Kitabı oku: «Odd Numbers», sayfa 13

CHAPTER XVIII
JOY RIDING WITH AUNTY

Was I? Then I must have been thinking of Dyke Mallory. And say, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I figure that anybody who can supply me with a hang-over grin good for three days ain’t lived in vain. Whatever it’s worth, I’m on his books for just that much.

I’ll admit, too, that this Dyckman chap ain’t apt to get many credits by the sweat of his brow or the fag of his brain. There’s plenty of folks would class him as so much plain nuisance, and I have it from him that his own fam’ly puts it even stronger. That’s one of his specialties, confidin’ to strangers how unpop’lar he is at home. Why, he hadn’t been to the studio more’n twice, and I’d just got next to the fact that he was a son of Mr. Craig Mallory, and was suggestin’ a quarterly account for him, when he gives me the warnin’ signal.

“Don’t!” says he. “I draw my allowance the fifteenth, and unless you get it away from me before the twentieth you might as well tear up the bill. No use sending it to the pater, either. He’d renig.”

“Handing you a few practical hints along the economy line, eh?” says I.

“Worse than that,” says Dyke. “It’s a part of my penance for being the Great Disappointment. The whole family is down on me. Guess you don’t know about my Aunt Elvira?”

I didn’t, and there was no special reason why I should; but before I can throw the switch Dyke has got the deputy sheriff grip on the Mallorys’ private skeleton and is holdin’ him up and explainin’ his anatomy.

Now, from all I’d ever seen or heard, I’d always supposed Mr. Craig Mallory to be one of the safety vault crowd. Course, they live at Number 4 West; but that’s near enough to the avenue for one of the old fam’lies. And when you find a man who puts in his time as chairman of regatta committees, and judgin’ hackneys, and actin’ as vice president of a swell club, you’re apt to rate him in the seven figure bunch, at least. Accordin’ to Duke, though, the Mallory income needed as much stretchin’ as the pay of a twenty-dollar clothing clerk tryin’ to live in a thirty-five dollar flat. And this is the burg where you can be as hard up on fifty thousand a year as on five hundred!

The one thing the Mallorys had to look forward to was the time when Aunt Elvira would trade her sealskin sack for a robe of glory and loosen up on her real estate. She was near seventy, Aunty was, and when she first went out to live at the old country place, up beyond Fort George, it was a good half-day’s trip down to 23d-st. But she went right on livin’, and New York kept right on growin’, and now she owns a cow pasture two blocks from a subway station, and raises potatoes on land worth a thousand dollars a front foot.

Bein’ of different tastes and habits, her and Brother Craig never got along together very well, and there was years when each of ’em tried to forget that the other existed. When little Dyckman came, though, the frost was melted. She hadn’t paid any attention to the girls; but a boy was diff’rent. Never havin’ had a son of her own to boss around and brag about, she took it out on Dyke. A nice, pious old lady, Aunt Elvira was; and the mere fact that little Dyke seemed to fancy the taste of a morocco covered New Testament she presented to him on his third birthday settled his future in her mind.

“He shall be a Bishop!” says she, and hints that accordin’ as Dyckman shows progress along that line she intends loadin’ him up with worldly goods.

Up to the age of fifteen, Dyke gives a fair imitation of a Bishop in the bud. He’s a light haired, pleasant spoken youth, who stands well with his Sunday school teacher and repeats passages from the Psalms for Aunt Elvira when she comes down to inflict her annual visit.

But from then on the bulletins wa’n’t so favor’ble. At the diff’rent prep. schools where he was tried out he appeared to be too much of a live one to make much headway with the dead languages. About the only subjects he led his class in was hazing and football and buildin’ bonfires of the school furniture. Being expelled got to be so common with him that towards the last he didn’t stop to unpack his trunk.

Not that these harrowin’ details was passed on to Aunt Elvira. The Mallorys begun by doctorin’ the returns, and they developed into reg’lar experts at the game of representin’ to Aunty what a sainted little fellow Dyke was growin’ to be. The more practice they got, the harder their imaginations was worked; for by the time Dyckman was strugglin’ through his last year at college he’d got to be such a full blown hickey boy that he’d have been spotted for a sport in a blind asylum.

So they had to invent one excuse after another to keep Aunt Elvira from seein’ him, all the while givin’ her tales about how he was soon to break into the divinity school; hoping, of course, that Aunty would get tired of waitin’ and begin to unbelt.

“They overdid it, that’s all,” says Dyke. “Healthy looking Bishop I’d make! What?”

“You ain’t got just the style for a right reverend, that’s a fact,” says I.

Which wa’n’t any wild statement of the case, either. He’s a tall, loose jointed, slope shouldered young gent, with a long, narrow face, gen’rally ornamented by a cigarette; and he has his straw colored hair cut plush. His costume is neat but expensive, – double reefed trousers, wide soled shoes, and a green yodler’s hat with the bow on behind. He talks with the kind of English accent they pick up at New Haven, and when he’s in repose he tries to let on he’s so bored with life that he’s in danger of fallin’ asleep any minute.

Judgin’ from Dyke’s past performances, though, there wa’n’t many somnolent hours in it. But in spite of all the trouble he’d got into, I couldn’t figure him out as anything more’n playful. Course, rough housin’ in rathskellers until they called out the reserves, and turnin’ the fire hose on a vaudeville artist from a box, and runnin’ wild with a captured trolley car wa’n’t what you might call innocent boyishness; but, after all, there wa’n’t anything real vicious about Dyke.

Playful states it. Give him a high powered tourin’ car, with a bunch of eight or nine from the football squad aboard, and he liked to tear around the State of Connecticut burnin’ the midnight gasolene and lullin’ the villagers to sleep with the Boula-Boula song. Perfectly harmless fun – if the highways was kept clear. All the frat crowd said he was a good fellow, and it was a shame to bar him out from takin’ a degree just on account of his layin’ down on a few exams. But that’s what the faculty did, and the folks at home was wild.

Dyke had been back and on the unclassified list for nearly a year now, and the prospects of his breakin’ into the divinity school was growin’ worse every day. He’d jollied Mr. Mallory into lettin’ him have a little two-cylinder roadster, and his only real pleasure in life was when he could load a few old grads on the runnin’ board and go off for a joy ride.

But after the old man had spent the cost of a new machine in police court fines and repairs, even this little diversion was yanked away. The last broken axle had done the business, and the nearest Dyke could come to real enjoyment was when he had the price to charter a pink taxi and inspire the chauffeur with highballs enough so he’d throw her wide open on the way back.

Not bein’ responsible for Dyke, I didn’t mind having him around. I kind of enjoyed the cheerful way he had of tellin’ about the fam’ly boycott on him, and every time I thinks of Aunt Elvira still havin’ him framed up for a comer in the Bishop class, I has to smile.

You see, having gone so far with their fairy tales, the Mallorys never got a chance to hedge; and, accordin’ to Dyke, they was all scared stiff for fear she’d dig up the facts some day, and make a new will leavin’ her rentroll to the foreign missions society.

Maybe it was because I took more or less interest in him, but perhaps it was just because he wanted company and I happened to be handy; anyway, here the other afternoon Dyke comes poundin’ up the stairs two at a time, rushes into the front office, and grabs me by the arm.

“Come on, Shorty!” says he. “Something fruity is on the schedule.”

“Hope it don’t taste like a lemon,” says I. “What’s the grand rush?”

“Aunt Elvira is coming down, and she’s called for me,” says Dyke, grinnin’ wide. “She must suspect something; for she sent word that if I wasn’t on hand this time she’d never come again. What do you think of that?”

“Aunty’s got a treat in store for her, eh?” says I, givin’ Dyke the wink.

“I should gurgle!” says he. “I’m good and tired of this fake Bishop business, and if I don’t jolt the old lady out of that nonsense, I’m a duffer. You can help some, I guess. Come on.”

Well, I didn’t exactly like the idea of mixin’ up with a fam’ly surprise party like that; but Dyke is so anxious for me to go along, and he gets me so curious to see what’ll happen at the reunion, that I fin’lly grabs my coat and hat, and out we trails.

It seems that Aunt Elvira is due at the Grand Central. Never having tried the subway, she’s come to town just as she used to thirty years ago: drivin’ to Kingsbridge station, and takin’ a Harlem river local down. We finds the whole fam’ly, includin’ Mr. and Mrs. Craig Mallory, and their two married daughters, waitin’ outside the gates, with the gloom about ’em so thick you’d almost think it was a sea turn.

From the chilly looks they shot at Dyke you could tell just how they’d forecasted the result when Aunt Elvira got him all sized up; for, with his collar turned up and his green hat slouched, he looks as much like a divinity student as a bulldog looks like Mary’s lamb. And they can almost see them blocks of apartment houses bein’ handed over to the heathen.

As for Mr. Craig Mallory, he never so much as gives his only son a second glance, but turns his back and stands there, twistin’ the ends of his close cropped gray mustache, and tryin’ to look like he wa’n’t concerned at all. Good old sport, Craig, – one of the kind that can sit behind a pair of sevens and raise the opener out of his socks. Lucky for his nerves he didn’t have to wait long. Pretty soon in pulls the train, and the folks from Yonkers and Tarrytown begin to file past.

“There she is!” whispers Dyke, givin’ me the nudge. “That’s Aunt Elvira, with her bonnet on one ear.”

It’s one of the few black velvet lids of the 1869 model still in captivity, ornamented with a bunch of indigo tinted violets, and kept from bein’ lost off altogether by purple strings tied under the chin. Most of the rest of Aunty was obscured by the hand luggage she carries, which includes four assorted parcels done up in wrappin’ paper, and a big, brass wire cage holdin’ a ragged lookin’ gray parrot that was tryin’ to stick his bill through the bars and sample the passersby.

She’s a wrinkled faced, but well colored and hearty lookin’ old girl, and the eyes that peeks out under the rim of the velvet lid is as keen and shrewd as a squirrel’s. Whatever else she might be, it was plain Aunt Elvira wa’n’t feeble minded. Behind her comes a couple of station porters, one cartin’ an old-time black valise, and the other with his arms wrapped around a full sized featherbed in a blue and white tick.

“Gee!” says I. “Aunty carries her own scenery with her, don’t she?”

“That’s Bismarck in the cage,” says Dyke.

“How Bizzy has changed!” says I. “But why the feather mattress?”

“She won’t sleep on anything else,” says he. “Watch how pleased my sisters look. They just love this – not! But she insists on having the whole family here to meet her.”

I must say for Mr. Mallory that he stood it well, a heavy swell like him givin’ the glad hand in public to a quaint old freak like that. But Aunt Elvira don’t waste much time swappin’ fam’ly greetin’s.

“Where is Dyckman?” says she, settin’ her chin for trouble. “Isn’t he here?”

“Oh, yes,” says Mr. Mallory. “Right over there,” and he points his cane handle to where Dyke and me are grouped on the side lines.

“Here, hold Bismarck!” says Aunty, jammin’ the brass cage into Mr. Mallory’s arm, and with that she pikes straight over to us. I never mistrusted she’d be in any doubt as to which was which, until I sees her look from one to the other, kind of waverin’. No wonder, though; for, from the descriptions she’d had, neither of us came up to the divinity student specifications. Yet it was something of a shock when she fixes them sharp old lamps on me and says:

“Land to goodness! You?”

“Reverse!” says I. “Here’s the guilty party,” and I pushes Dyke to the front.

She don’t gasp, or go up in the air, or throw any kind of a fit, like I expected. As she looks him over careful, from the sporty hat to the wide soled shoes, I notices her eyes twinkle.

“Hum! I thought as much!” says she. “Craig always could lie easier than he could tell the truth. Young man, you don’t look to me like a person called to hold orders.”

“Glad of it, Aunty,” says Dyke, with a grin. “I don’t feel that way.”

“And you don’t look as if you had broken down your health studying for the ministry, either!” she goes on.

“You don’t mean to say they filled you up with that?” says Dyke. “Hee-haw!”

“Huh!” says Aunty. “It’s a joke, is it? At least you’re not afraid to tell the truth. I guess I want to have a little private talk with you. Who’s this other young man?”

“This is Professor McCabe,” says Dyke. “He’s a friend of mine.”

“Let him come along, too,” says Aunty. “Perhaps he can supply what you leave out.”

And, say, the old girl knew what she wanted and when she wanted it, all right! There was no bunkoin’ her out of it, either. Mr. Mallory leads her out to his brougham and does his best to shoo her in with him and Mrs. Mallory and away from Dyke; but it was no go.

“I will ride up with Dyckman and his friend,” says she. “And I want to go in one of those new automobile cabs I’ve heard so much about.”

“Good! We’ll get one, Aunty,” says Dyke, and then he whispers in my ear, “Slip around the corner and call for Jerry Powers. Number 439. He can make a taxi take hurdles and water jumps.”

I don’t know whether it was luck or not, but Jerry was on the stand with the tin flag up, and inside of two minutes the three of us was stowed away inside, with the bag on top, and Dyke holdin’ Bismarck in his lap.

“Now my featherbed,” says Aunt Elvira, and she has the porter jam it in alongside of me, which makes more or less of a full house. Then the procession starts, our taxi in the lead, the brougham second, and the married sisters trailin’ behind in a hansom.

“My sakes! but these things do ride easy!” says Aunty, settlin’ back in her corner. “Can they go any faster, Dyckman?”

“Just wait until we get straightened out on the avenue,” says Dyke, and tips me the roguish glance.

“I’ve ridden behind some fast horses in my time,” says the old lady; “so you can’t scare me. But now, Dyckman, I’d like to know exactly what you’ve been doing, and what you intend to do.”

Well, Dyke starts in to unload the whole yarn, beginnin’ by ownin’ up that he’d scratched the Bishop proposition long ago. And he was statin’ some of his troubles at college, when I gets a backward glimpse out of the side window at something that makes me sit up. First off I thought it was another snow storm with flakes bigger’n I’d ever seen before, and then I tumbles to the situation. It ain’t snow; it’s feathers. In jammin’ that mattress into the taxi the tick must have had a hole ripped in it, and the part that was bulgin’ through the opposite window was leakin’ hen foliage to beat the cars.

“Hey!” says I, buttin’ in on the confession and pointin’ back. “We’re losin’ part of our cargo.”

“Land sakes!” says Aunt Elvira, after one glance. “Stop! Stop!”

At that Dyke pounds on the front glass for the driver to shut off the juice. But Jerry must have had Dyke out before, and maybe he mistook the signal. Anyway, the machine gives a groan and a jerk and we begins skimmin’ along the asphalt at double speed. That don’t check the moltin’ process any, and Dyke was gettin’ real excited, when we hears a chuckle from Aunt Elvira.

The old girl has got her eyes trained through the back window. Thanks to our speed and the stiff wind that’s blowin’ down the avenue, the Mallory brougham, with the horses on the jump to keep up with us, is gettin’ the full benefit of the feather storm. The dark green uniforms of the Mallory coachman and footman was being plastered thick, and they was both spittin’ out feathers as fast as they could, and the Mallorys was wipin’ ’em out of their eyes and ears, and the crowds on the sidewalk has caught on and is enjoyin’ the performance, and a mounted cop was starin’ at us kind of puzzled, as if he was tryin’ to decide whether or not we was breakin’ an ordinance.

“Look at Craig! Look at Mabel Ann!” snickers Aunt Elvira. “Tell your man to go faster, Dyckman. Push out more feathers!”

“More feathers it is,” says I, shovin’ another fold of the bed through the window. Even Bismarck gets excited and starts squawkin’.

Talk about your joy rides! I’ll bet that’s the only one of the kind ever pulled off on Fifth-ave. And it near tickles the old girl to death. What was a featherbed to her, when she had her sportin’ blood up and was gettin’ a hunch in on Brother Craig and his wife?

We goes four blocks before we shakes out the last of our ammunition, and by that time the Mallory brougham looks like a poultry wagon after a busy day at the market, while Aunt Elvira has cut loose with the mirth so hard that the velvet bonnet is hangin’ under her chin, and Bismarck is out of breath. It’s a wonder we wa’n’t pinched for breakin’ the speed laws; but the traffic cops is so busy watchin’ the feather blizzard that they forgets to hold us up. Dyke wants to know if I’ll come in for a cup of tea, or ride back with Jerry.

“Thanks, but I’ll walk back,” says I, as we pulls up at the house. “Guess I can find the trail easy enough, eh?”

I s’posed I’d get a report of the reunion from him next day; but it wa’n’t until this mornin’ that he shows up here and drags me down to the curb to look at his new sixty-horse-power macadam burner.

“Birthday present from Aunty,” says he. “Say, she’s all to the good, Shorty. She got over that Bishop idea months ago, all by herself. And what do you think? She says I’m to have a thousand a month, just to enjoy myself on. Whe-e-e! Can I do it?”

“Do it, son,” says I. “If you can’t, I don’t know who can.”

CHAPTER XIX
TURNING A TRICK FOR BEANY

Where’d I collect the Flemish oak tint on muh noble br-r-r-ow? No, not sunnin’ myself down to Coney Island. No such tinhorn stunt for me! This is the real plute color, this is, and I laid it on durin’ a little bubble tour we’d been takin’ through the breakfast doughnut zone.

It was Pinckney’s blow. He ain’t had the gasolene-burnin’ fever very hard until this summer; but when he does get it, he goes the limit, as usual. Course, he’s been off on excursions with his friends, and occasionally he’s chartered a machine by the day; but I’d never heard him talk of wantin’ to own one. And then the first thing I knows he shows up at the house last Monday night in the tonneau of one of these big seven-seater road destroyers, all fitted out complete with spare shoes, hat box, and a double-decker trunk strapped on the rack behind.

“Gee!” says I. “Why didn’t you buy a private railroad train while you was about it, Pinckney?”

“Precisely what I thought I was getting,” says he. “However, I want you and Sadie to help me test it. We’ll start to-morrow morning at nine-thirty. Be all ready, will you?”

“Got any idea where you’re going, or how long you’ll be gone?” says I.

“Nothing very definite,” says he. “Purdy-Pell suggested the shore road to Boston and back through the Berkshires.”

“Fine!” says I. “I’d love to go meanderin’ through the country with you from now until Christmas; but sad to say I’ve got one or two – ”

“Oh, Renée tells me we can make it in four days,” says Pinckney, nodding at the chauffeur. “He’s been over the route a dozen times.”

Well, I puts the proposition up to Sadie, expectin’ she’d queer it first jump; but inside of ten minutes she’d planned out just how she could leave little Sully, and what she should wear, and it’s all fixed. I tried to show her where I couldn’t afford to quit the studio for two or three weeks, just at this time of year, when so many of my reg’lars need tunin’ up after their vacations; but my arguments don’t carry much weight.

“Rubbish, Shorty!” says she. “We’ll be back before the end of the week, and Swifty Joe can manage until then. Anyway, we’re not going to miss this lovely weather. We’re going, that’s all!”

“Well,” says I to Pinckney, “I’ve decided to go.”

Now this ain’t any lightnin’ conductor rehash. Bubble tourin’ has its good points, and it has its drawbacks, too. If you’re willin’ to take things as they come along, and you’re travelin’ with the right bunch, and your own disposition’s fair to middlin’, why, you can have a bang up time, just like you could anywhere with the same layout. Also, I’m willin’ to risk an encore to this partic’lar trip any time I get the chance.

But there was something else I was gettin’ at. It don’t turn up until along durin’ the afternoon of our second day out. We was tearin’ along one of them new tar roads between Narragansett Pier and Newport, and I was tryin’ to hand a josh to Renée by askin’ him to be sure and tell me when we went through Rhode Island, as I wanted to take a glance at it, – for we must have been hittin’ fifty an hour, with the engine runnin’ as smooth and sweet as a French clock, – when all of a sudden there’s a bang like bustin’ a paper bag, and we feels the car sag down on one side.

“Sacré!” says Renée through his front teeth.

“Ha, ha!” sings out Pinckney. “My first blow-out!”

“Glad you feel so happy over it,” says I.

It’s a sensation that don’t bring much joy, as a rule. Here you are, skimmin’ along through the country, glancin’ at things sort of casual, same’s you do from a Pullman window, but not takin’ any int’rest in the scenery except in a general way, only wonderin’ now and then how it is people happen to live in places so far away.

And then all in a minute the scenery ain’t movin’ past you at all. It stops dead in its tracks, like when the film of a movin’ picture machine gets tangled up, and there’s only one partic’lar scene to look at. It’s mighty curious, too, how quick that special spot loses its charm. Also, as a gen’ral rule, such things happen just at the wrong spot in the road. Now we’d been sailin’ along over a ridge, where we could look out across Narragansett Bay for miles; but here where our tire had gone on the blink was a kind of dip down between the hills, with no view at all.

First off we all has to pile out and get in Renée’s way while he inspects the damage. It’s a blow-out for fair, a hole big enough to lay your two hands in, right across the tread, where we’d picked up a broken bottle, or maybe a cast horseshoe with the nails in it. Then, while he proceeds to get busy with the jack and tire irons, we all makes up our minds to a good long wait; for when you tackle one of them big boys, with the rims rusted in, it ain’t any fifteen-minute picnic, you know.

Course, Pinckney gets out his fireless bottles and the glasses and improves the time by handin’ around somethin’ soothin’ or cheerin’, accordin’ to taste. Not bein’ thirsty, I begins inspectin’ the contagious scenery. It wa’n’t anything an artist would yearn to paint. Just back from the road is a sort of shack that looks as though someone might be campin’ out in it, and behind that a mess of rough sheds and chicken coops.

Next I discovers that the object down in the field which I’d taken for a scarecrow was a live man. By the motions he’s goin’ through, he’s diggin’ potatoes, and from the way he sticks to it, not payin’ any attention to us, it seems as if he found it a mighty int’restin’ pastime. You’d most think, livin’ in an out of the way, forsaken place like that, that most any native would be glad to stop work long enough to look over a hot lookin’ bunch like ours.

This one don’t seem inclined that way, though. He keeps his back bent and his head down and his hands busy. Now, whenever I’ve been out in a machine, and we’ve had any kind of trouble, there’s always been a gawpin’ committee standin’ around, composed of every human being in sight at the time of the casualty, includin’ a few that seemed to pop up out of the ground. But here’s a case where the only party that can act as an audience ain’t doin’ his duty. So a fool freak hits me to stroll over and poke him up.

“Hey, you!” says I, vaultin’ the fence.

He jerks his head up a little at that, kind of stares in my direction, and then dives into another hill of spuds.

“Huh!” thinks I. “Don’t want any city folks in his’n, by chowder! But here’s where he gets ’em thrust on him!” and I pikes over for a closer view. Couldn’t see much, though, but dirty overalls, blue outing shirt, and an old haymaker’s straw hat with a brim that lops down around his face and ears.

“Excuse me,” says I; “but ain’t you missin’ a trick, or is it because you don’t feel sociable to-day? How’re the murphies pannin’ out this season?”

To see the start he gives, you’d think I’d crept up from behind and swatted him one. He straightens up, backs off a step or two, and opens his mouth. “Why – why – ” says he, after one or two gasps. “Who are you, please?”

“Me?” says I. “Oh, I’m just a stray stranger. I was being shot through your cunnin’ little State on a no-stop schedule, when one of our tires went out of business. Hence this informal call.”

“But,” says he, hesitatin’ and pushin’ back the hat brim, “isn’t this – er – aren’t you Professor McCabe?”

Say, then it was my turn to do the open face act! Course, knockin’ around as much as I have and rubbin’ against so many diff’rent kinds of folks, I’m liable to run across people that know me anywhere; but blamed if I expected to do it just walkin’ out accidental into a potato orchard.

Sure enough, too, there was something familiar about that long thin nose and the droopy mouth corners; but I couldn’t place him. Specially I’d been willin’ to pass my oath I’d never known any party that owned such a scatterin’ crop of bleached face herbage as he was sportin’. It looked like bunches of old hay on the side of a hill. The stary, faded out blue eyes wa’n’t just like any I could remember, either, and I’m gen’rally strong on that point.

“You’ve called my number, all right,” says I; “but, as for returnin’ the compliment, you’ve got me going, neighbor. How do you think I’m looking?”

He makes a weak stab at springin’ a smile, about the ghastliest attempt at that sort of thing I ever watched, and then he shrugs his shoulders. “I – I couldn’t say about your looks,” says he. “I recognized you by your voice. Perhaps you won’t remember me at all. I’m Dexter Bean.”

“What!” says I. “Not Beany, that used to do architectin’ on the top floor over the studio?”

“Yes,” says he.

“And you’ve forgot my mug so soon?” says I.

“Oh, no!” says he, speakin’ up quick. “I haven’t forgotten. But I can’t see very well now, you know. In fact, I – I’m – Well, it’s almost night time with me, Shorty,” and by the way he chokes up I can tell how hard it is for him to get out even that much.

“You don’t mean,” says I, “that – that you – ”

He nods, puts his hands up to his face, and turns his head for a minute.

Well, say, I’ve had lumps come in my throat once in a while before on some account or other; but I never felt so much like I’d swallowed a prize punkin as I did just then. Most night time! Course, you hear of lots of cases, and you know there’s asylums where such people are taken care of and taught to weave cane bottoms for chairs; but I tell you when you get right up against such a case, a party you’ve known and liked, and it’s handed to you sudden that he’s almost in the stick tappin’ class – well, it’s apt to get you hard. I know it did me. Why, I didn’t know any more what to do or say than a goat. But it was my next.

“Well, well, Beany, old boy!” says I, slidin’ an arm across his shoulder. “This is all news to me. Let’s get over in the shade and talk this thing over.”

“I – I’d like to, Shorty,” says he.

So we camps down under a tree next to the fence, and he gives me the story. As he talks, too, it all comes back to me about the first time some of them boys from up stairs towed him down to the studio. He’d drifted in from some Down East crossroads, where he’d taken a course in mechanical drawin’ and got the idea that he was an architect. And a greener Rube than him I never expect to see. It was a wonder some milliner hadn’t grabbed him and sewed him on a hat before he got to 42d-st.

Maybe that gang of T Square sports didn’t find him entertainin’, too. Why, he swallowed all the moldy old bunk yarns they passed over, and when they couldn’t hold in any longer, and just let loose the hee-haws, he took it good natured, springin’ that kind of sad smile of his on ’em, and not even gettin’ red around the ears. So the boss set him to sweepin’ the floors and tendin’ the blueprint frames on the roof.

That’s the way he broke in. Then a few months later, when they had a rush of contracts, they tried him out on some detail work. But his drawin’ was too ragged. He was so good natured, though, and so willin’ to do anything for anybody, that they kept him around, mainly to spring new gags on, so far as I could see.

It wa’n’t until he got at some house plans by accident that they found out where he fitted in. He’d go over a set of them puzzle rolls that mean as much to me as a laundry ticket, and he’d point out where there was room for another clothes closet off some chamber here, and a laundry chute there, and how the sink in the butler’s pantry was on the wrong side for a right handed dish washer, and a lot of little details that nobody else would think of unless they’d lived in just such a house for six months or so. Beany the Home Expert, they called him after that, and before any house plans was O. K.’d by the boss he had to revise ’em.