brought back the cow for him, as the cow didn't like the other island. Didn't go into details, and the partner didn't ask for them.

"'That so?' said he. 'What kind of boat you got?'

"'Pretty good sized boat,' says Glenn.

"'Well now,' says the old boy, 'that's a piece of luck that don't often happen to me, because I was figuring on how we're going to get the old bull back there—he's getting mighty poor here, and our gas boat is too small. Could you take him back with you?'"

Jimmy chuckled. "What did you say?" Aline asked Walker.

"Say!" exploded the young man. "I said no more forcefully than I ever said it in my life!"

LA BELLA GINA

By Eleanor Mercein Kelly

ELEANOR MERCEIN KELLY

Eleanor Mercein Kelly was born in Milwaukee, Wis., on August 30, 1880, the daughter of Thomas Boyce Mercein, was graduated from the Georgetown Convent of the Visitation, Washington, in 1898, and was married to Robert Morrow Kelly, Jr., of Louisville, Ky., in 1901. Mr. Kelly died in 1926. She is the author of short stories of unusual excellence appearing in many of the magazines and of several novels of which the best known is perhaps Kildares of Storm. Her home is in Edgehill Road, Louisville.

"La Bella Gina," which was first published in Harper's Magazine for September, 1926, is a fine example of thoroughly sophisticated and completely unobtrusive humor. In fact, there are experienced judges who will deny that it is a humorous story. In the same breath they express their admiration for the story itself; so that evidently the valuation of its humorous element, if it has one, depends upon temperament. Mrs. Kelly expressed willingness for its inclusion and I take it that this signifies that her intention, as author, was partly humorous. In a collection which presents humor open and unashamed, even on occasion a little riotous, this subtlest of stories surely finds a place as representative of the opposite extreme.

LA BELLA GINA[1]

[1] Copyright, 1926, by Eleanor Mercein Kelly.

One met the lady, as it were, by installments: first the dog Bijou, emerging from the ascenseur like a jack from its box, wheezing; next the harassed little lady-secretary—or was she a duenna?—in leashed pursuit; next the maid Annette, very French and voluble, personally conducting the footsteps of greatness; last, but by no means nor in any respect least, La Bella Gina herself, leaning upon the arm of her devoted but practically invisible little cavalier, the Marchese. It was always an effective entrance; a gay wave of the hand for the gentleman at the desk, a coquettish smile for the staring lobby at large, and for us, who had come so far to be the guests of her Italy, a charming, courteous inclination of hospitality.

Then the Signor Direttore would hurry out of his office with a daily bouquet provided by the management; the concierge, so haughty with others, would abase himself backward before her; and the cortège would pass out into the street, there to be greeted by a small cheer from whatever public happened to be gathered about; flower-sellers, beggars, cameo-vendors, quarreling groups of vetturini, and the like. The latter would leap each to the box of his carriage, lifting a hopeful whip; but Madame Gina, wagging a forefinger sidewise in sign of friendly negation, as at a too insistent gallery, would turn her teetering footsteps in the direction of the Pincio, leaning partly upon the willing Marchese, and partly, à la Tosca, upon a cane.

The secretary and Bijou would fall into line behind; or possibly, according to the whim of Bijou, they would lead the procession, at the run; and only Annette was left, gazing after them commiseratingly and shaking a well-coiffed head.

"Has it not of pathos?" she murmured to me on one occasion, observing that I too watched this daily little parade with interest.

"Pathos?" I repeated. I supposed her reference was to the diva's lameness, which had appeared to my skeptical American eye rather histrionic than pathetic; due perhaps more to the tightness of the lady's high-heeled satin boots than to any more serious infirmity.

The maid sighed. "Eh, that it should be La Gina, La Bella Gina herself, thus marching on two feet like anybody, like you or me!—trotting along the pavé with no more réclame than the sale bête Bijou" (evidently Annette shared my lack of enthusiasm for the poodle of the profession). "She who in a manner of speaking has not set heel to ground since the day of her début at San Carlo; whose carriage princes have been proud to draw, yes, and millionaires!—I who speak have seen it thus. But now, upon those exquisite feet which sculptors beg to model, she makes along rough streets the promenade, like any Anglaise. Daily, as you see!—— It is the imbecile doctors who have done this thing."

"In order to overcome her little lameness, perhaps?" I suggested.

Annette snapped her fingers. "The lameness, what of that? A habitude, a gesture! At her age, Madame finds the cane un peu distingué. No, it is for the—how shall I say?" Expressive hands fluttered about her person, indicatively. "The conformation, hein? the embonpoint. When last season an ankle sprained itself, as you remember" (it did not occur to Annette that anyone, even tourists from the Antipodes, could be ignorant of this event), "Madame was for some time confined to the sitting and reclining postures. So, the catastrophe commenced. Diet made nothing. My God, what misfortune! The smallest gâteau, the merest soupçon of whip-cream on the morning chocolate, and spang! off pops another hook from the brassière. Madame increased, literally, before the eye. How it was tragic!"

"But," I said consolingly, "she carries her weight extremely well, and she is no fatter than many other opera singers."

"That is true. And it is not as if she were a coloratura, what? To the deeper voice must be allowed the wider latitudes. However, it is not with the appearance one concerns oneself; assuredly, with such beauty, appearance need not be considered—other than to add a dash of rouge here, a drop of belladonna there. It is the voice, voyez-vous, the voice itself! What if La Gina were to become short of breath in the upper register? Picture to yourself if she were compelled to wheeze, like the sale bête Bijou?"

I admitted that this would be indeed a misfortune.

"Therefore," shrugged Annette, "she makes daily the promenade. Also, she starves—it would bring tears to the eyes to see. What fortitude! Never a bon-bon, not so much as a pot of chocolate for the déjeuner. Only café noir—picture to yourself, on an empty digestion!" (She made a face of abhorrence.) "And to what avail? Ah, Mees, I ask of you as one woman to another, to what avail?"

I gazed critically after the retreating figure of the diva, hobbling heroically on toward the Pincian Gardens, three weary blocks away. She had indeed developed, beyond repair, a sitting-figure; or as it is known to my compatriots, the middle-aged spread. And quite seasonably. While it was difficult to detect other symptoms beneath the thick liquid-white of her face, the thin geranium-red of her lips, and the varied glories of her hair, I could not but recall that her début at San Carlo must have taken place at least thirty-odd years earlier.

My eyes and Annette's met in mutual regret, and we shook our heads together. A bond of sympathy was established between us; sympathy for a fellow-woman in distress.

It led to other conversations in passing, Annette being one of those to whom breath seems given entirely for purposes of conversation. La Bella Gina (I wondered whether the song had been named for her, or she for it) was making a pilgrimage, "as usual at this time of year." They merely paused at Rome, en route from Naples.... I should not have thought the singer so devout. One did not like to ask at what shrine she intended to pay her devotions. Or was it perhaps at the tomb of some lost loved one? Annette's manner, in speaking of the pilgrimage, seemed appropriately grave and subdued.

Monsieur le Marchese, also as usual, was accompanying them on the pilgrimage, although stopping at another hotel; which I thought extremely delicate of the little gentleman. He had made many journeys in the train of Madame, it appeared; had followed her triumphs even to the Americas, and to Mexico. It was on the latter occasion that he had taken with him his two young sons, in order that they might have the advantage, the inestimable privilege of intimate association with such an artist, such a woman of the world. But yes, Annette assured me, the young noblemen had indeed appreciated the privilege, Madame being excessively fond of children, particularly of boys. She had fed them sweets all day long. There had been afterwards a letter from Madame la Marchesa herself, thanking Madame Gina for her kindness to the little noblemen.

"What! from their mother?"

But it appeared Madame la Marchesa was their grandmother.

It seemed to me an interesting and unusual relationship. I said so.

Ah, yes, agreed Annette; such fidelity through so many years deserved its reward, n'est-ce pas?—a better reward than La Gina had felt herself able to bestow, she being wedded to her art.

"And of a discretion incroyable. Picture to yourself!—never so much as an hour alone tête-à-tête with monsieur; always a third person in attendance!—myself, or Signora the secretary, or the little noblemen—

"Or the dog Bijou?" I murmured.

"Or the dog Bijou," she assented seriously, "who has, if nothing else, a nature of the most jealous.... 'While I value your attachment, my Boncelli, above pearls and rubies' (I who speak have heard her say this to monsieur, although pearls and rubies are her favorite gems) 'still, a man may not serve two masters; particularly if a woman. The competition deranges. My heart'—she said to him, just like that—'is in my larynx, cher Boncelli, in my diaphragm. These are your successful rivals.'—The poor Marchese!"

"You think," I asked, "that there is no hope for him whatever?"

She shrugged. "Hope, yes—but what a sad little hope! If ever the voice fails, then only will the Marchese receive his reward. He is content to wait. What patience! Each year now we make the pilgrimage; and some day, when the test is unfavorable..." She gave a deep sigh. "Even La Bella Gina grows obviously no younger. Ah, yes, for him there is hope—hélas!"

The good creature seemed torn between sentiment for this model lover and for the exigent voice.

When next I passed the little gentleman, I looked at him with a new regard. He had seemed before rather a negligible quantity, in his dapper yellow gloves and high-heeled patent leathers; rather like an alert elderly crow hopping along under the wing, as it were, of a resplendent pouter-pigeon. But such faithfulness, such undiscouraged devotion to an ideal which he might well have found somewhat faded, lent him dignity; argued powers of endurance which commanded respect. He engaged sympathy, too; and it was to his matrimonial aspirations, rather than to the famous larynx, the too-exacting diaphragm, that one wished success in the forthcoming test, whatever that might be.

I was surprised to find the party at Pisa some days later, when we came to the grave old scholars' city; stopping at the Hotel of Neptune, whose unpretentious, restful atmosphere seemed a trifle primitive to appeal to the highly cultivated taste in hotels of a Madame Gina. But there they were, in full possession, Bijou, the harassed lady-secretary, and all, with the Marchese still in discreet long-distance attendance. He was the guest, so Annette informed me with some pride, of Monsieur the Archbishop of the diocese, his cousin.

There was an air of tension, of peculiar gravity about the party by this time. I fancied that the pilgrimage was wearing toward its close. Yet I could think of no particular shrine to be visited in the vicinity, nor of any famous singing master nearer than Florence to whom La Gina might be bringing the sacred voice for its test. There were no waters to be taken: on the contrary. As a resort of either health or fashion, Pisa was nil; and I could not believe the diva a mere tourist in her native land, searching for atmosphere, leaning towers, and the like.

Very early the morning after we arrived, one heard them stirring; they were always easy to hear. Apparently the promenade was about to take place. But at such an hour? Only natives were abroad, market women rattling barrows of melons and ripe purple figs over the cobblestones; goats, the milk wagons of Italy, being made vociferously to yield of their wares; watchful waiters already manning the walls of the sleeping Arno, with bamboo poles, in hope that the early worm would catch the fish at last (there can hardly be more than one fish left in that ancient and enfeebled stream). The real Pisa, that of the tourists, would slumber on for at least another hour; or endeavor to do so.

Yet Madame Gina, who never appeared in public until after the midday siesta, was unmistakably up and doing; one recognized her deep chest tones addressing Bijou, evidently about to be left behind: "Na, na, piccolo mio! mother's jewel cannot accompany us to the mass, it is not for such as thee. He must remain in his little bassinet and masticate his little ball, like a good dog of my heart, while his Gina who adores him goes forth alone to the ordeal!"—here the deep chest tones faltered and broke.

"Ah, ah, you tear at my heart strings!" sobbed the voice of the lady-secretary. "See, carissima, you are not alone! Are not we with you?"

"Courage, but courage," came the firm, efficient murmur of Annette. "Myself I have not a doubt but that things will go quite well, even better than last year; when, as you remember, Madame was slightly enrhumée."

"Cara mia, how you console me!—Signora, pray do not sniffle again; it is a noise I detest! Quick, my cane! Am I to wait here forever?"

I hurried to the window. Outside stood an open _carrozza_, half filled with flowers; beside it the Marchese, tugging at his mustache with nervous yellow gloves. His doglike eyes, turned upon the door, had an expression of mingled hope and apprehension. Certainly this was no mere promenade.

Suddenly I understood. The moment of the test had come!

I hurried into some clothes and followed—not a difficult thing to do since everybody in the street had been seized with the same idea. Market barrows, milch goats, and fishermen, all of us hastened along together in the direction of the Duomo. At its doors I recognized the flower-filled carriage, empty, surrounded by interested spectators.

"Have we then a wedding?" they asked one another. "A first communion?"

"No, no!" replied somebody. "Did you not recognize her? La Gina, La Gina again, in person!"

The great doors of the Cathedral were not yet open, but I managed an entrance by means of a tip and a lesser door, of green baize; in some such manner, perhaps, as sinners may enter Paradise. My cavalcade was there, having a mass all its own, near that ancient swinging lamp whose constant motion gave Galileo the idea of the pendulum. Level rays of a new-risen sun, through prismatic glass, touched to pure glory the rich interior: the black-and-white striped marble of the walls, the mellowed sculptures, the old, dim saints and madonnas who are forever young, the burnished silver splendor of the altar. They knelt in a row at its rail; Gina and the other two women with black veils over their hair, the Marchese beside them, yellow gloves and a large plaid handkerchief neatly disposed in the high top hat at his feet, and beside him the driver of their carriage, in a black Fascist blouse; all of them receiving the Communion together at the hands of a sleepy priest. I lingered a moment, to register the picture in my memory.

Suddenly they rose and filed out past me, in the direction of the Baptistry. Annette and the secretary walked with bent heads, as if in prayer; but behind them Gina moved rather splendidly, with lifted face and a fine, exalted smile on her lips, a victim going forth to some self-appointed sacrifice. She had forgotten her cane, I saw it leaning against the altar rail; nor did she avail herself of the arm of the Marchese, who followed at her elbow.

I waited outside, for at last I knew what was occurring: La Bella Gina, like many another singer before her, had come to try out an aging voice by the test of the Baptistry's famous echo.

"Good luck!—Oh, good luck!" I whispered under my breath; not this time to the Marchese, waiting like a neat little crow for its pickings, but to the gallant old artist, facing perhaps the end of her career.

What sounds came out to us there in the young dewy morning; what trills and birdlike scales, invocations, fragments of arias—sometimes a trifle off the key, but how impassioned! Great, golden, contralto organ tones, soft whisperings of pure attenuated melody, all multiplied, repeated, continued on and on by the incomparable echo. It seemed to me, and to those who listened with me, a glorious exhibition of what the human voice could do. We smiled at one another happily.

"It goes well, eh?" asked my neighbors of one another and of me. Everybody seemed to realize what was happening. At times they could not resist applause.

"Ancora, madonna mia!" they shouted. "Brava la Gina! La Gina bella, bellissima!" In their humble persons, all Tuscany was at her feet.

Suddenly there fell a silence. Nobody moved or whispered. The door of the Baptistry was opening.

The singer came out alone, still with that calm, uplifted smile; but in her eyes as she gazed at us, those too expressive eyes of her race, was the look of a dying Mimi, of a terrified Carmen at bay. Behind her the others wept, even the Marchese, who blew his nose with candor.

Seeing the unexpected audience, she bowed quite charmingly; she had at all times and everywhere a most gracious stage presence. Then her tragic gaze encountered mine.

"So, my dear! thou?" she remarked familiarly, although we had never before exchanged a syllable; perhaps it was my sympathy she recognized. "Well, it is over! The years have conquered. I am done! The voice of Gina"—she made us a little cheery gesture of despair—"is no more."

"Ah, ah! you break my heart!" sobbed the lady-secretary.

The priest, the verger, others about her were quick with disclaiming protest. The coachman vociferated praise. Annette called upon her God with tears to witness that never in life had she, she who spoke, heard a high F attacked with greater purity.

"And what," shrilled Gina, turning upon them with sudden viciousness, "what do you know about it? Hein? I ask you! Always you lie to me, you flatter, you deceive! Sapristi! I trust none of you! Only the echoes do not lie, flatter, deceive, they being straight from Heaven. In the upper register I sharped—do you hear? I sharped! What have you to say to that? And the sostenuto—my God, there was no sostenuto! Add to these that in the middle register one had a huskiness—ah, bah! It is I who hear! Myself who am the judge, myself whom I trust! Not you—and you—and you!"

She snapped her fingers furiously under the nose of each of her attendants in turn, including the priest.

But the storm passed as suddenly as it had arisen. She turned upon the Marchese a rainbow smile; rather a wry attempt, but arch, and kind, and singularly sweet. I recalled how she had fed his young sons with sugarplums.

"For you, my friend," she murmured (and the smile took us all into their confidence) "this is perhaps not altogether an occasion of tragedy, eh?"

He tried visibly to utter a suitable disclaimer, to find some tactful protestation of regret, but it was useless; sudden happiness shone out from the man like a radiance. He could only bow over the hand held out to him and salute it reverently. The audience cheered.

Then, tucking her arm beneath his, he led his capture proudly away toward the flower-filled _carrozza_. It was a noble exit.

That evening we were aware of unusual activities afoot in the Hotel of Neptune. Waiters scurried about, under a good deal of personal direction; through a half-closed door into the grand salon, which is used as a rule only for wedding parties or masked balls, we caught glimpses of a table laid as for a banquet. I presently encountered Annette, also scurrying, but able as always to pause for a brief exchange of courtesies.

"My God, was it not pathetic?" she demanded of me, referring to the morning's experience. "And to-night, she celebrates defeat with a fête. What a gesture!"

I agreed with Annette. It was a gesture. "But she will have at least the pleased support of the Marchese," I commented smilingly.

The maid smiled back at me, as one woman to another. "Ah, yes, that! And also of Monsieur the Archbishop, who comes to the festa in person, since he is of the family Boncelli.—Ah, Mees, if I could but show to you what a necklace Madame has received! Of pearls and rubies, par exemple, as big as my two eyes!" She made them very big indeed, to do justice to the princely offering. "And even I"—she touched complacently a brooch at her throat—"have not been neglected. It is the reward, one sees, of a sympathetic nature."

"How charming of him!" I exclaimed, delighted with such sentimental forethought on the part of the Marchese. He must have had the gift about him in readiness, since simple old Pisa would hardly be able to provide at such short notice a necklace of pearls and rubies as large as Annette's eyes.

"He has been carrying it en poche," she assured me, "for twenty years! Touching, n'est-ce pas? And it is now quite démodé. But we shall have the gems reset."

"So the engagement is to be announced already?" I asked. "The nuptials will soon follow?"

Annette looked puzzled. "Pardon?"

"Their marriage," I explained. "I thought possibly the Archbishop cousin might— Surely," I interrupted myself, puzzled in turn by her expression, "you told me that when her voice failed your mistress had promised to marry the Marchese?"

"Ah!" Annette gave a nod of comprehension. "That, no; it is a misunderstanding. What, in such case, would monsieur do with the wife he already has, the mother of the young noblemen? And Madame Gina, too—can you conceive that one of her rich nature should content herself all these years with combing the tresses of Saint Catherine?" She laughed a little, pleasantly. "Eh, no, it was not of marriage that I spoke," she said with a tender sigh, "but of love. Assuredly the poor Marchese deserves at last his happiness.... Yet at what cost to the world, what cost! The voice of Gina, that voice of velvet edged with little silver bells, never to be heard again, never again! Unless," she added pensively as she hurried away, "upon the concert stage of America, perhaps—who knows?"

CLASSICS IN SLANG:
ROBINSON CRUSOE

By H. C. Witwer

H. C. WITWER

Harry Charles Witwer was born in Athens, Pa., on March 11, 1890. He attended St. Joseph's College, Philadelphia, and his pre-literary career included: Errand boy in butcher shop, bellhop, managing prize fighters, and plain and fancy reporting on newspapers in Florida, Elizabeth, N.J., Newark, N.J., Atlanta, Ga., and New York (American and Sun). In 1917 he was a war correspondent and the following year his popular stories in slang first achieved book publication (From Baseball to Baches). He has had approximately a book a year ever since, of which The Leather Pushers was one of the most successful and Bill Grimm's Progress is the most recent. Besides something like 400 magazine stories—over 100 of them for a single magazine—he is the author of at least 125 motion pictures, a couple of comic strips and one or two plays.

Classics in Slang is a series of tales told by a prize fighter, One-Punch McTague, who has inherited a bookshop, conducted for him by an attractive young woman named Ethel Kingsley. At least she is attractive to McTague and he finds her altogether too attractive to a customer named Hootmon and probably Scotch. Ethel has been trying to instil in McTague a love for reading and in each story the prize fighter gives his own version of some literary classic she has put in his hands. There is also a running account of his own personal affairs, including fights in the ring and encounters in the bookshop.

CLASSICS IN SLANG: ROBINSON CRUSOE[1]

[1] Copyright, 1926, by H. C. Witwer.

I wish whoever ejaculates they's nothin' new under the son couldst of got a load of the gory conflict between them two fascinatin' heavyweights, Fifty-seven-Round McFoul and One-Punch McTague. In this epoch-makin' fracas One-Punch McTague done somethin' which was as new as the word itself; namely, he knocked himself as cold as a mother-in-law's kiss!

Speakin' of artichokes, few people can give you as good a account of that brawl as I can, because by a odd coincidence I'm One-Punch McTague.

I suppose, gentle readers, all three of you remember I was left a book store by my defunct Uncle Angus and I know you're all agog over my romantical affair de heart with Ethel Kingsley, the blond panic which is governess of the volumes therein. Via the efforts of sweet Ethel I'm gettin' a mock education through a darin' method she worked out herself; viz., I read one of my books and then put down in black and white all I can remember about it, if anything. In this way I've dallied and toyed with a flock of the classicals, somethin' I missed in my youth, as my schoolin' went in one ear and out the other, there bein' nothin' in between to stop it.

The fly in the ointment is a boloney answerin' to the high-soundin' title of Jack Hootmon, only sun and air of the aged Elihu Hootmon, the trillionaire Thumb-Tack King. This milk-fed bozo is a inmate of Columbia's College and nearly every time I honor my book emporium with a visit he's acin' around Ethel tryin' to promote. She tolerates him on the account he always hurriedly buys a book when he sees me darken the threshold and as customers is at the premium Ethel won't give him the gate. The last time he was in our midst he hauled off and purchased a choice novel published in 1790 and give us a thousand bucks for same. Since then Ethel has been busy tryin' to find some more bed-time stories of that date and likewise some more Patsys like Jack Hootmon, both bein' exceedin'ly rare.

Well, to get to the plot, the day of my fatal muss with Fifty-seven Round McFoul I sauntered nimbly into my book bazaar, and, low and behold, the first thing which greets my sparklin' eye is Jack Hootmon.

The plentifully tubed triple superiodine I'd put in to amuse my delicious clerkess was playin' either a Charleston or St. Vitus dance, and I bet in another minute them two wouldst of been trippin' the light fantastical. Not so good! I ain't what you call jealous, what I mean, but for a counterfeit Chinese coin of nominal value I wouldst of clouted this Hootmon gil right in the whiskers. Ethel turned to the shelves with undue haste and nature's gift to Columbia's College gives me a sickly grin. "Hello, McTague," he says. "Nice day, isn't it?"

"Blah!" I growled courteously. "What are you doin' clutterin' up my store?"

"He's been helping me look for some rare first editions," speaks up Ethel, comin' to this dizzy boob's succor. "You know, I'm sure, this place is a treasure house of valuable old books."

"Of course!" yeses Stupid, in that male milliner's voice of his. "Wouldn't it be splendid if you'd come across a first folio Shakespeare?"

"It'd be even more splendid if you'd come across with the price of a couple books," I tells him. "What's the idea of the jazz? This ain't no dance hall!"

"We picked up Static, Wyoming, a little while ago!" brags Ethel, hopin' to stave off violence. "Tune in on a movie studio if you crave some real distance!" I says.

"You mean we can listen to a star?" butts in Hootmon, beatin' me to the giggle of my nifty and lookin' to the smilin' Ethel for admiration.

"Cop a sneak and make it snappy!" I barks, the bit infuriated. "If it wasn't for the facts that I'm goin' to box to-night I'd broadcast you!"

He looked somewhat alarmed and picked up a near-by book. "How much is this?" he asks, the bit nervous.

"Ten bucks!" I snaps promptly. "And at that price it's a steal!"

"Nonsense!" says Ethel, frownin' at me. "That Mother Goose is only two and a half dollars!"

"Not no more!" I says firmly. "Geese is out of season and has went up in price!"

"I love that!" says Hootmon.

"So's your elderly parent!" I returns, bein' unrivaled at repertoire.

"Here's a new history of the League of Nations, Mr. Hootmon," remarks Ethel in a futile effort to change the subject.

"I don't think so much of the League," says this tomato, and who cares if he don't? "With all the bickering they're havin' over there, I don't believe we should ever join it, do you, McTague?"

"What wouldst the League of Nations wish with you and me?" I asked him lightly. "C'mon, leave me book you! Have you scanned 'Ladies Prefer Brunettes,' by Anita Loose; 'Lightnin' on the Right,' by Christy More Lee; 'The—

"What do you read?" he butts in, with a touch of evil curiosity.

"He's going to read Robinson Crusoe next," says Ethel, actin' as my counsel. "That will give him a breathing spell before he returns to the heavier classics."

"Why, he must have become familiar with Robinson Crusoe when he was in school!" exclaims Hootmon.

"I never get familiar with nobody, Ape!" I says. "And on top of that Robinson Crusoe didn't go to my school. We was particular in the trap I studied at, what I mean—you had to get sent by a judge!"

"Who do you box this evening?" inquired Ethel, winkin' at me not to give this mug too much of my secret life story.

Says I: "A palooka named Fifty-seven-Round McFoul, heavyweight champeen of Saturn. I'll lay him like a pavement, and I don't mean I guess so! I wish you wouldst be there to see the fun. I already got you a ringside ducat, for that matter."

"But I couldn't go to a prize fight without a male escort!" cries Ethel in dismay.

"I'd be very glad to take you, Miss Kingsley," pipes up the chump.

I was on the brinks of breakin' his arm for him, pour le sport, when like the flash it strikes me that the best thing in the world wouldst be to let him go to the murder with Ethel. Then she couldst see for herself what a vast difference they was between a he-man of the wide open faces like me and a parlor pest like Hootmon. So I become ungruff and give my consent to the date, though I knew that sendin' this monkey anywheres with the breath-takin' Ethel was like sendin' somebody a cabbage leaf by a rabbit. How the so ever, I couldst always leap from the ring and ruin Monsieur Hootmon, shouldst he endeavor to hold Ethel's hand durin' the fight.

Well, lads and lassies, a few delicate hints, such as pushin' him out the door and slammin' it in his pan, soon made this Hootmon sapolio check out. Then me and Ethel searched high, low, jack and the game for some more choice old books but the only thing we discovered was that spiders is still makin' cobwebs. The hunt throwed me and Ethel into close contact which she didn't seem to find nauseatin' and I was doin' a fine piece of buildin' up for a evenin' in her parlor, when Red Higgins phones me. This clown's my manager and operates a stable of racin' snails on the side. I got the same cryin' need for him as I got for another thumb, what I mean!

"Hey, you big umpchay!" he greets me, with Old World politeness. "Shove off from 'at blonde and do some road work. I'll state you'll need it to-night in this pettin' party we got on with Fifty-seven-Round McFoul, because if you can't run he'll kill you!"

A nice, encouragin' manager, what? The big stiff!

"What have you found out about this catcher McFoul?" I inquired, with forgivable interest. "Can he hit?"

"And how!" says Red, with the gusto. "If you keep in close, he'll cave in your ribs, and if you box him off he'll left-hand you into a pulp. His best punch is his right, though nobody's ever yet got up from a sock with his left!"

"I see—just a tramp, eh? Well, I don't know my own strength, Red!"

"You wouldn't fool me, would you? 'At ain't all you won't know when this baby pastes you. You better give me a power of attorney so's I can act for you, Big Boy, just in case!"

"You can start right off actin' for me to-night," I suggests demurely, "by goin' in there with powers of attorney and boxin' this guy McFoul!"

"I can't," says Red. "The referee's McFoul's old man, and he knows me."

No kiddin', Red simply slays me!

Well, Ethel give me Robinson Crusoe for my home work, and I says good-by and left for the wars. First I got a shave and a haircut to ready myself for the battle of the centuries with Fifty-seven-Round McFoul, and then I went home and passed the few remainin' hours before my doom by readin' about Robby. It's a grand book, and I'll put you jerry to it the minute I get through describin' my thrillin' conflict with this McFoul scissor-bill—a fight which was the talk of the industry for many moons.

When I stumbled into the ring my first view of Fifty-seven-Round McFoul satisfied me that they wasn't the faintest chance of me yawnin' myself to death for the next half hour! I'll have you know this burly gorilla must of outweighed me eighty-odd pounds, and I personally tip the beams at two hundred, stark naked. He toured over me like Washington's monument, but faint heart never win no decisions, so I merely give this proper elephant a dirty look and sit down on my stool determined to show no quarter to nobody! I'm one of them two-fisted, fightin' idiots which makes boxin' a tough racket for the weaklin's.

The instant the old cowbell rings out I fairly skidded across the ring, and before McFoul couldst make a move I slammed him on the smeller with a horrible left. He looked somewhat nonpulsed at this little incident, and his seconds shrieked, "Don't leave him fox you, McFoul—use your head!" No sooner said than this big goiter butts me with that organ and the crowd howls, "Just a couple of bums!" meanin', of course, McFoul and the referee.

I then put a sizzlin' left and right to McFoul's profile, but they got delayed in transit whilst the right he shot at me didn't! Alas, ah me and alackaday! The next thing I know I'm sittin on the floor and the referee is sayin' to me, "Six—get up, you banana, _you_ ain't hurt!—seven—snap into it or I'll kick your teeth out—eight——"

Up I sprang like a enraged baboon and the panic was on! I chased McFoul all over the ring till it looked like our names was Paddock and Nurmi, instead of what the customers was callin' us. The fun waxed fast and furious! Twice McFoul led with his chin and each time he connected perfect with my right glove. The second time he dropped to his haunches, bounced up and wowed me and the fans by smackin' me right on top of the head. It was a fearful buffet! I come near windin' up in the basement of the club, but thought better of it and stayed in the ring, gettin' a bird's eye view of the ceilin'. I managed to leap up before the referee got through countin' and I swung two murderous rights which wouldst of ended the thing, only I forgot to get off my knees and the punches caught McFoul in the shins. The bell found us in mid-ring, exchangin' wise cracks.

I was sittin' on my stool with my handlers laughin' themselves sick at the whole affair, when McFoul staggers over to me and holds out his glove. He seemed the bit goofy.

"Well, I hope we fight again some time!" he says, shakin' my hand.

"Go back and sit down, you big mock orange!" snarls the referee. "That's only the first round!"

We had ten frames yet to go.

"How am I goin'?" I quizzed Red Higgins as he shoved the smellin' salts under my battered beak.

"You wouldn't even make a good punchin' bag!" says my jovial manager coyly. "You're so far behind now, you'll have to knock this other false alarm stiff to get a draw!"

I seen Ethel and this Hootmon parsnip in the ringside seats I'd bestowed on 'em. Ethel give me a cheery smile, whilst Hootmon gazed at me and then grabbed his uncomely nose with his thumb and finger like some garlic eater had just breathed on him.

With all this encouragement, I was full of new life for the second round, while McFoul pushes his handlers to one side and stands erect, glarin' at me. The mob screams for us to kill each other, and at the gong I tried nobly to oblige. I decided to make a choppin' block out of my adversus, and I begin workin' on him with the skill of a old master, hittin' him with everything but the ring posts! He socked me on the button with a hard right, but life bein' what it is I deliberately ignored it and wittily retorted with a terrible left to the stomach. Mr. McFoul didn't care for it down below, and was forced to grimace at me. We traded ugly looks whilst the crowd went mad and then I suddenly run amuck.

I slammed McFoul back against the ropes with a torrid right to what passed for his head. Another right to the same address crashed him to the mat, and Jack Dempsey, a ringside witness, was heard to shudder and wince. McFoul rose and fell again. This time he got up about as steady as the French Premier's job, and I indignantly floored him again, as he annoyed me bobbin' up and down like that! McFoul took nine before arisin', and at that he didn't seem overanxious to make no reputation for gameness which wouldst stand for all time. This Humpty Dumpty staggered around the ring like a wood-alcohol admirer and out of the corner of my one good eye I seen Ethel jump up and cheer me!

Honest to Coolidge, I simply couldn't lose, and though the crowd was urgin' me in no uncertain terms to execute McFoul, I took my time and measured him carefully. Tippin' his jaw back to a attractive angle with a light left, I swung a most boisterous right for the button. My glove landed flush on his embarrassed features, and he went down like I'd shot him through the heart! But, sad to relate, my countrymen, my swing was so furious that I lost my balance and fell backward on my head. The force of that fall knocked me insensible. I'd knocked myself for a loop, and this big punk McFoul got to his feet at nine and win the fight! What's wrong with this picture?

I was out for ten minutes, and when I come to life the water bucket was jammed tight over my head, where Red Higgins had carelessly parked it when the referee held up McFoul's glove.

Well, it's all in the game, and here's the confessions of Robinson Crusoe. If you find 'em less appetizin' than I did, don't be afraid to keep it a secret.

ROBINSON CRUSOE

By Daniel Defoe and One-Punch McTague

Once upon a time Robinson Crusoe, a Big Pudding Man from Yorkshire, set sail for a slab called Guinea with the objects of buyin' some Senegambians. Rob wished these high browns for a Broadway revue he had a piece of, though he fails to state how come he had to sail the briny for 'em, when he couldst of hired a slew of colored entertainers in Birmingham and the etc.

How the so ever, he shoved off, and all went well till the twelfth day, when along come grief! For no reason at all, either two or fifty-one hurricanes hit the scow and drove it hither, thither and even yon, much to the dismay of the passengers, as you may well believe. Things had come to a pretty pass and somebody bellowed "Land!" But before anybody couldst get in touch with this real-estate operator, the ship hit a sand bank and bein' sick of the voyage it begin to sink. So much for that.

Robinson Crusoe, bein' a jack of all trades, hopped in a lifeboat with fourteen other devil-may-cares which started workin' their way toward the new sub-division discovered by the lookout, but before they got there the boat upset and everybody went down to mingle with the other poor fish with the slight exception of Rob. The latter done a Johnny Weismuller to shore, climbed up the cliffs and slept that night in a tree with the monkeys. Let Dayton, Tennessee, laugh that off!

Came the dawn and Rob woke up bright and early—that is, the mornin' was bright and he was early. Much to his surprise and disappointment, the ship was still floatin' about, and he seen at a glance that nobody wouldst of been drownded had they only kept out of the lifeboat or else stayed at home. Well, it was too late to tell his deceased companions they were all wet and as Robby had a hunch he was set for a long stay on the island he snapped into it.

His first imitation was to make a raft. He was a smart lad and knew his bananas! With the aid of the raft this boy scout managed to get his saxophone, food, gadgets, ammunition and game in season from the ship, includin' a pair of cats and a dog. He wouldst of brung the ship's horse and cow along too, only for one reason; namely, the ship didn't have no horse or cow. Right after that the noble but unseaworthy vessel sunk in deadly earnest. Bein' sociable to a fault, Rob looked about for more company and fin'ly run down a full-fledged parrot which he took the liberty of namin' "Poll" and taught to talk in a twinklin'. I told you he was clever! Rob claims the way this dizzy parrot wouldst crack "So's your old man!" and the like was a caution and broke up many's the dull night.

Well, to make a long story even longer, Mrs. Crusoe's little boy next scans the landscape for a joint to inhabit, but hotels was just somethin' else the island didn't have. It was no Miami, though ripe for a boom. D'ye think that stopped Robby? Hades, no! He snatched up a ax and buildin' materials he'd hauled from the ship and builds himself as nobby a drum as you'd care to lay a eye on. He was like that.

In the midst of his labors a sack of grain caught his glance, and he carelessly dumped the grain out on the ground, wishin' to use the sack for evenin' clothes shouldst the monkeys ask him to bridge or somethin'. That night it rained like nobody's business, and the next mornin' Rob nearly swoons when outside his hut he seen whole rows of corn, rice, barley and produce growin' where he'd throwed that grain.

"Well, burn my clothes!" laughs Robby, which was delighted with his good fortune and imagination. "If them Californians couldst only see this!"

Though Rob had never used tools before in his life, he found that when it got down to makin' furniture he had Grand Rapids lookin' like a novice, what I mean! Tables, chairs, bureaus, desks, beds, custom-made limousine bodies or what have you flowed from his fluent ax like magic. This go-getter likewise turned out baskets, hammers, creature comforts, hatchets, nails, crowbars and fliv rear ends as a side line. Why, they was no stoppin' the kid, and a simple ax to him was the same as a fully equipped machine shop to anybody else. His favorite feat of strength and skill was to stick his finger in his ear and hold himself out at arm's length!

They was cake galore on this wonderful island, but alas, no bread. Well, Rob was no cake eater, so he grabs up his trusty ax again, which was a little worn by now, and hews him a bakery. He ovened a wicked poultice, as he readily admits. All this took him a paltry three years, but, then, he was short-handed, as them cats, the dog and the wise-crackin' parrot was all thumbs when it come to helpin' him hew.

Rob kept one of the finest stables of goats on the island, which done nothin' night and day but make his clothin'. That is, they growed their own skin, at which point Rob stepped in and knocked 'em off, sewin' their hides into plus fours and the like. He was gettin' smarter all the time.

In that way the years passed like years. Rob was king of the island, even if he didn't have no subjects, and he wouldst of been as happy as happy itself, but for one thing—namely, he thought the island was applesauce and he craved somebody to talk to. Robby didn't care who it was, but he wouldn't of cut his throat by no means if his tête-à-tête had been late of the Follies!

Walkin' about his vast domains one fine day, Rob gets the thrill which comes once in a lifetime to a guy on a desert island. He seen a human footprint in the sand. Hot dog! Right away Rob thinks of cannibals and not havin' the wish to be part of somebody's diet he scurries back to his castle and locks himself in.

"What a sucker I was to go down to the sea in ships!" says Rob to his parrot. "They's Hades to pay and no pitch hot!"

"Be your age—this is only a book we're in, anyways!" sneers pretty Poll.

Rob had now put in twenty-two annums on this island, and he was commencin' to feel the need of a change. Two years later he heard a great how-dy-do on the beach and peerin' down from his cliff he seen a nude savage runnin' for his life from a mob of other scantily clad savages. He had the skin they'd love to touch! They hurled spears and tommyhawks and sarcastical remarks at the runner, but he was a two-legged fool and was tow-ropin' the field when he stumbled. Well, Robinson Crusoe come to the rescue by drawin' his gat and cookin' a bevy of these cannibals. The rest of 'em scampered away with shrill cries of indignation, and the sap he saved from a fatal death fell down at Robby's shapely feet and says:

"Boss, yo' sure is de berries, and Ah'm yo' slave fo' life!"

"Fair enough!" says Rob. "And what might your name be, gentle stranger?"

"Did y'all ever heah ob Napoleon Bonaparte?" asks the dinge.

"Yes," says Robby, gettin' interested in spite of himself.

"Well, mah name's Friday!" grins the slave, executin' a parabola.

"My, my, it's a small world after all!" remarks Crusoe.

"Ain't it de truf?" says Friday, the first yes-man, with typical cannibal wit.

As this was no time to draw the color line, the men become fast friends and after Rob had been on the island for a net total of twenty-seven years, a English ship comes along. The captain tripped gracefully ashore and told Rob he was just the egg he was lookin' for, as his crew had went crazy and mutinied on him. What to do? In round numbers, Crusoe and Friday made mince meat of the crew's ringleaders and then sailed for home on the ship. Robby made Friday a present of a brand-new whisk broom and got him a job as a Pullman porter, so they all lived happy ever after.

Robinson Crusoe was gone on that one voyage a total of thirty-five fiscal years and from that day to this he can't as much as look at a anchor without gettin' deathly sick at his stomach. He nearly killed a real-estate agent which tried to sell him a home on Long Island!

THE PUSHER-IN-THE-FACE

By F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

F. Scott Fitzgerald, born at St. Paul, Minn., on September 24, 1896, attended Princeton University, 1913-17, as every reader of his novel, This Side of Paradise, knows. He served in France as an officer of infantry, becoming aide-de-camp to Brig.-Gen. J. A. Ryan after the Armistice and being honorably discharged in February, 1919. He records himself as a Socialist. His novel, The Great Gatsby, has been held by most competent judges to be his best book to date.

"The Pusher-in-the-Face," first published in Woman's Home Companion for February, 1925, and included in Fitzgerald's book, All the Sad Young Men, is something more than a humorous story, appealing as it does to a universal experience—for who has not at some tortured moment in his life yearned to push-in the face of the nuisance at the rear? This, as editors say, is a story of the very widest "reader-appeal."

THE PUSHER-IN-THE-FACE[1]

[1] Copyright, 1925, by Wheeler Syndicate, Inc.

The last prisoner was a man—his masculinity was not much in evidence, it is true; he would perhaps better be described as a "person," but he undoubtedly came under that general heading and was so classified in the court record. He was a small, somewhat shriveled, somewhat wrinkled American who had been living along for probably thirty-five years.

His body looked as if it had been left by accident in his suit the last time it went to the tailor's and pressed out with hot, heavy irons to its present sharpness. His face was merely a face. It was the kind of face that makes up crowds, gray in color with ears that shrank back against the head as if fearing the clamor of the city, and with the tired, tired eyes of one whose forebears have been underdogs for five thousand years.

Brought into the dock between two towering Celts in executive blue he seemed like the representative of a long extinct race, a very fagged out and shriveled elf who had been caught poaching on a buttercup in Central Park.

"What's your name?"

"Stuart."

"Stuart what?"

"Charles David Stuart."

The clerk recorded it without comment in the book of little crimes and great mistakes.

"Age?"

"Thirty."

"Occupation?"

"Night cashier."

The clerk paused and looked at the judge. The judge yawned.

"Wha's charge?" he asked.

"The charge is"—the clerk looked down at the notation in his hand—"the charge is that he pushed a lady in the face."

"Pleads guilty?"

"Yes."

The preliminaries were now disposed of. Charles David Stuart, looking very harmless and uneasy, was on trial for assault and battery.

The evidence disclosed, rather to the judge's surprise, that the lady whose face had been pushed was not the defendant's wife.

On the contrary the victim was an absolute stranger—the prisoner had never seen her before in his life. His reasons for the assault had been two: first, that she talked during a theatrical performance; and, second, that she kept joggling the back of his chair with her knees. When this had gone on for some time he had turned around and without any warning pushed her severely in the face.

"Call the plaintiff," said the judge, sitting up a little in his chair. "Let's hear what she has to say."

The court room, sparsely crowded and unusually languid in the hot afternoon, had become suddenly alert. Several men in the back of the room moved into benches near the desk and a young reporter leaned over the clerk's shoulder and copied the defendant's name on the back of an envelope.

The plaintiff arose. She was a woman just this side of fifty with a determined, rather overbearing face under yellowish white hair. Her dress was a dignified black and she gave the impression of wearing glasses; indeed the young reporter, who believed in observation, had so described her in his mind before he realized that no such adornment sat upon her thin, beaked nose.

It developed that she was Mrs. George D. Robinson of 1219 Riverside Drive. She had always been fond of the theater and sometimes she went to the matinée. There had been two ladies with her yesterday, her cousin, who lived with her, and a Miss Ingles—both ladies were in court.

This is what had occurred:

As the curtain went up for the first act a woman sitting behind had asked her to remove her hat. Mrs. Robinson had been about to do so anyhow, and so she was a little annoyed at the request and had remarked as much to Miss Ingles and her cousin. At this point she had first noticed the defendant who was sitting directly in front, for he had turned around and looked at her quickly in a most insolent way. Then she had forgotten his existence until just before the end of the act when she made some remark to Miss Ingles—when suddenly he had stood up, turned around and pushed her in the face.

"Was it a hard blow?" asked the judge at this point.

"A hard blow!" said Mrs. Robinson indignantly. "I should say it was. I had hot and cold applications on my nose all night."

——"on her nose all night."

This echo came from the witness bench where two faded ladies were leaning forward eagerly and nodding their heads in corroboration.

"Were the lights on?" asked the judge.

No, but everyone around had seen the incident and some people had taken hold of the man right then and there.

This concluded the case for the plaintiff. Her two companions gave similar evidence and in the minds of everyone in the court room the incident defined itself as one of unprovoked and inexcusable brutality.

The one element which did not fit in with this interpretation was the physiognomy of the prisoner himself. Of any one of a number of minor offenses he might have appeared guilty—pickpockets were notoriously mild-mannered, for example—but of this particular assault in a crowded theater he seemed physically incapable. He did not have the kind of voice or the kind of clothes or the kind of mustache that went with such an attack.

"Charles David Stuart," said the judge, "you've heard the evidence against you?"

"Yes."

"And you plead guilty?"

"Yes."

"Have you anything to say before I sentence you?"

"No." The prisoner shook his head hopelessly. His small hands were trembling.

"Not one word in extenuation of this unwarranted assault?"

The prisoner appeared to hesitate.

"Go on," said the judge. "Speak up—it's your last chance."

"Well," said Stuart with an effort, "she began talking about the plumber's stomach."

There was a stir in the court room. The judge leaned forward.

"What do you mean?"

"Why, at first she was only talking about her own stomach to—to those two ladies there"—he indicated the cousin and Miss Ingles—"and that wasn't so bad. But when she began talking about the plumber's stomach it got different."

"How do you mean—different?"

Charles Stuart looked around helplessly.

"I can't explain," he said, his mustache wavering a little, "but when she began talking about the plumber's stomach you—you had to listen."

A snicker ran about the court room. Mrs. Robinson and her attendant ladies on the bench were visibly horrified. The guard took a step nearer as if at a nod from the judge he would whisk off this criminal to the dingiest dungeon in Manhattan.

But much to his surprise the judge settled himself comfortably in his chair.

"Tell us about it, Stuart," he said not unkindly. "Tell us the whole story from the beginning."

This request was a shock to the prisoner and for a moment he looked as though he would have preferred the order of condemnation. Then after one nervous look around the room he put his hands on the edge of the desk, like the paws of a fox terrier just being trained to sit up, and began to speak in a quivering voice.

"Well, I'm a night cashier, your honor, in T. Cushmael's restaurant on Third Avenue. I'm not married"—he smiled a little, as if he knew they had all guessed that—"and so on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons I usually go to the matinée. It helps to pass the time till dinner. There's a drug store, maybe you know, where you can get tickets for a dollar sixty-five to some of the shows and I usually go there and pick out something. They got awful prices at the box office now." He gave out a long silent whistle and looked feelingly at the judge. "Four or five dollars for one seat——"

The judge nodded his head.

"Well," continued Charles Stuart, "when I pay even a dollar sixty-five I expect to see my money's worth. About two weeks ago I went to one of these here mystery plays where they have one fella that did the crime and nobody knows who it was. Well, the fun at a thing like that is to guess who did it. And there was a lady behind me that'd been there before and she gave it all away to the fella with her. Gee"—his face fell and he shook his head from side to side—"I like to died right there. When I got home to my room I was so mad that they had to come and ask me to stop walking up and down. Dollar sixty-five of my money gone for nothing.

"Well, Wednesday came around again, and this show was one show I wanted to see. I'd been wanting to see it for months, and every time I went into the drug store I asked them if they had any tickets. But they never did." He hesitated. "So Tuesday I took a chance and went over to the box office and got a seat. Two seventy-five it cost me." He nodded impressively. "Two seventy-five. Like throwing money away. But I wanted to see that show."

Mrs. Robinson in the front row rose suddenly to her feet.

"I don't see what all this story has to do with it," she broke out a little shrilly. "I'm sure I don't care——"

The judge brought his gavel sharply down on the desk.

"Sit down, please," he said. "This is a court of law, not a matinée."

Mrs. Robinson sat down, drawing herself up into a thin line and sniffing a little as if to say she'd see about this after a while. The judge pulled out his watch.

"Go on," he said to Stuart. "Take all the time you want."

"I got there first," continued Stuart in a flustered voice. "There wasn't anybody in there but me and the fella that was cleaning up. After a while the audience came in, and it got dark and the play started, but just as I was all settled in my seat and ready to have a good time I heard an awful row directly behind me. Somebody had asked this lady"—he pointed to Mrs. Robinson—"to remove her hat like she should of done anyhow and she was sore about it. She kept telling the two ladies that was with her how she'd been at the theater before and knew enough to take off her hat. She kept that up for a long time, five minutes maybe, and then every once in a while she'd think of something new and say it in a loud voice. So finally I turned around and looked at her because I wanted to see what a lady looked like that could be so inconsiderate as that. Soon as I turned back she began on me. She said I was insolent and then she said 'Tchk! Tchk! Tchk!' a lot with her tongue and the two ladies that was with her said 'Tchk! Tchk! Tchk!' until you could hardly hear yourself think, much less listen to the play. You'd have thought I'd done something terrible.

"By and by, after they calmed down and I began to catch up with what was doing on the stage, I felt my seat sort of creak forward and then creak back again and I knew the lady had her feet on it and I was in for a good rock. Gosh!" he wiped his pale, narrow brow on which the sweat had gathered thinly, "it was awful. I hope to tell you I wished I'd never come at all. Once I got excited at a show and rocked a man's chair without knowing it and I was glad when he asked me to stop. But I knew this lady wouldn't be glad if I asked her. She'd of just rocked harder than ever."

Some time before, the population of the court room had begun stealing glances at the middle-aged lady with yellowish-white hair. She was of a deep, lifelike lobster color with rage.

"It got to be near the end of the act," went on the little pale man, "and I was enjoying it as well as I could, seeing that sometimes she'd push me toward the stage and sometimes she'd let go, and the seat and me would fall back into place. Then all of a sudden she began to talk. She said she had an operation or something—I remember she said she told the doctor that she guessed she knew more about her own stomach than he did. The play was getting good just then—the people next to me had their handkerchiefs out and was weeping—and I was feeling sort of that way myself. And all of a sudden this lady began to tell her friends what she told the plumber about his indigestion. Gosh!" Again he shook his head from side to side; his pale eyes fell involuntarily on Mrs. Robinson—then looked quickly away. "You couldn't help but hear some and I begun missing things and then missing more things and then everybody began laughing and I didn't know what they were laughing at and, as soon as they'd leave off, her voice would begin again. Then there was a great big laugh that lasted for a long time and everybody bent over double and kept laughing and laughing, and I hadn't heard a word. First thing I knew the curtain came down and then I don't know what happened. I must of been a little crazy or something because I got up and closed my seat, and reached back and pushed the lady in the face."

As he concluded there was a long sigh in the court room as though everyone had been holding in his breath waiting for the climax. Even the judge gasped a little and the three ladies on the witness bench burst into a shrill chatter and grew louder and louder and shriller and shriller until the judge's gavel rang out again upon his desk.

"Charles Stuart," said the judge in a slightly raised voice, "is this the only extenuation you can make for raising your hand against a woman of the plaintiff's age?"

Charles Stuart's head sank a little between his shoulders, seeming to withdraw as far as it was able into the poor shelter of his body.

"Yes, sir," he said faintly.

Mrs. Robinson sprang to her feet.

"Yes, judge," she cried shrilly, "and there's more than that. He's a liar too, a dirty little liar. He's just proclaimed himself a dirty little——"

"Silence!" cried the judge in a terrible voice. "I'm running this court, and I'm capable of making my own decisions!" He paused. "I will now pronounce sentence upon Charles Stuart," he referred to the register, "upon Charles David Stuart of 212½ West Twenty-second Street."

The court room was silent. The reporter drew nearer—he hoped the sentence would be light—just a few days on the Island in lieu of a fine.

The judge leaned back in his chair and hid his thumbs somewhere under his black robe.

"Assault justified," he said. "Case dismissed."

The little man Charles Stuart came blinking out into the sunshine, pausing for a moment at the door of the court and looking furtively behind him as if he half expected that it was a judicial error. Then, sniffing once or twice, not because he had a cold but for those dim psychological reasons that make people sniff, he moved slowly south with an eye out for a subway station.

He stopped at a news stand to buy a morning paper; then entering the subway was borne south to Eighteenth Street where he disembarked and walked east to Third Avenue. Here he was employed in an all-night restaurant built of glass and plaster white tile. Here he sat at a desk from curfew until dawn, taking in money and balancing the books of T. Cushmael, the proprietor. And here, through the interminable nights, his eyes, by turning a little to right or left, could rest upon the starched linen uniform of Miss Edna Schaeffer.

Miss Edna Schaeffer was twenty-three, with a sweet mild face and hair that was a living example of how henna should not be applied. She was unaware of this latter fact, because all the girls she knew used henna just this way, so perhaps the odd vermilion tint of her coiffure did not matter.

Charles Stuart had forgotten about the color of her hair long ago—if he had ever noticed its strangeness at all. He was much more interested in her eyes, and in her white hands which, as they moved deftly among piles of plates and cups, always looked as if they should be playing the piano. He had almost asked her to go to a matinée with him once, but when she had faced him her lips half-parted in a weary, cheerful smile, she had seemed so beautiful that he had lost courage and mumbled something else instead.

It was not to see Edna Schaeffer, however, that he had come to the restaurant so early in the afternoon. It was to consult with T. Cushmael, his employer, and discover if he had lost his job during his night in jail. T. Cushmael was standing in the front of the restaurant looking gloomily out the plate-glass window, and Charles Stuart approached him with ominous forebodings.

"Where've you been?" demanded T. Cushmael.

"Nowhere," answered Charles Stuart discreetly.

"Well, you're fired."

Stuart winced.

"Right now?"

Cushmael waved his hands apathetically.

"Stay two or three days if you want to, till I find somebody. Then"—he made a gesture of expulsion—"outside for you."

Charles Stuart assented with a weary little nod. He assented to everything. At nine o'clock, after a depressed interval during which he brooded upon the penalty of spending a night among the police, he reported for work.

"Hello, Mr. Stuart," said Edna Schaeffer, sauntering curiously toward him as he took his place behind the desk. "What become of you last night? Get pinched?"

She laughed, cheerfully, huskily, charmingly he thought, at her joke.

"Yes," he answered on a sudden impulse, "I was in the Thirty-fifth Street jail."

"Yes, you were," she scoffed.

"That's the truth," he insisted. "I was arrested."

Her face grew serious at once.

"Go on. What did you do?"

He hesitated.

"I pushed somebody in the face."

Suddenly she began to laugh, at first with amusement and then immoderately.

"It's a fact," mumbled Stuart. "I almost got sent to prison on account of it."

Setting her hand firmly over her mouth Edna turned away from him and retired to the refuge of the kitchen. A little later, when he was pretending to be busy at the accounts, he saw her retailing the story to the two other girls.

The night wore on. The little man in the grayish suit with the grayish face attracted no more attention from the customers than the whirring electric fan over his head. They gave him their money and his hand slid their change into a little hollow in the marble counter. But to Charles Stuart the hours of this night, this last night, began to assume a quality of romance. The slow routine of a hundred other nights unrolled with a new enchantment before his eyes. Midnight was always a sort of a dividing point—after that the intimate part of the evening began. Fewer people came in, and the ones that did seemed depressed and tired: a casual ragged man for coffee, the beggar from the street corner who ate a heavy meal of cakes and a beefsteak, a few nightbound street-women and a watchman with a red face who exchanged warning phrases with him about his health.

Midnight seemed to come early to-night and business was brisk until after one. When Edna began to fold napkins at a nearby table he was tempted to ask her if she too had not found the night unusually short. Vainly he wished that he might impress himself on her in some way, make some remark to her, some sign of his devotion that she would remember forever.

She finished folding the vast pile of napkins, loaded it onto the stand and bore it away, humming to herself. A few minutes later the door opened and two customers came in. He recognized them immediately, and as he did so a flush of jealousy went over him. One of them, a young man in a handsome brown suit, cut away rakishly from his abdomen, had been a frequent visitor for the last ten days. He came in always at about this hour, sat down at one of Edna's tables, and drank two cups of coffee with lingering ease. On his last two visits he had been accompanied by his present companion—a swarthy Greek with sour eyes who ordered in a loud voice and gave vent to noisy sarcasm when anything was not to his taste.

It was chiefly the young man, though, who annoyed Charles Stuart. The young man's eyes followed Edna wherever she went, and on his last two visits he had made unnecessary requests in order to bring her more often to his table.

"Good evening, girlie," Stuart heard him say to-night. "How's tricks?"

"O.K.," answered Edna formally. "What'll it be?"

"What have you?" smiled the young man. "Everything, eh? Well, what'd you recommend?"

Edna did not answer. Her eyes were staring straight over his head into some invisible distance.

He ordered finally at the urging of his companion. Edna withdrew and Stuart saw the young man turn and whisper to his friend, indicating Edna with his head.

Stuart shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He hated that young man and wished passionately that he would go away. It seemed as if his last night here, his last chance to watch Edna, and perhaps even in some blessed moment to talk to her a little, was marred by every moment this man stayed.

Half a dozen more people had drifted into the restaurant—two or three workmen, the news dealer from over the way—and Edna was too busy for a few minutes to be bothered with attentions. Suddenly Charles Stuart became aware that the sour-eyed Greek had raised his hand and was beckoning him. Somewhat puzzled he left his desk and approached the table.

"Say, fella," said the Greek, "what time does the boss come in?"

"Why—two o'clock. Just a few minutes now."

"All right. That's all. I just wanted to speak to him about something."

Stuart realized that Edna was standing beside the table; both men turned toward her.

"Say, girlie," said the young man, "I want to talk to you. Sit down."

"I can't."

"Sure you can. The boss don't mind." He turned menacingly to Stuart. "She can sit down, can't she?"

Stuart did not answer.

"I say she can sit down, can't she?" said the young man more intently, and added, "Speak up, you little dummy."

Still Stuart did not answer. Strange blood currents were flowing all over his body. He was frightened; anything said determinedly had a way of frightening him. But he could not move.

"Sh!" said the Greek to his companion.

But the younger man was angered.

"Say," he broke out, "sometime somebody's going to take a paste at you when you don't answer what they say. Go on back to your desk!"

Still Stuart did not move.

"Go on away!" repeated the young man in a dangerous voice. "Hurry up! Run!"

Then Stuart ran. He ran as hard as he was able. But instead of running away from the young man he ran toward him, stretching out his hands as he came near in a sort of straight arm that brought his two palms, with all the force of his hundred and thirty pounds, against his victim's face. With a crash of china the young man went over backward in his chair and, his head striking the edge of the next table, lay motionless on the floor.

The restaurant was in a small uproar. There was a terrified scream from Edna, an indignant protest from the Greek, and the customers arose with exclamations from their tables. Just at this moment the door opened and Mr. Cushmael came in.

"Why, you little fool!" cried Edna wrathfully. "What are you trying to do! Lose me my job?"

"What's this?" demanded Mr. Cushmael, hurrying over. "What's the idea?"

"Mr. Stuart pushed a customer in the face!" cried a waitress, taking Edna's cue. "For no reason at all!"

The population of the restaurant had now gathered around the prostrate victim. He was doused thoroughly with water and a folded table-cloth was placed under his head.

"Oh, he did, did he?" shouted Mr. Cushmael in a terrible voice, seizing Stuart by the lapels of his coat.

"He's raving crazy!" sobbed Edna. "He was in jail last night for pushing a lady in the face. He told me so himself!"

A large laborer reached over and grasped Stuart's small trembling arm. Stuart gazed around dumbly. His mouth was quivering.

"Look what you done!" shouted Mr. Cushmael. "You like to kill a man."

Stuart shivered violently. His mouth opened and he fought the air for a moment. Then he uttered a half-articulate sentence:

"Only meant to push him in the face."

"Push him in the face?" ejaculated Cushmael in a frenzy. "So you got to be a pusher-in-the-face, eh? Well, we'll push your face right into jail!"

"I—I couldn't help it," gasped Stuart. "Sometimes I can't help it." His voice rose unevenly. "I guess I'm a dangerous man and you better take me and lock me up!" He turned wildly to Cushmael. "I'd push you in the face if he'd let go my arm. Yes, I would! I'd push you—right-in-the-face!"

For a moment an astonished silence fell, broken by the voice of one of the waitresses who had been groping under the table.

"Some stuff dropped out of this fella's back pocket when he tipped over," she explained, getting to her feet. "It's—why, it's a revolver and——"

She had been about to say handkerchief but as she looked at what she was holding her mouth fell open and she dropped the thing quickly on the table. It was a small black mask about the size of her hand.

Simultaneously the Greek, who had been shifting uneasily upon his feet ever since the accident, seemed to remember an important engagement that had slipped his mind. He dashed suddenly around the table and made for the front door, but it opened just at that moment to admit several customers who, at the cry of "Stop him!" obligingly spread out their arms. Barred in that direction, he jumped an overturned chair, vaulted over the delicatessen counter, and set out for the kitchen, collapsing precipitately in the firm grasp of the chef in the doorway.

"Hold him! Hold him!" screamed Mr. Cushmael, realizing the turn of the situation. "They're after my cash drawer!"

Willing hands assisted the Greek over the counter, where he stood panting and gasping under two dozen excited eyes.

"After my money, hey?" shouted the proprietor, shaking his fist under the captive's nose.

The stout man nodded, panting.

"We'd of got it too!" he gasped, "if it hadn't been for that little pusher-in-the-face."

Two dozen eyes looked around eagerly. The little pusher-in-the-face had disappeared.

The beggar on the corner had just decided to tip the policeman and shut up shop for the night when he suddenly felt a small, somewhat excited hand fall on his shoulder.

"Help a poor man get a place to sleep——" he was beginning automatically when he recognized the little cashier from the restaurant. "Hello, brother," he added, leering up at him and changing his tone.

"You know what?" cried the little cashier in a strangely ominous tone. "I'm going to push you in the face!"

"What do you mean?" snarled the beggar. "Why, you Ga——"

He got no farther. The little man seemed to run at him suddenly, holding out his hands, and there was a sharp, smacking sound as the beggar came in contact with the sidewalk.

"You're a fakir!" shouted Charles Stuart wildly. "I gave you a dollar when I first came here, before I found out you had ten times as much as I had. And you never gave it back!"

A stout, faintly intoxicated gentleman who was strutting expansively along the other sidewalk had seen the incident and came running benevolently across the street.

"What does this mean!" he exclaimed in a hearty, shocked voice. "Why, poor fellow——"

He turned indignant eyes on Charles Stuart and knelt unsteadily to raise the beggar.

The beggar stopped cursing and assumed a piteous whine.

"I'm a poor man, Cap'n——"

"This is—this is horrible!" cried the Samaritan, with tears in his eyes. "It's a disgrace! Police! Pol——!"

He got no farther. His hands, which he was raising for a megaphone, never reached his face—other hands reached his face, however, hands held stiffly out from a one-hundred-and-thirty-pound body! He sank down suddenly upon the beggar's abdomen, forcing out a sharp curse which faded into a groan.

"This beggar'll take you home in his car!" shouted the little man who stood over him. "He's got it parked around the corner."

Turning his face toward the hot strip of sky which lowered over the city the little man began to laugh, with amusement at first, then loudly and triumphantly until his high laughter rang out in the quiet street with a weird, elfish sound, echoing up the sides of the tall buildings, growing shriller and shriller until people blocks away heard its eerie cadence on the air and stopped to listen.

Still laughing the little man divested himself of his coat and then of his vest and hurriedly freed his neck of tie and collar. Then he spat upon his hands and with a wild, shrill, exultant cry began to run down the dark street.

He was going to clean up New York, and his first objective was the disagreeable policeman on the corner!

They caught him at two o'clock, and the crowd which had joined in the chase were flabbergasted when they found that the ruffian was only a weeping little man in his shirt sleeves. Someone at the station house was wise enough to give him an opiate instead of a padded cell, and in the morning he felt much better.

Mr. Cushmael, accompanied by an anxious young lady with crimson hair, called at the jail before noon.

"I'll get you out," cried Mr. Cushmael, shaking hands excitedly through the bars. "One policeman, he'll explain it all to the other."

"And there's a surprise for you too," added Edna softly, taking his other hand. "Mr. Cushmael's got a big heart and he's going to make you his day man now."

"All right," agreed Charles Stuart calmly. "But I can't start till to-morrow."

"Why not?"

"Because this afternoon I got to go to a matinée—with a friend."

He relinquished his employer's hand but kept Edna's white fingers twined firmly in his.

"One more thing," he went on in a strong, confident voice that was new to him, "if you want to get me off don't have the case come up in the Thirty-fifth Street court."

"Why not?"

"Because," he answered with a touch of swagger in his voice, "that's the judge I had when I was arrested last time."

"Charles," whispered Edna suddenly, "what would you do if I refused to go with you this afternoon?"

He bristled. Color came into his cheeks and he rose defiantly from his bench.

"Why, I'd—I'd——"

"Never mind," she said, flushing slightly. "You'd do nothing of the kind."

ALMOST A GENTLEMAN

By Edward Hope

EDWARD HOPE

Edward Hope is Edward Hope Coffey, Jr., of New York. I forget his age, but he is about thirty. He was graduated from Princeton and has varied newspaper work with employment in a great advertising agency. He has begun to write for the theater and was the author of one of the most amusing sketches in the Garrick Follies for 1926, produced by the Theatre Guild School.

As a newspaperman he first found his niche pinch-hitting for Don Marquis, then a columnist on the Sun, New York. Don tells me that having occasion to look up his column a year later at about the time Hope had filled it for him, he found himself quite unable to tell which was his stuff and which was Hope's. Hope now writes the column in the New York Herald Tribune which Marquis used to do daily.

If I am not mistaken, "Almost a Gentleman" was Hope's second real attempt at a short story—and he sold his first at first try. He is not invariably a humorist, but sometimes follows it as the line of least resistance. He is probably almost the least known of the authors represented in this book—due to his youth as a writer—but every collection like this should produce one "unknown" and he will serve very well. And, anyway, "Almost a Gentleman"—first published in the Saturday Evening Post for February 25, 1925—deserves to be here.

ALMOST A GENTLEMAN[1]

[1] Copyright, 1925, by Edward Hope.

The Sunday morning after the game there were many students and graduates of the Yale persuasion who claimed that young Mr. Gildersleeve of Princeton was a lucky stiff. In New York, New Haven, and I doubt not, Hartford, they called upon Heaven to punish him and to lay a curse on the unkind fate which had guided a Yale forward pass into his arms during the last quarter, with the score Yale 3, Princeton 0. It was not, however, until the event had been almost forgotten in undergraduate circles that George Banks began to harbor a grudge against young Mr. Gildersleeve for his glorious run. For Gildersleeve had inadvertently brought a great deal of sorrow upon George Banks's head, although George was a recent Princeton graduate and should normally have benefited, both financially and spiritually, by the victory.

This is how it was:

When George asked Mildred Trudeau to go to the game with him—and in fact right up to the moment when Gildersleeve's cleats tore a chunk out of the Yale goal line—she seemed to him to be quite an ordinary sort of last year's débutante.

Pretty, of course, or she never would have been honored with the invitation. But otherwise a little blah. Good mouth, a mouth a fellow might kiss with a certain amount of satisfaction, but not a mouth from which wisdom could reasonably be expected. Pretty eyes, but no suggestion of anything behind them except a blue back drop. Nice, even features, but too even for much character.

That was, as I have said, George Banks's estimate of Mildred Trudeau until close to the end of the fourth quarter, up to which point he was what you might call a rational young man.

But Gildersleeve's run did something to George Banks's entire being. At its conclusion he pounded the back of the ponderous, middle-aged gentleman in front of him. He emitted a yell which would have set a high standard of audibility for a locomotive whistle. He flung both arms around Mildred Trudeau and hugged her as, I hope, she had never been hugged before.

He tore off his rather modish gray felt hat and scaled it toward the field. He drank at some length from a frankly illegal square bottle and whooped again louder than before.

As they changed Princeton's 6 on the scoreboard to a 7, George Banks augmented the loss of his hat with the loss of its erstwhile contents. During the minute that remained of the game he babbled and gurgled and laughed into the ear of Mildred Trudeau like one bereft of his senses. Again and again he besought her to tell him if she had ever seen anything like that before. And she showed her teeth, which had been well spoken of, and tried to be as excited as he was, which was absurd.

Even after the game his exaltation held. Outwardly he became a little calmer, but his heart thumped with the fullness of his emotion. He found himself overwhelmed with a love of the world he lived in, of the human race in general, and of Mildred Trudeau, with whom he had shared this transfiguration, in particular. Walking with her, he squeezed her fur-coated arm until her shoulder was in grave danger of dislocation.

Presently, when they were buttoned into George's roadster, protected from the cold November wind, his love of things in general focused itself more and more on his companion. The girl at his side was warmish and smallish and very much his.

Before they got to New Brunswick he told her intimate details about himself and the peculiarities of his mind.

Just past the Raritan bridge he slipped one of his hands into both of hers.

Right in the middle of Metuchen he put his arm around her.

A couple of miles farther on he kissed her tentatively.

A minute or two beyond Rahway he asked her to marry him.

He alleged—in a voice that carried surprising conviction—that he had loved her passionately ever since he had first met her, though that would have taken him back through the Dorothy Husted era into the time of Louise Vanderlin, as he might have remembered. He told her that he had loved her always, for that matter, for she was the ideal for whom he had sought.

To give her a chance to answer, he stopped the roadster with a suddenness which nearly caused horrible carnage in the line of cars behind.

When she raised her eyes to his and said that she would marry him if her mother would let her, you might have expected him to realize the enormity of the thing he had done.

He did not. Rather, he bent his head a little and drew her face close to his, murmuring "My dear, my dear" in a whisper he could not help admiring, if he did it himself, who shouldn't have. He found his exaltation increased by this new entanglement. The jeers of home-going football fans seeped through the side curtains, but he heeded them not. He kissed her rather thoroughly.

The rest of the journey was joy unstinted.

She told him things about his charms that even he had never suspected. He answered with gallantries he would have labeled the grossest sort of exaggeration a few hours before. They planned how they would tell her mother, and his father and mother and kid sister. They speculated joyously about how astonished Marian would be and what Paul would say. Stalled in the line of cars on the hill leading to the ferry, they petted shamelessly.

That is a brief explanation of the resentment toward Gildersleeve of Princeton which grew and grew in the heart of George Banks toward the last of the year; a resentment which became stronger as the New Year came in and January and February passed, and Mildred Trudeau was in fact the fiancée of George Banks, and was turning out to be, as he had suspected, pretty, but otherwise blah; quite hopelessly blah.

They went to deb parties at the Ritz and Sherry's and Pierre's. They saw musical comedies and farces and plain comedies and melodramas together. They became recognized and were bowed to in most of the fashionable night clubs. They motored hither and yon in the environs of New York. They were lavishly entertained at teas and dinners and luncheons. By all ordinary standards they should have had a most enjoyable winter.

Probably Mildred was having just that. Her picture appeared in the papers with reasonable regularity. She was on whatever committees it was right to be on. She was engaged to George Banks, who was no mean catch socially, financially, and personally.

Through the eyes of the desirable young man, however, things were not so satisfactory. This girl who seemed destined to be attached to him for life fell several running broad jumps short of his ideal of womanhood. She had looks and poise and serenity—and not another visible gift. He knew by heart her answers to everything he might conceivably say to her, which discouraged him from saying anything. He knew even what she would do in any given set of circumstances, which took most of the interest out of creating sets of circumstances. She repeated herself with perfect regularity.

He knew her seven facial expressions as well as if he had had a photograph of each with a descriptive caption: Disappointment, Pleasure, Love, Annoyance, Surprise, Interest, Boredom—every one of them mild.

She danced average well, but with an indefinable sense of heaviness. She played bridge passably, but with too frequent recourse to the wide-eyed look which is supposed to excuse misplay. Her conversation was fair until you got onto her system, or until the talk slipped off the field which is covered by the society columns. Her intellectual interests were limited to an attempt to classify everything she came in contact with as either nice or vulgar.

For some men, no doubt, she would have been an ideal mate. George credited her with this possibility. The elder Bankses seemed to approve her as prospective daughter-in-law. Young men who knew her slightly congratulated George on her charms with unlimited fervor.

He was even willing to admit that the whole trouble might be the result of something wrong with his own make-up; but the main point was that there was something awfully wrong with some one. That he knew.

II

Perhaps it would be just as well for the story to skip lightly over the late winter and early spring and bring the reader snappily to the weekend in May when Mildred Trudeau and George Banks went to Barbara Kittridge's house party. It was there that things started to happen.

As a matter of fact, the exact time when things started to happen was 12:17 A.M. on Saturday, May eighteenth. It was at that particular moment that George Banks and Barbara Kittridge stopped dancing and stepped through a French window of the living room to the terrace. It was at that particular moment that Barbara Kittridge turned her head upward so that she could catch George Banks with the corners of her eyes, and said, "What you need, Mr. Banks, is to sit down quietly in the moonlight and talk about yourself."

Her voice was pleasant to the ear. She was soothing. Had it been May of last year, with the moon just exactly the way it was, George Banks would have proceeded to flirt outrageously with her. But it was May of this year.

"Oh no," he said self-consciously. And again, "No."

He lighted a cigarette, and they walked out to the edge of the terrace.

"But you're depressed," she said. "If I ever saw a depressed man—and I have seen depressed men—you are gruesomely depressed."

"Oh no, I'm not." He spoke without conviction, listlessly.

"You are! Listen to yourself! You sound like a funeral oration that has been badly received. Come along. I am going to take the liberty of leading you to a place where you can sit down quietly in the moonlight. You can decide then whether to talk about yourself."

They went down the steps to the bottom of the terrace and down a path thickly bordered with shrubs which cut off the moonlight. He was moodily silent while they walked twenty steps. Suddenly she laughed softly.

"Which is the leper?" she said. "You or I?"

"Leper? I don't think——"

"I have had men tell me they were afraid of me, but they have always been chronic bachelors and they have suspected me of wanting to marry them. Now you are Trudy's fiancé and Trudy's a friend of mine. You ought to know I don't mean you any harm."

"My dear Miss Kittridge, I really haven't been thinking of you at all. I——"

"If I believed you, I should think you very rude. But I don't believe you. I know perfectly well that you have been thinking of me and that you're afraid of me. That is why you have kept this careful yard of space between us."

George Banks laughed uneasily.

"No," he said. "Oh no—didn't notice it."

He stepped closer to her, miscalculated the distance and rubbed her soft, cool forearm with the back of his hand. He snatched the hand back as though it had touched hot iron. She laughed again.

"You see? You are afraid."

The path widened and they came into a tiny plaza in the middle of which there was an inactive fountain. To right and left, back against the shrubbery, were low stone benches, one moon-lit, the other in darkness. Barbara Kittridge led him to the dark one. She seated herself, leaning back against the curved stone arm at one end, and placed her feet on the middle of the seat.

"Now," she said, "let me explain. Sit down over there."

She paused while he produced a cigarette and lighted it.

"Now here is the idea: I don't want you to flirt with me. I don't want you to try to kiss me. I don't want you to do anything that bothers your conscience in the least. I have no designs whatever upon you.

"But I like Trudy. I've known her around school and at parties for three or four years, and I like her. When I heard about her engagement to you I asked you both down here so that I could see the happy couple. And what do I feast my eyes on?

"Trudy about as usual, and—you! A dignified young pallbearer. It looks bad. Something is wrong. It hurts me to see the course of true love so bumpy. Therefore I have enticed you out here among the moon and the shrubs and the nasty cold stone benches to find out what is wrong."

George Banks lighted another cigarette and withdrew to his corner of the bench.

"It's very—nice of you," he said at length, and lapsed into silence.

"Come now, tell me about yourself. What sort of person are you? What did you do at Princeton?"

"Played baseball a couple of years."

"No poetry? Never contributed to the Lit? Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Were you notoriously gloomy or silent?"

"No."

"What was your nickname? That will tell something."

"Phooey."

"What?"

"Phooey."

"Where did you get a nickname like that? It doesn't fit you now."

"That's kind of a long story. It had something to do with drinking applejack sophomore year. I don't believe you'd care to hear it."

"Then you drink applejack?"

"Well, I have."

"Phooey, do you know what I've got?"

"No. At least I don't know everything you've got. I have some idea of your talents."

For a moment the old George Banks threatened to show himself. There was life in his voice.

"I've got about ten bottles of applejack in the cellar."

"You're lucky."

"So are you."

"I?"

"My applejack is your applejack."

"Oh, that's very good of you; but—— Well, you see, Trudy doesn't like my drinking much and I'm pretty careful. Cocktails and punch, but that's about enough." He rose and walked to the inactive fountain, balanced himself upon its stone rim. "It's mighty good of you," he said again.

"Not at all. Trudy ought to know better than to cut a strong young man off from his applejack! That may be just what you need to make you cheer up."

"No, that isn't what's the matter. It's——"

He broke off suddenly. He went back and sat at his end of the bench, lighted another cigarette.

"Then you know what is the matter?"

"Miss Kittridge, really——"

"Please don't call me Miss Kittridge and please don't say really to me in that particular way again. You're the most unpardonable sort of man. I don't see how you ever persuaded Trudy to think of marrying you. I give up. Let's go back."

She stood up and started up the path toward the house.

"But, Miss Kittridge—er—B a r b a r a—er——"

"Kitt."

"Kitt."

"You were going to say?"

She had turned. She stood in the moonlight facing him, slim and tall, shimmering in a white evening dress. Her dark hair contrasted with the moonlit whiteness of her neck and shoulders. A little cold shiver made its way up George Banks's back.

"Oh, nothing," he said. "Let's go back."

And they went back to the house. He left her and walked alone among the shrubs. It had been a stupid conversation. It had been an embarrassing conversation. But—this Barbara Kittridge—Kitt—thrilling—exciting—to look at, to talk to, to keep from involving oneself with. Lively girl. Snappy dark eyes. Nice hands. Well built. Slim ankles. Quick, elusive, jumping around behind a conversation, with a funny mouth that did queer little things with its corners.

Face that laughed at you, without laughing at all so you could trace it. And always one jump ahead of what you were thinking. Footwork with her head. Now that kind of a girl——

He danced with his betrothed.

"What do you think of Kitt?" she asked from his shoulder.

He executed an intricate step and stalled for time.

"What did you say, dear?"

"What do you think of Kitt?"

"Oh, very nice. Clever, I should think. Talks well."

"Do you think so?"

"Well, we didn't talk much. She seemed quick."

"She says whatever comes into her head. I've heard her say the worst things—to men—trying to be original."

The music stopped and George and Mildred Trudeau seated themselves side by side. His eyes followed Barbara Kittridge as she went, laughing, through the French windows with a man.

"Her reputation," said Trudy guardedly into his ear, "is not too good lately. She went to Europe all alone last summer. Katherine Milton met her in Brussels and she was traveling all over with two Oxford students. Perfectly respectable, of course. But a girl can't tell what people are going to think and say. It isn't a very nice thing to do."

"But if she was all alone in Europe——"

"There were plenty of girls she knew, without her picking out perfectly strange young Englishmen and traveling all over with them. I'll bet she had a fine gay time. A couple of weeks ago I heard about a party at a bachelor apartment in town that Kitt went to. I don't believe that was too nice. She drinks a little too much, anyway."

The music started and they danced again.

Just before three the party broke up for the evening. George Banks took Trudy to the top of the stairs and kissed her good night. Then he remembered that he had no cigarettes and went down again to find some.

So far as is known, it was entirely by accident that he found Barbara Kittridge alone in the library. She was curled up at the end of the big leather sofa.

George Banks sighted her and jumped like a startled criminal. He took a step backward and smiled foolishly. Kitt laughed.

"Why, Phooey! I thought I'd packed you off to bed. What are you doing prowling around downstairs again? You don't go in for nocturnal melancholia, do you? I hope it isn't so bad as that."

He fidgeted.

"No. Cigarettes. Found I didn't have any in my pocket. None upstairs. Thought I'd come down and find some."

"Lots in that box on the table beside you. Help yourself."

He did, and dropped six or eight into his pocket.

"Well——" he said, fidgeting toward the door.

"Breakfast at eleven thirty," said his hostess, and just then something strange happened in George Banks.

"What the dickens are you going to do for the rest of the night?" he asked. "Are you given to communing with nature yourself?" Again she laughed.

"Brave boy!" she said. "Sit down."

This time they were not on a cold stone bench in the darkness. This time her feet were not so placed as to keep him at a distance.

He seated himself a couple of inches from her, his arm on the back of the sofa behind her head. He took one of the cigarettes from his pocket and placed it between his lips. For the first time his manner of looking at her was leisurely. He filled his lungs with smoke before he opened the conversation.

"And now," he said, "tell me what this is all about. Where do you get the privilege of laughing at me? Who told you I was a funny old man to be kidded unmercifully at every opportunity? What have you done to deserve the right to embarrass me?"

She laughed.

"Why, Phooey! I haven't done anything to embarrass you. If you've felt uncomfortable it's been your own fault. I have laughed at you, but that was because you were funny. I reserve the right to laugh at anything that's funny."

"That isn't entirely wise. You'll find there are a lot of things that are funny that you aren't supposed to laugh at. You'll get in trouble laughing indiscriminately."

"In trouble with you?"

"Among others—yes."

"Ah, then it bites?"

"Not necessarily. But a healthy man can't stand being laughed at. You'll find that out."

"Are you a healthy man? You don't seem healthy. You goof too much. You stare into corners and study rug patterns and look as though you were going to scream with some secret sorrow gnawing at your entrails. Do you really think you're healthy?"

"I really know I'm healthy."

She made an incredulous noise and the corners of her mouth did things. He leaned closer to her.

"Further," he said, picking up one of her hands, "I can prove I'm healthy. I have a healthy normal desire to kiss you."

"To kiss me?" Her mouth was still insulting him. "You look more as though you wanted to choke me."

She executed some sort of distracting movement of her knees. Her eyes were larger than he had thought. Her hand was cool and smooth in his. His arm slipped slowly down from the back of the sofa behind her. His fingers touched her bare shoulder on the side away from him. He thought profane things about himself and removed her hand from a position where it might interfere with possible progress. Slowly, eye to eye with her, he drew her close to him and placed his lips on hers—left them there for throbbing seconds. The end of her nose was cool against his cheek. Her lips were soft. Her body in the crook of his arm was pliant and small. His mind traveled out of the library, upstairs to Mildred Trudeau.

He took his mouth away, replaced his arm on the back of the sofa. He still looked into her eyes.

"Was that what you wanted me to do?" he asked.

"No; though you do do it rather well. I am quite glad you did. It was very pleasant. Thank you."

"I'm afraid you're not welcome. That one kiss is going to make me feel like a burglar for weeks. You have no idea the mental anguish I'll go through."

"And end up by telling Trudy I made you do it?"

"No, I don't think that. But I'm not proud of myself. I might have a little more self-control." He stood up before her, feet slightly apart, right hand gripping left elbow. "Well——" he said. Then, after a pause, "I hope you'll understand this whole performance. I hope you won't think I go around kissing other girls while I'm engaged to Trudy."

He saw a flicker at the corners of her mouth. He fled. Over his shoulder he heard her words:

"It must be funny to have a conscience." Then a laugh. "Breakfast at eleven thirty."

III

It wasn't funny to have a conscience. It was bad for George Banks's trousers, which he tossed over the back of a chair and left there to wrinkle. It was bad for his disposition, especially as he found that the cigarettes he had put in his pocket were crushed beyond the possibility of use. It was bad for his sleep, for he lay flat on his back for a long time thinking things over, and all he could think of was the way Barbara Kittridge's lips felt and the way her mouth laughed at him.

The next day he avoided his hostess. In the evening particularly he made sure not to be left alone with her. And on Sunday, when he said his good-by and drove off with Trudy at his side, he vowed he would never see Barbara Kittridge again.

If he was going to marry Trudy—and that seemed entirely probable, for she seemed perfectly willing and he certainly couldn't do anything about it—well, the thing to do was to keep out of the way of temptation. After all, Kitt was the first girl who had interested him since he had asked Mildred to marry him. If he should strike only one exciting girl every six or eight months, it ought to be fairly easy to keep out of their way.

I record his line of reasoning. It becomes my painful duty to record his actions during the three months that followed. But I will do it quickly for you, so that you will not feel so badly about it as I do.

A week after the Kittridge house party Mrs. Trudeau decided to take Mildred abroad. Two weeks after that they sailed. Both of them were properly kissed good-by by George Banks. They found their stateroom filled to the point of discomfort with flowers and baskets of fruit and cakes and books, and cards from George Banks saying bon voyage and other stimulating sentiments.

From the pier George made his way to a certain club and partook of certain stimulants in tall cold glasses. He stayed in the club for dinner, which consisted of several repetitions of the same stimulants, and for the night, which was interspersed with more of the same. By Monday he was ready to return to his regular round of duties in his father's bond house and to look at things calmly.

Thereafter for two weeks he lived a life of quiet and sobriety, at home for dinner every night and in bed early. He wrote to Mildred, care of this and that in Paris and London and Berne and elsewhere, and told her that life was dull without her, as it was. He did not mention that this particular sort of dullness was relief from the other kind of dullness that had been his lot before she left.

Then he got a note from Barbara Kittridge, which said that she was having a lot of people out for a week-end and that she would be delighted to have him among them. This he carried in his pocket for two days and finally answered by a letter which alleged a business trip out of town. The next day he called Kitt on the phone and told her that he found he didn't have to go away after all.

For a great part of Friday evening he talked with Kitt. Saturday morning they swam together—with several other people, which was just as well. Sunday they played tennis and talked about books. Monday he came home again with a heavy heart. He had not kissed Kitt, nor had he come close to it. But he had recognized in her a person worthy of himself—more than worthy of himself—far above him.

She worried him. She made him wish he were less than a gentleman and could drop his fiancée quietly off a pier in a burlap bag. She caused him to spend another afternoon and evening with the tall cool glasses.

For the rest of the summer, let us say merely that George Banks was seen more or less frequently at the Kittridge summer home and that he dined with Kitt in town on several occasions. Let us say that he remembered throughout that he was engaged to be married and that he maintained a high standard of personal behavior.

Let us skip to the not particularly joyous day on which he received a letter from Mildred Trudeau, saying that she would land in New York from the Majestic on September fifth, barring icebergs and other acts of God. At which time, she said, they would announce that their wedding would take place in October.

With the aid of another evening at the club, George bore up. After all, Mildred was a very fine type of young woman. High social endowments. Mighty respectable and dependable. He wouldn't jilt her. Hell, let her marry him!

Still, when his father called him in next morning and asked him to go to Chicago on business that would keep him away from New York on the day of his fiancée's arrival, he welcomed the opportunity. He wired to Bill Lincoln, who had been his roommate for two years, and told him to have the Field Museum and the stockyards ready. With some abandon he packed two bottles of Scotch in his suit case for the trip.

IV

On the evening of September third George Banks was told by the doorman of the Sportsmen's Club in Chicago that Mr. Lincoln was awaiting him in the bar. Going through the main lounge and taking the first turn to the left, he found that the doorman had spoken at least part of the truth.

Mr. Lincoln was awaiting him. So was the bartender of the Sportsmen's Club. So were a great many Sportsmen's Specials, which were made of gin and lime juice and dashes of things from several bottles, the whole being shaken until it became greenish and frothy. The mixture was efficacious. After the fifth, or possibly the sixth, Mr. Lincoln and his guest, Mr. Banks, might fairly have been said to have reached the ole-fella state. After the eighth, or possibly the twelfth, they felt themselves sufficiently fortified for dinner, and left the bar with promises of a speedy return.

In the dining room, when the waiter, wrinkling his brow over his orders, was fairly started toward the kitchen, Bill Lincoln came to the point.

"Phooey," he said, "whus this I hear 'bout you being engaged?"

He leaned across the table slightly, looking out of the tops of his eyes. His guest drank water.

"Yes," said George Banks.

"Yes, what? Yes, you're engaged? I shu'say you pro'bly are engaged. Seems's though I haven't read anything else in months but George Banks engaged. What I mean's, who's the girl? Whus she like? Is she downhearted or does she keep the spirit of conviv'al'ty in the home? Tell me about her."

"Oh, she's all right."

"Well, tha's a big send-off you give her. 'She's all right,' he says. I didn't ask you if she's sick. I ask you whus she like? Is she a good egg? Tha's what I mean. Is she a good egg?" He stared across the table at George. "Phooey," he said after a moment, "y'understand I didn't mean any harm. I hope I didn't offend you or anything. 'S jus' friendlies' kin' of interes'. 'F course a fella gets a drink or two, he doesn't talk so nice as he might. But Lord! I didn't mean any harm!" His voice trailed off and he stared.

"It isn't that, Bill. You didn't say anything wrong. 'S jus' th' I wan'ed to keep on pleasant topics. I don't want to talk about whus she like. Le's talk about you."

George Banks reached for the water again.

"Wait!" said Bill Lincoln. "Wait! Don' touch that stuff. Good Scotch in my pocket."

He called a captain and ordered sparkling water, glasses and ice. When these necessities arrived he made two drinks and pushed one across the table.

"Now," he said, "what's all this talk about pleasant topics?" The oysters arrived and interrupted him, but he waited. "Tell me," he said as a father commands his erring son.

And so it was that George Banks divulged, for the first time, his inmost thoughts about marriage and women and Mildred Trudeau. With eloquence that waned and waxed as food sobered him and Scotch buoyed him up, he told the whole story of nearly a year of engagement. He told of the enthusiasm that had robbed him of discretion, of the dreadful months of engagement to beauty unmarred by brains. He explained the conventions that the fact of being a gentleman forces upon one engaged by mistake, and how he was just gentleman enough to go through with the thing. He omitted entirely any reference to Barbara Kittridge, and, at that, his story was not finished until they were ready to return to the bar—which they did.

At eleven, when the bar closed, they went, supplied with water and ice, to a corner of the lounge and talked further. All I can say of their conversation is that it was earnest. To reproduce it would be to endanger the world's supply of apostrophes and possibly to make this story unfit for publication.

Eliminating nonessentials, the thing simmered down to an argument as to whether a gentleman must necessarily be a damn fool. Mr. Lincoln saw no sense in Mr. Banks's theories of social ethics, and Mr. Banks had no defense except a series of dogmas about what a gentleman might not do. Therefore Mr. Lincoln won the debate and Mr. Banks agreed that, gentleman or no gentleman, it was up to him, for the good of all concerned, especially old Bill Lincoln, to break his engagement into a thousand pieces.

So firm was his conviction that it held him after he had safely attained his room. He found writing materials in the desk and proceeded not to put off till tomorrow what he had the nerve to do tonight. For nearly an hour he sat and wrote and tore up paper and chewed the penholder and smoked cigarettes. And finally he was satisfied. He folded the paper and put it into an envelope. He picked his way carefully down the hall and rang for the elevator. When it came he handed his letter and fifty cents to the astonished elevator boy, with strict orders that this letter must be posted at once. The boy bowed and agreed that it should be so. George Banks found his room and went to bed. Let us read the letter into the evidence:

MY DEAR MILDRED: I sent a letter to you at the Ritz yesterday to explain how I happened to be in Chicago when you got home. In that letter I said a lot of things I did not honestly mean. The things I mean I did not mean were the things I said about—erasure—loving you. I know that a gentleman does not ever jilt a lady and I hope you will accept my apologies and I hope you will forgive me and I hope that you will understand that I am not jilting you exactly, but only telling you the truth for your good and my good both. You see, it would be a hell of a mess if we got married and we would both be unhappy and so I do not see any sense in being a gentleman about it. It would be pretty hard to be a gentleman and be married to you, anyway, as a friend of mine was saying to me only this evening.

You see, when I asked you to marry me I did not know you very well and I thought you were different from the way you are. I do not mean to say that you are not great the way you are, and everybody seems to think you are great, and my family likes you; but what I mean is I think you would probably be a wonderful wife for somebody that thinks woman's place is in the home, or probably almost anybody but me. But, you see, I cannot talk to you, because I never think you understand what I say and I do not believe you do now. Anyway, I do not think that would be a very good way to commence being married, not understanding each other when we talk and not talking very much.

So what I want to suggest if you do not mind too much is that we do not announce that we will get married in October or any time at all, but just quietly forget it and let bygones be bygones and you speak to me when you see me around even if you know I am not a gentleman, because this is the only time I have not been a gentleman with you or anybody else. And you will know that I am sorry, because I have been thinking of what a mess we would make of it for months; and I have not said anything about it before, because I did not want to be not a gentleman. And I want to impress on you that I am perfectly stone cold sober when I am writing this and that I would never write it at all if it wasn't for the best of both of us.

Hoping to see you soon.

Sincerely yours,
GEORGE BANKS.

V

At eleven the next morning George Banks awoke in his room in the Sportsmen's Club. He found his eyes burning and his vision blurred. He found his head throbbing with an ache which radiated from one particular spot inside of his forehead. He found his lips and tongue parched as though he had slept all day in the middle of a desert with his mouth wide open to the blistering sun. An experiment in rising showed conclusively that his knees were weak and that his equilibrial nerves were functioning badly, if at all.

But worse than all this physical disability was a sickening sense of unpleasantness to be faced, which was firmly fixed in the back of his mind. He tried to think, but memories slipped away from him and disappeared like so many slippery pieces of soap under a bathtub. Presently he gave up and lay face downward on the bed, partly conscious, knowing only that his head was throbbing, throbbing, throbbing.

Half an hour later he mustered his courage again and sat up. The room whirled dangerously and he grasped the side of the bed. The edges of his vision were a little clearer. He looked about him. On the desk he saw salvation—a half-full bottle of Scotch. Shakily, supporting himself by whatever came to hand, he made his way to the desk. He carried the bottle to the bathroom and poured a drink of heroic proportions. He drank.

For a minute he sputtered. His eyes blurred again worse than before. He was not entirely sure that he had not wasted the whisky. Then he became stronger, blinked a few times, placed one foot timidly before the other and walked.

Just as he got back to the bed and sat down, he remembered. He had written a letter to Mildred. He had told her what he thought—of her and of his engagement to her and everything. He had asked her to call it all off. Of that much he was sure. And past that his memory would not carry him. Had he told her she was the world's dumbest woman? Had he told her that he had much rather marry a book of etiquette because that, at least, could be left home? Probably. He didn't know, and it didn't make much difference. The import of the letter, however he had worded it, was enough.

He rolled across the bed to the telephone and got Bill Lincoln on the wire.

What George Banks said to Bill Lincoln is neither printable nor essential. It is enough that Bill rushed to the Sportsmen's Club to confer with his ex-roommate, and that the result of the hasty conference was that George Banks found himself, in almost no time, on a train which was due at Grand Central Station at 9 A.M., September fifth.

For it had been decided that he must beat his fiancée to his letter or be forever damned, socially and as a gentleman, and this was the only way the thing could be done. His father's business was unfinished, but that could be explained somehow. The point now was to save Mildred Trudeau's feelings and George Banks's soul. To that end all else must be sacrificed.

George Banks slept soundly in the club car while the train bore him many miles from Chicago. It was close to dinner time when he snorted, gulped five times in rapid succession, and awoke feeling clearer in the head, but clearer, too, in the realization of what he had to face. It was then that he remembered a bottle which had never been taken from his suit case, and bethought himself, in this connection, of an old proverb having to do with the hair of the dog that bites one. A few minutes later the club-car porter was pouring bubbly water into a glass the lower half of which was filled with ice and an amber colored fluid.

After the first, George Banks felt stronger. As the treatment progressed he began to become friendlier toward his fellow wanderers through this vale of tears. When it was time for the fourth, he felt moved to alleviate the sufferings of a young man who sat at his left, separated from him by only one vacant chair. The young man accepted. On investigation he proved to be none other than Harry Powers, who had graduated from Princeton only three years before George. So there they were. They found reminiscences enough to last nearly through dinner; and by the time these began to pall on them they were ready to philosophize on whatever subjects presented themselves, which offered a wide range indeed.

The upshot was that they spent the evening together over George's bottle. Nor did they consider the evening at an end until the bottle had been emptied beyond the possibility of miscalculation. Even then the club-car porter had to plead with them to let him close up for the night.

By showing his Pullman check to the various porters he encountered, George found his way to his own berth. He flung himself in headlong. He undressed lying on his stomach, and wriggling out of his clothes, after what must be the manner of Houdini in a strait-jacket at the bottom of a river. By a miracle he found his pajamas and got himself into them.

For some time he had not thought of what awaited him in the morning. Suddenly the realization came back to him with a vividness that shook him. He would have to kiss the bearded cheek of Mrs. Trudeau. He would have to stare hungrily for hours and hours at her inane daughter—his fiancée. And—good Lord!—first he would have to dash to the Ritz and get that letter before she did. Suppose the ship should dock at daybreak. He had heard they did sometimes. He would have to be early all right.

His reasoning led him to the conclusion that the porter must be admonished to call him early—if the porter was waking. If you're waking, call me early, call me early, mother dear. Oh yes, by all means. The porter must be waking, and if he was waking, he must call George early.

With the refrain of Tennyson's worst poem running through his head, George Banks, neatly clad in blue silk pajamas, rolled from his berth into the dimly lighted aisle. If you're waking, call me early, call me early, porter dear. He stumbled over the prominently displayed shoes of the snoring gentleman in the next section. If you're waking, call me early.... He arrived at the men's wash room and pushed the curtain aside. The porter was not there.

George Banks rang a bell and waited a moment, but no one appeared. Porter probably gone to sleep in the caboose or whatever arrangement they have for porters to sleep in. Better find the conductor, anyway. More dependable fellows, these conductors.... If you're waking, call me early, call me early, conductor dear. Not so good. Meter all wrong. But a wise hunch to tell the conductor.

If you're waking, call me early.... George Banks found his way through the next car to the confusion of the shoes parked neatly along the aisle. No porter there, either. He went on. Another car yielded neither porter nor conductor, and George was sick of this business. Chances were some one would call him too early, anyway. They always did.

He gave up the expedition and started back. Through one car—two, three. And then he began to have misgivings. What was the name of his car? Santa Clara? Middleditch? Marianola? Spencersfield? None of them sounded familiar. For that matter, what was the number of his berth? Lower—Lower Five? Seven? Twelve? Ten? That bit of information, too, escaped him. He went through another car to see if any of the green curtains looked familiar. Then he went back through three or four cars. The cars were all alike. The curtains were all alike. The numbers meant nothing.

The train threw itself round a curve just as George Banks came opposite the curtained entrance to the men's room of the good car Gwendoline. George's feet forsook him. He was catapulted through the curtain and saved himself from destruction only by a lucky grab at a passing wash basin. He pulled himself upright. The shock was great. He eased himself to a position of comfort on the long leather seat. It had been a long walk through all those cars, back and forth.

In fact he was remarkably sleepy. A tiring journey it had been.... Oh, well, the train was going to New York. Some porter could be persuaded to find him his berth in the morning. He drew his feet up and stretched out as far as possible on the seat. Presently he slept.

VI

The porter who came upon George Banks in the morning was a fat jolly person who had made many a friend and many a tip by his big-hearted way. He placed hand on the shoulder of the Banks blue silk pajamas. He shook ever so gently. He knew that you never know what will happen when you wake the gentlemen up.

"Cap'n, sir," he said in his easiest voice, "better wake up, sir. We in." There was a faint, almost indefinable sign of life from the gentleman in the blue pajamas. The porter allowed his pudgy hand to shake again. "Time you was up, sir," he said more than civilly. "Gettin'-up time."

He was rewarded with greater activity. The blue-pajamaed body uncurled itself in the manner of a boa constrictor.

"Wump!" said George Banks.

The hand on his shoulder continued to move gently back and forth.

"Yes, sir. Gettin'-up time. We in a station right this minute."

George Banks turned his head slightly, opened one eye and fixed it on the porter. He thought deeply for an instant.

"Wump?" he inquired.

"We right at a platform right this minute," the porter repeated. "This yere's Boston." George Banks sat up straight with both eyes wide.

"This yere's what?"

"Boston."

"Boston?"

"Boston, I says, Cap'n. Boston's right."

"Boston?"

"You said it."

George Banks sprang to his feet, disregarding the state of his equilibrial nerves. He took the porter by both shoulders and held him firmly.

"Now," he said sternly, "you think very carefully and tell me where we are. One false move may cost you your life. Tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Where are we?"

"Boston, Mass-a-chusitts, Cap'n, sir. I said it and I sticks to it. Boston, like a little brown bulldog."

The porter of the car Gwendoline was wondering what sort of case he had to deal with. He saw insanity in the reddish eyes of his man in blue pajamas.

"Look here," said George Banks, "I got on a train in Chicago yesterday and that train was going to New York. How can you tell me I'm waking up in Boston?"

"I ain't told you no lie, Cap'n, sir. I tells you we in Boston be-cause in Boston we is. 'Is yere car, she come from Chicago last night and you come with her. 'At's all I know."

"But I had a New York ticket and the conductor took it. I couldn't have been on the wrong train."

"Wrong train—no, sir. This car, she switch offn that train at Albany. This yere's the Boston car."

The truth poured into George Banks's tired brain. His clothes, his money—everything he had had with him was in New York. He released the porter. His limp arms flopped to his sides. He looked out the window at the wooden platform.

Suddenly he was galvanized into action. He sprang, knocking the porter to one side, swished through the curtained door and out to the station platform. Far away he saw the station. Pausing not, he took that direction as fast as his slippered feet would carry him, which was pretty fast, all things considered.

Through the glass swing doors he went across No Man's Land between station and trains, into the station, down the marble steps. Civilians and railroad employees stared at him. Women probably screamed. Children pointed. George Banks rushed on.

Before him was the street. In the street was an empty taxi. That was all the sprinting young man saw. Beyond that taxi he had no plans. All he knew was that there might be nameless delays in the station and in the taxi he was free. He splashed through the muddy street and jumped on the running board of the taxicab. The driver turned to him.

"Harvard Square, Cambridge!" shouted George Banks.

He opened the door and got inside. The taxi moved onward with a jerk that threw him into the seat.

"Them college boys!" sighed the driver to himself. "It's a wonder to me the things they do. Runnin' through the streets in pejammers!"

Within, George Banks huddled into a corner of the cab and thought hard. Whom did he know in Boston? There was his father's branch office, of course; but that would never do. There was old Miss Cable, his mother's second cousin; but she would serve even worse.... Wait—Jimmy Sayre! Jimmy Sayre, of course! Somewhere in Cambridge—James M. Sayre, 79—75—

He opened the door and yelled an address into the driver's ear.

The taxi man had to go up to the house and explain things a bit. He cleared the way and at a signal George Banks ran up the walk at top speed, causing, even so, considerable amazement among the breakfasting residents of Cambridge. Jimmy paid the taxi driver and gave George a bathrobe to cover his blueness.

"Better have a wash and some breakfast," said Jimmy. "Lil'll be down in a minute. Let me take you upstairs."

But the distracted look was still in George's eyes.

"Telephone," he said briefly.

"Sure, right in here," Jimmy led the way.

"I want to get the manager of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York," George Banks told the operator. There was fuss and waiting; interminable waiting, during which George Banks paced the rug and smoked Jimmy Sayre's cigarettes, Egyptian though they were. His host asked questions, but George was unable to give coherent answers. After a while the connection with New York was ready.

"Is this the manager? ... Well, I want to speak to somebody who has charge of the guests' mail.... Yeah.... All right, listen! I mailed a letter from Chicago night before last. Addressed to Miss Mildred Trudeau and marked Hold for Arrival.... Miss Mildred Trudeau. Mildred.... Yeah, Trudeau. That's right.... Now, I want that letter destroyed—destroyed, torn up, thrown away.... Yeah....

"What? Oh, don't be dumb. I wrote the letter, I tell you! It isn't the guests' mail unless the guests get it.... Yeah, but I wrote it; can't I have you destroy it if I want to? ... How do you know? How do you know anything? Do you know anything? Of course I wrote it. How'd I know you had it if I didn't write it? ... Don't be dumb. Why can't you——"

The conversation continued a minute or two and came to a snappy conclusion when George Banks gave the Ritz gentleman certain specific directions as to where to go.

George jiggled the receiver hook and got the long-distance operator on the line again. He told her to get him the office of the White Star Line. Again there was a pause of minutes and again the telephone was ready with New York.

"Hello! White Star Line? Is the Majestic docking this morning? ... She has, you say? What time? ... What time is it now? Do you suppose most of the passengers are still on the pier? ... Don't be fresh! I'm asking you for information. Is there any possibility of reaching one of the passengers by telephone? ... By telephone.... Yeah, I might better run down to the pier myself—in pajamas, from Boston. Sure, that's a good idea, too! I'm asking you if there's any chance of reaching one of the passengers by telephone. Is there? ... You're sure? ... No way at all, eh? All right. Thanks."

With a gesture of finality, George Banks put the receiver on the hook.

"Well, Jimmy, I've done all I could, haven't I?"

Jimmy Sayre, who had not the faintest idea of what it was all about, thought it was best to agree.

"It looks as though you had, Phooey."

"Thank you," said George Banks.

Again he placed the receiver at his ear and asked for long-distance. There was the shadow of a smile on his face.

"Long-distance, old dear. I'm awfully sorry to break in on your morning like this," he said. "I hope it isn't too much trouble....

"Will you please get me Great Neck, Long Island, one-one-six-one? ... Yep.... And ask for Miss Barbara Kittridge."

ARABIAN KNIGHTS

By Octavus Roy Cohen

OCTAVUS ROY COHEN

One of the long-distance records for magazine publication of a series of stories is held by Octavus Roy Cohen, who was born in Charleston, S.C., on June 26, 1891, and who was a civil engineer, a newspaper man, and a lawyer before, in 1915, he gave his time exclusively to writing. The series of humorous negro stories centered about Florian Slappey which have appeared for years in the Saturday Evening Post has provided a succession of diverting books with no less diverting titles—Polished Ebony, Highly Colored, Assorted Chocolates, Black and Blue, etc.

"Arabian Knights," which is of this lineage, was first published in Photoplay.

In justice to Mr. Cohen the reader may be reminded that he is not a writer in a single vein. The Crimson Alibi—afterward made into a highly successful play—was his novel, and his negro stories have been interspersed with detective and mystery tales. In general his other fiction is of the type rather loosely called "dramatic"; and Cohen is famed among editors for his extraordinary gifts as a contriver of plots. Lately this gift for situation and the "O. Henry twist" has gained him a fresh reputation as the author of dramatic, highly compressed stories told in not more than a thousand words.

ARABIAN KNIGHTS[1]

[1] Copyright, 1926, by Octavus Roy Cohen.

J. Cæsar Clump, director-in-chief for the Midnight Pictures Corporation, Inc., of Birmingham, Alabama, reclined in a hammock and gazed languidly down upon the city of Algiers. He was engaged in the task of whipping his brain into a subjective state, in order that he might more efficiently consider a new story idea suggested that morning by Forcep Swain, Midnight's elegant author.

Physical conditions were ideal. He was surrounded by the vivid vegetation of the hotel gardens. Overhead the sun streamed warmly from an unflecked sky. Through the iron grill of the garden gates he could see the narrow, winding streets of Mustapha Superieur, fashionable suburb of Algiers: and far below the harbor stretched—all sapphire and burnished gold, studded with small and picturesque ships: fishing boats with queer, triangular sails; decrepit tramp steamers from Gibraltar, Marseilles, Venice, Naples, Genoa and North African ports; one tremendous liner stopping over in Algiers for a day in the course of a world cruise.

He extracted from his pocket a package of American cigarettes, liberally besprinkled with Algerian revenue stamps. He selected one, lighted it, and luxuriously inhaled the rich Virginia tobacco. He raised his putteed legs from the ground, settled them comfortably in the hammock, removed a checkered cap, and closed his eyes in order to give his thought processes the benefit of full physical comfort.

And then his superb serenity was shattered by a crashing in the shrubbery and a hoarse voice bellowing his name. Director Clump sat up and stared with ill-concealed hostility toward the sound.

"Mistuh Clump!" came the harsh, masculine call: "Hey, Cæsar! Where is you at?"

The director sighed and shook his head. Always when he slipped away for an hour of undisturbed thought, there was something to destroy his tranquillity. And usually it was this same person.

He waited resignedly until the enormous figure of Opus Randall, Midnight's most popular comedian, burst through a hedge of flowers and confronted him.

Mr. Randall was hot, tired, and indignant. His massive chest was heaving with exertion, his pudgy face was beaded with perspiration, and his fat legs trembled.

One glance at the face of the leading actor, and Director Clump knew that peace had departed for the afternoon. There were times when Opus was trying beyond the point of endurance—and this was one of the times. Cæsar Clump assumed a resigned look, waved a languid hand, and voiced a question.

"Well, Opus—wha's eatin' you now?"

Mr. Randall came close and hovered over the recumbent figure, upon which he gazed with ill-concealed hostility. His voice quivered with fury.

"Wha's the matter? Huh! That you could lay down there an' ask me such!" He doubled one big fist and spanked it into the palm of the other hand. "I reckon you know as well as me wha's the matter."

"Well, if you know an' I know—then us bofe knows, an' there ain't no need talkin' about it."

"Gittin' sarcastical, is you? Just like you been doin' ever since us fust come to Africa. You think you can talk to me like that—an' ride me all the time when us is workin'—an' gimme dirty work to do. I's good an' sick an' tired of it, an' I ain't gwine stan' it another minute."

"What does you aim to do?" inquired the director. His tone was smooth, but anger was commencing to smolder within the narrow bosom.

"Plenty!"

"What, f'r instant?"

Opus spluttered. He choked. He knew very well there was nothing he could do—but he hated to be reminded of that fact. Director Clump saw his opportunity and was quick to press the advantage.

"Now listen at me, Fat Boy. Ever since us left Bumminham you has been makin' trouble. Nothin' ever suits you. Always you is fightin' with Florian Slappey or Welford Potts or Aleck Champagne—or somebody. An' now you comes bustin' in on my solichude yellin' 'cause I has been givin' you some funny scenes——"

"Funny? Great Sufferin' Tripe! Who says they is funny? You reckon it's funny fo' me that you should chuck me overboard fo' some fishermen to pull up in a net ... an' then a dawg-gone octopus gits in that net with me an' I is almost drowned an' besides also scared to death? I guess you think I just laughed myse'f sick, don't you? An' was it funny I should fall down them stone steps in the native quarter this mawnin'? Why di'n't you tell me there was a rope across that street?"

Mr. Clump explained patiently. "I wanted the fall to look nachel."

"Ooooow! So that's it? An' you takes a chance of bustin' me all up! A lot you care does I crack my neck. Why don't you give Welford Potts some of them terrible things to do? Why is it always me, me, me when it comes to gittin' beat up?"

Mr. Clump rose and his voice crackled. "Stop! You quit kickin' an' listen at me! I craves to make somethin' plain to yo' fat head—once an' fo' all time. You signed up with this comp'ny to play slapstick comedy. You is a comedian an' tha's all what you is. But ev'ything you gits tol' to do, you raises a howl. What do you think you is, anyhow—a tragedian? Wantin' to play Hamlick or somethin' like that? Now I'se finished, th'oo and done with you. I has exhausted my temper an' next time you do any of this yellin' aroun' you gits fined an' laid off without sal'ry. Git that clear. I has tried to keep fum havin' trouble with you. I has let you buzz aroun' like a crazy hawssfly ... but I'se finished. You ain't nothin' but a straw an' I is a camel's back. I has done broke! Now—git!"

Opus stared intently at his chief. It was the first time he had ever seen the immaculate little man aroused to a high pitch of ill humor and instinct warned him that Mr. Clump had been exasperated to the absolute limit of his endurance. Opus was no fool. He swung around with what dignity he could muster and crashed away through the flowers and palms. He assumed a grand manner, but he knew that his bluff had been called—and he boiled with rage.

Mr. Randall wished to convey the impression that he accepted the dictum of his director. He wished Mr. Clump to lower his guard in order that the force of Opus's retaliating blow might be unimpaired. Mr. Randall vowed vengeance! And, what was more, he knew precisely how he intended wreaking it.

He moved through the luxurious gardens in search of a particular person. He found her in a tiny palm grove, sipping tea and eating little cakes. She was a slender and attractive creature of undoubted strength of character. Opus bowed low.

"Good evenin', Mis' Clump."

"Evenin', Opus. How is you this evenin'?"

"Tol'able, thank you." He seated himself opposite, and yawned. "Algiers suttinly bores me. Nothin' to do an' heaps of time to do it in."

Mrs. Sicily Clump smiled. "Reckon you must be the only bored pusson in the Midnight troupe, Opus."

"How come? Ain't Cæsar bored?"

"My husban'?" She gestured in negation. "Nossuh, he showly ain't. He says this is the finest town fo' pitchers we has found since we come abroad. All day he wuks an' at night he goes out an' gathers material."

"Oh! he does?" Opus eyed her speculatively and tried to make his question casual. "Is he goin' out tonight?"

"Showly."

"Where?"

"Down to the water front to watch the ships an' git ideas. Him an' Florian Slappey is goin'."

Mr. Randall emitted a large and raucous laugh, and Mrs. Clump leaned forward.

"What at is you laughin', Brother Randall?"

"Nothin', Mis' Clump. Nothin' at all—'cept that a lady which has been ma'ied to a man as long as you has, should b'lieve such fumadiddles."

"You mean my husban' ain't gwine to no water front? You mean you know where him an' Florian is really goin'?"

"Uh-huh." Mr. Randall drummed on the table-top. "Now you mind, Sicily—I ain't tryin' to start somethin'. But I happen to know that where Cæsar an' Florian really is goin' is down to a Arab dancin'-girl place on a li'l alley right off that Rue de la Kasba we seen the other day."

Sicily smiled. "Tha's where you is wrong, Opus. The place what you mention, Florian an' my husban' went to las' night with my permission."

"Aaah! An' they had such a good time with them cullud dancin' ladies that tonight they goes back without tellin' you they is doin' such." Opus rose ponderously. "Sicily, what you ain't got in you' haid is no brains."

He retired in excellent order, leaving Sicily Clump sitting straight up in her chair, eyes focused upon a tangerine. She knew instinctively that Opus had spoken the truth, and her wifely wrath was beginning to mount.

Reviewing the events of the past week, it seemed as though her husband and Florian had been unnaturally zealous in their hunt for filmable material. Last night Cæsar had told her frankly that he wished to visit a hall where Algerian girls performed Arab dances. His frankness disarmed her, and she gave her permission. But if, tonight, he was returning to the dance hall and concealing his intention of doing so—then she felt that it behooved her, as a lawfully wedded spouse, to do something.

Mr. Randall was thoroughly satisfied with the start he had made. He knew Sicily was no bungler. He realized that she would proceed carefully—and to the complete eventual discomfiture of the dapper director who persisted in making Opus's life one misery after another. Meanwhile he seated himself on the ground with his back against an orange tree and lost himself in thought. A peaceful smile played about his lips and until a voice broke upon his ears he was unaware of another's presence in the vicinity.

"What is you so happy about, Opus?"

Mr. Randall looked up at the trim little figure of Edwin Boscoe Fizz, Midnight's second director. Mr. Randall frowned. He resented the imputation that he was happy.

"I'se mis'able!" he snapped. "Entirely an' completely unhappy."

"How come you is smilin', then?"

"Just got to fool people. 'Fraid if I don't smile, folks will stop thinkin' I'se a comedjin. But my heart ain't smilin', Eddie—it's bustin'."

Mr. Fizz seated himself beside the portly actor. "Shuh! Opus, that ain't no way to talk. S'pose you tell me what's wrong?"

Mr. Randall was quite willing to unburden himself. "I showly wisht you was my director, Eddie—instead of that uppity, strutful Cæsar Clump. What I think of that feller——"

Eddie Fizz stiffened. "Quit talkin' that away, Opus. Cæsar Clump is the fondest man I is of."

"Well, I ain't gwine be yo' rival. You is a better man than him an' a better director. Was you handlin' me, you woul'n't be doin' me the dirty tricks he is."

"Like what, f'rinstance?"

Opus unfolded his worries and laid them out before the eyes of Eddie Fizz. But somehow, Eddie failed to agree with him, even though he was sympathetic. Soft-heartedness was one of Eddie's greatest shortcomings. "I think you takes things all wrong, Opus," he volunteered. "Wasn't you such a good actor, you woul'n't git so much rough stuff to do. An' you is lucky to have such a swell director as Cæsar——"

"Piffles! That slice of tripe! That——"

"You cain't call him out of his name befo' me!" Eddie had risen and was confronting the infuriated Opus with aggressive loyalty.

"I reckon I can. I ain't quarrelin' with you, Eddie. I like you fine. But I has got my 'pinion of Mistuh Julius Cæsar Clump an' there ain't nobody gwine change me. N'r neither I ain't no pusson to sit back idle an' git stepped on. Cæsar has insulted me, an' when I'se insulted I fights! I'se gwine make that feller wish he hadn't never been bawn. I'se gwine——"

"Is you threatenin' him?"

"Tha's the one thing I ain't doin' nothin' else but!"

Mr. Fizz turned away. "I cain't listen to you no mo' then, Opus. Us is friends, but Cæsar is mo' friendlier with me than you, so I bids you a respective good evenin'."

Opus stared after the slim figure. He liked Eddie—couldn't help liking the modest, inoffensive little man whose genius for comedy had elevated him to his present important post over the handicap of a shy, sensitive disposition. But he resented Eddie's loyalty to Cæsar Clump.

What if Clump had worked with Eddie and taught him all he knew? What if Eddie had attained directorship through handling Sicily Clump when her husband failed? Gratitude was one thing, but Opus felt that Mr. Fizz carried it to the point of insanity.

As for Eddie Fizz, he was considerably worried. He discounted Opus's threats, of course. Opus was always threatening somebody. He was an inveterate trouble maker, the single member of the Midnight troupe possessing a violent case of temperament. But, just the same, it was well for him to know—as Cæsar's stanch friend—that there was somebody in the organization who bore him ill-will.

A low whistle was wafted to his ears. He traced it with his eyes and saw that it came from the lips of the elegant Mr. Florian Slappey. Florian leaned out of the window and called softly.

"Hey, Eddie—come up to my room a minute."

Mr. Fizz obeyed. He mounted the stairway and entered the bare little cubicle which Mr. Slappey occupied in solitary state. Then his eyes fell upon the other occupant of the room.

"Hello, Cæsar."

"Howdye, Eddie."

Florian dropped an affectionate hand on Eddie's shoulder and spoke beatifically. "Man! where Cæsar an' I was las' night!"

"That dancin'-girl place?"

"Uh-huh!" Florian rolled his eyes. "Hot diggity dawg!"

J. Cæsar Clump chuckled. "How 'bout you goin' back there with us tonight, Eddie?"

Mr. Fizz frowned. "You goin' back there?"

"Tha's the most thing we is aimin' to do."

"But Cæsar—how come Sicily lets you return to a place like that?"

Mr. Clump laughed loudly. "Shuh! Eddie, she don't know nothin' 'bout it. She thinks I an' Florian is gwine be gallivantin' aroun' the water front lookin' fo' lit'ry material."

"No!"

"Yeh. Golla! she woul'n't dream of leavin' me go to see no Algiers dancin' girls a secon' time. Once was bad enough. So I an' Florian framed this story an' right away she says all right we can go. Now we was thinkin' that you would have the time of yo' life.... Boy! until you has visited that place, you ain't been nowhere an' you ain't seen nothin'. How 'bout it?"

Eddie shook his head. "Nothin' stirrin', Cæsar. Glorious woul'n't never say yes."

"You ain't got to 'splain ev'ything to yo' wife, has you?"

"Uh-huh. Us promised each other that."

Florian grimaced. "What good is a wife if you cain't break promises to her? C'mon, Eddie—be a good sport."

"Cain't make it, boys." He stared at Cæsar thoughtfully. "Anybody but me know where you-all is goin'?"

"I don't reckon so."

"Well, don't tell nobody then."

Cæsar smiled affectionately. "Ol' Sad Face! Why not?"

"'Cause ev'body in this comp'ny ain't yo' friend, Cæsar. An' was Sicily to find out where you was at——"

Both men whistled expressively. Eddie wished them luck and went his way. Once out of the room Florian and Cæsar looked apprehensively at each other.

"What you reckon he meant, Florian?"

"Talkin' 'bout Opus Randall, mos' prob'ly. He's hatin' you plenty in the las' few days."

"He don't know nothin' 'bout this trip tonight, does he?"

"Showly not." There was the faintest quiver of doubt in Florian's voice. "Co'se I guess there's some in the comp'ny suspecks where we is gwine. We done a heap of talkin' this mawnin' an' Opus might of heard."

Mr. Clump's eyes narrowed hostilely. "If that fat slab of side-meat ever tol' my wife on me.... But shuh! we ain't doin' nothin' but borryin' trouble. Sicily don't suspeck nothin' an' us is gwine have the time of our lives."

Mr. Slappey grinned hugely. "Chief, when you said that you show spoke a parabola!"

At three o'clock that afternoon a party of three, consisting of Director Clump, Cameraman Exotic Hines and Author Forcep Swain, left the hotel on a tour of inspection. They were seeking locations for certain important comedy shots and were intent on business.

Mrs. Sicily Clump stood at her window and watched them go. They moved off down the Rue Michelet and passed from sight. Immediately Sicily swung into action.

She descended to the hotel gardens and quested for the company's official Algiers guide. She found him chatting amiably with two taxi drivers.

M. Fernand Boutierre was a decidedly estimable gentleman. His credentials were unimpeachable, as President Orifice R. Latimer had taken very good care to see after a certain thoroughly disastrous experience in Biskra.

Fernand was of medium height and modest structure. In complexion he was of that doubtful mahogany tinge which marks the native Algerian. Born and reared within the corporate limits of the sprawling, hilly city on the north African coast, Fernand had learned to speak French fluently. Later he had picked up bits of English from tourists and then had seriously studied the language until now it was his proud boast that he spoke it as good as a native.

A large tourist bureau had recommended Fernand without qualification. He was licensed by the police and they asserted that he was familiar with everything in Algiers from palace to pest-hole. He spoke on terms of respectful intimacy with officials and wharf-rats. Proprietors of two large halls where boule and baccarat flourished knew him well, and there was no iniquitous establishment in the city which was not eager to welcome him and his clients.

His chief recommendation was that wherever he chose to guide a person—there that person was safe. Being a native Algerian, he held high social rank among his kind. French shopkeepers and entertainment purveyors catered to the man.

Sicily Clump knew Fernand well, and liked him. She opened the interview by pressing in his hand a crisp, new hundred-franc note, realizing that this made of Fernand her stanch ally—unless somebody happened to come along with more than a hundred francs.

She spoke earnestly and lengthily with M. Boutierre. At first he raised his hands in horror and shook his head violently. Once he offered to return her hundred francs. But Mrs. Clump was insistent. He spoke of risks and she volunteered to assume them. He told her he dared not jeopardize his very excellent position with Midnight, and she promised protection: she gave her word that he was to be merely an innocent bystander. And at the crucial instant of his indecision, she produced a second hundred-franc note.

Fernand was converted. Much against his better judgment he consented to put himself at her disposal. She then proceeded to speak more specifically and a half hour later the somewhat doubtful M. Boutierre boarded a tram for down-town, there to seek the native clothing shop of a very good friend. Frankly, Fernand regarded it as a very silly proceeding—entirely too much ado about nothing at all. What if this woman's husband cared to visit—for the second time in two nights—an irreproachable dancing establishment? Fernand shrugged. The mental ways of these American women were quite beyond him. Why, the place was so respectable that he frequently took tourist ladies to watch the dancing ... invariably to their disappointment. Native Algerian dances lack considerable of the paprika which seasons the famous French can-can.

Shortly before the dinner hour Fernand returned from the native quarter with a large bundle and a suggestion. He had surveyed the situation from every angle and finally made it quite clear to Sicily that he would take her to the dancing place only on condition that some colored gentleman in the company should accompany them. This, Fernand felt, would leave him in the clear should things go wrong.

Much to his amazement, Sicily did not protest. In fact, she instantly and heartily endorsed the idea and immediately went in search of Opus, whom she found staring down miserably upon the Mediterranean Sea.

Opus demurred. It was one thing to start the ball rolling, and quite another to trot along with it. Sicily used powerful argument, and eventually Opus consented to accompany them to the dance palace.

"But," said he, in qualification of his agreement, "I ain't gwine in. I goes downtown in the taxi with you-all, but when we gits to that place, I waits outside."

"Why?"

"You is gwine be disguised. I ain't. Minute I go in, Cæsar an' Florian reckernizes me ... then the whole scheme goes blooie. Ain't that the truth?"

"Yeh ... seems so."

"'Tis so. You don't wan yo' husban' to know you is there. An' with me waitin' outside, he won't know nothin'."

"Good enough. Now, you keep yo' eyes open this evenin', Brother Randall, an' as soon as Cæsar an' Florian starts downtown you hunt me up."

Dinner that evening was a gala affair. There was unusual jocularity and good nature, most of the laughter emanating from J. Cæsar Clump, Florian Slappey, Sicily Clump, and Opus Randall. The first two stood upon the threshold of a glorious evening, Sicily was determined that any lurking suspicion on the part of her husband should be allayed and Opus was chuckling inwardly at the thought of the revenge he was about to take.

Mr. Randall was, as a matter of fact, in fine fettle. His deep voice boomed across the room. He fairly oozed high spirits. Personally unpopular as he was, the others were laughing with him—all save Director Edwin Boscoe Fizz, whose mild little eyes turned inquiringly upon the fat comedian. Mr. Fizz felt that there must be something sinister behind Opus's abrupt climb from the nadir of unhappiness to the zenith of jocularity.

By the time dinner ended, night had settled over Algiers in a rich, purple mantle. The sky was cloudless and spangled with stars. From the hotel veranda one could look down upon the sprawling city; the wide, tree-sentineled streets of the French quarter, the white houses and mosques in the native section. The panorama was weirdly beautiful in the moonlight.... Cæsar and Florian took their leave and, as long as they remained within earshot, discussed loudly the sort of pictorial material they hoped to discover on the proposed tour of the congested and malodorous water front.

Less than fifteen minutes after their departure, Sicily Clump answered a tap on her door. She took from M. Boutierre a sizable bundle, and talked with him briefly in subdued tones. She closed the door and started to dress.

Less than twenty minutes after that, Mrs. Sicily Clump, feminine star of Midnight productions, surveyed herself in the mirror. The reflection showed an Arab lady of unusual shapeliness, encased in a long, flowing robe of white. The head was completely covered and the lower half of her face was concealed by a white veil. Only the eyes shone forth ... and they were twinkling with a mixture of excitement and anger.

Sicily was well content. "Cæsar woul'n't never know me," she observed to her reflection. "In fack, I ain't so sure I'd reckernize myself."

She tapped on the door as a signal to Fernand, who was waiting in the hall. He entered and exclaimed rapturously, declaring that even an Algerian would mistake her for a native. He then bade her wait, while he inspected the narrow hall leading to the side door.

He returned in a few moments. Sicily took his arm, gathered her Arabian robe about her, and they slipped down the stairway, along the dark hall and thence into a taxi which was waiting outside. Opus was already there. He was enthusiastic. "Golla! Sicily—how moslemmed up you is!"

She smiled. "You is sure that they ain't nobody saw'n us?"

"Positively not. I been standin' heah waitin' an' nobody but the taxi driver ain't been near heah."

Mrs. Clump was satisfied. But neither she nor Opus knew of the loyalty which had aroused the suspicions of Eddie Fizz, nor of the determination with which he had shadowed Opus Randall since dinner.

Eddie had missed no move of Opus since the conclusion of that meal. He felt that something was brewing—and when Mr. Randall posted himself by the side door of the hotel, Mr. Fizz scrooched himself in the shadow of a nearby palm tree—and watched.

What he had just seen appeared to more than justify such pains as he had taken. First there had been Opus standing alone—expectantly. Then the figure of Fernand Boutierre appearing briefly, speaking a few words with the large actor; then beckoning with his right hand. At once, as though it had been waiting for this particular signal, a taxicab rolled out of line, and came to a halt near where Mr. Randall was standing. Opus immediately entered.

Fernand reëntered the hotel. He appeared again a few seconds later accompanied by a modestly veiled Arab woman. This couple joined Opus in the taxi and the vehicle rolled down the driveway toward the gate of the hotel grounds.

Eddie Fizz stepped out of the shadow of the palm tree. The Arab woman puzzled him. Then his mind flashed back over the episodes and apprehensions of the afternoon, and a great light broke upon him. He clapped his hands together and his eyes blazed.

"Ow!" he murmured, "what a dirty trick!"

His legs twinkled upstairs to his room, where he found his wife, Glorious. He spoke jerkily.

"Don' ast me no questions, honey; an' don't say nothin' to nobody no time. But Cæsar Clump is in trouble, an' I has got to git him out."

Mrs. Fizz patted his hand. "Go ahead, Eddie. I ain't gwine to say nothin', an' I won't repeat myse'f."

He was gone as abruptly as he entered. He shot out of the front door like a slender, black arrow and pitched himself into a taxi. He motioned the driver into the Rue Michelet and gestured toward the town below. Wild contortions indicated to his driver that he desired speed and plenty of it.

They started toward the lower town at a breakneck rate, twisting this way and that, coming now within sight of the harbor, and again being hemmed in by high walls surrounding handsome homes. Eventually there appeared far ahead of them another car in the rear of which Eddie could discern the veiled and hooded figure of the woman he believed was Sicily Clump. In his very worst and most painstaking French he explained to the driver that he wished the other taxi trailed—but not too closely.

Their way led through the French quarter; a section of wide streets and imposing shops—very much like any city of France. Then they turned to the left and progress was slower. The streets narrowed, seeming to close in upon them. They rose sharply, buildings lost individuality ... they found themselves in a twisting, tortuous maze of narrow cobblestoned alleys. The native quarter was picturesque, but not prepossessing. Lights glowed palely—intensifying the outer darkness; the streets were crowded with burnoosed Algerians moving with slow indifference, or merely squatting against the stucco walls and gazing with some hostility and considerable distaste toward the taxi. It was a silent section of the city; sinisterly quiet; narrow; treacherous....

Meanwhile in the leading taxi, Sicily Clump was wondering whether she had allowed wifely indignation to vanquish common sense. In broad daylight the native quarter had attracted her. Now, she felt herself oppressed by vague fears. She fancied that she detected criticism in certain native eyes—as though they were asking what a veiled Algerian lady was doing in a taxi-cab with an American negro and a native guide.

Even the bazaars, so intriguing in the daytime, were pale and uninteresting tonight. The ineffective lights glowed weirdly on the white walls ... and there were blocks where there was no light at all; merely scores of ghostlike figures moving soundlessly in the night.

Sicily regretted the trip, but now that she had come this far she had no intention of turning back. Her resentment against her husband was flaming. It was all his fault! What right had he to force her to trail him down here!

"Is we near the place, Fernand?"

"Ver' near quite, madame. Almost are there."

She sighed. "Remember, Fernand—if I should be reckernized we is just gwine say that I was studyin' for a part I'se gwine play in a Arab pitcher, an' that I made you bring me heah."

"Madame is correct. For Arab part she desire to see Arab dance so Fernand is delight' to escort, n'est-ce pas?"

"Oui—oui!" broke in Opus, "we gotcha, Fernand."

Their taxi moved with difficulty along the Rue Babel Oued, a populous street urgent with color, odor and life. In the center, and flanking both sides, were tiny shops displaying odds and ends: nondescript garments, bits of glassware, pieces of filmy silk, ragged and worthless rugs, squares of gaudy, imitation tapestry. Halfway along this narrow, pulsing thoroughfare they came to the corner of the Rue de la Kasba, where the Eglise Notre Dame des Victoires gleamed whitely in the moonlight. An ancient mosque of impressive dimensions and architecture, it affected Sicily Clump with a bad case of creeps.

But even more impressive was the narrow street they swung into after proceeding a few squares upgrade along the Rue de la Kasba. This was indeed the narrowest street they had yet traversed, and just as Sicily was on the point of reconsidering, the taxi stopped and Fernand announced that they had arrived.

The house before which they stood was more impressive than its somewhat squalid neighbors. It was of strictly Moorish design with an ornate entrance. Fernand instructed the taxi driver to keep his headlights burning until after he and Sicily had entered the house. Opus settled himself comfortably in the rear of the car and wished the others much luck.

Obviously Mr. Fernand Boutierre was well known in this particular establishment. The girl at the door smiled a greeting and gazed with casual curiosity at the figure of the veiled woman. Fernand walked ahead and Sicily followed, her heart thumping.

They came into a large room, perhaps twenty feet wide by forty in depth, across the width of which benches had been placed. But the second floor of the building did not form a ceiling to the room. Instead, a balcony circled the hall about sixteen feet above the first story, and leading off from this balcony were several ornately carved doorways.

At the lower end of the hall was the stage: a simple platform raised perhaps two feet from the floor. On this stage were dancers and orchestra. As Sicily and Fernand seated themselves in a dark, obscure corner where they could not be recognized the orchestra sounded off. It performed this feat without undue formality. One portly Algerian lady played deftly on an instrument resembling a flageolet, another scraped earnestly at a sort of fiddle. And the drummer drummed.

The drummer fascinated Mrs. Clump. For one thing, he seemed to be the only man connected with the enterprise; for another, he was a man of striking proportions. Probably six feet in height and correspondingly broad; with a vast chest and huge, muscular arms, he sat cross-legged in the middle of the stage and thumped with the fingers of both hands on the end of a huge kettle covered with tightly-stretched hide. The effect was inspiring: thumpy-thump-thump-thump! Thumpy - thump - thump - thump! Thumpy-thump ... over and over again, marking time for the flageolet and fiddle.

The drummer seemed disinterested. His black eyes were unseeing, his dark-complexioned face inscrutable. He did not even look around when a young Arab lady, introduced in French as an Ouled Nail dancer from Biskra, arose and commenced to strut her stuff.

The dance, as such, was vastly disappointing, even to Sicily. This particular young woman was as fully dressed as her dozen sister performers who sat stolidly on the floor of the stage awaiting their turn. She wore an ornate blouse, baggy trousers, a few beads and a sort of veil. As she moved, the others clapped languidly, keeping time to the thumping of the gargantuan drummer.

The dancer moved slowly and indifferently. If there was any intricacy in the steps, Sicily could not detect it. To her untutored eyes the lady seemed to be performing about one-quarter of a desultory daily dozen. She walked up and down the stage a few times, smiled, bowed—and seated herself. At which signal another lady—equally bored and languid—arose.

But now Sicily turned her gaze from the stage, and her eyes came to rest on the figures of her truant husband and his friend.

It was obvious that J. Cæsar Clump and Florian Slappey were enjoying themselves hugely. They were sitting straight up in their chairs paying rapt attention to the modest undulations of the dancer then holding the boards. Once or twice they broke into spontaneous applause ... and it was then that Mrs. Sicily Clump commenced to become angry in earnest.

She eyed them balefully through her veil. Once Cæsar looked straight at her. For an instant she feared detection, but he turned away disinterestedly. What mattered it to him that an Arab woman desired to see the dancers?

Two or three more numbers were performed, the giant thumper thumping steadily. Then Sicily saw her husband and Florian rise. They beckoned to the overlarge and overdark woman who seemed to be the proprietress and there ensued a difficult but evidently satisfactory conversation in French. Florian and Cæsar started for the door.

Sicily half rose from her seat, intending to confront her husband. But just as she would have started forward, Cæsar turned back toward the stage. The smile which he flung at the girls seemed to include them all, and he waved a cheery hand toward the fat duenna.

"So long, girls," called Cæsar gaily. "See you-all a li'l later!"

Sicily sank back in fury. So he was coming back later, was he? She was quivering with righteous wrath as she watched them disappear through the front door. Once they had gone she swung violently on her guide.

"Fernand," she hissed, "you heard my husban' say just now he was comin' back, didn't you?"

"Oui, madame."

"Well, I crave to have you take me up yonder on the balcony. Then when him an' that wuthless Florian Slappey return back heah, I can watch what they does, an' they won't see me."

Fernand shrugged. He was under orders and receiving excellent pay. If a wife chose to act this way... He escorted Sicily up the twisting stairway leading to the balcony. Once there, Mrs. Clump took matters in her own hands.

She arranged two chairs where she and the guide might sit and gaze down onto the first floor without themselves being observed. To make assurance doubly sure, she borrowed an ornate Moorish screen from an adjoining room and placed this in front of the chairs. Then, firm-lipped and bright-eyed, she settled herself to wait until such time as Julius Cæsar Clump paid his return visit.

Meanwhile, another chapter in the drama was being enacted in the terrifyingly dark side street on which the dance house was located.

Mr. Edwin Boscoe Fizz was loyally on the job.

The task of trailing Sicily's taxi had not been simple, but eventually Eddie's chauffeur parked a block away from the spot where the other taxi was standing. Eddie commanded the man to extinguish his lights. Then the little director stepped to the ground and pussyfooted up the alley toward the waiting car.

He was unobserved. The Stygian gloom of the alley afforded excellent protection and he came quite close to Sicily's car. There, in the glow of a light over the doorway, he saw the figure of the large and smug Opus Randall perched comfortably in a corner, a large cigar in his teeth.

Eddie stood motionless, observing Opus—and thinking. Sicily and Fernand were inside, he knew. If Cæsar was already there, then the rescue was too late. If not ... Eddie took up his place in the shadows of a building and waited, prepared to intercept Cæsar in case he had not already arrived.

The door of the big Moorish house opened and in the pale yellow light of the entry, two masculine figures stood revealed. At the same instant a bit of melancholy music spurted into the street: the thump of drum and wail of derbuka. Eddie frowned in puzzlement. Sicily was inside, and Cæsar was leaving. Obviously he had not been confronted by the irate wife.

Cæsar and Florian started down the street. Opus Randall made himself as inconspicuous as possible. And Eddie Fizz—hestitating to accost his friends in full view of Opus—slunk along in the shadows until they turned a corner. He accelerated his pace and whistled softly. They turned in surprise.

"Well, if it ain't ol' Eddie Fizz! Coul'n't stan' the gaff! Dawg-gone yo' ol' hide——"

"Cease!" commanded the mild little man. "Cæsar—you is up to yo' neck in trouble."

Mr. Clump chuckled. "Boy! you says words but they don't convey no inflammation. I asks you, How come?"

Eddie stepped close. "Was there a Arab lady sittin' in the dance place back yonder?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well," snapped Eddie, "there wasn't!"

"Huh? Be yo' age, boy. I seen the Arab lady——"

"You didn't do no such of a thing. The lady you seen which you thought was Arab, was Sicily Clump!"

There was an instant of hushed and bleak terror. Then doubt gripped the husbandly heart of Mr. Clump and questions cascaded from his lips. Briefly and graphically Eddie explained the situation and the sinister role in which Opus had cast himself. The eyes of Mr. Clump blazed with homicidal fury and he suggested that they immediately repair to the alley and start the evening right by completely exterminating Mr. Randall—a suggestion which Florian enthusiastically seconded.

Eddie restrained them. "When time comes fo' beatin' up that no-good ol' buzzard," he said, "I'se gwine he'p, an' he'p a-plenty. Any man which would do what he has done ain't wuth plantin' lilies on. But meanwhile, Cæsar, you got mo' impawtant things to consider. In the fust place, you got to conwince Sicily that you ain't gallivantin'."

"Hmph!" mourned Clump, "is that all?"

"'Tain't hard! Where yo' brains is at, feller? Now listen: Sicily seen you in there an' you was behavin' proper. You says yo'se'f that you tol' the lady you-all was comin' back. Undoubtlessly, Sicily is waitin' fo' you to do same. All right: You an' Florian goes back an' I goes with you. You go in an' talk loud about how bored you is an' how you wish you was home with yo' wife. An' you makes loud speechments about you got to go on down to the water front an' git material. Sicily heahs all that, an' she don't know you know she's there an' right away she sees she's done you injustice an' gits sorry. Maybe she don't even leave you know she is there, but goes back to the hotel instead. Then you comes in about an hour fum now an' goes right to her an' says, 'Honey, I an' Florian had to go back to that dance place fo' a few minutes, but it was awful.' That puts you all clear and makes things happy."

Director J. Cæsar Clump was staring pop-eyed at his friend.

"Eddie," he declared solemnly, "you ain't no man! You is simply a genius!"

The trio marked time for perhaps ten minutes. Then, filled with high purpose, they returned to the dance house. Clump rapped on the door and they were admitted. They moved through the ill-lighted hallway into the large room. At sight of them the music of drum and flageolet and derbuka immediately commenced and one of the Algerian ladies rose and commenced to undulate.

Wearing masks of innocence, the three gentlemen strode down the aisle. Cæsar surveyed the room out of the corners of his eyes. Then he stopped short and whispered uncertainly to Eddie Fizz.

"Eddie—where Sicily is at?"

From her post of vantage on the balcony, Mrs. Clump saw the three men glance affrightedly about the hall. But she did not hear the conversation.

"I dunno, Cæsar."

"She coul'n't of gone out, could she?"

"No. Nobody come out of heah, an' besides, wasn't Opus still sittin' outside in his taxi?"

"Then what——"

Florian Slappey had been gazing about with increasing fright. He clutched Mr. Clump's arm. "Cæsar—s'pose they 'scovered she wasn't no Arab lady an' done somethin' terrible to her?"

Genuine terror smote Mr. Clump. It was one thing for him to come down with his friend and enjoy a bit of dancing—and quite another to have his wife abducted.

And so—in this hour of danger—Mr. Clump became a very grim and determined man. He was convinced that Sicily was somewhere in the house, and he determined to know where—and to know promptly. His manner as he advanced to the stage was surcharged with hostility which those on the stage sensed.

Mr. Clump and his associates found themselves in a quandary. No one in the place could speak a word of English, and he knew practically no French. But a mere discrepancy in language could not affect his determination to save the fair Sicily from whatever trouble might have befallen her.

"Madame," he rasped, "ou est mon femme?"

The stout woman shook her head. On the balcony Sicily inquired of Fernand what Cæsar had said.

"I cannot comprehend way up here," answered M. Boutierre. "Also I do not know whether Mr. Clump speaks the French or the English."

"That's French," snapped Sicily.

Fernand shrugged. "I do not say. To me it sounds like English."

Cæsar was trying again. His voice barely carried to the balcony. "Mon femme est ici," he asserted with decidedly American accent. "Je demander ou est elle a!"

The stout lady gestured hopelessly. Sicily again inquired of her guide what Cæsar was saying.

"I do not know, madame. The words they may be French but the sound is English and the meaning is absent."

Cæsar turned helplessly to Florian Slappey.

"You is smart, Florian—you try. An' tell her us ain't to be fooled with."

Mr. Slappey spoke without hesitation. "Femme!" he announced. "Très bon femme! Vous cacher ou? Vous respondez or we est going to staht somethin'. Comprez?"

The woman did not comprez. Neither did the bewildered Fernand on the balcony. "If they would not talk French!" he wailed. "I can speak French and therefore I cannot understand what they say."

Cæsar was glaring hostilely at the proprietress. To his way of thinking, both he and Mr. Slappey had spoken clearly and perfectly in French. It was inconceivable that they should not be readily understood. Therefore he believed that her look of blankness was affected to trick him.

Mr. Clump tried again. He raised his fists and shook them in the startled face of the fat Algerian lady. French verbs and nouns and adjectives tumbled all over the room. Nobody understood what he was saying, but it was obvious that he was exceedingly wrathy and on the verge of precipitating trouble.

From the back of the stage the large gentleman uncoiled himself and ostentatiously placed his drum on the floor. Standing, he seemed even more formidable than when seated. His more-than-two-hundred pounds of sinew moved forward and hovered over the irate Cæsar.

He spoke in his native tongue. The words fell softly as snowflakes, but the eyes were level and cold. Ordinarily, the three colored gentlemen from Birmingham would have retreated in more or less good order, but now—confronted by the possibility of genuine danger to Sicily—no such thought entered their heads. Cæsar returned stare for stare.

"You long-drawed-out cracklin'!" he observed scathingly. "Thinkin' you can scare us!"

He stepped away and motioned the others into a conference. His voice dropped to a whisper.

"They is prob'ly holdin' Sicily prisoner," he announced. "I'se gwine find her, an' it'll take the whole Algiers army to stop me—let alone that tall boy. Is you-all with me, or does you crave to beat it befo' the action stahts?"

Florian hitched his belt together. "Reckon if you is boun' to git kilt, you could use a li'l comp'ny."

Mr. Fizz was equally ready, but his brain continued to function. "Befo' the row commences," he suggested, "le's go drag Opus Randall in heah. He's got plenty beef an' we can use him."

Cæsar grimaced. "He won't fight."

"Then," suggested Eddie calmly, "le's manslaughter him out yonder."

Still whispering, they moved into the alley. From the balcony Sicily and Fernand saw them go—apparently permanently. Sicily rose.

"Le's travel back to the hotel, Fernand."

M. Boutierre was quite willing. He started toward the stairway. Mrs. Clump restrained him.

"Ain't there another way out? My husban' will mos' likely be hangin' around that alley an' I don't crave fo' him to see me."

Fernand admitted that there was another exit, and through this he escorted Sicily from the house. But while they were reaching their decision and making their departure, much was happening in the alley.

The door of the taxi was flung violently open and the terrified Mr. Randall found himself staring into the frigid eyes of Director J. Cæsar Clump. Over Mr. Clump's shoulder he could glimpse the hostile countenances of Florian Slappey and Eddie Fizz. Cæsar spoke.

"Git out of that car, wuthless."

"Whaffo?"

"'Cause you stahted all this. It was you tol' Sicily where I was gwine be at tonight. If you hadn't of been suggestive, she never would of come. Now they has kidnapped her an' is holdin' her prisoner. Us four goes in an' commits a rescue."

Opus alighted, but exhibited marked reluctance. "I—I ain't yearnin' fo' no trouble."

"Boy! yo' yearns don't afflict me none whatsoever. You is in the middle of a whole mess of trouble right now. Inside that house there's li'ble to be a rough-house, an' you does yo' share. Otherwise us th'ee steps on you right heah an' now an' makes you into a pancake."

Opus considered flight and abandoned the idea. He stared at the three men and saw that they were determined and desperate. He tried to appear cheerful. "Well, if you really needs my he'p..."

"Come along. Keep yo' mouf an' yo' fists shut!"

They barged through the front door. The dancing girls were cowering on the stage. The proprietress of the place rushed forward, chattering hysterically in French. And immediately behind her towered the warlike figure of the monster drummer. Cæsar acted as spokesman.

"You got mon femme en haute somewhere," he grated. "Us is gwine fetch her down. An' if this big hunk of cheese here tries to stop me, I'll——"

The Algerian gentleman and lady understood nothing of the situation. They did not connect the dark-skinned tourists with the veiled woman who had recently visited the place. All they could see was that these four men were obviously looking for trouble. Therefore the large man placed himself squarely across the path of J. Cæsar Clump.

To Mr. Clump this was a sinister maneuver. His voice came harshly.

"Out of my way, big boy! I'se gwine en haute——"

He put his foot on the first step. Iron fingers closed about his arm and he was jerked roughly aside.

Cæsar struck. He struck straight and hard and his fist spanked against the face of the Algerian. That individual let loose a bellow of rage and astonishment and leaped toward Mr. Clump.

Florian Slappey swung into action. Swiftly and with genuine skill, he executed a flying tackle. Algerian and Birminghamite struck the floor together. At the same instant two flailing figures landed on top of the native. Cæsar and Eddie were small but enthusiastic.

It was then that the fight really started. The girls were shrieking. The fat proprietress flew howling into the street. On the floor four figures milled viciously.

Three against one, but the three were small and the one was a giant. Time after time he staggered to his feet with one or two men hanging to his arms and another punching viciously at his face. And in the background stood the terrified Opus Randall, too cowed to fight and entirely too scared to run. Once, from the melee, came Florian's voice——

"Git in heah, Opus. Us needs you!"

And Opus's honest answer. "I—I'se scared, Florian. You-all is doin' fine without me."

The voice of Mr. Fizz came back, expressing his opinion of Mr. Randall. Mr. Fizz was doing himself proud. He and his two friends were taking a fine beating, but they were inflicting more than a bit of punishment at the same time. They were now up, now down; benches and tables were knocked over; the native was roaring with rage ... the three slender Birmingham negroes fought silently and desperately.

The tide of battle ebbed and flowed. It was an epic encounter; numbers against might—a trio of Lilliputians at grips with a dark-skinned Gulliver. And just when the battle was at its fiercest, when it was anybody's victory—or nobody's—the door was flung open and a weeping proprietress entered in the wake of two businesslike gendarmes.

The voice of authority rang through the room. The two efficient figures surged into the middle of the battle and dragged the contestants apart. Then words began to fly.

The four men presented a sorry spectacle. Cæsar, Florian and Eddie were clad in rags, their faces resembled a boy's nightmare of a trip through an abattoir. The Algerian was scarcely any better. His clothing, too, was torn; his face pounded out of shape and his whole body bruised. Only Opus Randall showed no scars of battle ... and even in their rage Florian and Eddie found time to express their opinion of him.

The woman and the drummer explained that they knew no reason for the disturbance. J. Cæsar struggled in his best French to explain that his wife was being held prisoner in the house. But they could not understand him, and so—struggling and protesting—he and Eddie and Florian and Opus ... the latter screaming his innocence ... were dragged to the police station.

It was a sadly bedraggled trio which confronted the sergeant at headquarters. But fortunately an interpreter was on duty and through him Cæsar explained what it was all about. The interpreter had heard of the movie company and had no reason to doubt the story told, although he made it quite clear that the Americans were laboring under a misapprehension. The house, he affirmed, was eminently respectable and safe.

The quartet was dismissed from custody. Then the interpreter and a gendarme went with them to the dancing establishment. They searched the place and when the interpreter explained whom they were seeking, the fat woman told them she had long since departed. Cæsar assuaged her grief with two one-hundred franc notes and profound apologies. Then he caused the interpreter to question her. The result was somewhat startling.

"She say," explained the interpreter, "that the lady who was here is Arab lady and not no American."

Florian, Cæsar and Eddie exchanged significant glances. Opus caught their meaning and hastened to speak.

"That was Sicily," he announced. "I'se sure of it."

"How come you is so sure?"

Mr. Randall found himself between the devil and the deep sea. "I just got a hunch," he affirmed. "I don't know nothin' fo' certain, but I'se positive anyhow."

They took Opus with them into the alley and bundled him into the taxi. The machine bumped and rolled down the narrow, ill-lighted, cobblestoned thoroughfare and the three participants in the recent battle groaned with each agonizing jerk of the antiquated machine.

Opus cowered in the corner. He felt that all was not as it should be. Instinct informed him that the end was not yet, and that he had erred in attempting to wreak revenge on Cæsar.

During the ride through the French quarter and thence toward the upper reaches of the city where their hotel was located, the three battlers spoke little and groaned much, but such words as dropped from their lips were fraught with unpleasant promise for Mr. Randall.

Eventually they swung in through the big iron gates, rolled under the trees that lined the hotel garden and came to a stop before the front door.

The trio of battered figures dragged themselves up the steps, completely surrounding the harried Opus. They moved into the lobby—where a picture of utter serenity presented itself.

Seated in an easy-chair, immersed in a London magazine, was Sicily Clump. She was calm and quiet and unruffled as she swept the newcomers with a curious gaze.

Cæsar started forward, his tone indicative of relief.

"Honeybunch!" he exulted, "you is safe!"

"What you mean, Cæsar? Safe?"

"Nothin' happened to you, did it?"

A slow smile creased Sicily's lips. She had determined to torture her husband with uncertainty.

"How come anythin' should occur to me, Mistuh Clump?"

Cæsar frowned. "Has you been out anywhere?"

And Sicily, mistress of the situation, shook her head.

"Goodness, no! I ain't been out of this hotel all evenin'."

A solemn and terrible hush fell upon the trio of slim young men who had lately been locked in deadly combat with a large and muscular drum-beater.

With one accord they turned and inspected the cringing Opus Randall. He started to speak, but before the words came, the others acted.

They acted efficiently, positively and immediately. Two arms hooked into Opus's and he found himself propelled into the darkness of the hotel gardens. An awful thought occurred to him—there swept over him the knowledge that no matter what developed he was in a horrid predicament.

They escorted him outside and surrounded him. Then, with ghastly ostentation, Cæsar, Eddie and Florian shed their torn coats and rolled up their sleeves.

Their eyes blazed with a fine and righteous light.

"Us is about to pufform a sweet duty," remarked Mr. Slappey casually.

Mr. Clump's voice carried slightly more bitterness. "An' all on account of this feller," he grated. "It was bad enough when us thought we was rescuin' Sicily. But to find out she never lef' this hotel, an' that we got beat up over some woman we don't even know..."

Opus stared wild-eyed from one to the other. He felt that it were better that the truth be known—far better than that they should think he had invented the entire story.

He knew he must convince them that Sicily had actually left the hotel to visit the dancing establishment.

His eye lighted on the bruised figure of Director Edwin Boscoe Fizz. Mr. Fizz could prove his case....

"Eddie!" he wailed, "you know good an' well Sicily lef' this hotel tonight. You seen her go! Please, suh, tell these fellers that you know I is speakin' the truth."

Mr. Fizz caressed his biceps. Terror still sat largely upon him and he burned with indignation. The others moved closer. It became terribly apparent to Mr. Randall that his only hope for mercy lay with Mr. Fizz. If Eddie chose to testify that he spoke the truth about Sicily's absence ...

"Eddie! Please... Don't you remember seein' Sicily Clump leave the hotel in the taxi?"

Eddie stared thoughtfully.

Then he doubled his fists and nodded to Cæsar and Florian.

He addressed the cringing Mr. Randall—and his words shattered that gentleman's last forlorn hope.

"When that big drummer walloped me on the jaw," announced Mr. Fizz, "he knocked my memory plumb loose!"

THE SIXTH McNALLY

By Montague Glass

MONTAGUE GLASS

I think it is not generally known that Montague (Marsden) Glass was born in Manchester, England, on July 23, 1877, and came to America at the age of thirteen. Once here, he was educated at the College of the City of New York and New York University, and in a dozen more years or so was famous as the author of the Potash and Perlmutter stories. Perhaps no fictional characters of our generation have enjoyed so extensive a popularity.

"The Sixth McNally" is from Mr. Glass's book, Y' Understand.

THE SIXTH McNALLY[1]

[1] Copyright, 1925, by Doubleday, Page & Company. Copyright, 1921, by International Publications, Inc.

"Yes, Mr. Leonard," Gershon Danowitz said as he sat in the office of J.J. Leonard, manager, producer, and personal director of the "Comics of 1913 to 1919," both inclusive—"yes, Mr. Leonard, your poor father olav hasholom, Sam Lippmann, had me down right. 'Danowitz,' he used to say, 'the trouble with you is that you are all heart,' he used to say. 'If some one is in trouble or misfortune,' he used to say, 'you are right there,' he used to say, and certainly he was right."

Mr. Leonard nodded perfunctorily.

"The old man was a big jollier," he said.

"And a wonderful judge from character," Danowitz added, "which when he resigned from the presidency of the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indignant Females, Mr. Leonard, he says to me, 'Danowitz,' he says to me, 'you are my successor,' he says to me, 'and I know how it is with a man like you,' he says. 'You will want to do the whole thing yourself,' he says. 'You will be giving a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there, and the first thing you know, you will be practically supporting that Home out of your own pocket,' he says. 'So don't be afraid to ask my son to get up an annual benefit,' he says, and I says that while it ain't in my nature to ask favors for myself, y'understand, if that was his wish and desire, I says, auch recht, I says, which if Sunday evening February eleventh would be convenient to you, Mr. Leonard, it would be convenient to me."

Mr. Leonard sighed heavily. "This'll be the fifth annual benefit I give for them rotten females," he declared.

"And you could depend on it, Mr. Leonard," Danowitz said, piously, "that your poor father, olav hasholom, which when he was alive was a tzadik if ever there was one, knows about these here benefits you are giving for the Home, and appreciates it."

"Maybe he appreciates that it has cost me on an average, $425.20 for lights, ushers, orchestra, and advertising," Leonard retorted, "not to say nothing about cleaning the theater and a full stage crew at regular union rates. So I am giving you this straight, Mr. Danowitz; next year you've got to get some one else to get up this here benefit, because this is positively the last time I am going to get stung for it."

He lifted the receiver from the telephone. "See if Al Sands of Sands & McNally is out there, and don't let nobody else in till you find who they are first. That was what my instructions was the first day I hired you.... What's that? ... Is that so! I suppose you didn't let in a party a few minutes ago what I thought was Manowitz the costoomer, and it turns out to be somebody else."

As he banged the receiver back on its hook, he fixed Danowitz with a venomous glare. It did not, however, noticeably disturb the expression of benevolence which, as president of the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females, Danowitz habitually wore.

"Well, I guess I would be moving on," the philanthropist remarked, with precisely the same inflection as though he anticipated being pressed to remain for anyhow twenty minutes; "which if there is anything you would like to ring me up about, don't hesitate to trespass on my time."

His manner was graciousness itself as he cuddled Leonard's resisting hand in a warm clasp of farewell, and when he passed out of the room, a less adamant person than Leonard might have been left with the impression that to share in benevolent enterprises of so admirable a character, even to the extent of $425.20, was a privilege and an honor. Leonard, however, did not see it that way, and he was still muttering to himself when Al Sands, the male partner of the old-established team of Sands & McNally, entered the room.

"You ain't got no objections if I bring a couple of sandwiches along the next time, J.J.?" Al said, by way of giving himself what he considered to be a good speech to come on with. "I've been waiting outside since ten o'clock."

"Always clowning, ain't you, Al?" Leonard retorted. "Why don't you get some of that comedy into your performance? Because if you don't get no more laughs in this year's 'Comics' than you did in last year's, I've got to make some different arrangements, that's all. And as for McNally——"

"I know, I know," Sands interrupted. "But I ain't got that McNally no longer. The McNally I've got this year is a wonder."

"That's what you said last year," Leonard declared. "In fact, this'll be the sixth McNally you've had since you and me has been doing business together, Al, and they've been going down steadily. The one you had last year was the worst of the bunch."

"Sure, I know, but that McNally was Irish," Sands explained. "She's the only Irish McNally I ever had, and that's where I made a big mistake. The McNally I've got this year is all right, J. J. She's got a wonderful voice, good dancer, and she's right there in three dialects."

"And on your say-so, unsight unseen, without letting the cat out of the bag or nothing, you want me to give you a contract, I suppose," Leonard said.

"I ain't trying to keep no cat in a bag," Al said. "When do you want me to bring her up here?"

"I don't want you to bring her up here never," Leonard replied. "I'm giving a benefit for a home for females—the one I always give the benefit for, on account of my father once being the president of it, on Sunday night February eleventh—and if they like her, I'll like her."

"You couldn't tell nothing by a benefit audience," Al Sands protested.

"Benefit or no benefit," Leonard declared, "if the people out front pays three dollars apiece for an orchestra seat, y'understand, they ain't going to laugh unless the laugh is there."

He turned to a desk heaped high with manuscripts of plays whose fate had long since been sealed by the circumstance that Leonard produced nothing but his annual revue. He utilized them, nevertheless, in the reception and dismissal of visitors; and by way of informing Al Sands that his visit was at an end Leonard immediately became absorbed in the title page and dramatis personæ of a thick manuscript bound in blue vellum paper. To any other manager, its inordinate length would have made it impossible, because, reckoning that one page of manuscript consumes one minute in its performance, there were eight hours and twenty-five minutes of solid drama contained within its covers; but for J.J. Leonard's purposes, this was, if anything, an advantage.

Thus, at the beginning of the season, when obscure members of the "Comics" Company would summon up sufficient courage to call on Leonard with a request for more salary, the impression they received from discovering their employer in the perusal of so weighty a manuscript was not at all dispelled by the noise with which Leonard closed it and threw it back on his desk. It frequently banged twenty dollars a week off a timid actor's salary, and was therefore Leonard's favorite manuscript.

"I suppose I get anyhow one orchestra rehearsal," Al Sands said, with his hand on the door knob.

"Saturday morning at eleven downstairs," J.J. said, without looking up.

The manuscript was called "Death and Transfiguration" and suggested in its treatment Tolstoy's "Resurrection" with just a hint of "Twin Beds," but for anything Leonard had learned of its contents, it might just as well have been a combination of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Oh, Boy!" All he knew about it was that his father, Sam Lippmann, had brought it into the office and asked him to read it when he found the time; and although as the resolution of the Board of Trustees of the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females had so aptly put it, an all-wise Providence had gathered Sam unto his fathers some three years before, J.J. had still not found the time. Nevertheless, out of respect for his father he continued to believe that he was going to find the time some time or other, and he periodically instructed his secretary to notify the author that his manuscript was under consideration by Mr. Leonard and a decision would be rendered upon it in due course.

These notifications were all sent to Gerald Dane, care of The Fitgood Shirt Company, 22A Washington Place, New York City; and while it may seem a piece of pure coincidence that, half an hour after the incidents above set forth, Gershon Danowitz entered the Washington Place factory of the Fitgood Shirt Company, it may be readily explained upon the score that he was the sole proprietor of it and that Gerald Dane labored there under the shirt-business name of Gershon Danowitz, Jr.

"Well," Gershon, Jr., demanded impatiently before his father had time to remove his hat and coat, "did you ask him about it?"

The proprietor of the Fitgood Shirt Company and President of the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females immediately lost his benevolent manner and became livid with rage.

"What do you mean—did I ask him?" he bellowed. "It ain't enough that I am insulted about the benefit already. I should ask him about your verflüchte Schauspiel yet!"

He tore off his hat and coat and threw them on to a chair.

"Sam Lippmann, that was a friend!" he cried. "I should ought to of been shot before I ever met that old crook, olav hasholom. Throws the whole burden of them fakers of females on my shoulders and then he goes to work and encourages my only son that he should be a play writer yet!"

"Now look here, pop," Gershon, Jr., protested. "There isn't any need to get so excited."

"Isn't there?" Gershon, Sr., began. "Well, let me tell you something, Gershon. Once and for all I want you to get through with this nonsense. You have been fooling away your time here long enough. Either you must got to be a play writer oder a shirt manufacturer, but you couldn't be both, y'understand."

He had been delivering the same ultimatum at intervals of a week or so for more than three years, and it had always been accepted by Gershon, Jr., as incidental to the avocation of dramatist and to be dismissed with some such rejoinder as "Hire a hall!" or even, in less respectful moments, "Tell it to Sweeney." But on this occasion Gershon, Jr., maintained what his father ought to have recognized as an ominous silence; for only the night before, while dining on West Houston Street, somebody at the next table had audibly informed a female companion that the feller with the spectacles and that leather sample case—don't look now—was the one that wrote all them shows for them now Washington Square actors. And although the female companion was extremely rustic in her appearance and said, "What! That homely looking feller with the long hair?" the incident had fired his imagination, nevertheless.

"Because when a young feller gets to be already twenty-six years old, he ain't a child no longer," Gershon, Sr., continued, his philanthropic manner beginning to reassert itself. He intended it to be a heart-to-heart conversation such as any president of any home might hold with a thoughtless son in whom there wasn't, so to speak, a button's worth of harm, and to that end settled himself comfortably in the revolving chair at his office desk; but Gershon, Jr., refused to perform in the role assigned to him.

"I know I ain't," he said with a firmness that ought to have warned Gershon, Sr.

"You bet your life you ain't," Gershon, Sr., went on, just as though he were not addressing a dramatist who only the night before had been mistaken for the author of the entire Washington Square Players repertoire. "And when a feller gets to be twenty-six years old in any business—particularly the shirt business——"

"To hell with the shirt business!" Gershon, Jr., exclaimed.

If a spectator had arisen in the body of the Supreme Court at Washington and said the same thing about the Constitution of the United States the combined bench and bar there present could have been no more shocked than Gershon, Sr., was. For at least a minute he sat in his office chair unable to move, unable even to enunciate; but at last he tottered to his feet.

"Go on," he said, "out of here, before I kick you out."

"You wouldn't kick anybody out," Gershon, Jr., retorted. "For three years now I've sat and listened to you giving advice, and I ain't going to stand for it any longer."

"And for how many years did he sit and listen to you cutting teeth and having colic?" inquired a stout, florid gentleman in a fur overcoat. He had entered the office unnoticed at the very moment of Gershon, Jr.'s sacrilegious outbreak against the shirt industry, and although shirts were only one department of the Gembitz-Jones Mercantile Company's jobbing business in Los Angeles, Marcus Gembitz was hardly less shocked than Gershon, Sr., himself. "Ain't you ashamed to talk that way to your father?"

He might just as well have asked Trotzky and Lenin if they weren't ashamed to speak disrespectfully about such decent, estimable people as the Russian bourgeoisie, for in the lexicon of a Greenwich Village dramatist, derived in great measure from the prefaces to the published plays of Bernard Shaw, there are no such words as respect for parents. In fact, even in that crucial moment—the turning point of a career, as it were—when Gershon, Jr., was putting on his hat and coat preparatory to abandoning the shirt business forever, he could not help snorting contemptuously at such a hopelessly old-fashioned remark.

"Here!" Gershon, Sr., demanded. "Where are you going?"

For answer Gershon, Jr., crushed his hat over his forehead. It was a black, soft hat—essentially a dramatist's hat and not a shirt-manufacturer's hat. And then looking around the office, much as the Prisoner of Chillon must have looked around his dungeon at the moment of liberation—if he ever was liberated—he opened the door, and the next moment it closed behind him with a bang. Indeed, had it closed with a clang instead of a bang, the effect could not have been more dramatic.

"Nu, Danowitz," Marcus Gembitz said at last, "don't worry your head. He'll come back."

"I don't want him to come back," Gershon, Sr., said. "He's made his bed. Now he could rot in it for all I care."

Gembitz waved his hands in deprecation of such harshness.

"Say!" he said. "You'll get over that feeling." He patted Danowitz's shoulder consolingly. "After all," he continued, "we all have trouble with our children and it comes out all right."

"With children maybe, but with an only child, Mr. Gembitz, that's something else again," Danowitz said. His head nodded slowly as he began to realize the bereavement he had suffered.

"Mind you," he went on, "I begged his mother she shouldn't send him to college, because if you have two sons and one of them goes to college, supposing something happens to you, Gott soll hüten, you've anyhow one left to look after the business, but if you've got only one son and him a college gradgewate, y'understand, what is it? Am I right or wrong?"

"Couldn't a college gradgewate also run a business?" Gembitz inquired.

"In some business, maybe," Danowitz said. "But in a business where there is such a competition like the shirt business, Mr. Gembitz, such business you've got to learn it from the bottom up, whereas a college gradgewate learns a business from the top down, and while some college gradgewates reaches the bottom quicker as others, y'understand, when such a college gradgewate is also a play writer, before he has learned even the top of the business, understand me, the bottom has dropped out of it."

"Even so," Gembitz said, "you've got to make allowances for your boy."

"I would never forgive him—never," Danowitz said emphatically.

"Say!" Gembitz protested. "I would make you a bet right now that in less than two weeks the young feller would be back on the job and you would never think nothing had happened at all. Forgiving children is the easiest thing fathers could do. Why, you take me, for instance, Danowitz, and the troubles which you got with your boy ain't already a marker to what I got with my daughter, which I told my wife how it would come out if she lets her take vocal.

"'Learn her first to make a decent cup of coffee,' I says to my wife, 'or that she should cook chotzig a potato,' I says.

"But you know how it is in Los Angeles, Danowitz. Everybody figures that if their daughter ain't got no other talent, she looks like Mary Pickford; and my wife has settled in her mind that my Sadie has only got to take for twelve hundred dollars singing lessons to be a second Geraldine Patti, y'understand. Right now she is in Chicago staying with her aunt and taking vocal from an Italiener, which he has got the nerve to charge more for one office call than a first-class A-number-one stomach specialist."

"Well, that's the way it goes," Gershon, Sr., declared, with a tremulous sigh. "I've got a good business and nobody to leave it to but the boy, and nothing would do but that he must be a play writer doch. You have got an only daughter which you are well fixed enough that she could have a good husband and a good home, and I suppose the first thing you know, you would be firing her out of the house for getting a job singing in a moving-picture theayter or something."

"Say!" Gembitz remarked. "The girl is very far from reaching that point, y'understand, but if she did, understand me, firing her out of the house would be the furthest from my thoughts. Hafter all, Danowitz, children has got their rights as well as parents, and if your son or my daughter thinks they've got openings above the shirt business or the home, y'understand, the thing to do is to look at the matter from philosophy."

Once more he patted Danowitz's shoulder.

"Now come, Danowitz," he said, "this here business about your Gershon is going to blow over, and in the meantime I would like to see what you've got in some popular-price percales. My reservations for Los Angeles is all taken for tomorrow, and I ain't got no time to lose."

For more than an hour Gershon, Sr., displayed his spring line of shirts, and in spite of his broken-hearted condition succeeded in procuring from Gembitz a most satisfactory order at prices slightly above the market, since Gembitz could not find it within his ordinarily businesslike nature to add to Danowitz's troubles by standing out for bedrock figures. In fact, once or twice Gembitz suspected that Danowitz was taking advantage of a customer's kindness of heart by sandwiching rather extravagant quotations between two outbursts of emotion at his son's ungrateful behavior. But Gembitz's sympathy for Danowitz, as of one father for another, outweighed the trade antagonism which as a jobber he would normally have felt toward a manufacturer, and he allowed Danowitz to get away with a couple of items which upon mature reflection he considered to be little short of grand larceny. Nevertheless, after checking up the order and correcting a few mistakes which Danowitz in his grief had made in his own favor, the two parents shook hands warmly.

"You will see, Danowitz," Gembitz declared, "that your boy will be back here in a few days, and you and him will be just as good friends as ever."

"Him with me, maybe," Danowitz said, "but not me with him."

"Ach! That's nonsense!" Gembitz exclaimed. He was about to enlarge upon the amount of forgiveness which a parent ought to display to an erring child, when the telephone bell rang.

"Excuse me," Danowitz said, taking the receiver from the hook. "Hello.... Yes, this is the Fitgood Shirt Company. Hello.... Mister Who? ... Yes, he's right here."

He turned to Gembitz.

"For you, Mr. Gembitz," he said.

"For me?" Gembitz cried. "Why, nobody knows I'm here, excepting I told the twentieth-floor clerk at the hotel she should ring me up here in case a package didn't come from my tailor, but the package came just as I left. I wonder who it would be?"

"Might if you answered the phone, maybe you would find out," Danowitz suggested.

"Give it to me," Gembitz said. "Hello.... Yes, this is Mr. Gembitz.... You are the twentieth-floor clerk, yes? ... You got a what? ... What kind of wire? ... A telegram? ... Sure, go ahead and open it."

He smiled at Danowitz.

"Ain't it funny, when you get a telegram, you always think sickness or death and it turns out to be nothing," he said. "Probably my partner is—— Oh, hello! ... Yes, I'm listening.... It's from Chicago.... Yes, I understand—Chicago.... Mrs. Clarence Fimpel. That's my wife's sister.... Yes, go ahead.... What? ... Shema Beni! What do you think of that?"

He hung up the receiver and stared at Danowitz while his florid complexion grew suddenly purple.

"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz exclaimed. "What's the matter? Is somebody sick or something?"

Gembitz flipped his right hand in a gesture of despair.

"Worser," he said. "My Sadie has run away to be an actress."

"An actress?" Danowitz repeated.

"The telegram says, 'Sadie in New York, threatens go on stage, stop her,' signed Mrs. Clarence Fimpel," Gembitz said. "And she don't even give the telephone number in New York where Sadie threatens to go on the stage."

"Don't it say letter follows?" Danowitz asked. "Most telegrams do, and usually you couldn't tell nothing about it till the letter arrives."

"I don't care if fifty letters follows," Gembitz declared, striking the desk with his clenched fist. "If the girl wants to go on the stage, she can go."

He rose from the chair on which he was sitting and looked as though he were about to raise both hands in the classic gesture that used to accompany all parental curses with or without a snowstorm off stage.

"But if she does," he said, "she'll never see a penny of my money—not one penny."

He sank back into his chair and covered his eyes with his right hand.

"A shame and a disgrace!" he muttered. "My only daughter to be an actress!"

Danowitz shrugged his shoulders.

"Say!" he said. "Lots of girls from good families has threatened to go on the stage and even went. Hafter all, what is so terrible that your daughter should be an actress, Mr. Gembitz? An actress could behave herself the same like anybody else and very often does."

"She should never come near my house again," Gembitz said with a groan.

"Schmooes!" Danowitz exclaimed. "If the girl makes a hit on the stage, you will be proud of her the same like any other father."

He patted Gembitz's back reassuringly, but Gembitz only shook his head.

"You don't know me, Danowitz. When I make up my mind, I make up my mind," he concluded. "And I would never forgive her—never."

The passage of a camel through the eye of a needle or of a rich man into Heaven is a relatively easy matter compared with the admission of an aspiring playwright to the presence of a manager, and when Gershon Danowitz, Jr., called at the office of J.J. Leonard on the following Saturday morning, it was only because Leonard failed to notice the Jr. on Gershon's visiting card that he succeeded in getting an audience.

"Tell that faker to come in here," Leonard said to the office boy who brought it in. "I want to talk to him."

He almost bit his cigar in two as he framed in sufficiently strong language just how he was going to break to the president of the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indigent Females that if one-half of the increased expenses of running off the benefit were not forthcoming from the treasury of the Home, there wasn't going to be any benefit at all.

"Now, looky here, Danowitz," he began, as Gershon, Jr., entered, and then broke off suddenly when he discovered that his visitor was not the person he supposed him to be. "Say! Who let you in here?" he bellowed.

It is hardly necessary to say that the question was embroidered with profanity selected at random from a particularly rich vocabulary, and for a moment Gershon, Jr., forgot that he was no longer the manager of a prosperous shirt business.

"Who do you think you're talking to—a shipping clerk?" he asked. "I sent in my card, and your boy told me to come in."

Leonard picked up the card and looked at it again.

"Oh, you're the old man's son," he said.

"I'm not any man's son," Gershon replied. "I'm here on my own account."

It was at this juncture that he saw his play on Leonard's desk.

"I called to see you about this," he said. Forthwith the habits of five years spent in the shirt business began to assert themselves. What he held in his hand seemed to him not a manuscript but a shirt, a high-grade shirt—in fact, an entire line of high-grade shirts—and he addressed himself to the task of selling it to Leonard, much as if Leonard had been a retailer with a chain of haberdashery stores and hence a prospective customer of large buying capacity. It was an entirely novel experience for the theatrical manager. He had met brash playwrights, shy playwrights, intellectual playwrights, and playwrights who were acquainted with every device of the theater since the days of Corneille and Racine, but a playwright who was also a first-class, cracker jack, A-number-one shirt salesman was something he had never been called upon to cope with, and he was soon completely at Gershon's mercy.

For more than an hour his only contributions to the dialogue were, "But, say!" or "Now, listen here," all of which Gershon treated as mere punctuation. In disposing of this one manuscript, he was using enough salesmanship to sell shirts in gross lots, and he talked on and on to such good purpose that by twelve o'clock, not only had he caused Leonard to accept in writing "Death and Transfiguration," a play in three acts and a prologue by Gerald Dane, but they had also discussed its forthcoming production to the extent of changing its title to "Early to Bed," merging the prologue into the first act and cutting between the laughs so as to bring its acting time well within the conventional period of one hundred and thirty minutes.

"And now," Gershon, Jr., said, shortly before half-past twelve, "we'll go out and have a bit of lunch."

Leonard looked at his watch and impiously uttered a pious exclamation.

"I've got a rehearsal downstairs," he said.

"All right, I'll go with you," Gershon remarked, and a few minutes later Leonard vaguely wondered why he was not surprised to find himself seated side by side with Gershon, Jr., in one of the last rows on the ground floor of the Cabot Theater. An orchestra of less than ten musicians—using the term in its occupational and not its artistic meaning—was playing an accompaniment to a song in which the word "Dixie" recurred at intervals. So far as it affected Gershon, however, it might just as well have been Bosnia or Herzegovina, for he was concerned not with the song but the singer. He clutched Leonard's arm convulsively.

"Who's the lady?" he asked in a shrill whisper.

"What lady?" Leonard asked in return. "Lady" was a word he reserved for members of the audience. For performers, whether as principals or chorus women, he possessed a fund of synonyms which had never been included in any thesaurus. "Oh, her!" he exclaimed, when he realized that he was sitting next to a layman. "She's one of them—now—McNallys."

"Yes?" Gershon said. He had, of course, heard of such theatrical families as the Drews, the Barrymores, and even the Eight Brothers Byrne, but, even though he was not prepared to admit it, he had never heard of the McNally family.

"Which one is she?" he asked, as though he knew all the others.

"She's the fifth or the sixth," Leonard said. "I forget which."

"The sixth," a voice said from the seat back of them, "and the best of the bunch, J.J."

"But she can't sing for nuts, Al," Leonard replied, without looking around.

"Of course, I'm no judge of singing," Gershon began, by way of protest, but he immediately became silent at a warning nudge from Leonard.

"She ain't got no more voice than I have," Leonard said.

"Say!" Al Sands retorted. "She can put over a song without singing a note. All she's got to do is to stand there, and it's across. Am I right or wrong?"

Leonard clutched Gershon's knee, but this additional warning was entirely unnecessary. Six years of buying and selling made him realize at once that even though Miss McNally combined all the more attractive features of Maxine Elliott, Billie Burke, and Mrs. Mildred Harris Chaplin, these were commodities just as much subject to bargain and sale in the theater as merchandise is in the dry-goods district.

"She's a great performer," Al Sands added, emphatically.

Leonard turned around in his seat.

"What am I—a new beginner?" he asked. "Have I been putting on for seven years now a show where I got to play to twenty-two thousand to break even, without being my own judge of what's good and what ain't?"

These figures, representing the gross weekly receipts of the "Comics," and the profanity with which they were quoted, made such an impression on Al Sands that he was silent for at least thirty seconds.

"She's a big find," he said at last.

"She's a rank amateur," Leonard retorted. "I bet she ain't left her home a month already."

"Well, what of it?" Sands asked. That was just what Gershon wanted to know. Here was a McNally—member, no doubt, of an old theatrical family—in short, the sixth McNally, and yet she was a rank amateur and had just left her home.

"What of it?" Leonard said. "Why, there's this of it: I suppose you expect I should pay you the old figure when all you got to pay her is fifty a week."

"Say!" Al Sands interrupted. "You don't know her or you wouldn't talk that way. You may think she's an amateur and I may think she's an amateur, but she don't think so. She struck me for two hundred right off the reel, and she made me pay it, too."

"Back up!" Leonard cried. "What are you trying to give me?"

"All right," Sands said. "Meet her once."

"All right, I will," Leonard said, jumping up from his seat. He made his way down the side aisle to the door leading from the auditorium to the stage, followed by Al Sands. Gershon stumbled after them through the darkness, quite forgotten by Leonard, but when they all three arrived on the stage, such was the effect of Gershon's late salesmanship that Leonard accepted his presence there as a matter of course.

"Miss McNally," Al said, "I want you to meet Mr. Leonard, and this other gentleman here, I don't know his name."

"He ain't interested," Leonard said, shaking Miss McNally's ungloved hand, and not releasing it after the handshake had concluded. "I think I seen you somewheres before, didn't I?"

"I don't think so," Miss McNally replied.

"Good speaking voice," Sands commented. "Great carrying quality."

"Now, listen," Leonard broke in. "Let her do the talking, will you?"

Miss McNally withdrew her hand from Leonard's clasp.

"Mr. Sands does the talking for me," she said. She looked at Gershon and thereby caused him to undergo all the cardiac symptoms associated with too much smoking and coffee-drinking. Nevertheless, he seemed to detect a slight flicker of Miss McNally's left eyelid.

"I suppose," Leonard said, "Al told you to tell me that."

"What's the difference who told who?" Sands asked. "As a matter of fact, she suggested it."

"Miss McNally," Leonard broke in angrily, "I want you to come upstairs to my office. I'm starting to cast my 'Comics' and I want to talk business to you."

"The act is Sands and McNally, Mr. Leonard," Sands said. "I own and manage it, and if you want to talk business, talk it to me."

For at least half a minute Leonard hesitated.

Miss McNally's physical charms were no less evident to him than they were to Gershon, but unlike Gershon, his heart functioned quite normally. So did his brain. He was, in fact, considering her attractiveness in terms of box-office receipts, and at the end of thirty seconds he had made up his mind.

"Come upstairs, Al," he said, and a minute later Gershon was alone on the stage with Miss McNally.

"Well," Miss McNally declared, "if he lands that job in the 'Comics,' I guess I'll have burned my boats behind me and not a cent of insurance."

Her lips parted in a melancholy smile and Gershon smiled in return.

He had only half heard what she had said, but Al Sands was right. All she had to do was to stand there, and she was a hit with any audience. For instance, she had not intended to create in Gershon the feeling that without a home presided over by Miss McNally, play writing and shirt manufacturing were as one. Nevertheless, merely by standing there and looking at him, she had done more than that. Her melancholy smile had automatically caused him to contrast the hazardous compensation of a playwright with the relatively certain income of the shirt-manufacturing business. In short, he was considering her attractiveness, not by Leonard's standard of box-office receipts, but in terms of a honeymoon, a small apartment in a good neighborhood, and just one or two children, and by the time she spoke again he was rapidly getting back into a shirt-business frame of mind.

"You look like you didn't understand what I mean," she said, "so I may as well tell you that I left a good home to go into this."

Gershon held out his right hand.

"Shake!" he said. "I've just burned a couple of fleets myself."

They shook hands solemnly.

"And one or two bridges," Gershon added.

"You don't mean to say that you left a good home to be an actor?" she asked, after they were seated side by side on a tool box against the back wall.

"Not an actor," Gershon said; "a playwright, and I left more than a good home. I left a good shirt business."

"A good shirt business!" she exclaimed. "Oh, dear! Wasn't that foolish of you!"

She laid her left hand on his right sleeve and let it stay there for just a moment.

"Why couldn't you write plays on the side and still stay in the shirt business?" she said.

"Ask my father," Gershon replied. "He owns the business, and he told me that I had to choose between being a shirt manufacturer and a playwright, so I chose."

Miss McNally nodded her head comprehendingly.

"Aren't families just like that?" she said. "They don't understand you one bit, do they?"

She moved up just a trifle closer to him.

"Tell me," she said. "What kind of plays do you write?"

"Suppose I tell you at lunch," Gershon said. "It'll be half an hour or longer before Leonard gets through with your—your friend."

"He isn't my friend," Miss McNally assured him. "He pays me a salary and I board with him and Mrs. Sands up in Tremont."

"Even at that, we could leave word with the doorman that we would be back in half an hour," Gershon said. "How about it?"

Miss McNally considered the proposition for at least a minute.

"How many plays have you produced?" she asked.

"As yet, none," Gershon said, "but I've had one accepted."

"Then I'll go to lunch with you on one condition," Miss McNally declared. "There's an awfully nice place right across the street where they have the best Danish pastry."

And a moment later they were seated at a rear table in one of those lunch rooms that seek to divert their patrons' attention from the poor quality of the food by an elaborate scheme of decoration in the style of an 1895 model Pullman Palace Car.

There over a plate of Danish pastry and two cups of coffee they exchanged the preliminary confidences of what was rapidly to ripen into an ardent friendship. In fact, so rapid was the ripening and so ardent the friendship that, by the following Thursday, not only had they lunched together five times and dined together six times, but in the course of the last dinner Miss McNally had occasion to say, "No." To be sure she didn't say it too emphatically. Her precise words were: "No, Gerald dear, I couldn't. Not this season, anyway."

"But, I tell you, I'll go back into the shirt business. I'll do anything," he protested.

"Don't I know you would?" Miss McNally said. "But I have a contract with Mr. Sands not to get married for the run of the 'Comics,' anyway."

"And it may run two years," he said, hopelessly.

"Well, that can't be helped," she said. "My contract with him says I shouldn't get married and I can't break it."

That she was firm in this resolution, however, may be doubted by the events of the following morning, when Gershon Danowitz, Sr., was interrupted in the task of checking up his monthly statements by a visitor whose clothes could not have been called conservative even for a man half his age.

"Say, looky here!" the visitor said to Gershon, Sr. "This thing has gone far enough. Is that plain?"

Gershon, Sr., was startled into a pious expectoration.

"T'phooee!" he said. "What do you mean, busting in here like this?"

"I mean what I say," Al Sands declared. "It's got to stop. I know what my rights are, and this wouldn't be the first time I made trouble for a guy like that."

"Say, what's the matter?" Gershon asked. "Are you meshugga or something?"

"I ain't no more crazy than you are," Al said. "I've got a contract for the run of the 'Comics'—me and my partner—and if your son busts it up on me, my lawyers tell me I can put him in jail for malicious interfering in a contract."

For a brief interval Danowitz nodded his head while a pulse beat in his cheek.

"So that's what it is, is it?" he said. "Already he gets into trouble."

"And he'll get into worser trouble if he fools with me," Sands commented.

"That I couldn't help," Danowitz rejoined. "I ain't seen the boy in a week and what he is up to, I don't know."

"Well, I can tell you what he is up to," Sands told him. "He's threatening to marry my partner."

"Your partner!" Danowitz repeated. "What for a business are you in that you get a lady partner? The millinery business?"

"I ain't in no business," Sands replied. "My name is Sands, of Sands and McNally, my own act now for ten years, and your son is going to marry my partner Miss McNally."

The pulse in Danowitz's cheek beat a trifle more quickly and he grew slightly red in the face, but his voice was firm enough when he spoke, even though his lips did quiver.

"Well," he said, "I didn't expect no better. Anyone what starts out writing plays when he's got a good home and a good business, is liable to end up marrying a Miss McNally, even."

"And how about me?" Sands asked.

"You?" Danowitz said. "What have I got to do with you?"

"You've got plenty to do with me," Sands retorted. "Either you stop this thing or I put your son in jail."

Danowitz rose from his chair.

"You mean you are going to put into jail the young feller that is going to marry this Miss McNally?" he said.

Al Sands nodded.

"Well, that young feller ain't my son," Danowitz declared. "I ain't got no more a son."

For more than half an hour after Sands left, Danowitz remained seated in his revolving chair, his head sunk on his breast, and it was in this attitude that Marcus Gembitz found him when he entered the office at eleven o'clock.

"Nu, Mr. Gembitz," he asked, rousing himself with an effort, "have you heard from your daughter?"

"No, I ain't," Gembitz said, "and from the looks of you, you ain't heard from your son, either."

Danowitz smiled a rather wan smile.

"You ain't no judge of looks, Mr. Gembitz," he said. "The reason why I am looking this way is that I have heard from him—indirectly."

"And how is he getting on?" Gembitz asked.

"He's getting on fine," Danowitz replied. "He's going to marry a Miss McNally."

Gembitz sat down heavily in the revolving chair at Gershon, Jr.'s vacant desk. "Um Gottes Willen, you don't tell me!" he said.

He tried to think of something to say that might be of some consolation.

"Well," he said, after a long silence, "the chances is that you don't feel no worse over your son marrying Miss McNally than Miss McNally's father does about her marrying your son."

"Did I say any different?" Danowitz asked. "And the chances is she is a very nice girl, too," Gembitz added.

"Yaw, a nice girl!" Danowitz exclaimed. "She's an actress."

Gembitz grew red in the face.

"What are you trying to do—insult me?" he roared. "My own daughter is an actress."

"Say, say!" Danowitz retorted. "Your daughter ain't no more an actress than my son is a play writer."

"Is that so!" Gembitz cried. "Well, let me tell you something: If my daughter wouldn't be a better actress than your son is a play writer, I wouldn't mention the matter at all."

Danowitz waved both hands frantically.

"Don't get excited, Mr. Gembitz," he said. "For my part she could be a regular Clara Bernhardt; but, just the same, if your daughter was going to marry an actor by the name McNally, that wouldn't be exactly nothing for you and Mrs. Gembitz to give a sigh of relief over, neither."

"Well, of course, when it comes time for my daughter to get married," Gembitz said, after he had cooled down, "I should like for her to marry a young man of her own people, but on the other hand if she should want to marry outside her own people—I suppose me and my wife would got to forgive her."

Once more Danowitz's chin rested on his shirt-front and his eyes were fixed on vacancy. Indeed, he presented so pitiable a spectacle that Gembitz was moved to offer him a cigar. To be sure, it was the same cigar that Gembitz had accepted from Danowitz only the week before, but that he should have offered a man from whom he bought goods a cigar at all, since it is a rigid convention that customers should receive cigars and not give cigars away, indicated how deeply he felt for the unfortunate Danowitz.

"Now, come, Danowitz," he said, patting him on the shoulder, "if I would be in your situation, I wouldn't take it so much to heart. My daughter is just so much my daughter as your son is your son, but if she would marry some one outside her people, I would say, 'Sadie,' I would say, 'you have done something which is wrong,' I would say, 'but,' I would say——"

However, the hypothetical duologue thus begun proceeded no further, for when it had reached this critical stage of its development, the door opened to admit a youth clothed in the uniform of a naval lieutenant except for the words Belsize Hotel which were embroidered in gold thread on the collar and sleeves.

"Is there a party here by the name Gembitz?" he inquired.

"That's me," Gembitz said.

"The floor clerk on the twentieth floor says you left word that if any letters or telegrams comes to bring 'em over here."

"Give it to me," Gembitz cried, and snatched a letter from the messenger's hand. He tore it open, and after reading its contents he sank back into his chair with a groan.

"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz exclaimed. "What's the matter?"

"I would never speak to her again so long as I live. Why, I would never even look at her," he said, hoarsely.

"Mr. Gembitz!" Danowitz said. "What is it?"

"I am like you, Danowitz," he groaned. "I ain't got no more a daughter. She's dead."

"Dead!" Danowitz exclaimed.

"Worse than dead," Gemhitz replied. "She has gone to work and got married. And by the name, he ain't one of our people."

The messenger from the hotel took off his cap reverently.

"That'll be fifty cents," he said, "and ten cents carfare."

Danowitz offered no consolation. He felt instinctively there could be none. He did not even inquire the name of Gembitz's son-in-law, but what he did do was to produce from the middle compartment of his safe in violation of the Eighteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and the acts to enforce the same, a quart bottle of rye whisky and two miniature glasses. He filled them both to the brim and handed one to Gembitz.

"L'chayim," he said piously.

"L'chayim tovim!" Gembitz replied.

As they tossed it down, the office door opened again, and this time, J.J. Leonard, the theatrical manager, literally flung himself into the room.

"Huh!" he snorted. "Celebrating, ain't you!"

"I couldn't talk to you about the benefit now," Danowitz said, hastily replacing the bottle in the safe.

"Benefit!" Leonard cried. "There ain't going to be no benefit."

"Why not?" Danowitz demanded.

Leonard threw his hat on the desk and jutted out his chin at Danowitz.

"Don't throw me no bluffs, you charity faker, you!" he cried. "Chutzpah! Does me out of an act that would have made the show—absolutely made it—and then expects me I should go on with his rotten benefit yet."

"I don't know what you're talking about at all," Danowitz said.

"You don't, hey?" Leonard said. "I suppose you ain't drinking that hootch because your son gets married this morning."

"And suppose he is," Gembitz said. "What of it?"

"I don't know who you are and I don't want to know, but I'll tell you what of it," Leonard said. "His son busts up my 'Comics' by marrying this here McNally, and he made up the match."

"I made up the match!" Danowitz cried. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"Like a fox," Leonard said. "I suppose you don't know that girl's father is a millionaire."

Danowitz grabbed Leonard's hat from the desk and handed it to the manager.

"You get right out of here," he shouted. "An idea! Just because the girl's father is a millionaire or a multimillionaire or a billionaire, he thinks that I should go to work and make up a match between my only son and a lady which ain't one of our people."

"Yes, she ain't!" Leonard jeered.

"But her name is McNally," Gembitz said.

"And mine is Leonard," Leonard retorted. "She ain't no McNally. She's only in the show business with Al Sands under the team name of Sands and McNally."

"Maybe he's right, Danowitz," Gembitz said. "When a feller does business under the firm name of the Eagle Pants Company he don't necessarily got to be an eagle."

"Well, if her name ain't McNally," Danowitz asked, "what is it?"

Before Leonard could answer, Gershon Danowitz, Jr., opened the door. He was wearing a new hat—a brown derby—in place of the old soft black hat. It was essentially a shirt manufacturer's hat and not a dramatist's hat.

"Pop," he said, "I want you to meet my wife."

He stood aside and disclosed in the doorway behind him a young lady who combined all the more attractive physical features of Maxine Elliott, Billie Burke, and Mrs. Mildred Harris Chaplin.

"Sadie!" Gembitz cried, and immediately enfolded her in his arms.

"It looks like a curtain and a good one," Leonard said, "but it ain't. I am going to see a lawyer about this."

"Save your money," Gershon, Jr., said. "All you can do under your contract is to get an injunction against her acting in any other show except yours, and if you want a written guarantee that she won't, I'll give it to you."

"And I'll give you a written guarantee that I wouldn't put on your show, neither," Leonard said.

"Your word is sufficient," Gershon, Jr., assured him, "because I am out of the play-writing business for good."

"Well," Gershon Danowitz, Sr., remarked after Leonard had left, "it's an old saying and a true one that all's well what ends well, but where the Bella Hirschkind Home for Indignant Females gets off, I don't know."

"Say," Gembitz said, "figure out what them indignant females would of got out of this here benefit and send me a bill for it. After all, an only daughter only gets married once, so why shouldn't it cost me something? Am I right or wrong?"

ZONE OF QUIET

By Ring W. Lardner

RING W. LARDNER

Ring Lardner was born in Niles, Mich., on March 6, 1885, became a reporter in South Bend, Ind., twenty years later, and almost immediately began a career as a sports writer, chiefly for Chicago newspapers, which has never entirely terminated, although crisscrossed in recent years by a couple of other careers. The more widely known of these is Lardner's career as a humorist; but in addition he has now become famous as a satirist of no mean powers. For particulars see "Champion" in his book, How to Write Short Stories.

"Zone of Quiet," which is, I think, a humorous story, but which is also certainly something else again, is from Mr. Lardner's latest collection, The Love Nest.

ZONE OF QUIET[1]

[1] Copyright, 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1925, by The International Magazine Company.

"Well," said the doctor briskly, "how do you feel?"

"Oh, I guess I'm all right," replied the man in bed. "I'm still kind of drowsy, that's all."

"You were under the anesthetic an hour and a half. It's no wonder you aren't wide-awake yet. But you'll be better after a good night's rest, and I've left something with Miss Lyons that'll make you sleep. I'm going along now. Miss Lyons will take good care of you."

"I'm off at seven o'clock," said Miss Lyons. "I'm going to a show with my G.F. But Miss Halsey's all right. She's the night floor nurse. Anything you want, she'll get it for you. What can I give him to eat, Doctor?"

"Nothing at all; not till after I've been here tomorrow. He'll be better off without anything. Just see that he's kept quiet. Don't let him talk, and don't talk to him; that is, if you can help it."

"Help it!" said Miss Lyons. "Say, I can be old lady Sphinx herself when I want to! Sometimes I sit for hours—not alone, neither—and never say a word. Just think and think. And dream.

"I had a G.F. in Baltimore, where I took my training; she used to call me Dummy. Not because I'm dumb like some people—you know—but because I'd sit there and not say nothing. She'd say, 'A penny for your thoughts, Eleanor.' That's my first name—Eleanor."

"Well, I must run along. I'll see you in the morning."

"Good-by, Doctor," said the man in bed as he went out.

"Good-by, Doctor Cox," said Miss Lyons as the door closed.

"He seems like an awful nice fella," said Miss Lyons. "And a good doctor, too. This is the first time I've been on a case with him. He gives a girl credit for having some sense. Most of these doctors treat us like they thought we were Mormons or something. Like Doctor Holland. I was on a case with him last week. He treated me like I was a Mormon or something. Finally I told him, I said, 'I'm not as dumb as I look.' She died Friday night."

"Who?" asked the man in bed.

"The woman; the case I was on," said Miss Lyons.

"And what did the doctor say when you told him you weren't as dumb as you look?"

"I don't remember," said Miss Lyons. "He said, 'I hope not,' or something. What could he say? Gee! It's quarter to seven. I hadn't no idear it was so late. I must get busy and fix you up for the night. And I'll tell Miss Halsey to take good care of you. We're going to see 'What Price Glory?' I'm going with my G.F. Her B.F. gave her the tickets and he's going to meet us after the show and take us to supper.

"Marian—that's my G.F.—she's crazy wild about him. And he's crazy about her, to hear her tell it. But I said to her this noon—she called me up on the phone—I said to her: 'If he's so crazy about you, why don't he propose? He's got plenty of money and no strings tied to him, and as far as I can see there's no reason why he shouldn't marry you if he wants you as bad as you say he does.' So she said maybe he was going to ask her tonight. I told her: 'Don't be silly! Would he drag me along if he was going to ask you?'

"That about him having plenty of money, though, that's a joke. He told her he had and she believes him. I haven't met him yet, but he looks in his picture like he's lucky if he's getting twenty-five dollars a week. She thinks he must be rich because he's in Wall Street. I told her, I said: 'That being in Wall Street don't mean nothing. What does he do there? is the question. You know they have to have janitors in those buildings just the same like anywhere else.' But she thinks he's God or somebody.

"She keeps asking me if I don't think he's the best-looking thing I ever saw. I tell her yes, sure, but between you and I, I don't believe anybody'd ever mistake him for Richard Barthelmess.

"Oh, say! I saw him the other day, coming out of the Algonquin! He's the best-looking thing! Even better looking than on the screen. Roy Stewart."

"What about Roy Stewart?" asked the man in bed.

"Oh, he's the fella I was telling you about," said Miss Lyons. "He's my G.F.'s B.F."

"Maybe I'm a D.F. not to know, but would you tell me what a B.F. and G.F. are?"

"Well, you are dumb, aren't you!" said Miss Lyons. "A G.F., that's a girl friend, and a B.F. is a boy friend. I thought everybody knew that.

"I'm going out now and find Miss Halsey and tell her to be nice to you. But maybe I better not."

"Why not?" asked the man in bed.

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking of something funny that happened last time I was on a case in this hospital. It was the day the man had been operated on and he was the best-looking somebody you ever saw. So when I went off duty I told Miss Halsey to be nice to him, like I was going to tell her about you. And when I came back in the morning he was dead. Isn't that funny?"

"Very!"

"Well," said Miss Lyons, "did you have a good night? You look a lot better, anyway. How'd you like Miss Halsey? Did you notice her ankles? She's got pretty near the smallest ankles I ever saw. Cute. I remember one day Tyler—that's one of the internes—he said if he could just see our ankles, mine and Miss Halsey's he wouldn't know which was which. Of course we don't look anything alike other ways. She's pretty close to thirty and—well, nobody'd ever take her for Julia Hoyt. Helen."

"Who's Helen?" asked the man in bed.

"Helen Halsey. Helen; that's her first name. She was engaged to a man in Boston. He was going to Tufts College. He was going to be a doctor. But he died. She still carries his picture with her. I tell her she's silly to mope about a man that's been dead four years. And besides a girl's a fool to marry a doctor. They've got too many alibis.

"When I marry somebody, he's got to be a somebody that has regular office hours like he's in Wall Street or somewhere. Then when he don't come home, he'll have to think up something better than being 'on a case.' I used to use that on my sister when we were living together. When I happened to be out late, I'd tell her I was on a case. She never knew the difference. Poor sis! She married a terrible oil can! But she didn't have the looks to get a real somebody. I'm making this for her. It's a bridge-table cover for her birthday. She'll be twenty-nine. Don't that seem old?"

"Maybe to you; not to me," said the man in bed.

"You're about forty, aren't you?" said Miss Lyons.

"Just about."

"And how old would you say I am?"

"Twenty-three."

"I'm twenty-five," said Miss Lyons. "Twenty-five and forty. That's fifteen years' difference. But I know a married couple that the husband is forty-five and she's only twenty-four, and they get along fine."

"I'm married myself," said the man in bed.

"You would be!" said Miss Lyons. "The last four cases I've been on was all married men. But at that, I'd rather have any kind of a man than a woman. I hate women! I mean sick ones. They treat a nurse like a dog, especially a pretty nurse. What's that you're reading?"

"Vanity Fair," replied the man in bed.

"Vanity Fair! I thought that was a magazine."

"Well, there's a magazine and a book. This is the book."

"Is it about a girl?"

"Yes."

"I haven't read it yet. I've been busy making this thing for my sister's birthday. She'll be twenty-nine. It's a bridge-table cover. When you get that old, about all there is left is bridge or cross-word puzzles. Are you a puzzle fan? I did them religiously for a while, but I got sick of them. They put in such crazy words. Like one day they had a word with only three letters and it said 'A e-longated fish' and the first letter had to be an e. And only three letters. That couldn't be right! So I said if they put things wrong like that, what's the use? Life's too short. And we only live once. When you're dead, you stay a long time dead.

"That's what a B.F. of mine used to say. He was a caution! But he was crazy about me. I might of married him only for a G.F. telling him lies about me. And called herself my friend! Charley Pierce."

"Who's Charley Pierce?"

"That was my B.F. that the other girl lied to him about me. I told him, I said, 'Well, if you believe all them stories about me, maybe we better part once and for all. I don't want to be tied up to a somebody that believes all the dirt they hear about me.' So he said he didn't really believe it and if I would take him back he wouldn't quarrel with me no more. But I said I thought it was best for us to part. I got their announcement two years ago, while I was still in training in Baltimore."

"Did he marry the girl that lied to him about you?"

"Yes, the poor fish! And I bet he's satisfied! They're a match for each other! He was all right, though, at that, till he fell for her. He used to be so thoughtful of me, like I was his sister or something.

"I like a man to respect me. Most fellas wants to kiss you before they know your name.

"Golly! I'm sleepy this morning! And got a right to be, too! Do you know what time I got home last night, or this morning, rather? Well, it was half past three. What would mamma say if she could see her little girl now! But we did have a good time. First we went to the show—'What Price Glory?'—I and my G.F.—and afterwards her B.F. met us and took us in a taxi down to Barney Gallant's. Peewee Byers has got the orchestra there now. Used to be with Whiteman's. Gee! How he can dance! I mean Roy."

"Your G.F.'s B.F.?"

"Yes, but I don't believe he's as crazy about her as she thinks he is. Anyway—but this is a secret—he took down the phone number of the hospital while Marian was out powdering her nose, and he said he'd give me a ring about noon. Gee! I'm sleepy! Roy Stewart!"

"Well," said Miss Lyons, "how's my patient? I'm twenty minutes late, but honest, it's a wonder I got up at all! Two nights in succession is too much for this child!"

"Barney Gallant's again?" asked the man in bed.

"No, but it was dancing, and pretty near as late. It'll be different tonight. I'm going to bed just the minute I get home. But I did have a dandy time. And I'm just crazy about a certain somebody."

"Roy Stewart?"

"How'd you guess it? But honest, he's wonderful! And so different than most of the fellas I've met. He says the craziest things, just keeps you in hysterics. We were talking about books and reading, and he asked me if I liked poetry—only he called it 'poultry'—and I said I was wild about it and Edgar M. Guest was just about my favorite, and then I asked him if he liked Kipling and what do you think he said? He said he didn't know; he'd never kipled.

"He's a scream! We just sat there in the house till half past eleven and didn't do nothing but just talk and the time went like we was at a show. He's better than a show. But finally I noticed how late it was and I asked him didn't he think he better be going and he said he'd go if I'd go with him, so I asked him where could we go at that hour of night, and he said he knew a road house just a little ways away, and I didn't want to go, but he said we wouldn't stay for only just one dance, so I went with him. To the Jericho Inn.

"I don't know what the woman thought of me where I stay, going out that time of night. But he is such a wonderful dancer and such a perfect gentleman! Of course we had more than one dance and it was after two o'clock before I knew it. We had some gin, too, but he just kissed me once and that was when we said good night."

"What about your G.F., Marian? Does she know?"

"About Roy and I? No. I always say that what a person don't know don't hurt them. Besides, there's nothing for her to know—yet. But listen: If there was a chance in the world for her, if I thought he cared anything about her, I'd be the last one in the world to accept his intentions. I hope I'm not that kind! But as far as anything serious between them is concerned, well, it's cold. I happen to know that! She's not the girl for him.

"In the first place, while she's pretty in a way, her complexion's bad and her hair's scraggy and her figure, well, it's like some woman in the funny pictures. And she's not peppy enough for Roy. She'd rather stay home than do anything. Stay home! It'll be time enough for that when you can't get anybody to take you out.

"She'd never make a wife for him. He'll be a rich man in another year; that is, if things go right for him in Wall Street like he expects. And a man as rich as he'll be wants a wife that can live up to it and entertain and step out once in a while. He don't want a wife that's a drag on him. And he's too good-looking for Marian. A fella as good-looking as him needs a pretty wife or the first thing you know some girl that is pretty will steal him off of you. But it's silly to talk about them marrying each other. He'd have to ask her first, and he's not going to. I know! So I don't feel at all like I'm trespassing.

"Anyway, you know the old saying, everything goes in love. And I—— But I'm keeping you from reading your book. Oh yes; I almost forgot a T.L. that Miss Halsey said about you. Do you know what a T.L. is?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, you give me one and I'll give you this one."

"But I haven't talked to anybody but the doctor. I can give you one from myself. He asked me how I liked you and I said all right."

"Well, that's better than nothing. Here's what Miss Halsey said: She said if you were shaved and fixed up, you wouldn't be bad. And now I'm going out and see if there is any mail for me. Most of my mail goes to where I live, but some of it comes here sometimes. What I'm looking for is a letter from the state board telling me if I passed my state examination. They ask you the craziest questions. Like 'Is ice a disinfectant?' Who cares? Nobody's going to waste ice to kill germs when there's so much of it needed in high balls. Do you like high balls? Roy says it spoils whisky to mix it with water. He takes it straight. He's a terror! But maybe you want to read."

"Good morning," said Miss Lyons. "Did you sleep good?"

"Not so good," said the man in bed. "I—

"I bet you got more sleep than I did," said Miss Lyons. "He's the most persistent somebody I ever knew! I asked him last night, I said, 'Don't you never get tired of dancing?' So he said, well, he did get tired of dancing with some people, but there was others who he never got tired of dancing with them. So I said, 'Yes, Mr. Jollier, but I wasn't born yesterday and I know apple sauce when I hear it and I bet you've told that to fifty girls.' I guess he really did mean it, though.

"Of course most anybody'd rather dance with slender girls than stout girls. I remember a B.F. I had one time in Washington. He said dancing with me was just like dancing with nothing. That sounds like he was insulting me, but it was really a compliment. He meant it wasn't any effort to dance with me like with some girls. You take Marian, for instance, and while I'm crazy about her, still that don't make her a good dancer and dancing with her must be a good deal like moving the piano or something.

"I'd die if I was fat! People are always making jokes about fat people. And there's the old saying, 'Nobody loves a fat man.' And it's even worse with a girl. Besides people making jokes about them and don't want to dance with them and so forth, besides that they're always trying to reduce and can't eat what they want to. I bet, though, if I was fat, I'd eat everything in sight. Though I guess not, either. Because I hardly eat anything as it is. But they do make jokes about them.

"I'll never forget one day last winter, I was on a case in Great Neck and the man's wife was the fattest thing! So they had a radio in the house and one day she saw in the paper where Bugs Baer was going to talk on the radio and it would probably be awfully funny because he writes so crazy. Do you ever read his articles? But this woman, she was awfully sensitive about being fat and I nearly died sitting there with her listening to Bugs Baer, because his whole talk was all about some fat woman and he said the craziest things, but I couldn't laugh on account of she being there in the room with me. One thing he said was that the woman, this woman he was talking about, he said she was so fat that she wore a wrist watch on her thumb. Henry J. Belden."

"Who is Henry J. Belden? Is that the name of Bugs Baer's fat lady?"

"No, you crazy!" said Miss Lyons. "Mr. Belden was the case I was on in Great Neck. He died."

"It seems to me a good many of your cases die."

"Isn't it a scream!" said Miss Lyons. "But it's true; that is, it's been true lately. The last five cases I've been on has all died. Of course it's just luck, but the girls have been kidding me about it and calling me a jinx, and when Miss Halsey saw me here the evening of the day you was operated, she said, 'God help him!' That's the night floor nurse's name. But you're going to be mean and live through it and spoil my record, aren't you? I'm just kidding. Of course I want you to get all right.

"But it is queer, the way things have happened, and it's made me feel kind of creepy. And besides, I'm not like some of the girls and don't care. I get awfully fond of some of my cases and I hate to see them die, especially if they're men and not very sick and treat you half-way decent and don't yell for you the minute you go out of the room. There's only one case I was ever on where I didn't mind her dying and that was a woman. She had nephritis. Mrs. Judson.

"Do you want some gum? I chew it just when I'm nervous. And I always get nervous when I don't have enough sleep. You can bet I'll stay home tonight, B.F. or no B.F. But anyway he's got an engagement tonight, some directors' meeting or something. He's the busiest somebody in the world. And I told him last night, I said, 'I should think you'd need sleep, too, even more than I do because you have to have all your wits about you in your business or those big bankers would take advantage and rob you. You can't afford to be sleepy,' I told him.

"So he said, 'No, but of course it's all right for you, because if you go to sleep on your job, there's no danger of you doing any damage except maybe give one of your patients a bichloride of mercury tablet instead of an alcohol rub.' He's terrible! But you can't help from laughing.

"There was four of us in the party last night. He brought along his B.F. and another girl. She was just blah, but the B.F. wasn't so bad, only he insisted on me helping him drink a half a bottle of Scotch, and on top of gin, too. I guess I was the life of the party; that is, at first. Afterwards I got sick and it wasn't so good.

"But at first I was certainly going strong. And I guess I made quite a hit with Roy's B.F. He knows Marian, too, but he won't say anything, and if he does, I don't care. If she don't want to lose her beaus, she ought to know better than to introduce them to all the pretty girls in the world. I don't mean that I'm any Norma Talmadge, but at least—well—but I sure was sick when I was sick!

"I must give Marian a ring this noon. I haven't talked to her since the night she introduced me to him. I've been kind of scared. But I've got to find out what she knows. Or if she's sore at me. Though I don't see how she can be, do you? But maybe you want to read."

"I called Marian up, but I didn't get her. She's out of town but she'll be back tonight. She's been out on a case. Hudson, New York. That's where she went. The message was waiting for her when she got home the other night, the night she introduced me to Roy."

"Good morning," said Miss Lyons.

"Good morning," said the man in bed. "Did you sleep enough?"

"Yes," said Miss Lyons. "I mean no, not enough."

"Your eyes look bad. They almost look as if you'd been crying."

"Who? Me? It'd take more than—I mean, I'm not a baby! But go on and read your book."

"Well, good morning," said Miss Lyons. "And how's my patient? And this is the last morning I can call you that, isn't it? I think you're mean to get well so quick and leave me out of a job. I'm just kidding. I'm glad you're all right again, and I can use a little rest myself."

"Another big night?" asked the man in bed.

"Pretty big," said Miss Lyons. "And another one coming. But tomorrow I won't ever get up. Honest, I danced so much last night that I thought my feet would drop off. But he certainly is a dancing fool! And the nicest somebody to talk to that I've met since I came to this town. Not a smart Aleck and not always trying to be funny like some people, but just nice. He understands. He seems to know just what you're thinking. George Morse."

"George Morse!" exclaimed the man in bed.

"Why, yes," said Miss Lyons. "Do you know him?"

"No. But I thought you were talking about this Stewart, this Roy."

"Oh, him!" said Miss Lyons. "I should say not! He's private property; other people's property, not mine. He's engaged to my G.F. Marian. It happened day before yesterday, after she got home from Hudson. She was on a case up there. She told me about it night before last. I told her congratulations. Because I wouldn't hurt her feelings for the world! But heavens! what a mess she's going to be in, married to that dumb-bell. But of course some people can't be choosy. And I doubt if they ever get married unless some friend loans him the price of a license.

"He's got her believing he's in Wall Street, but I bet if he ever goes there at all, it's to sweep it. He's one of these kind of fellas that's got a great line for a little while, but you don't want to live with a clown. And I'd hate to marry a man that all he thinks about is to step out every night and dance and drink.

"I had a notion to tell her what I really thought. But that'd only of made her sore, or she'd of thought I was jealous or something. As if I couldn't of had him myself! Though even if he wasn't so awful, if I'd liked him instead of loathed him, I wouldn't of taken him from her on account of she being my G.F. And especially while she was out of town.

"He's the kind of a fella that'd marry a nurse in the hopes that some day he'd be an invalid. You know, that kind.

"But say—did you ever hear of J.P. Morgan and Company? That's where my B.F. works, and he don't claim to own it neither. George Morse.

"Haven't you finished that book yet?"

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Table of Contents

- Cream of the Jug
- I'M IN A HURRY
- THE CUSTODY OF THE PUMPKIN
- THE MILKY WAY
- LA BELLA GINA
- CLASSICS IN SLANG: ROBINSON CRUSOE
- THE PUSHER-IN-THE-FACE
- ALMOST A GENTLEMAN
- ARABIAN KNIGHTS
- THE SIXTH McNALLY
- ZONE OF QUIET
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE