Part 9

"I thought I'd walk a little way with you," explained the banker, with an attempt at carelessness that overshot the mark.

"All right," said Mr. Wattles, buttoning up his serviceable coat and bestowing a quick, chipmunk glance upon the weather. "You won't mind if I stop to get my collars?"

A misty rain was falling, and the streets were filled with people hurrying home from work. As the two men fell in with the procession the banker gave an awkward little hop to catch the step.

"I don't suppose you take your laundry to the same place still?" he speculated.

"Oh, yes, the same old place," replied the other. "Mrs. Brennan's dead, of course, but Mary Ann still carries on the business."

"You don't mean little Mary Ann?"

"Yes, she's big Mary Ann now, and has five children of her own. Her husband was a switchman in the yards until he got run over by an engine two years ago."

Connected talk was difficult in the jostling crowd, and often the two men proceeded for half a block in silence. Once Mr. Wattles dived into a little shop to buy tobacco for his pipe. On his return he found the banker occupied with landmarks.

"Didn't there use to be a grocery over there?" asked Mr. Clatfield.

"Yes, where the tall building now stands," replied the other. "Do you remember the fat groceryman who used to sell us apples?"

"Oh, yes," the banker rejoined, "and they were first rate apples, too. Strange, but I can't eat apples now; they don't agree with me."

"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not."

The lighted windows of a great department store made an arcade of radiance in the murky night, creating an illusion of protection so strong that one might well believe oneself indoors. The rain was changing into snow, which melted under foot but hung about the hair and beards and shoulders of the passers-by. Along the curb a row of barrows displayed cheap toys and Christmas greens for sale.

"Do you remember how we used to linger at the shops, and pick out presents and imagine we had lots of money?" Mr. Wattles asked.

"That was your game," answered Mr. Clatfield. "I never could imagine anything. I could see only the things you pointed out."

It seemed to the banker that in the place of his middle-aged cashier there walked beside him an odd, alert little boy, with bristling hair and beady eyes, and he caught himself looking about him in an old, vain hope of being able first to catch sight of something interesting. As they turned into a less frequented street he asked:

"What became of the old woman who made butterscotch?"

"She made the last in '81," replied the other. "The penny-in-the-slot machines broke up her business."

"Really?" the banker commented. "It seems a pity."

The air was growing colder and the dancing motes of snow made halos about every street-lamp.

"Don't they look like swarms of Mayflies?" remarked Mr. Wattles. "One might almost believe it was summer."

"Yes, so one might," assented Mr. Clatfield, "now that you speak of it."

A few steps up a slippery alley they stopped before a shabby little house, the shabbiest of a row of little houses, each one of which displayed the legend "Washing Done."

"Come in," said the cashier, as he pushed open the door.

Within, a tall spare woman stood with bare red arms before a washtub on a backless wooden chair. Upon the floor, amid the heaps of linen waiting for the tub, a litter of small children rolled and tumbled like so many puppies. Festoons of drying shirts and handkerchiefs hung in an atmosphere of steam and suds.

At sight of Mr. Wattles the woman broke into a flood of explanation and excuse. The water had been frozen all the week, the sun had refused to shine, the baby had been sick. There were a dozen reasons why he could not have his collars, as the speaker called on Heaven to bear witness.

"You'd have 'em on your neck this minute," she declared, "if work could put them there, for it's meself that needs the money for me rint."

"Ahem!" said Mr. Wattles, "I fancied that your claim against the railway had left you pretty comfortably off."

"Claim, is it?" cried the laundress. "Claim against the railway? Faith, after keeping me waiting for two years they threw me out of court. They said that Mike contributed his negligence and that it served him right."

"That seems a little hard," commented Mr. Clatfield guardedly, for he was a director in the railway.

"Small blame to you, but you're a gentleman!" exclaimed the washerwoman.

"At least your husband left you quite a little family," the banker ventured to suggest.

"Contributory negligence again!" said Mr. Wattles under his breath.

"It's all a body has to do to keep them fed," lamented Mary Ann, "as maybe you know well yourself, sir, if you've childer of your own."

"I have none," said the other.

"God pity you!" returned big Mary Ann.

"Ah, that reminds me," put in Mr. Wattles, and coming nearer to the laundress, he explained: "My friend here is the banker, Mr. Clatfield."

"It's proud I am this day," she answered, with a courtesy.

"He has no children," went on Mr. Wattles, "but he is very anxious to adopt one, and knowing that you have more than you really need----"

"What are you saying?" began Mr. Clatfield, but his voice was drowned in an outbreak from the woman.

"Is it daft ye are?" she cried. Mr. Wattles continued, unheeding:

"He is willing to give you ten thousand dollars for such a one as this"--indicating with his cane an animated lump upon the floor.

"Me Teddy, is it?" cried the mother, catching up the lump and depositing it for safety in an empty tub.

"Or what would you say to twenty thousand for this one here?" persisted Mr. Wattles, again making use of his cane.

"Sure that's me Dan," the woman almost shrieked, and another lump went into the tub.

"Well, we are not disposed to quarrel over trifles," went on Mr. Wattles cheerfully. "You select the child and name the price--twenty, thirty, forty thousand--all in cash."

"Gwan out of this, and take your dirty money wid yez!" cried Mrs. Murphy, ominously rolling a wet sock into a ball.

"Of course, if you feel that way, we shall not urge the matter," said Mr. Wattles coldly. "Good-evening, Mrs. Murphy."

"Bad luck to yez for a pair of thavin' vipers!" she called after their retreating figures. "If I had me strength ye'd not get far."

"I am astonished at you, Wattles," said Mr. Clatfield when they were safe beyond the alley. "I would not have given a dollar for the lot."

"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not."

The two men walked along in silence for a time, while Mr. Clatfield occupied himself with efforts to divine the point of Mr. Wattles's ill-timed jest. More than once he would have cut short the expedition could he have thought of an excuse, and though the course was somewhat devious, they were headed in a general way toward his own front door, with its broad marble steps and iron lions. The people in the street were few and uninteresting, the houses dull and monotonous, each with its drawn yellow shades and dimly lighted transom, and the banker welcomed the sight of what appeared to be a gathering of some sort up ahead.

They had come out upon a dreary square, surrounded by tall warehouses and wholesale stores, now tightly closed and barred with iron shutters. A line of vans and drays without their horses occupied an open space in violation of the law. From one of these a man addressed a little group of inattentive loiterers.

The audience changed constantly as those whose passing curiosity was satisfied moved off to be replaced by others, but the man did not appear to care how few or many stayed to listen. He was a young man, and his face, in the full glare of the electric light, was radiant with enthusiasm for his theme, whatever it might be. The cashier pushed his way into the crowd and Mr. Clatfield followed.

"I should think he would prefer to speak indoors a night like this," remarked the banker.

The speaker's subject was an old one, old as the tree of Eden, but never had the two newcomers heard a more effective speech. Perhaps the setting of the bleak, deserted market-place created an illusion.

"That man is getting rich," he cried, "who can every day add a little to the surplus in his heart----"

"What interest do you pay?" called out a bystander facetiously.

"None," replied the young man. "Ours is a profit-sharing enterprise."

"That don't mean anything," commented Mr. Wattles; "but it was a first-rate answer all the same. It made the people laugh."

"I wonder why?" demanded Mr. Clatfield.

The discourse ended presently and the audience dispersed, some with swinging dinner-pails and some with thin coats buttoned tightly at the neck.

"It does a fellow good to hear the world ain't going to the dogs," remarked a burly laborer, "even if it is just a crank who says it."

"Good-evening," said the young man, jumping from his dray and landing within speaking distance of the two adventurers. "I'm glad to see you here."

"And we are glad to be here," answered Mr. Wattles. "We have been greatly interested, especially my friend Mr. Clatfield, the banker."

Mr. Clatfield drew himself erect, for he considered such an introduction unnecessary.

"I have heard of Mr. Clatfield often," said the other simply, "and I am happy now to make his acquaintance. Good-evening, gentlemen; I hope you'll come again."

"One moment, please," the cashier interposed. "We will not detain you long, but my friend here has a proposition to make you. He is about to build a large church on the Heights, and he is anxious to secure a preacher who entertains the views you have expressed so well. May I ask you, sir, if you are free to undertake such a charge?"

The young man's face blushed red with gratified amazement.

"A church?--and on the Heights?" he stammered.

"Yes," went on Mr. Wattles, "a large church--very large. I don't suppose you would be sorry to give up this sort of thing." He made a motion of his head toward the dray.

"Would that be necessary?" the young man asked.

"Naturally," rejoined the other. "The two could scarcely be combined."

"In that case," said the preacher, "I am not free."

"The salary, I should have told you, will be twenty thousand dollars."

"You ought to get a first-rate man for that amount," replied the preacher. "I should advise you to consult the Bishop."

"Thank you," said Mr. Wattles, "and good-night."

"Wattles," cried Mr. Clatfield, who had heard the conversation with stupefied astonishment which deprived him of the power of speech; "Wattles, I have not the slightest idea of building a church either on the Heights or anywhere else."

"No," said Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not."

"I'm going home," announced the banker.

"All right," agreed the other. "We'll strike through here to Main Street."

At Main Street they were detained for several minutes at the corner where the trolleys cross, by the crowds waiting for the cars or flocking about the transfer agent like so many sheep for salt. They seemed a dull, bedraggled lot to Mr. Clatfield, just like every other lot who waited every night there for blue or red or yellow trolley cars. But the cashier's eyes went wandering from face to face, more in selection than in search, and presently he nudged his companion to call attention to a couple who stood apart a little from the rest under the shelter of a small, inadequate umbrella.

"What of them?" asked the banker crossly. "You need not look far to see a fellow and a girl."

The fellow in this case was tall and stoutly built, and the fact that he wore no overcoat might have been set down to strenuous habits. But as Mr. Wattles noted, he was the only man without an evening paper, and he wore his derby hat reversed in order that a worn place on the rim might be less conspicuous.

"I'll bet that young man is terribly hard up," remarked Mr. Wattles.

"You don't want me to adopt him, do you?" demanded Mr. Clatfield.

"Oh, no, but just see how his shoulder is getting soaked with drippings from the wet umbrella."

"That's the girl's fault," said Mr. Clatfield. "I guess he wishes she were home."

She was a plain girl with freckles on her nose; she carried a lunch basket and her gloves were white about the seams, but as the young man whispered something in her ear even Mr. Clatfield thought that he had never seen a more attractive smile. When a blue car came along the young man helped her carefully to mount the step, and in shaking hands they laughed and made a little secret of the act. As the car went on its way the young man ran for cover to the awning beneath which stood the banker and the cashier.

"Good-evening, sir," said Mr. Wattles. "I have seen you often at the bank."

"Oh, yes, indeed," replied the other, highly gratified to be recognized by one so great as Mr. Wattles. "I am there every day for my employers, Pullman & Pushings."

"An excellent firm," commented Mr. Wattles. "I understand they pay their people handsomely."

"Oh, as to that," responded the other, laughing, "it's rather handsome to pay at all in times like these."

"That's true," assented Mr. Wattles. "Times are dull, and more than likely to get worse."

"Oh, do you think so, really?" the young man asked rather wistfully.

"Sure of it," answered the cashier, "and if you've any thought of asking for a raise of salary, I should advise you not to do so."

"I'm very much obliged for the advice," rejoined the other, "because I have been thinking----"

"Ahem!" coughed Mr. Wattles, interrupting. "I want to introduce you to our president, Mr. Clatfield."

The junior clerk took off his hat and put it on again the right way by mistake. In his confusion he had not observed that Hiram Clatfield looked frigidly above his head; he only heard the cashier's voice continuing like enchanted music:

"Mr. Clatfield has for some time been looking for a private secretary. The salary would be commensurate with the responsibility from the first, and should you prove the right man--but of course we would make no promises. Do you think you would be disposed to consider such an opening?"

"Would I?" gasped the junior clerk.

"And, by the way, you are not married, are you?"

"No," said the young man, "I'm not, but----"

"That's good," continued the cashier. "That's very fortunate, for Mr. Clatfield prefers that his confidential secretaries should be single men. In fact, he makes that an absolute condition."

"The deuce he does!" replied the junior clerk. "Then he can give the place to anyone but me. There comes my yellow car. Good-night, and much obliged."

"Wattles," cried Mr. Clatfield, "have you gone crazy? I do not want a private secretary on any terms!"

"No," answered Mr. Wattles, "I suppose not."

The lighted trolley cars went shooting past. The wind had risen till the big umbrella of the transfer agent threatened to go sailing skyward like a yellow parachute. Already at the corners the ground was getting white. A muffled clock somewhere struck seven.

"Wattles," said Mr. Clatfield, "come home and dine with me. I'd like to talk about our walk."

"I can't to-night," replied the cashier. "I'm going to take dinner with a man named Briggs."

Mr. Clatfield tried to fancy what this Mr. Briggs was like and what his dinner would be like, but in either case failed to make a picture because he never could imagine anything.

"At least come with me to the door," he said.

It was not far to where the iron lions crouched, and presently the two men stood before them shaking hands.

"Good-night," said Mr. Clatfield. "This has been like old times. I suppose you'll not be at the bank to-morrow?"

"I shall be there for an hour perhaps to finish up some work," replied the cashier. "Is there anything I can do?"

He drew a memorandum book from his pocket. Holding the page in the light of a street lamp, his eyes fell on some small, neatly penciled figures.

"By the way," he said, "I have figured out your problem. Ten million one-dollar bills placed end to end would reach one hundred and ten miles, forty-eight hundredths and a fraction."

"Thank you," said Mr. Clatfield.

"In two-cent stamps----" continued the cashier, but his employer interfered.

"Never mind the stamps," he said. "To-morrow, if you have time, I should like you to draw three checks upon my private account."

"Three checks----" repeated Mr. Wattles, preparing to make a note.

"For twenty thousand each--no, make it fifty thousand each."

"For fifty thousand dollars each--and payable to----"

Mr. Clatfield hesitated an instant, then went on desperately:

"One payable to big Mary Ann; one to the preaching fellow, and one--make it out to the girl with the freckles on her nose."

The cashier paused, and for the first time in his long service ventured to dispute instructions.

"Hiram," he said, "what harm have they done you?"

Mr. Clatfield did not answer, but stood in silence, poking his cane into the iron lion's open mouth.

THE GUEST OF HONOR

"Letters of introduction!" Clara sighed. "One can't help wishing they were made misdemeanors like other lottery tickets." And this being her third remark of kindred import, curiosity became at least excusable. So Mrs. Penfield stroked a sable muff in silent sympathy.

"We had one yesterday from Jack's Boston aunt," went on her charming hostess, "a Mrs. Bates, who is continually sending us spiritualists or people who paint miniatures, or Armenian refugees, just because we spent a week or so with her one summer when the children had the mumps. In Lent one does not mind, one rather looks for trials, but now one's dinner-table is really not one's own. Maude, do let me give you another cup of tea; it's awfully bad, I know; we have to buy it from the Dunbar girls. If one's friends would only not sell things one has to drink!"

"Such a delightful little tea-pot would make any tea delicious, I am sure," murmured Mrs. Penfield, and the conversation rested while a noiseless menial entered, put wood upon the fire, and illuminated an electric bulb within an opalescent shell. An odor of cut flowers floated in the air and an exotic whiff of muffin.

Mrs. Fessenden, when she had made the tea, sank back once more among the cushions and stretched her small feet to the blaze.

"I am not at home, Pierre," she announced.

"Perfectly, Madame," replied the menial, as though the absence were self-evident.

Mrs. Penfield mused and sipped.

"Some women are so inconsiderate when they are old," she said remindingly.

"And so are most men when they are young," rejoined the lady of the cushions, "and Jack, though nice in many ways, is no exception. When I ask him to help by having unexpected men who must be fed to luncheon at the club, he says champagne at midday gives him apoplexy. And so we have to invite an unknown person to our very nicest dinner."

"What unknown person?" inquired Mrs. Penfield, and Clara sighed.

"A Mr. Hopworthy," she replied. "Fancy, if you can, a man named Hopworthy."

Mrs. Penfield tried and failed.

"What is he like?" she asked.

"I haven't an idea. He called here yesterday at three o'clock--fancy a man who calls at three o'clock! and Jack insisted on inviting him for to-morrow night--and I had to give so much thought to to-morrow night!"

"Of course he is coming," put in Mrs. Penfield; "such people never send regrets."

"Or acceptances either, it would seem," returned her friend; "the wretch has not so much as answered, and soon it will be too late to get even an emergency girl."

"Oh, one can always scare up a girl," the other said consolingly.

Pierre entered with a little silver tray.

"A note, if Madame pleases," he announced. Perhaps had Madame pleased a pineapple or a guinea-pig might have been forthcoming. When he had retired, Madame tore open the envelope. A flush of pleasure made her still more charming.

"Hopworthy has been seriously injured!" she cried almost in exultation.

"And how much anxiety you have had for nothing, dear!" said Mrs. Penfield, rising. "So often things turn out much better than we dare to hope. What does he say?"

"Oh, only this; he writes abominably," and Clara read:

DEAR MRS. FESSENDEN:

I assure you, nothing less than a serious injury could prevent my availing myself of your charming invitation for Wednesday evening....

"Oh, Maude, you can't think what a relief this is!"

"But----" began Mrs. Penfield and paused, while Clara, folding the note, tore it deliberately in twain.

"I don't believe he has been seriously hurt at all," she said on second thought. "He simply did not want to come. Fancy a man who invents such an excuse!"

"But----" began Mrs. Penfield once more, when Mrs. Fessenden interposed.

"I shall hope never to hear his wretched name again," she said. "Maude, dear, you won't forget to-morrow night?"

"Not unless Butler forgets me," said Mrs. Penfield, whereat both ladies laughed the laugh that rounds a pleasant visit.

"Jack," whispered Clara, "please count and see if everyone is here; there should be twenty."

It was Wednesday evening, and the Fessenden's Colonial drawing-room housed an assembly to make the snowy breast of any hostess glow with satisfaction, especially a hostess possessing one inch less of waist and one inch more of husband than any lady present.

"Exactly twenty," Jack announced; "that is, if we count the Envoy and the Countess each as only one, which don't seem quite respectful."

"Please don't try to be silly," said his wife, suspecting stimulant unjustly.

To her the function was a serious achievement, nicely proportioned, complete in all its parts; from Mrs. Ballington's tiara--a constellation never known to shine in hazy social atmospheres--to the Envoy Extraordinary's extraordinary foreign boots. Even the Countess, who wore what was in effect a solferino tea-gown with high-bred unconcern, was not a jarring note. Everybody knew how the Countess's twenty priceless trunks had gone to Capetown by mistake, and her presence made the pretty drawing-room a _salon_, just as the Envoy's presence made the occasion cosmopolitan. When the mandolin club in the hall struck up a spirited fandango, no pointed chin in all the town took on a prouder tilt than Clara Fessenden's.

The Envoy Extraordinary had just let fall no less a diplomatic secret than that, in his opinion, a certain war would end in peace eventually, when Mrs. Penfield, who happened to be near, inquired:

"Oh, Clara, have you heard anything more of that Mr. Hopworthy?"

"Don't speak to me of him!" retorted Clara, clouding over. "When Jack called at his hotel to leave a card, he had the effrontery to be out. Just fancy, and we had almost sent him grapes!"

"But----" began Mrs. Penfield.

Pierre was at the door; one hand behind him held the orchestra in check.

"Madame is served," he formed his lips to say, but having reached "Madame," he found himself effaced by someone entering hurriedly--a tall young man with too abundant hair and teeth, but otherwise permissible.

The new arrival paused, took soundings, as it were, divined the hostess, and advanced upon her with extended hand. Evidently it was one of those amusing little incidents called "contretemps," which often happen where front doors are much alike, and the people on the left have odd acquaintances.

"I trust I am not late," the blunderer began at once. "It was so kind of you to think of me; so altogether charming, so delightful." His eyes were dark and keen, his broad, unsheltered mouth, which seemed less to utter than to manufacture words, gave the impression of astonishing productive power, and Clara, though sorry for a fellow-creature doomed to rude enlightenment, was glad he was not to be an element in her well-ordered little dinner. But as her guests were waiting she gave a slight impatient flutter to her fan. The other went on unobservant.

"One can say so little of one's pleasure in a hurried note, but I assure you, my dear Mrs. Fessenden, nothing short of a serious accident----"

Where had she met this formula before?