Chapter 1. Our Hero

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_ CHAPTER I. OUR HERO

Two men were standing in front of the Empire Theatre on Broadway, at the outer edge of the sidewalk, amiably discussing themselves in the first person singular. It was late in September and somewhat early in the day for actors to be abroad, a circumstance which invites speculation. Attention to their conversation, which was marked by the habitual humility, would have convinced the listener (who is always welcome) that both had enjoyed a successful season on the road, although closing somewhat prematurely on account of miserable booking, and that both had received splendid "notices" in every town visited.

These two loiterers serve a single purpose in this tale--they draw your attention to the principal character, to the person who plays the title role, so to speak, and then, having done so, sink back into an oblivion from which it is quite unnecessary to retrieve them.

The younger of the two players was in the act of lighting a cigarette, considerately tendered by the older, when his gaze fell upon the figure of the approaching hero. He hesitated for a moment, squinting his eyes reflectively as if to make sure of both vision and memory before committing himself to the declaration that was to follow.

"See that fellow there? The little chap with his hands in his pockets?"

The other permitted a vague, indifferent glance to enter the throng of pedestrians, plainly showing that he did not see the person indicated. (Please note this proof of the person's qualifications as a hero.)

"The fellow in front of Browne's," added the first speaker, so eagerly that his friend tried once more and succeeded.

"What of him?" he demanded, unimpressed.

"That is What's-His-Name, Nellie Duluth's husband."

The friend's stare was prolonged and incredulous.

"That?"

"Yes. That's the fair Nellie's anchor. Isn't he a wonder?"

The object of these remarks passed slowly in front of them and soon was lost in the crowd. Now that we know who he is we will say thank you to the obliging Thespian and be off up Broadway in his wake, not precisely in the capacity of spies and eavesdroppers, but as acquaintances who would know him better.

He was not an imposing figure. You would not have looked twice at him. You could not have remembered looking once at him, for that matter. He was the type of man who ambles through life without being noticed, even by those amiably inclined persons who make it their business to see everything that is going on, no matter how trivial it is.

Somewhere in this wide and unfeeling world the husband of Nellie Duluth had an identity of his own, but New York was not the place. Back in the little Western town from which he came he had a name and a personality all his own, but it was a far cry from Broadway and its environments. For a matter of four or five years he had been known simply as "Er--What's-His-Name? Nellie Duluth's husband!" You have known men of his stripe, I am sure; men who never get anywhere for the good and sufficient reason that it isn't necessary. Men who stand still. Men who do not even shine by reflected glory. Men whose names you cannot remember. It might be Smith or Brown or Jones, or any of the names you can't forget if you try, and yet it always escapes you. You know the sort I mean.

Nellie Duluth's husband was a smallish young man, nice-looking, even kind-looking, with an habitual expression of inquiry in his face, just as if he never quite got used to seeing or being seen. The most expert tailor haberdasher could not have provided him with apparel that really belonged to him. Not that he was awkward or ill-favoured in the matter of figure, but that he lacked individuality. He always seemed to be a long way from home.

Sometimes you were sure that he affected a slight, straw-coloured moustache; then, a moment afterward, if you turned your back, you were not quite sure about it. As a matter of fact, he did possess such an adornment. The trouble came in remembering it. Then, again, his eyes were babyish blue and unseasoned; he was always looking into shop windows, getting accustomed to the sights. Trolley cars and automobiles were never-decreasing novelties to him, if you were to judge by the startled way in which he gazed at them. His respect for the crossing policeman, his courtesy to the street-car conductor, his timidity in the presence of the corner newsboy, were only surpassed by his deference to the waiter in the cheap restaurants he affected.

But, ah! You should have seen him in that little Western town! He was a "devil of a fellow" out there! He knew the policemen by their first names and had no respect for them; street-car conductors were hail-fellows well met, and the newsboys wore spectacles and said "Yes, sir," to him. As for the waiters, he knew them all by their Christian name, which usually was Annie or Mamie or Katie.

On Broadway he was quite another person. He knew his Broadway from one end to the other--that is to say, he knew that side of the "Great White Way" which stares you in the face and rebukes you for staring back--the outside of Broadway. He had been on and off Broadway for a matter of five years and yet he had never recovered from the habit of turning out for every pedestrian he met, giving the other man the right of way instead of holding to his own half of it, sometimes stepping in puddles of water to do so and not infrequently being edged off the curbstone by an accumulation of the unexpected.

Once in a while during his peregrinations some one recognised him and bowed in a hesitating manner, as if trying to place him, and at such times he responded with a beaming smile and a half-carried-out impulse to stop for a bit of a chat, but always with a subsequent acceleration of speed on discovering that the other fellow seemed to be in a hurry. They doubtless knew him for Miss Duluth's husband, but for the life of them they couldn't call him by name. Every one understood that Nellie possessed a real name, but no one thought to ask what it was.

Moreover, Nellie had a small daughter whose name was Phoebe. She unquestionably was a collaboration, but every one who knew the child spoke of her as that "darling little girl of Nellie's." The only man in New York who appeared to know Nellie's husband by name was the postman, and he got it second-hand.

At the stage door of the theatre he was known as Miss Duluth's husband, to the stage hands and the members of the chorus he was What's-His-Name, to the principals he was "old chap," to Nellie herself he was Harvey, to Phoebe he was "daddy," to the press agent he was nameless--he didn't exist.

You could see Nellie in big red letters on all the billboards. She was inevitable. Her face smiled at you from every nook and corner--and it was a pretty face, too--and you had to get your tickets of the scalpers if you wanted to see her in person any night in the week, Sundays excepted. Hats, parasols, perfumes, and face powders were named after her. It was Nellie here and Nellie there and Nellie everywhere. The town was mad about her. It goes without saying that her husband was not the only man in love with her.

As Harvey--let me see--oh, never mind--What's-His-Name--ambled up Broadway on the morning of his introduction into this homely narrative he was smiled at most bewitchingly by his wife--from a hundred windows--for Nellie's smile was never left out of the lithographs (he never missed seeing one of them, you may be sure)--but it never occurred to him to resent the fact that she was smiling in the same inviting way to every other man who looked.

He ambled on. At Forty-second Street he turned to the right, peering at the curtained windows of the Knickerbocker with a sort of fearful longing in his mild blue eyes, and kept on his way toward the Grand Central Station. Although he had been riding in and out of the city on a certain suburban train for nearly two years and a half, he always heaved a sigh of relief when the gate-tender told him he was taking the right train for Tarrytown. Once in a great while, on matinee days, he came to town to luncheon with Nellie before the performance. On Sundays she journeyed to Tarrytown to see him and Phoebe. In that way they saw quite a bit of each other. This day, however, he was taking an earlier train out, and he was secretly agitated over the possibility of getting the wrong one. Nellie had sent word to the theatre that she had a headache and could not have luncheon with him.

He was not to come up to her apartment. If he had known a human being in all New York with whom he could have had luncheon, he would have stayed in town and perhaps gone to a theatre. But, alas, there was no one! Once he had asked a low comedian, a former member of Nellie's company, but at the time out of a job and correspondingly meek, to luncheon with him at Rector's. At parting he had the satisfaction of lending the player eleven dollars. He hoped it would mean a long and pleasant acquaintance and a chance to let the world see something of him. But the low comedian fell unexpectedly into a "part" and did not remember Nellie's husband the next time he met him. He forgot something else as well. Harvey's memory was not so short. He never forgot it. It rankled.

He bought a noon extra and found a seat in the train. Then he sat up very straight to let people see that they were riding in the same car with the great Nellie Duluth's husband. Lucky dog! Every one was saying that about him, he was sure. But every one else had a noon extra, worse luck!

After a while he sagged down into the seat and allowed his baby-blue eyes to fall into a brown study. In his mind's eye he was seeing a thousand miles beyond the western bank of the Hudson, far off into the quiet streets of a town that scarcely had heard the name of Nellie Duluth and yet knew him by name and fame, even to the remotest nook of it.

They were good old days, sweet old days, those days when he was courting her--when she was one among many and he the only one. Days when he could serve customers in his shirt-sleeves and address each one familiarly. Every one was kind. If he had a toothache, they sympathised with him and advised him to have it pulled and all that sort of thing. In New York (he ground his teeth, proving that he retained them) no one cared whether he lived or died. He hated New York. He would have been friendly to New York--cheerfully, gladly--if New York had been willing to meet him halfway. It was friendly to Nellie; why couldn't it be friendly to him? He was her husband. Why, confound it all, out in Blakeville, where they came from, he was somebody while she was merely "that girl of Ted Barkley's." He had drawn soda water for her a hundred times and she had paid him in pennies! Only five years ago. Sometimes she had the soda water charged; that is to say, she had it put on her mother's bill. Ted couldn't get credit anywhere in town.

And now look at her! She was getting six hundred dollars a week and spurned soda water as if it were poison.

His chin dropped lower. The dreamy look deepened.

"Doggone it," he mused for the hundredth time, "I could have been a partner in the store by this time if I'd stuck to Mr. Davis."

He was thinking of Davis' drug store, in Main Street, and the striped blazer he wore while tending the soda fount in the summer time. A red and yellow affair, that blazer was. Before the "pharmacy law" went into effect he was permitted to put up prescriptions while Mr. Davis was at meals. Afterward he was restricted to patent medicines, perfumes, soaps, toilet articles, cigars, razor strops, and all such, besides soda water in season. Moreover, when circuses came to town the reserved-seat sale was conducted in Davis' drug store. He always had passes without asking for them.

Yes, he might have been a partner by this time. He drew a lot of trade to the store. Mr. Davis could not have afforded to let him go elsewhere.

Five years ago! It seemed ages. He was twenty-three when he left Blakeville. Wasted ages! Somehow he liked the ready-made garments he used to buy at the Emporium much better than those he wore nowadays--fashionable duds from Fifth Avenue at six times the price. He used to be busy from seven A.M. till ten P.M., and he was happy. Nowadays he had nothing to do but get up and shave and take Phoebe for walks, eat, read the papers, tell stories to Phoebe, and go to bed. To be sure, the food was good and plentiful, the bed was soft, and the cottage more attractive than anything Blakeville could boast of; Phoebe was a joy and Nellie a jewel, but--heigh-ho! he might have been a partner in Davis' drug store if he'd stayed in the old town.

The man in the seat behind was speaking to him. He came out of his reverie with a glad rush. It was so unusual for any one to take the initiative that he was more than ready to respond.

"I see the Giants lost again yesterday," said the volunteer conversationalist.

"Yes. Six to four," said our hero, brightly, turning in his seat. He always read the baseball news. He could tell you the batting average of every player in the big leagues for ten years back.

"Lot of bone-heads," said the other sourly. At first glance our friend thought he looked like an actor and his heart sank. But perhaps he might be a travelling salesman. He liked them. In either event, the stranger's estimate of the New York ball team pleased him. He rejoiced in every defeat it sustained, particularly at the hands of the Chicagos.

"Not in it with the Cubs," he announced, blitheness in his manner. Here was a man after his own heart.

But the stranger glared at him. "The Cubs?" he said, his voice hardening, his manner turning aggressive.

"They make the Giants look like two-spots," went on our friend, recklessly.

The stranger looked him over pityingly and then ended the conversation by deliberately hiding himself behind his newspaper. Our hero opened his lips to add further comment, but something in the way the paper crackled caused him to close them and turn back to his bitter survey of the Hudson. And the confounded fellow had invited his confidence, too!

He got down at Tarrytown and started up the hill. The station-master pointed him out to a friend.

"That's--er--What's-His-Name--Nellie Duluth's husband."

"That guy?"

"She keeps him up here in a cottage to take care of the baby. Away from the temptations of the city," said the agent, with a broad wink.

"I didn't know she was married," said his friend, who lived in Yonkers.

"Well, she is."

Mr.--(I declare, his name escapes me, so I will call him by his Christian name, Harvey)--Harvey, utterly oblivious to the pitying scrutiny of the two men, moved slowly up the road, homeward bound. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to light a "Sweet Cap," threw back his unimposing shoulders, and accelerated his gait a trifle in deference to his position as the master of a celebrity.

It was his habit to take a rather roundabout way up to the little cottage on the hill. The route led him past a certain drug store and a grocer's where he was on speaking terms with the clerks. They knew him. He did the marketing, but the account was in Miss Duluth's name. A livery stable, too, was on the line of progress. He occasionally stopped in to engage a pony phaeton for a drive in the afternoon with Phoebe.

To-day he passed these places by. Every one seemed to be busy. He could see that at a glance. So there wasn't any use stopping. That was what he got for coming home from town in the middle of the day. He nodded to several acquaintances--passing acquaintances in both senses of the word. They turned to look after him, half-smiles on their lips.

One woman said to another, "I wonder if he's really married to her?"

"If he wasn't, he'd be living in the city with her," was the complete rejoinder.

"He seems such a quiet little man, so utterly unlike what a husband of hers ought to be. He's from the far West--near Chicago, I believe. I never can remember his name. Can you?"

"I've never heard it."

"It's not an uncommon name."

"Why doesn't he call himself Mr. Duluth?"

"My husband says actresses are not supposed to have husbands. If they have them, they keep them in the background."

"That's true. I know I am always surprised when I see that they're trying to get divorces."

Harvey was never so far in the background as when he appeared in the foreground. One seldom took notice of him unless he was out of sight, or at least out of hearing.

He was not effeminate; he was not the puerile, shiftless creature the foregoing sentences may have led you to suspect. He was simply a weakling in the strong grasp of circumstance. He could not help himself; to save his life, he could not be anything but Nellie Duluth's husband.

Not a bad-looking chap, as men of his stamp go. Not much of a spine, perhaps, and a little saggy about the shoulders; all in all, rather a common type. He kept his thin moustache twisted, but inconsistently neglected to shave for several days--that kind of a man. His trousers, no matter how well made, were always in need of pressing and his coat was wrinkled from too much sitting on the small of his back. His shirts, collars, and neckties were clean and always "dressy." Nellie saw to that. Besides he always had gone in for gay colours when it came to ties and socks. His watch-fob was a thing of weight and pre-eminence. It was of the bell-clapper type. In the summer time he wore suspenders with his belt, and in the winter time he wore a belt with his suspenders. Of late he affected patent-leather shoes with red or green tops; he walked as if he despised the size of them.

Arriving at the snug little cottage, he was brought face to face with one of the common tragedies of a housekeeper's life. The cook and the nursemaid, who also acted as waitress and chambermaid, had indulged in one of their controversies during his absence, and the former had departed, vowing she would never return. Here it was luncheon time and no one to get it! He knew that Bridget would be back before dinner time--she always did come back--but in the meantime what were they to do? There wasn't a thing in the house.

He found himself wishing he had stayed in the city for luncheon.

Annie's story was a long one, but he gathered from it that Bridget was wholly to blame for the row. Annie was very positive as to that.

"Have we any eggs?" asked the dismayed master.

"Eggs? How should I know, sir?" demanded Annie. "It's Bridget's place to know what's in the pantry, not mine. The Lord knows I have enough to do without looking after her work."

"Excuse me," said he, apologetically. He hesitated for a moment and then came to a decision. "I guess I'd better go and see what we've got. If we've got eggs, I can fry 'em. Bridget will be back this evening."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Annie, belligerently. "I told her this was the last time, the very last."

"I'll bet you a quarter she comes back," said he, brightly.

"Gee! What a sport you are!" scoffed Annie.

He flushed. "Will you please set the table?"

"It's set."

"Oh!"

"I'll help you make the toast, if you'd like," said she, a sudden feeling of pity for him coming into her niggardly soul.

"Thanks," he said, briskly. "And the tea, too?"

"I think we'd better have coffee," said she, asserting a preference for the housemaid's joy.

"Just as you say," he acquiesced, hastily. "Where is Phoebe?"

"Next door with the Butler kids--children, I mean. Maybe they'll ask her to stay to lunch."

He gave her a surprise. "Go over and tell her to come home. I don't want her staying to luncheon with those damned Butlers."

She stared, open-mouthed. "I'm sure, sir, they're quite as good as--as we are. What have you got against 'em?"

He could not tell her that Butler, who worked in a bank, never took the trouble to notice him except when Nellie was out to spend Sunday.

"Never mind. Go and get Phoebe."

He made a dash for the kitchen, and when the exasperated Annie returned a few minutes later with Phoebe--rebellious Phoebe, who at that particular moment hated her father--he was in his shirt-sleeves and aproned, breaking eggs over a skillet on the gas stove. His face was very red, as if considerable exertion had been required.

Phoebe was pouting when she came in, but the sight of her father caused her to set up a shriek of glee.

"What fun, daddy!" she cried. "Now we'll never need Bridget again. I don't like her. You will be our cook, won't you?"

Annie's sarcastic laugh annoyed him.

"I used to do all the cooking when the Owl Club went camping," he announced, entirely for Annie's benefit.

"In Blakeville?" asked Annie, with a grin.

"Yes, in Blakeville," he exploded, almost dropping the cigarette from his lips into the skillet. His blue eyes flashed ominously. Annie, unused to the turning of the worm, caught her breath.

Suddenly obsessed by the idea that he was master in his own house, he began strutting about the kitchen, taking mental note of the things that needed attention, with a view to reproving Bridget when she came back to the fold. He burnt his fingers trying to straighten the stovepipe, smelt of the dish-cloths to see if they were greasy, rattled the pans and bethought himself of the eggs just in the nick of time. In some haste and embarrassment he removed the skillet from the fire just as Annie came out of the pantry with the bread and the coffee can.

"Where's the platter?" he demanded, holding the skillet at arm's length. "They're fried."

"They'll be stone cold," said she, "waiting for the coffee to boil. You ain't got any water boiling."

"I thought, perhaps, we'd better have milk," he said, gathering his wits.

To his surprise--and to her own, for that matter--she said, "Very good, sir," and repaired to the icebox for the dairy bottles. He was still holding the skillet when she returned. She was painfully red in the face.

Phoebe eyed the subsequent preparations for the meal with an increasing look of sullenness in her quaint little face. She was rather a pretty child. You would say of her, if you saw her in the street, "What a sweet child!" just as you would say it about the next one you met.

Her father, taking note of her manner, paused in the act of removing his apron.

"What's the matter, darling?"

"Can't I go over to Mrs. Butler's for luncheon?" she complained. "They're going to have chicken."

"So are we," said he, pointing to the eggs.

"I want to go," said Phoebe, stubbornly.

He coloured. "Don't you want to stay home and eat what daddy has cooked?" he asked, rather plaintively.

"I want to go."

He could only resort to bribery. "And daddy'll take you down to see the nickel show as soon as we've finished," he offered. The child's face brightened.

Here Annie interposed.

"She can't go to see them nickel shows; Miss Duluth won't stand for it. She's give me strict orders."

"I'll take good care of her----" began Phoebe's father.

"Miss Duluth's afraid of diphtheria and scarlet fever," said Annie, resolutely, as she poured out a glass of milk for him.

"Not likely to be any diphtheria this time of year," he began again, spurred by the kick Phoebe planted on his kneecap.

"Well, orders is orders. What Miss Duluth says goes."

"Ah, come now, Annie----"

"Say, do you want her to ketch scarlet fever and die?" demanded the nurse, putting the bottle down and glaring at him with a look of mixed commiseration and scorn.

"Good Heavens, no!" he ejaculated. The very thought of it brought a gush of cold water to his mouth.

"Well, take her to see it if you must, but don't blame me. She's your kid," said Annie, meanly, with victory assured.

"Make her say 'Yes,'" urged Phoebe, in a loud whisper.

He hedged. "Do you want to have the scarlet fever?" he asked, dismally.

"Yes," said Phoebe. "And measles, too."

The sound of heavy footsteps on the back porch put an end to the matter for the time being. Even Phoebe was diverted.

Bridget had come back. A little ahead of her usual schedule, too, which was food for apprehension. Usually she took the whole day off when she left "for good and all." Never before in the history of her connection with Miss Duluth's menage had she returned so promptly. Involuntarily the master of the house glanced out of the window to see if a rain had blown up. The sun was shining brightly. It wasn't the weather.

The banging of the outer door to the kitchen caused him to jump ever so slightly and to cast a glance of inquiry at Annie, who altered her original course and moved toward the sitting-room door. In the kitchen a perfectly innocent skillet crashed into the sink with a vigour that was more than ominous.

A moment later Bridget appeared in the door. She wore her best hat and gloves and the dress she always went to mass in. The light of battle was in her eye.

"We--we thought we wouldn't wait, Bridget," said Mr.--er--What's-His-Name, quickly. "You never come back till six or seven, you know, so----"

"Who's been monkeyin' wid my kitchen?" demanded Bridget. She started to unbutton one of her gloves and the movement was so abrupt and so suggestive that he got up from his chair in such a hurry that he overturned it.

"Somebody had to get lunch," he began.

"I wasn't sp'akin' to you," said Bridget, glaring past him at Annie.

He gulped suddenly. For the second time that day his eyes blazed. Things seemed to be dancing before them.

"Well, I'm speaking to you!" he shouted, banging the table with his clenched fist.

"What!" squealed Bridget, staggering back in astonishment.

He remembered Phoebe.

"You'd better run over to the Butlers', Phoebe, and have lunch," he said, his voice trembling in spite of himself. "Run along lively now."

Bridget was still staring at him like one bereft of her senses when Phoebe scrambled down from her chair and raced out of the room. He turned upon the cook.

"What do you mean by coming in here and speaking to me in that manner?" he demanded, shrilly.

"Great God above!" gasped Bridget weakly. She dropped her glove. Her eyes were blinking.

"And why weren't you here to get lunch?" he continued, ruthlessly. "What do we pay you for?"

Bridget forgot her animosity toward Annie. "What do yez think o' that?" she muttered, addressing the nursemaid.

"Get back to the kitchen," ordered he.

Cook had recovered herself by this time. Her broad face lost its stare and a deep scowl, with fiery red background, spread over her features. She imposed her huge figure a step or two farther into the room.

"Phat's that?" she demanded.

She weighed one hundred and ninety and was nearly six feet tall. He was barely five feet five and could not have tipped the beam at one hundred and twenty-five without his winter suit and overcoat. He moved back a corresponding step or two.

"Don't argue," he said, hurriedly.

"Argue?" she snorted. "Phy, ye little shrimp, who are you to be talkin' back to me? For two cents I'd----"

"You are discharged!" he cried, hastily putting a chair in her path--but wisely retaining a grip on it.

She threw back her head and laughed, loudly, insultingly. Her broad hands, now gloveless and as red as broiled lobsters, found resting-places on her hips. He allowed his gaze to take them in with one hurried, sweeping glance. They were as big and as menacing as a prizefighter's.

"We'll discuss it when you're sober," he made haste to say, trying to wink amiably.

"So help me Mike, I haven't touched a----" she began, but caught herself in time. "So yez discharge me, do yez?" she shouted.

"I understood you had quit, anyway."

"Well, me fine little man, I'll see yez further before I'll quit now. I came back this minute to give notice, but I wouldn't do it now for twenty-five dollars."

"You don't have to give notice. You're discharged. Good-bye." He started for the sitting-room.

She slapped the dining-table with one of her big hands. The dishes bounced into the air, and so did he.

"I'll give this much notice to yez," she roared, "and ye'll bear it in mind as long as yez stay in the same house wid me. I don't take no orders from the likes of you. I was employed by Miss Duluth. I cook for her, I get me pay from her, and I'll not be fired by anybody but her. Do yez get that? I'd as soon take orders from the kid as from you, ye little pinhead. Who are yez anyhow? Ye're nobody. Begorry, I don't even know yer name. Discharge me! Phy, phy, ye couldn't discharge a firecracker. What's that?"

"I--I didn't say anything," he gasped.

"Ye'd better not."

"I shall speak to--to Miss Duluth about this," he muttered, very red in the face.

"Do!" she advised, sarcastically. "She'll tell yez to mind yer own business, the same as I do. The idee! Talkin' about firing me! Fer the love av Mike, Annie, what do yez think av the nerve? Phy Miss Duluth kapes him on the place I can't fer the life av me see. She's that tinder-hearted she----"

But he had bolted through the door, slamming it after him. As he reached the bottom of the stairs leading to his bedroom the door opened again and Annie called out to him:--

"Are you through lunch, sir?"

He was halfway up the steps before he could frame an answer. Tears of rage and humiliation were in his baby-blue eyes.

"Tell her to go to the devil," he sputtered.

As he disappeared at the bend in the stairs he distinctly heard Annie say:--

"I can see myself doing it--not."

For an hour he paced the floor of his little bed-chamber, fuming and swearing to himself in a mild, impotent fashion--and in some dread of the door. Such words and sentences as these fell from his lips:--"Nobody!" "Keeps me on the place!" "Because she's tender-hearted!" "I will fire her!" "Can't talk back to me!" "Damned Irisher!" And so on and so forth until he quite wore himself out. Then he sat down at the window and let the far-away look slip back into his troubled blue eyes. They began to smart, but he did not blink them.

Phoebe found him there at four when she came in for her nap. He promised to play croquet with her.

Dinner was served promptly that evening, and it was the best dinner Bridget had cooked in a month.

"That little talk of mine did some good," said he to himself, as he selected a toothpick and went in to read "Nicholas Nickleby" till bedtime. "They can't fool with me."

He was reading Dickens. His wife had given him a complete set for Christmas. To keep him occupied, she said. _

Read next: Chapter 2. Miss Nellie Duluth


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