The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon, and other humorous tales

§4

He woke feeling very strange, and not exactly as fresh as a daisy. He felt much more like a cauliflower cooled after boiling. His head buzzed a bit, with a sort of gay giddiness, but for all that he knew that he was not the same Hugh Braddy that had been catapulted from bed by an alarm clock in his Long Island City home the morning before.

"A man can do what he's a mind to," he said to himself in a slightly husky voice. His first move was to get breakfast. The old Hugh Braddy would have gone humbly to a one-armed beanery for one black coffee and one doughnut—price, one dime. The new Hugh Braddy considered this breakfast, and dismissed it as beneath a man of his importance. Instead, he went to the Mortimore Grill and had a substantial club breakfast. He called up Angelica, his wife, and cut short her lecture with—"Unavoidable, m'dear. Inventory at the store." His tone, somehow, made her hesitate to question him further. "It'll be all right about that raise," he added grandly. "Have a good supper to-night. G'by."

He bought himself an eleven-cent cigar, instead of his accustomed six-center, and, puffing it in calm defiance of a store rule, strode into the employees' entrance of the Great Store a little after nine. Without wavering, he marched straight to the office of Mr. Berger, who looked up from his morning mail in surprise.

"Well, Mr. Braddy?"

Mr. Braddy blew a smoke ring, playfully stuck his finger through it, and said:

"Mr. Berger, I'm thinking of going with another concern. A fellow was in to see me the other day, and he says to me, 'Braddy, you are the best rug man in this town.' And he hinted that if I'd come over with his concern they'd double my salary. Now, I've been with the Great Store more than twenty years, and I like the place, Mr. Berger, and I know the ropes, so naturally I don't want to change. But, of course, I must go where the most money is. I owe that to Mrs. B. But I'm going to do the square thing. I'm going to give you a chance to meet the ante. Sixty's the figure."

He waved his cigar, signifying the utter inconsequence of whether Mr. Berger met the ante or not. Before the amazed manager could frame a reply, Mr. Braddy continued:

"You needn't make up your mind right away, Mr. Berger. I don't have to give my final decision until to-night. You can think it over. I suggest you look up my sales record for last year before you reach any decision." And he was gone.

All that day Mr. Braddy did his best not to think of what he had done. Even the new Mr. Braddy—philosophy and all—could not entirely banish the vision of Angelica if he had to break the news that he had issued an ultimatum for twice his salary and had been escorted to the exit.

He threw himself into the work of selling rugs so vigorously that his fellow salesmen whispered to each other, "What ails the Ole Hippopotamus?" He even got rid of a rug that had been in the department for uncounted years—showing a dark-red lion browsing on a field of rich pink roses—by pointing out to the woman who bought it that it would amuse the children.

At four o'clock a flip office boy tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Mr. Boiger wants to see you." Mr. Braddy, whose head felt as if a hive of bees were establishing a home there, but whose philosophy still burned clear and bright, let Mr. Berger wait a full ten minutes, and then, with dignified tread that gave no hint of his inward qualms, entered the office of the manager.

It seemed an age before Mr. Berger spoke.

"I've been giving your proposition careful consideration, Mr. Braddy," he said. "I have decided that we'd like to keep you in the rugs. We'll meet that ante."

IX: Gretna Greenhorns

The object of his pensive musings was at that moment eating her evening meal some blocks away in the home of her parents. Fondly, with that inward eye which is alleged to be the bliss of solitude, Chester followed the process. It had only been lately that he could bring himself to admit that she ate at all. She was so dainty, so ethereal. And yet reason, and the course he was taking in physiology, told him that she, even she, must sometimes give way to the unworthy promptings of necessity, and eat. But that she should eat as ordinary mortals do, was unthinkable. It was not the first time that Chester, in reverie, had permitted her a slight refection. The menu of her meals never varied. To-night, as on other occasions, it consisted of watercress salad, a mere nibble of it; a delicate dab of ice-cream, no bigger than a thimble; a small cup of tea, and, perhaps, a lady-finger. The lady-finger was a concession. On the occasion of his last call, Mildred had confessed that she could die eating lady-fingers. Of course, later in the evening she might have a candy or two, but then candy can hardly be considered food.

A mundane clatter of dishes in the kitchen below caused Chester to start from his dream, and drop the shoe. He leaped up and began to make elaborate and excited preparations for dressing.

From an ancient, battered chest of drawers he carefully took a tissue-paper package containing a Union Forever Suit, whose label proclaimed that "From Factory to You, No Human Hand Touches It." With brow puckered in abstract thought, Chester broke the seal and laid the crisp, immaculate garment on the bed. With intense seriousness, he regarded it for a moment; apparently it passed his searching examination, for he turned again to the chest of drawers and drew forth a smaller package, from which he extracted new socks of lustrous blue. These he placed on the bed. From beneath the bed he drew a pair of low shoes, which gleamed in the gaslight from arduous polishing. On their toes, fanciful artisans had pricked curves and loops and butterfly designs. Chester gave them a few final rubs with the shirt he had just discarded and placed them on the bed. At this point there was a hiatus in the wardrobe. He went out into the hall and shouted down the back stairs.

"Oh, Ma. Oh, Ma!"

"Well?" came his mother's voice from the regions below.

"Are my trousers pressed yet?"

"My goodness, Chester," she called, "I haven't had time yet. It's only a little after six. Do come down and eat some supper."

"But I don't want any supper," protested Chester.

"There's apple pudding with cream," she announced.

"Oh, well," said Chester, reluctantly, "I suppose I'd better. Can I have a dish of it on the back stairs? I'm not dressed."

"Yes. But you have plenty of time. You know you shouldn't make an evening call before eight-fifteen at the very earliest," said Mrs. Jessup.

After he had disposed of two helpings of apple pudding, Chester returned to his room and spent some moments analyzing the comparative merits of a dozen neckties hanging in an imitation brass stirrup. He had eliminated all but two, a black one and a red one, when his mother's voice floated up the back stairs.

"For goodness' sake, Chester, do be careful of that bathtub. It's running over again. How many times do I have to tell you to watch it?"

Chester bounded to the bathroom and shut off the water. It had, indeed, started to overflow the tub, and Chester, accepting the Archimedian principle without ever having heard of it, perceived that he must let some of the water out before he could put himself in. Accordingly he pulled out the plug and returned to his own room to wait for a little of the water to run off.

He made the most of this idle moment. Throwing off his multi-hued Navajo bathrobe, he surveyed the reflection of his torso in the mirror. He contracted his biceps and eyed the resulting egg-like bulges with some satisfaction. Suddenly, his ordinarily amiable face took on a fierce, dark scowl. He crouched until he was bent almost double. He lowered at the mirror. His left fist was extended and his right drawn back in the most approved scientific style of the prize-ring.

"You will, will you?" came from between his clenched teeth, and his left fist darted out rapidly, three, four, five times, and then he shot out his right fist with such violence that he all but shattered the mirror.

This last blow seemed to have a cataclysmic effect on Chester's opponent, for the victorious Chester backed off and waited, still crouching and lowering, for his victim to rise.

The opponent apparently was a tough one, and not the man to succumb easily. Chester waited for him to regain his feet and then they were at it again. Chester let loose a shower of savage uppercuts. From the way he leaped six inches into the air to deliver his blows it was evident that his opponent was considerably bigger than he. At length, when all but breathless from his exertions, Chester with one prodigious punch, a coup de grâce that there was no withstanding, knocked all the fight out of his foe. But, seemingly, he was not satisfied with flooring his giant opponent; with stern, set face, Chester walked to the corner where the fellow was sprawling, seized him by his collar, and dragged him across the room. Then, shaking him fiercely, Chester hissed:

"Now, you cad, apologize to this lady for daring to offer her an affront by passing remarks about her."

The apology would, no doubt, have been forthcoming had not Chester at that moment heard an unmistakable sound from the bathroom. He abandoned his prostrate foe and rushed in just in time to see the last of his bath-water go gargling and gurgling out of the tub.

Chester sat moodily on the edge of the tub until enough hot water had bubbled into it for him to perform ablutions of appalling thoroughness. He was red almost to rawness from his efforts with the bath brush, and was redolent of scented soap and talcum powder when he again returned to his bedroom.

He dressed with a sort of feverish calmness, now and again pausing to sigh gently and gaze for a moment into nothingness. By now she had finished her lady-finger—

His mother had laid his freshly pressed trousers on the bed, and he ran an appreciative eye along their razor-blade crease. From the chest of drawers he brought forth a snowy shirt, which, from the piece of cardboard shoved down its throat and the numerous pins which Chester extracted impatiently, one could surmise was fresh from the laundry. When he came to the collar-and-tie stage, he was halted for a time. Three collars of various shapes were tried and deemed unworthy, and then, at the last minute, yielding to a sudden wild impulse, he discarded the black tie in favor of the red one. He slipped on a blue serge coat, the cut of which endeavored to promote his waist-line to his shoulder blades, and was all dressed but for the crowning task—to comb his hair.

By dint of many dismal experiences, Chester knew that this would be trying, for his hair was abundant but untamed. He tried first to induce it to part while it was still dry, but the results of this operation, as he had feared, were negligible. He then attempted to achieve a part with his hair slightly moistened with witch hazel. For fully five seconds it looked like a success, but, as Chester started to leave, one parting look told him that little spikes and wisps were rearing rebellious heads and quite ruining the perfection of his handiwork. With a sigh he fell back upon his last resort, the liberal application of a sticky, jelly-like substance derived from petroleum, which imparted to his brown hair an unwonted shine. But the part held as if it had been carved in marble. Arranging his white silk handkerchief so that it protruded a modish eighth of an inch from his breast pocket, Chester Arthur Jessup, Jr., sallied forth to make his call.

On the front porch was his family, and Chester would have avoided their critical eyes if he could. However, the gantlet had to be run, so he emerged into the family group with a saunter that he hoped might be described as "nonchalant." In the privacy of his room he often practiced that saunter; he had seen in the papers that a certain celebrated criminal had "sauntered nonchalantly into the court-room," and the phrase had fascinated him.

"What in the name of thunder have you been doing to your hair?" demanded his father, looking up from his pipe and paper.

"Combing it," replied Chester, coldly.

"With axle grease?" inquired Jessup senior, genially.

"And it does look so nice when it's dry and wavy," put in his mother.

Chester emitted a faint groan.

"Oh, Ma, you never seem to realize that I'm grown up," he protested. "Wavy hair!" He groaned again.

"Well," remarked the father, "I suppose it's better that way than not combed at all. Seems to me that last summer you didn't care much whether it was combed, or cut either, for that matter."

"A woman has come into his life," explained his twenty-two year-old sister, from behind her novel.

"You just be careful who you go callin' a woman," exclaimed Chester, turning on her, with some warmth.

"Don't you consider Mildred Wrigley a woman?" asked Hilda, mildly.

"Not in the sense you mean it."

"By the way," said Hilda, "I saw her last night."

Chester's manner instantly became eager and conciliatory. "Did you? Where?"

"At the Mill Street Baptist Church supper," said Hilda.

"At the supper?" Chester's tone suggested incredulity.

"Yes. And goodness me, I never saw a girl eat so much in my life. She——"

"Hilda Jessup, how dare you!"

Chester's voice cracked with the emotion he felt at so damnable an imputation.

"There, there, Hilda, stop your teasing," said Mrs. Jessup. "What if she did? A big, healthy girl like that——"

"Mother——" Chester's tone was anguished.

"Come, Nell," said Mr. Jessup, "leave him to his illusions. It's a bad day for romance when a man discovers that his goddess likes a second helping of corned beef."

"Father, how can you say such things! I will not stay here and listen to you say such things about one who I——"

"One whom," interrupted Hilda.

Chester flounced down the front steps and slammed the gate after him, in a manner that could not possibly be described as "nonchalant."

§2

The Wrigley home was four blocks away, and Chester, once out of sight of his own home, became meditative. He stopped, and after looking about to see that he was not observed, drew from his inside pocket an envelope, and for the twelfth time that day counted its contents. Ninety-four dollars! The savings of a lifetime! It had originally been saved for the purchase of a motor-cycle, but that was before Mildred Wrigley had smiled at him one day across the senior study-hall. That seemed but yesterday, and yet it must have been fully seven weeks before! He replaced the money and continued on his way.

Chester paused at the Greek Candy Kitchen on Main Street to buy a box of candy, richly bedight with purple silk, and by carefully gauging his saunter, contrived to arrive at the Wrigley residence at fourteen minutes after eight. He gave his tie a final adjustment, his hair a last frantic smoothing, licked his dry lips—and rang the bell.

"Oh, good evening, Chester."

Mildred Wrigley had a small, birdlike voice. She was looking not so much at Chester as at the beribboned purple box he held. They went into the parlor.

"Oh, Chester," cried Mildred, as she opened the purple box, "how sweet of you to bring me such heavenly candy. I just adore chocolate-covered cherries. I could just DIE eating them."

She popped two of them into her mouth, and sighed ecstatically. They discussed, with great thoroughness, the weather of the day, the weather of the day before and the probable weather of the near future. Then Mildred moved her chair a quarter of an inch nearer Chester's.

"There, now," she said, with her dimpling smile, "let's be real comfy." A glow enveloped Chester.

"I had the most heavenly supper to-night," confided Mildred.

"I hardly ate at all," said Chester.

"Oh, you poor, poor boy," said Mildred. "Do pass me another candy."

They discussed school affairs, and the approaching examinations.

"I'm so worried," confessed Mildred. "Horrid old geometry. Stupid physics. What do I care why apples fall off trees? I'm going to go on the stage. That miserable old wretch, Miss Shufelt, has been writing nasty notes to Dad, saying I don't study enough."

Her lip trembled; she looked so small, so weak. "Look here," said Chester, hoarsely, "we've known each other for a long time now, haven't we?"

"Yes, ever so long," said Mildred, taking another chocolate-covered cherry. "Months and months."

"Do you think one person ought to be frank with another person?"

"Of course I do, Chester, if they know each other well enough."

"I mean very frank."

"Well," said Mildred, "if they know each other very, very well, I think they ought to be very frank."

"How long do you think one person ought to know another person before he, or for that matter she, ought to be very frank with that person."

"Oh, months and months," answered Mildred.

Chester passed his white silk handkerchief over his damp brow.

"When I say very frank, I mean very frank," he said.

"That's what I mean, too." She took another chocolate-covered cherry.

Chester went on, speaking rapidly.

"For example, if one person should tell another person that he liked that person and he didn't really mean like at all but another word like like, only meaning something much more than like—don't you think he ought to tell that person what he really meant? I mean, of course, providing that he had known that person months and months and knew her very well and——"

"I guess he should," she said, taking a sudden keen interest in the toe of her slipper. Chester plunged on.

"But suppose you were the person that another person had said they liked, only they really didn't mean like but another word that begins with 'l,' do you think that person ought to be very frank and tell you that the way he regarded you did not begin 'li' but began 'lo'?"

"I guess so," she said, without abandoning the minute scrutiny of her toe.

"Well," said Chester, "that's how I regard you, not with an 'li' but with an 'lo.'"

Mildred did not look up.

"Oh, Chester," she murmured. He hitched his chair an inch nearer hers, and with a quick, uncertain movement, took hold of her hand. A loud slam of the front door caused them both to start.

"It's Dad," whispered Mildred. "And he's mad about something."

Her father, large and red-faced, entered the room.

"Good evening," he said, nodding briefly at Chester.

"Mildred, come into my study a minute, will you. There's something I want to talk to you about."

The folding doors closed on father and daughter, and Chester was left balancing himself on the edge of a chair.

Mildred's father had a rumbling voice that now and then penetrated the folding doors and Chester caught the words "whippersnapper" and "callow." He heard, too, Mildred's small, high voice, protesting. She was in tears.

Presently Mildred reappeared, lacrimose. "Oh, that nasty, horrid Miss Shufelt," she burst out.

"What has she done?" asked Chester.

"The nasty old cat asked Dad to stop in to see her to-night on his way home from the office, and she told him the awfulest things about me."

"She did?" Chester's voice was rich with loathing. "I just wish I had her here, that's all I wish," he added fiercely.

"She said," went on Mildred, with fresh sobs, "she said—I—was—boy—c-c-crazy. And—I—never—studied—and——"

"Darn that woman!" cried Chester.

"And Dad's—going—to—send—me—to—S-Simpson Hall!"

The idea stunned Chester.

"Simpson Hall? Why, that's a boarding school in Massachusetts, miles and miles from here," he gasped.

"I know it," said Mildred. "I know a girl who went there. It's a nasty, horrid place." A fresh attack of sobs seized her.

"They'll—make—me—do—c-calisthenics, and—they—won't—give—me—anything—to—eat—but—b-beans."

Nothing but beans! Mildred eat beans! It was an outrage, a sacrilege.

"He's already written to Simpson Hall," wailed Mildred. "And I have to go, Monday."

"Monday? Not Monday? Why, to-day's Friday!" Chester's face became resolute; he felt in his inside pocket where his envelope was.

"You sha'n't go," he declared. "You and I will elope to-morrow morning."

§3

Chester met Mildred aboard the 8:48 train for New York City the next morning.

Mildred, clasping a small straw suit-case, had misgivings. But Chester reassured her.

"Don't worry, Mildred, please don't worry," he pleaded. "My cousin, Phil Snyder, who is at Princeton and knows all about such things, says it's a cinch to get married in New York. All you do is walk up to a window, pay a dollar, and you're married. And if we can't get married there, we can go to Hoboken. Anybody, anybody at all, can get married in Hoboken, Phil told me so."

She smiled at him.

"Our wedding day," she said, softly.

"Why are you so pensive?" he asked, after a while.

"I haven't had my breakfast," she said. "I always feel sort of weak and funny till I've had my breakfast."

Chester bought several large slabs of nut-studded chocolate from the train boy. When they passed Harmon, at Mildred's suggestion he bought a package of butter-scotch. Her flagging spirits were revived by these repasts. "I could just DIE eating butter-scotch," she said, dimpling.

"We'll always keep some in the house, little woman," Chester promised her, mentally adding butter-scotch to the menu of watercress salad, tea, ice-cream and an occasional lady-finger.

The human torrent in the Grand Central station whirled the elopers with it along the ramp and out under the zodiac dome of the great, busy hall. They stood there, wide-eyed. "New York," said Mildred.

"Our New York," said Chester.

He steered a roundabout course for the subway, for he wanted to reach the Municipal Building as soon as possible. He had fears, the worldly Phil Snyder to the contrary notwithstanding, that he might encounter difficulties in getting a marriage license there. And he and Mildred would then have to go to Hoboken. He had only a sketchy idea of where Hoboken was. And it was then nearly eleven.

But Mildred was not to be hurried.

"Couldn't we have just one little fudge sundae first?" she asked. "I haven't had my regular breakfast, you know. And I do feel so sort of weak and funny when I haven't had my regular breakfast."

To Schuyler's they went, and consumed precious minutes and two fudge sundaes. On the way out, Mildred stopped short.

"Oh, look," she exclaimed, "real New Orleans pralines. I just adore them. And you can't get them in Clintonia."

Chester looked at her a little nervously.

"It's getting sort of late," he suggested.

"All right, Mr. Hurry," Mildred pouted, "just you go on to the horrid old City Hall by your lonesome. I'm going to stop and have a praline."

Chester capitulated, contritely, so Mildred had two.

They started for the subway which was to take them far down-town to the Municipal Building. On Forty-second Street they passed a shiny, white edifice in the window of which an artist in immaculate white duck was deftly tossing griddle cakes into the air so that they described a graceful parabola and flopped on a soapstone griddle where they sizzled brownly and crisply. A faint but provoking aroma floated through the open door. Mildred's footsteps slackened, then she paused, then she came to a dead stop.

"Ummm-mmm! What a heavenly smell!" she said. "Don't you just adore griddle cakes?"

"Yes, yes," said Chester, a little desperately. "Let's have some for lunch. It's twenty-five minutes to twelve. Let's hurry."

"Why, Chester Jessup, you know I haven't had my regular breakfast yet. I just couldn't go away down to that old City Hall and get married and everything without having had some nourishment. It won't take a minute to have a little breakfast."

"Oh, all right," said Chester.

The griddle cakes tasted like rubber to Chester. Mildred ate hers with great relish and insisted on having them decorated with country sausage.

"It's so nourishing," she explained. "I could just die eating sausage."

Chester paid the check and forgot to take the change from a two-dollar bill.

"I could just die eating sausage. I could just die eating sausage." The wheels of the subway train seemed to click to this refrain as it sped down-town.

It was nearly one o'clock when the elopers at last reached the Municipal Building. They found a sign which read, "MARRIAGE LICENSES. KEEP TO THE RIGHT."

With his heart just under his collar button and his dollar grasped tightly in his hand, Chester knocked timidly. The door was opened by a stout minor politician with a cap on the back of his head.

"I want a marriage license, please," said Chester. He dropped his voice a full octave below his normal speaking-tone.

The minor politician blinked at Chester and Mildred. Then he guffawed, hoarsely.

"Say," he said, "in the foist place, you'll have to get a little more age on yuh, and in the second place, this is Satiddy and this joint closes at noon. Come back Thoisday between ten and four about eight years from now." He closed the door.

Chester turned miserably to Mildred.

"That means Hoboken," he said.

"I don't care," she said, "as long as I'm with you."

They went out into the canyons of lower Manhattan, in search of the way to Hoboken. Their wanderings took them past a restaurant whose windows were adorned with vicious-looking, green, live lobsters, scrambling about pugnaciously on cakes of ice.

"Oh, LOBSTERS," cried Mildred, her eye brightening. "I've only had lobster once in my life. Couldn't you just DIE eating lobster?"

"I suppose so," said Chester, gloomily.

"Couldn't we stop in and have a teeny, weeny bit of lunch?" she asked, eyeing the lobsters wistfully. "It makes me feel sort of queer to go on long trips without food."

"I'm not hungry," said Chester.

"But I am," said Mildred. They went in.

A superior waiter handed Mildred a large menu card. "May I order just anything I want?" she asked eagerly.

"Wouldn't you like some nice watercress salad and some tea and lady-fingers?" Chester asked, hopefully.

"Pooh! Why, there's no nourishment in that at all!" Mildred was studying the menu card. "I want a great big lobster, and some asparagus. And then I want some nice chicken salad with mayonnaise. And then some pistache ice-cream. And, oh, yes, a piece of huckleberry pie."

To Chester that lunch seemed the longest experience of his life. It seemed to him that no lobster ever looked redder, no mayonnaise yellower, no pistache ice-cream greener and no huckleberry pie purpler. Mildred ate steadily. Now and then she made little joyful noises of approbation.

When lunch was over at last, they started for Hoboken.

"It's a nice pleasant trip by ferry-boat," a policeman told them.

"I don't think I'd care for a boat trip," said Mildred.

"But we have to go to Hoboken," Chester expostulated.

"Couldn't we walk?" she asked.

"No, no, of course we couldn't. It's across the river."

"I feel sort of queer, somehow," said Mildred, faintly.

The North River was choppy from darting tugs and gliding barges as the ferry-boat bore the elopers toward the Jersey side. Leaning on the rail, Chester gazed morosely at the retreating metropolitan sky-line. Mildred plucked at his coat sleeve. He turned and looked at her. Her face was pale. "Oh, Chester, I want to go back. I want to go home," she said, tearfully.

"Why, Mildred," exclaimed Chester, and for the first time there was impatience in his voice, "what's the matter?"

"I'm going to be sick," she said.

She was.

§4

"I hate you, Chester Jessup. I hate, hate, HATE you. And I'm going to go back," she said, tearfully.

The elopers had never reached Hoboken. Mildred refused to leave the ferry-boat and Chester did not urge her. It bore them back to the New York side. Their flight to Gretna Green was a failure.

"You take me right home, do you hear?" cried Mildred.

"We can get the 3:59 from the Grand Central," said Chester in an icy voice. "That will get you home in time for supper."

"Chester Jessup, you're a nasty, heartless boy to mention supper to me when I'm in this condition," said Mildred.

They made the trip from New York back to Clintonia in silence. Chester, watching the scenery flow by, was thinking deeply. He was wondering at what age young men are admitted to monasteries. He left Mildred at her house.

"Good night, Mr. Jessup," she said, coolly.

"Good night, Miss Wrigley," said Chester, and stalked home.

"Where have you been all day?" demanded his mother.

"Oh, just around," said Chester.

"Why weren't you home for lunch?"

"I wasn't hungry," said Chester.

"And we had the best things, too. Just what you like—chicken salad with mayonnaise, and deep-dish huckleberry pie."

Chester shivered. "I don't think I'll take any supper to-night," he said.

"Why, what ails you, anyhow?" asked his mother, solicitously. "We're going to have such a nice supper. Your father brought home a couple of lobsters. And afterward we're going to have pistache ice-cream, and lady-fingers."

"Good Heavens, Mother, I guess I know when I'm not hungry. There are other things in life besides food, aren't there?"

"Like being in love, for example?" suggested his sister Hilda.

"I'm not in love," declared Chester, vehemently.

"How would you like to have me tell Mildred Wrigley you said that?" asked Hilda.

"I just wish you would," said Chester, "I just wish you would."

"By the way," remarked Mr. Jessup, "I met Tom Wrigley to-day and he said he was sending that girl of his off to boarding school at Simpson Hall."

"Oh, is he?" said Mrs. Jessup. "Chester, did you hear what your father said?"

"Yes, I did," said Chester, "and all I can say is that I hope she gets enough to eat."

X: Terrible Epps

Mildly, as he did everything else in life, Tidbury admired, indeed almost envied Mr. Spingle's silk shirts, which customarily suggested an explosion in a paint factory. But such sartorial grandeur, Tidbury felt, was not for him. He stuck to plain white shirts, dark blue ties and pepper-and-salt suits. The pepper-and-salt suit was invented for Tidbury Epps.

Tidbury worked diligently and even cheerfully on a high stool and a low salary, copying neat little black figures into big black books. The salary and the stool were the same Tidbury had been given when he first came to New York from Calais, Maine, ten years before.

It probably never entered his head, as he bent over his columns of digits that crisp fall morning, that in their sanctum of real mahogany and Spanish leather his employers were discussing him.

"Whitaker has quit," announced Mr. Blatter, who acted as sales manager.

Mr. Spingle's acre of face, pink and dimpled from much good living, showed concern.

"How come you can't keep an assistant, Otto?" he inquired.

"After they've been with me for six months," explained Mr. Blatter modestly, "they get so good that they simply have to get better jobs."

"Well, got any candidates for the place?" queried the president.

"Burdette?" suggested Mr. Blatter.

Mr. Spingle eliminated Burdette with a flick of his finger.

"Too young," he said.

"Wetsel?"

"Too old."

"Fitch?"

"Too careless."

"Hydeman?"

"Too inexperienced."

"Well," ventured Mr. Blatter, "what about Tidbury Epps?"

Mr. Spingle's shrug included his shoulders, face and entire body.

"He's neither too old, too young, too careless nor too inexperienced," advanced Mr. Blatter.

"You're not serious, Otto?"

"Sure I am. Epps has been with us ten years and he's worked hard. I believe in giving our old employees a chance."

"So do I," rejoined the Napoleon of Hatdom; "but you know perfectly well, Otto, that Tidbury Epps is a dud."

"He's as conscientious as a Pilgrim father," remarked Mr. Blatter.

"That's the trouble with him," snorted Mr. Spingle.

"He spends so much time being conscientious that he hasn't time to be anything else. Not that I object to a man having a conscience, y'understand. But Epps hasn't anything else. You know how it is in the hat trade, Otto; you've got to be a good fellow."

Mr. Spingle paused to pat his silken bosom, in hue reminiscent of sunset in the Grand Cañon. That he was a good fellow, a bon vivant, even, was generally admitted in the hat trade.

"You see," went on the Napoleon of Hatdom, "your assistant has to be nice to the trade. That's almost his chief job. Remember the motto of our house is, 'Our business friends are our personal friends.' That's meant a lot to us, Otto. Now and then you've simply got to take a big buyer out and show him a good time—buy him a meal and take him to the Winter Garden. You and I are mostly too busy to do it, but your assistant isn't. Whitaker made us a lot of good friends, and good customers, too, because he was a regular fella and knew the ropes. But can you imagine old Epps giving a party?"

Mr. Blatter was forced to admit that he couldn't.

"But he's so willing," he argued.

"Oh, sure," agreed Mr. Spingle; "and sober and industrious and stands without hitching and all that. But he's too much of a hermit. No more personality than a parsnip. No spirit. No nerve. No fire. No zip. Sorry I can't jump him up; he may be a good man, but he's not a good fellow."

"I suppose it will have to be Hydeman, then," remarked Mr. Blatter, rising. "He's a little too slick and flip to suit me, and we don't know much about him, but I suppose he'd know how to show a buyer Broadway."

"I'll bet he would," said Mr. Spingle. "Try him out. But watch his expense account, Otto."

So Tidbury Epps continued to enjoy his high stool and his low salary and to copy endless little figures into big black books. His shoulders drooped a little when he heard of Hydeman's quick promotion, but he said nothing.

Messrs. Spingle and Blatter, being interested solely in what went on outside men's heads, did not attempt to find out what was wrong with Tidbury Epps. But had a psychoanalyst peered darkly into the interior of Tidbury's small round cranium he would have instantly noted that Mr. Epps was suffering from a bad case of inferiority complex, complicated by an acute attack of Puritanical complex.

If anybody was to blame for this it was not Tidbury himself but his Aunt Elvira, who, with the aid of a patented cat-o'-nine-tails she had sent all the way to Chicago for, willow switches from her own back yard, and an edged tongue that cut worse than either, had confined his juvenile steps to a very straight and exceedingly narrow path by the simple process of lambasting him roundly whenever he so much as glanced to the right or to the left.

Aunt Elvira was a lean woman with no digestion to speak of, and the chief tenet of her philosophy was that whatever is enjoyable is sinful. She impressed this creed on young Tidbury with her thin but sinewy arm, until one day while castigating him violently for laughing at a comic supplement that the groceries had come in she succumbed to an excess of virtue and a broken blood vessel.

Tidbury promptly came to New York with two suits of flannel underwear and many suppressed desires, and went soberly to work in the hat company. His subsequent life was as empty of adventure, variety, sin or success as the life of a Hubbard squash. His job wholly absorbed him. The little figures in the big books became his only world. He had never learned to play.

Yet people liked Tidbury, even while they thought him kin to the snail. He had a quiet twinkle in his eye and he took over mean jobs and night work without a peep of protest. It was his willingness to take on overtime work, and his quiet competence that first attracted the approving eye of Mr. Blatter. But Mr. Blatter had to admit that Mr. Spingle had diagnosed the case of Tidbury Epps all too accurately; Tidbury was indubitably, incurably a dud; and that is worse than being a dub. If any latent fire lurked beneath that pepper-and-salt bosom no one had ever glimpsed so much as a spark of it. Tidbury never lived up to that twinkle in his eye.

One would have said that Tidbury was as inconspicuous as an oyster in a fifteen-cent stew, and yet love, mysterious, ubiquitous love, found him out and laid him violently by the heels.

It was the round black eyes of Martha Ritter, the new girl at the information desk, and the way she cocked her head on one side when she smiled, that first brought to Tidbury the alarming realization that his heart was something more than a pump.

She was an alert little thing who would have been teaching school in her native Ohio village of Granville had not the glittering metropolitan magnet drawn her to it as every year it draws ten thousand Martha Ritters from ten thousand Granvilles.

She smiled at Tidbury one day as he registered his punctual arrival on the time clock, and a sudden strange warmth was kindled under his pepper-and-salt coat. Tidbury knew that it was wicked to feel so good, but he couldn't help it. Love laughs at complexes.

He saw her home; he called on her; he brought her salted peanuts; he took her to a concert in Central Park; he kept her picture on his washstand. But, characteristically, Tidbury as a lover was no volcano of imperious emotion. He was no aggressive bark, battling fiercely against wind and wave; he was a chip, floating with the tide. Matrimony, with Martha, was a desirable but distant shore; he would drift there in time. But Martha Ritter, who had more than a dash of romance in her, did not think much of this sort of courting.

The last time he had been with her—they had gone to the Aquarium to view the fishes—pent-up protest had burst from her, and she had exclaimed, "Oh, Tidbury, you are so—so quiet!"

The words had jolted him; he had said them over to himself uncounted times, and had pondered over them; indeed he was trying to keep from thinking of them as he bent over his task the day they made Hydeman assistant to the sales manager. Tidbury had noticed lately that Martha talked about Mr. Hydeman a great deal; she had mentioned his polished finger-nails; she had suggested that Tidbury would do well to get one of those high-lapeled, snug-waisted suits that Mr. Hydeman affected; she had quoted some of Mr. Hydeman's witticisms, and had retailed some incidents from his highly colored life. In short, she appeared to have taken a sudden acute interest in Mr. Hydeman.

Tidbury Epps could not drive from his mind the disquieting thought that Mr. Hydeman as a rival would be dangerous. In the washroom Mr. Hydeman made no secret of his finesse as a Don Juan. He was everything that Tidbury was not—dashing, worldly, confident. There was something about his smooth black hair, held in place by a shiny gummy substance, something about the angle at which he tilted his short-brimmed hat, something about the way his tight little knot of brilliant tie fitted into his modishly low collar, something about the way he filliped the ash from his cigarette so that one could see the diamond twinkle on his finger—that carried a subtle suggestion of sophistication and an adventurous nature.

That morning they had entered together—Tidbury and Mr. Hydeman—and Tidbury, with icy fingers gripping his heart, had noted that Martha bestowed on Mr. Hydeman a smile with a lingering personal note in it, while her greeting to Tidbury was a curt formal nod. His bitter cup was full, and for the first time in his life he gave way to the pangs of jealousy when, at noontime, he saw Mr. Hydeman take her to lunch. Tidbury came upon them, talking and laughing together, and Martha made not the slightest attempt to conceal her interest in the suave new assistant to the sales manager; she was open, even brazen about it.

Tidbury was moodily copying figures and trying not to heed the fact that the green-eyed monster was clutching him with torturing talons when Mr. Hydeman came up to his desk and prodded him playfully in the ribs.

"Well, old Tid," remarked Mr. Hydeman, "I'll bet you wish you were going to be in my shoes to-night."

Tidbury looked up from his work.

"Why?" he asked.

For answer Mr. Hydeman thrust two tickets beneath Tidbury's stub of nose. With only a vague comprehension Tidbury glanced at what was printed on them.

ADMIT ONE

THE PAGAN ROUT

All Greenwich Village Will Be There

Webber Hall

Only Persons in Costume Admitted. Don't Miss
the Daring Garden of Eden Ballet and
Masque at Four a.m.

"Are you a Greenwich Villager?" asked Tidbury.

Mr. Hydeman smiled at the note of horror in Tidbury's voice.

"Oh, I hang out down there," he admitted airily.

"And you're going to the Pagan Rout?"

Even into the seclusion of Calais, Maine, and Mrs. Kelty's, rumors of that revel had filtered.

"I never miss one," replied Mr. Hydeman grandly. "And say, I've a costume this year that's a knockout."

"You have?"

"Yes. I've got a preacher's outfit. Can you imagine me a parson?"

Weakly Tidbury said he couldn't.

"And say," went on Mr. Hydeman, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, "I'll have a flask of hip oil on me."

"Hip oil?"

"Sure. Diamond juice."

"Diamond juice?"

"Aw, hooch. For me and the gal."

"The girl?" quavered Tidbury.

"Say," demanded Mr. Hydeman, "did you think I was going to take a hippopotamus with me?"

Tidbury's small face was pathetic.

"You don't know what you're missing, Tid," Mr. Hydeman rattled on. "It's a real naughty party. Those costumes! Oh, bebe." Mr. Hydeman rolled his eyes toward the roof and blew thither a kiss. "Last year there was a Cleopatra there and she didn't have a thing on her but a pair of——"

"The cashier's waiting for these figures," mumbled Mr. Epps. "I've got to go to him."

He heard Hydeman's sniggle of laughter behind him.

That evening the desperate Tidbury met Martha Ritter as she was leaving the hat company's building.

"May I come to see you to-night?" he asked, trying not to stammer, and hoping his ears were not as red as they felt. "There's a nice band concert in Prospect Park and I thought——"

Martha Ritter cocked her head to one side and smiled mysteriously.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Epps," she said coolly, "but I have an engagement."

"You—have—an—engagement?" He repeated the words as if they were a prison sentence.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Oh, it's a masquerade." She smiled, her head on one side.

"Whom are you going with?" he blurted; he was trembling.

"That would be telling," she laughed. "Well, good night, Mr. Epps. I must hurry home and get my costume on. I'm going as a gypsy."

And she disappeared into the maw of the Subway.

A masquerade! In gypsy costume! Tidbury was struck by the lightning of complete realization; he understood Hydeman's leer now. Feebly he leaned against a lamp-post until his numbed brain could recover from the impact. Then he committed a sin. Deliberately he kicked the lamp-post a vicious kick.

"Darn it all," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Yes, gosh darn it all!"

Then he went wearily to his boarding house. Morosely he ate of Mrs. Kelty's boiled beef and bread pudding; morosely he sat in his lonely stall of a bedroom and glowered at a hole in the red carpet.

"I'm too quiet. Too darn quiet," he kept saying to himself in a sort of litany. "Yes, too gosh darn quiet."

And when he thought of Martha, sweet simple Martha, and so short a time ago his Martha, at the Pagan Rout with Hydeman, surrounded by indecorous and no doubt inebriate denizens of Greenwich Village, his head all but burst. That she was lost, and, most poignant thought of all, lost to him, kept beating in upon his brain. He moaned.

Suddenly his spine straightened with a terrible resolve. His small guileless face was set in lines of stern decision. He leaped from his chair, dived under his brass bed, rummaged in his trunk and fished up twenty-five hard-saved dollars in a sock.

Clapping his hat on his head in emulation of the tilt of Mr. Hydeman's hat Tidbury issued forth. In the hall he passed Mrs. Kelty, who regarded him with some surprise.

"You're not going out, Mr. Epps?" she asked. "Why, it's after nine!"

"I am going out, Mrs. Kelty," announced Tidbury Epps.

"Back soon?"

"I may never come back," he answered hollowly.

"Sakes alive! Where are you going?"

"I am going," said Tidbury Epps firmly, "to the devil."

And he strode into the night.

§2

Never having gone to the devil before, Mr. Epps was somewhat perplexed in mind as to the direction he should take. But a moment's reflection convinced him that Greenwich Village was the most promising place for such a pilgrimage. He had never been there before; he had been afraid to go there. Startling stories of the gay profligacy rampant in that angle of old New York had reached his ears. He believed firmly that if the devil has any headquarters in New York they are somewhere below Fourteenth Street and west of Washington Square.

Mr. Epps debouched from a bus in Washington Square and started westward along West Fourth Street with the cautious but determined tread of an explorer penetrating a trackless and cannibal-infested jungle. He glanced apprehensively to right and left, his eyes wide for the sight of painted sirens, his ears agape for gusts of ribald merriment. At each corner he paused expectantly, anticipating that he might come upon a delirious party of art students gamboling about a model. He traversed two blocks without seeing so much as a smock; what he did see was an ancient man of Italian derivation carrying a bag of charcoal on his head, and a stout woman wheeling twins stuffed uncomfortably into a single-seater gocart, and a number of nondescript humans who from their sedate air might well have been Brooklyn funeral directors. He owned, after a bit, to a certain sense of disappointment. Going to the devil was more of a chore than he had fancied.

As he trekked ever westward a sound at length smote his dilated ears and made him catch his breath. It was issuing from a dim-lit basement, and was filtering through batik curtains stenciled with strange, smeary beasts. He had heard the wild, dissipated notes of a mechanical piano. A lurid but somewhat inexpertly lettered sign above the basement door read,

YE AMIABLE OYSTER

Refreshmints at All Hrs.

With a newborn boldness Tidbury Epps thrust open the door and entered. No shower of confetti, no popping of corks, no rousing stein song greeted him. Save for the industrious piano the place seemed empty. However, by the feeble beams that came from the lights, bandaged in batik like so many sore thumbs, he discerned a mountainous matron behind a cash register, engaged in tatting.

"Where's everybody?" he asked of her.

"Oh, things will liven up after a bit," she yawned.

Tidbury sat at a small bright blue table and scanned a card affixed to the wall.

Angel's Ambrosia ........  $0.50
Horse's Neck ..............      .60
Devil's Delight ..............     .70
Dry Martini ..................     .50
Very dry Martini ..........     .60
Very, very dry Martini ..     .90
Champagne Sizzle ........     .75

A sleepy waiter with a soup-stained vest came from the inner room presently.

"Gimme a Devil's Delight," ordered Tidbury Epps recklessly.

He had heard that Greenwich Village, the untrammeled, laughs openly in the teeth of the Eighteenth Amendment. He had never in his life tasted an alcoholic drink, but to-night he was stopping at nothing. The Devil's Delight came, and Tidbury as he sipped its pink saccharinity found himself feeling that the devil is rather easily delighted. He had expected the potion to make his head buzz; but it did not. Instead it distinctly suggested rather weak and not very superior strawberry sirup and carbonated water. He crooked a summoning finger at the waiter.

"Horse's Neck," he commanded.

The Horse's Neck made its appearance, an insipid-looking amber fluid with a wan piece of lemon peel floating shamefacedly on its surface.

"Tastes just like ginger ale to me," remarked Mr. Epps. "Wadjuh expeck in a Horse's Neck?" queried the waiter bellicosely. "Chloride of lime?"

"I can't feel it at all," complained Mr. Epps.

"Feel it?" The waiter raised his brows. "Say, what do you think this joint is? A dump? We ain't bootleggers, mister."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mr. Epps.

He was about to go elsewhere, when a babel of excited voices outside the door made him sink back into his chair; evidently the promise of the tatting matron was to be made good, and Ye Amiable Oyster was about to liven up.

The first thing that entered the door was an animal—a full-size, shaggy anthropoid ape, big as a man. Mr. Epps was too alarmed to bolt. But as the creature careened into the light Mr. Epps observed that his face was human and slightly Hibernian. Behind him came a girl, rather sketchily dressed for autumn in a pair of bead portieres, a girdle or two, and a gilt plaster bird, which was bound firmly to her head. Mr. Epps had seen things like her on cigarette boxes. A second couple followed, hilarious. The man wore a tight velvet suit, a sombrero several yards around, black mustaches of prodigious length and bristle that did not match the red of his hair, and earrings the size of cantaloupes; it was not clear whether he was intended to be a pirate or an organ grinder or a compromise between the two; but it was clear that he was in a state where it did not matter, to him, in the least. His companion wore a precarious garment of dry grass, and her arms were stained brown; at intervals she conveyed the information to the general atmosphere that she was a bimbo from a bamboo isle.

The four, after an impromptu ring-around-a-rosie, collapsed into chairs near the wide-eyed Epps. Fascinated he stared at them—the first authentic natives of Greenwich Village on whom his cloistered eye had ever rested.

"Ginger ale," bawled the ape.

It was brought. The ape dipping into a fold in his anatomy brought to light a capacious flask, kissed it solemnly, and poured its contents into the glasses of the others.

"Jake, that sure is the real old stuff," said the girl in the grass dress.

"Made it m'sef," said the ape proudly. "Y'see, I took dozen apricots, and ten pounds sugar, and some yeast and some raisins, and mixed 'em in a jug, and added water and——"

"That's nine times we heard all about that," interrupted the pirate or organ grinder. "Better be careful, anyhow. Mebbe that guy is a revnoo officer."

They all turned to stare at Mr. Epps.

"Of course he ain't 'nofficer, Ed," protested the ape, surveying Tidbury with care. "He's got too kind a face. You ain't 'nofficer, are you?"

"No," said Tidbury.

"What did I tell yuh?" cried the ape, triumphantly, to his companions. "Shove up your chair, old sport, and have a drink with us. You look like a live one. I like your face."

Thus bidden, Tidbury, with an air of abandon, joined the group. The ape named Jake tilted his flask over Tidbury's spiritless Horse's Neck with such vehement good-fellowship that a gush of pungent brown fluid spurted from the container. Tidbury downed the mixture at a gulp; it made tears start to his eyes and a conflagration flame up in his brain.

"Howzit?" demanded Jake the ape.

"'Sgoo'," answered Tidbury warmly.

"Have 'nuther. Got plenty," said Jake, producing a second flask from another recess in his shaggy skin. "I like your face."

"Don't care if I do," said Tidbury nonchalantly.

The lights in the near-café were very bright, the voices very high, the conversation exquisitely witty, the mechanical piano a symphonic rhapsody, and the heart of Tidbury Epps was pumping with wild, unwonted pumps; he smiled to himself. He was going to the devil at a great rate. He waxed loquacious. He told them anecdotes; he even sang a little.

He beamed upon Jake, and playfully plucked a tuft of hair from his costume.

"Nice li'l' monkey," he said affably.

"Not a monkey!" denied Jake indignantly.

"Wad are you? S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e?"

"Nope. Not a S-s-schimpaz-z-ze-e-e."

"Ran-tan?"

"Nope. Not a ran-tan."

"Bamboo?"

"Nope. Not a bamboo."

"Well, wad are you?"

Jake thumped his hairy chest proudly.

"I'm a griller," he explained.

"Oh," said Mr. Epps, satisfied. "A griller. Of course! Is it hard work?"

"Work?" cried Jake. "Say, this ain't my real skin. It's a 'sguise."

"Oh," said Mr. Epps. "So you're 'sguised? Wad did you do?"

"Careful, Jake," the organ grinder or pirate warned. "He may be a revnoo officer."

The gorilla turned on him angrily.

"Lookahere, Ed Peterson, how dare you pass remarks like that about my ole friend, Mr. —— What is your name, anyhow? Of course he ain't no revnofficer? Are you?"

"I'll fight anybody who says I am," declared Tidbury Epps, glaring fiercely around at the empty chairs and tables.

"You a fighter?" inquired the gorilla, in a voice in which awe, admiration and alcohol mingled.

Mr. Epps contracted his brow and narrowed his eyes.

"Yep," he said impressively. "I'm Terrible Battling Epps. I'd rather fight than eat." He turned sternly to the gorilla. "Why are you 'sguised? Wad did you do?"

"Why, you poor nut," put in the girl in the beads, "we're going to the Pagan Rout."

"Sure, that's it," chimed in Jake. "Goin' to the Pagan Row. Come on along, Terrible."

"Aw, I'm tired of Pagan Routs," said Mr. Epps loftily. But the suggestion speeded up the pumpings of his heart.

"Oh, do come!" urged the girl in the beads.

"Ain't got no 'sguise," said Mr. Epps. He was wavering.

"Aw, come on!" cried the gorilla, clapping him on the shoulder till his teeth rattled. "Proud to have you with us, Terrible. I know a live one when I see one. Come on along. You'll see a lot of your friends there."

His friends? Tidbury thought of Martha.

"If I only had a 'sguise——" he began.

"You can get one round at Steinbock's, on Seventh Avenue," promptly informed the organ grinder-pirate. "That is," he added with sudden suspicion, "if you ain't one of these here revnofficers."

"S-s-s-s-sh, Ed," cautioned Jake, the gorilla. "Do you want Terrible Battling Epps to take a poke at you?"

Tidbury had made up his mind.

"I'll go," he announced.

"Good!" exclaimed the gorilla delightedly. "Atta boy! Glad to have a real N'Yawk sport with us. Meet you at Webber Hall, Terrible."

"Webber Hall? Wherezat?" inquired Tidbury as he sought to negotiate the door.

"Well," confessed the gorilla, "I dunno 'zactly m'sef. Y'see, I'm from Kansas City m'sef. In the lid game, I am. Biggest firm west of the Mizzizippi. Last year we sold——"

"Aw, stop selling and tell Terrible how to get to Webber Hall," put in the girl in the beads; she appeared to be the gorilla's wife.

"Well," said Jake, thoughtfully rubbing his fuzzy head, "far as I remember, you go out to the square and you go straight along till you get to the L and you turn to the right——"

"Left!" interjected the organ grinder-pirate.

"Right," repeated the gorilla firmly. "And then you turn down another street—no, you don't—you go straight on till you see a dentist's sign, a big gold tooth, with 'Gee, it didn't hurt a bit at Dr. B. Schmuck's Parlors,' painted on it, and you turn to your right——"

"Left," corrected the pirate-organ grinder sternly.

"Waz difference?" went on the gorilla blandly. "Well, as I was saying, you turn to the right or left and then you go along three or four blocks, and then you turn to your left——"

"Right, I tell you!" roared the man in velvet.

"Oh, well, you go along until you come to a corner and you turn it and go down a little bit, and there you are!"

"Where am I?" Mr. Epps, posing against the door, asked.

"Webber Hall," said Jake. "Pagan Row."

"Oh," said Mr. Epps.

"Didn't you follow me?"

"Of course I followed you."

"Good. See you at the party, Terrible. You're hot stuff."

"I'll be there. G'night."

"G'night, Terrible, old scout."