Chapter V (3)

“I daresay Frank Woolworth would have fallen for it, too,” Dove said. “The idea of a hundred meals for 10 cents each would have appealed to him. But you know, old man, there are certain fixed and immutable laws that the observant city dweller is accustomed to. My motto is, whenever you find an apparent exception to those laws, look for an enigma in the woodpile. I suspected something wrong when I saw that sandwich man on Church Street. A man as fat as that doesn't generally take a job sandwiching. Also I have doubts about people who insist on calling Christmas 'Yule'. Moreover, a man doesn't generally take a job sandwiching until his shirt is so ragged that he is ashamed to exhibit it in public, when he is glad to cover it up with the boards. Those two fat sandwicheers were members of the firm, I fear, for their linen was O. K. And, secondly, what are the first things a man gets if he really intends to start a restaurant? A cash register and a bunch of ketchup bottles. There wasn't a cash register nor a ketchup bottle in sight in the Commutation Chophouse. No, my dear; what you admired as carefully arranged atmosphere of antiquity, the plain board tables and candles and so on, was really stark cheapness. They weren't spending any money on overhead; they said so themselves.

“When you called my attention to the spilled beans, I was sure. For they were not merely beans: they were baked beans; a far more significant matter. When I looked out of the window I could see at once that there was no kitchen attached to the Commutation Chophouse. The food was all being delivered from that place on Beekman Street, whose name was on the truck. A few ingenious rogues simply rented that old cellar, cheaply enough I guess, put in a few tables, arranged to have grub shipped in from near by, printed their commutation tickets, and sat down to collect as many dollars as they could lure out of the open-handed Christmas throng.”

“Well, of all infernal liars,” I cried, “they certainly take the prize.”

“Not so,” said Dulcet as we got up to go. “You should have read the sandwich boards a little more carefully. Their ingenious author, whom you chide as the Ann Street Ananias, really told the exact and circumstantial truth.”

We stood at the gateway of the graveyard, and gazed across the roaring traffic of Broadway. Dove smiled and said he must be starting on his Christmas shopping.

“I tried to warn you,” he said, “but you wouldn't listen. As I was about to say just before we visited the place, it was queer that it should happen on Ann Street. Don't you remember that a certain famous gentleman had his museum at the corner of Broadway and Ann? And it was he, I think, who remarked that there's one born every minute. Well, Merry Christmas!”

THE PERT LITTLE HAT

HEMMING had a home, and dearly he loved everything in it--with one exception. He loved the furnace, and the kitchen range with its warm ruddy glow, and the violet-coloured wafer of expensive aromatic soap that always mysteriously appeared on the marble wash-basin when visitors came. He loved the little glass towel racks, and the miniature embroidered hand towels with Mrs. Hemming's maiden initials on them, which also appeared, white and fragrant, whenever there was any special festivity. Those little towels were to him a kind of symbol of the first ecstatic days of their married life, and he could not bear to think of the inevitable time when they would be frayed and discarded. He loved the shelf over the fireplace where his brown-stained corncob pipe waited for the after-supper smoke. He loved the little porch where the baby carriage stood, and the tulip beds that he and Janet had planted together, and the mission dining table, now blistered and scarred, that had been their very first piece of furniture.

But in the little den upstairs stood his desk, and how he hated it!

Hemming, you see, had literary ambitions, and that desk meant to him every circumstance, every long-drawn torment, of weariness and toil. It had meant much pleasure, too, in hours when his writing had prospered; but how the bitter outnumbered the sweet! How many hundred evenings he had dragged himself to it, in lassitude and lethargy; had forced his drowsy, unwilling mind to the task at hand. How many nights, nodding over the typewriter, he had stumbled on and on. Over his desk he kept, ironically, a letter he had once had from an editor, which said: _We like stories. They have a joyous freshness. You write as though you enjoyed it._

Hemming was no quick and easy composer. His stories emerged slowly, painfully, hammered and wrenched from the stubborn tissues of a weary brain. When his whole soul and body cried out for a comfortable stretch on the couch, with pipe and book, and a gradual, blissful lapse into slumber, he would throw off his coat, stick his head out of the window for a dozen gulps of cool night air, and then sit down at the wheezy old typewriter.

Its yellow keys seemed a kind of doleful rosary on which he told long petitions to whatever gods look down pityingly on young writers. He would think how wonderful it would be if he could only do his writing in the morning when he was fresh. To leap out of bed in the crisp early air, to plunge into the cold bath where the water shimmered a pale green by catching the tint of the big maple tree just outside the bathroom, to swallow two cups of hot coffee, two slices of buttered toast, and then sit down to his desk. In the zest and lustihood of the morning, how the thoughts would throng, how the great empire of words would unroll before him, far away to the blue hills where lived his unwritten poems! Such was his daily thought as he hurried down the hill on bright mornings to catch the 8.13 train to town. But to come back at night after a long day at the office, and after helping Janet wash the dishes, and stoking the furnace or mowing the lawn or planting bulbs in the garden--then to try to write seemed tough indeed.

Still, it had to be done, and Hemming threw his manhood into the task. In his little den there was just space for a couch, his desk, and his books, which were littered about the room. His only chance of accomplishing anything was to get Janet safely installed on the couch, for if he once lay down there work was impossible. She would curl up under a steamer rug, tired out from a long day with the house and the baby, reading a book or the evening paper. And then the stumbling clatter of the typewriter would begin.

After a while there always came what they humorously called “the pathetic little moment.” This was the time when Janet's book or paper would slip from her hand, she would turn away from the light, and coast down the long, smooth toboggan of sleep. Then Hemming would switch off the reading lamp above her head (with the secret economic satisfaction young householders always feel when they switch off a light), touch the soft cheek with a friendly finger, and climb the keys once more. His writing always seemed to go better after the “pathetic little moment” was past. There was a kind of subconscious satisfaction in the feeling that Janet was there, asleep, and that he was working for her. And Janet used to affirm that there was no lullaby like the irregular thumping of those keys and levers.

There was another catchword they had, which also moved stealthily in the back passages of his mind as he mulled over his manuscripts. Janet badly needed a new bonnet--a “pert little hat,” she liked to call it--and Hemming had pledged himself to write something that would bring her the saucy little ornament she craved in time for Christmas. She was a slender, bright-faced creature, and no one could wear an innocently tilted turban with more grace. But these had been hard days for small incomes. Winter coal, and warm clothes for the Urchin, and the cook's wages (when they had one), and Liberty Bonds--all these had taken precedence over the pert little hat. It had been talked of so long, it had become a kind of joyous legend, which Janet hardly expected to see realized on her head. She used to say wistfully, as she coasted off to sleep on the couch: “Would it be unpatriotic to think about the pert little hat?” And her husband would vow that patriotism that excluded pert little hats was no patriotism at all. So he had sworn that the bonnet should be millinered on the clacking loom of his typewriter. They used to laugh about it, and say that the little hat ought to be trimmed with carbon typewriter ribbons.

But Hemming did not know that Janet was not always asleep after the so-called “pathetic moment” when she ostensibly gave up the struggle with drowsiness. The twanging springs of the old couch made less noise than the typewriter keys, but they, too, moved to a secret creative refrain. There were times when Janet lay watching the lamplight on the rows of books, and little pictures of stories that she would like to write flashed into her head. They often used to come to her at inopportune periods during the day, when the Urchin was in his bath or when she was taking stock of the ice-box. Of course her husband was the literary man of the family, and she had no thought of setting up her simple imaginings against his more serious efforts. But one night, when he was engrossed in some intractable plot, Janet slipped away into the little guest room and shut herself in. With a stub pencil, on odd sheets of notepaper, she began scribbling hotly. Two hours later, when Hemming came back to earth and hunted her out, she was still at it.

“What on earth are you up to, monk?” he asked.

“Making out laundry lists,” she said.

More observant husbands might have wondered what occasion there would be for a laundry list on Thursday evening, but Hemming was always drowned in his dreams of literary fame.

His story, on which he had laboured at night for two months, and hers, which had taken the spare hours of three days, were finished almost at the same time. After dinner one night, when he had read the manuscript of his story aloud, Janet handed him her venture, with some trepidation. At first he seemed a little nettled that she should have done such a thing.

“Look here, monk,” he said, “you oughtn't to wear yourself out trying to write. You have quite enough to do with the house and the baby. Moreover, you don't know how discouraging it is. It takes years of patient apprenticeship before one can get anything across with the editors. This is my job, brownie.”

“But I enjoyed doing it,” she said.

“That's a bad sign. All really good stories take fearful effort. How long did you spend on this?”

“Oh, quite a while,” she said, vaguely. She did not like to admit that her little story had involved no “patient apprenticeship.”

He lit his pipe and began reading the sheets on which her quick pencil had flashed with such enthusiasm. She sat with her sewing, watching him shyly.

“Very nice,” was his comment; but privately he wondered how he was to avoid hurting her feelings. It seemed to him that the story had all the faults of the amateur.

“Would you submit it anywhere?” she asked, eagerly. “Do you think any magazine would buy it?”

He evaded the question. “Would you like me to type it for you?” he said.

“Oh, _would_ you?”

“I'll tell you what I'll do,” he said, “I'll be sending my manuscript to Mr. Edwards to-morrow. I'll type yours and send it, too.”

Janet was delighted, and she fell asleep that night with the sweet music of the thumping keys in her ears. As she heard the staccato clicking, she thought: “I wonder how far he has got now? How good of him to take all that trouble to copy my poor little story.”

Hemming sat up very late that night, copying Janet's manuscript and planning what to say to Mr. Edwards, the editor of the _Colonial Magazine_, who had been very cordial to him. He resisted the temptation to alter Janet's naïve phrasing here and there, to improve her technique by recasting some of the situations in her story. It was long past midnight when both manuscripts were ready to go into the stout manila envelope. Then, after some meditation, Hemming added the following note:

_Dear Mr. Edwards:_

_I am sending you herewith my new story, and hope you may like it. I am also enclosing a manuscript from my wife. Of course she is an untrained writer--this is her first attempt--but I think her story has a certain charm. Won't you, if you can, give her any encouragement you feel proper? If you would write her a personal note of comment it would mean a great deal to her. You know how tenderly one feels toward one's maiden effort._

_Sincerely yours,_

_Godfrey Hemming._

It was very late when Hemming folded the carefully typed sheets and placed them in the precious envelope. He was utterly weary, which must be the explanation of a curious error he made. It was his custom to type his name and address on a separate sheet of paper which was clipped to the story he was submitting. He put his own name on one sheet, and his wife's on another. But in arranging the manuscripts for the envelope he inadvertently put his name-page with his wife's manuscript, and vice versa. Then he went to bed with the satisfaction of well-earned fatigue, and wondering how soon he would be able to order the “pert little hat”.

It was two weeks later, and the Urchin had just murmured himself off into his morning nap, when Janet heard the postman's whistle, and ran down to receive an envelope with the name of the _Colonial Magazine_ engraved upon it. Eagerly she tore it open.

My Dear Mrs. Hemming:

Your husband was good enough to send me the manuscript of your story, which I have read with interest. It is an able piece of work, and shows unusual technical skill for a beginner. But I must caution you not to let your pen follow the track of your husband's method too closely. Naturally enough, perhaps, your style seems to have modeled itself on his: but this is a mistake, because it is quite evident that you have ability enough to strike out on your own line. I wish you would study carefully Mr. Hemming's last story, “Three Is Company,” which shows a freshness and spontaneous originality better than anything he has done before. It has a touch of charming humour which is new to his work. If you can do us something of that sort, we shall be only too happy to publish it.

I am returning your manuscript with many thanks.

Faithfully yours

Theodore Edwards.

Janet looked at the editor's flowing signature in amazement. “Three Is Company” was her own story. And there, in the _Colonial Magazine's_ envelope, lay the revered pages of Godfrey's masterpiece, returned. The “fresh and spontaneous originality” was hers! A flush of exultation thrilled her: she could almost feel the pert little hat on her head. Instinctively she looked at herself in the mirror over the hall mantelpiece. Was it possible that she was a literary genius, and had never known it?

But then a pang of horror chilled her. What dreadful mistake had happened? Alas, it was only too plain--the two stories had been confused. The editor had thought that her story was Godfrey's. He had read it expecting to find the skill of Godfrey's trained hand. And now how was she to spare her husband the mortification of having his painstaking work rejected, while her prentice sketch had won favour by some fluke? Her loyal heart, entirely devoid of selfish satisfaction, could not bear the thought of this grotesque and unhappy climax for her innocent venture. It was all her fault for meddling with what did not concern her. What business had she to write a better story than Godfrey, anyway? She knew that her husband would be honestly proud of her success and would not grudge her the triumph for an instant, but she felt that the poignance of the situation would be intolerable for her. Much better do without all the pert little hats on Chestnut Street than win one at the expense of Godfrey's feelings.

How could she prevent the bad tidings from reaching him? Even now it might be too late. She flew to the telephone, and with pricking pulses asked for the office of the _Colonial_. One nervous hand unconsciously flew to her hair, as though she were about to enter the august sanctum of the editor.

“Is this Mr. Edwards?

“Oh, Mr. Edwards, this is Mrs. Hemming, Mrs. Godfrey Hemming, the wife of one of your authors----

“Why, there's been a terrible mistake about our manuscripts, Mr. Edwards, the stories that Mr. Hemming sent you. I've just had your letter, and that story you sent back wasn't mine at all, it was Godfrey's----

“I don't see how you can have made the mistake--

“Yes, the story called 'Three Is Company' is mine, I wrote it, but really it can't possibly be better than the other one because I wrote it in such a hurry, it's my first attempt----

“You want to publish it? But, Mr. Edwards, you simply mustn't, because----

“I can't explain over the telephone. I know you only like it because you thought----

“Will you promise not to do anything about it, and not to tell Mr. Hemming anything, until you get a letter from me?

“You _will_ promise? Oh, thank you so much! I'll write at once.

“Good-bye!”

She hurried to the little white enamelled desk, the same desk where the ill-starred “Three Is Company” had been written.

“This will cure me of trying to write,” she thought; “why, I never heard of such a thing--to have one's first story accepted! Mr. Edwards must be mad.”

Luckily there was one sheet of her engraved stationery left--the paper that Godfrey had given her, she thought remorsefully. All about her were evidences of his loving care, and she had repaid him by undermining his prestige with the one editor who had been nice to him. A fine way for an author's wife to behave! She seized her pen and wrote:

Dear Mr. Edwards:

As I just told you over the phone, there has been some horrible mistake. How it happened I can't guess. The manuscript you sent back to me is Mr. Hemming's story. The one you say you like and want me to study as a model is my own story, “Three Is Company”. I'm sorry you like it, I mean I'm sorry you think it is better than Mr. Hemming's story, which can't be so as it is the first story I ever tried to write. I have decided to withdraw it, I don't want it published, so please send it back to me instantly, and write me a letter saying how amateurish it is. I am sending Mr. Hemming's story back to you, so that now you know who wrote it you can reconsider it. Of course, if you thought it was by me, you naturally considered it as the work of a beginner, and only a poor imitation of Mr. Hemming's style.

I don't want you ever to tell Mr. Hemming that I have written this letter. Just tell him you sent my story back to me because it was not good enough.

Sincerely yours,

Janet Colton Hemming.

The importance Janet attached to this letter may be judged from the fact that she left the baby alone in the house, asleep, while she hurried down to the post-office to mail it, together with Godfrey's manuscript, back to Mr. Edwards. And not even the sympathetic Mr. Edwards ever guessed that on the first page, where Godfrey's careful typing ran in neat lines, she had printed a good luck kiss.

The editor was an honourable man, and though he chuckled a little over Janet's breathless letter he really meant to keep the innocent secret. We hope that no young wives will be lured to destruction by our telling the truth, which was simply this, that Janet's little story was much better than Godfrey's. It might not have happened again in a lifetime, but the enthusiasm of her girlish zeal had carried her pen into a very pretty and moving tale, which the _Colonial_ would have been glad to print. But since she wanted it back, there was nothing for Mr. Edwards to do but comply. Then, that very morning, while he was dictating a note of polite refusal to accompany “Three Is Company” back to the suburbs, who should call at the office but Godfrey, to know what the editor thought of the two stories. The coincidence was too much for Edwards, and thinking that it could do no harm to let Hemming know of his wife's devotion--for young husbands are too likely to be selfish--he told him the whole incident. And Godfrey, with a faint sensation of burning under his eyelids, related the dream of a new bonnet that had inspired “Three Is Company”.

“Well, now, look here,” said Edwards, “I'm not so awfully keen on this story of yours. It isn't anywhere near up to what you can do--or rather, up to what Mrs. Hemming can do,” he added, chuckling. “But you go home and write me a yarn about the pert little hat, and I'll put it in the January number. It'll come out just before Christmas, and I hope you'll get that wife of yours the best bonnet in town on the proceeds. If all writers had wives like yours, perhaps the magazines would make better reading. But for heaven's sake don't tell Mrs. Hemming I gave her away. Wait until she sees the story in the magazine, it'll be a Christmas surprise for her.”

On the Saturday before Christmas Hemming took Janet to the city to solemnize the purchase of the pert little hat. Any one who happened to see her wearing it down Chestnut Street that bright winter afternoon knew that the elated pink in her cheek was not all reflected from the red bow on the bonnet's neat brim. As they sat down for a matinée and Janet removed the precious creation, giving it to Godfrey to hold for a moment, he said admiringly:

“Well, the old typing bus isn't such a bad milliner after all, hey, monk?”

And Janet, who would then have denied that such a story as “Three Is Company” ever existed, replied innocently:

“I'm so glad Mr. Edwards turned down my story, grump. I like the pert little hat ever so much better because it came all from you.”

Even if the pert little hat should live to be a great-great-grandbonnet, none of its descendants will ever give Janet such pleasure.

URN BURIAL

NEVER quarrel at breakfast is the first maxim for commuters and their wives. Partings in anger mean day-long misery for both, and generally involve telephone calls later in the day, and a box of chocolate-coated maraschino cherries carried home on the 5.18. Marriage (say the philosophers) is a subdivision of the penal code, dedicated to the proposition that men and women are created equal. But the studious observer of matrimonial feints and skirmishes sees very little to verify that daring surmise.

Harry Bennett sipped his breakfast coffee grimly. Its savour had departed: for ninety seconds earlier Mrs. Bennett had fled upstairs in a flush of anger and tears. In five minutes he would have to run for the train; and what man can soothe an outraged wife in five minutes? He ate his toast without relish, gazing sourly on the blue-and-white imitation Copenhagen china, the pretty little porcelain marmalade pot, and the big silver coffee-urn.

The desperate inequality of married life pierced his heart. Why should he have to accept in silence tart remarks uttered by his wife, while the least savagery of his own was cause for tears?

He rushed upstairs to say a few consoling words. The bedroom door was locked. Compassion fled, and he growled furiously through the panels. Then he ran hotly for the train.

It seems unreasonable: but the lives of human beings are not guided by reason. Harry had come to the conclusion that the silver coffee-urn was at the bottom of all their squabbles.

Before Elaine Addison surrendered herself into his capable hands, there had been a competitor for the honour of surrounding her with sectional bookcases, linen closets, potted hydrangeas, and the other authentic trappings of a home.

Aubrey Andrews was the rival warrior. He was the kind of man who always has a lot of crisp greenbacks in a neat leather bill-fold. Harry's hard-earned frogskins were always crumpled in a trousers pocket This may seem trivial, but it distinguishes two totally different classes of men. Aubrey was tall, dark, well groomed; he played billiards and belonged to expensive clubs. It was supposed that his wife would be beyond the reach of financial worries. He kept a horse and easy office hours.

Harry--well, Harry was no aristocrat. He worked hard for what he got, and didn't get much. He was neither tall, nor dark, nor well groomed. But he was a fine, lovable, high-minded chap, and to everyone's surprise, including his own, he got Elaine.

Tennyson had a good deal to do with it, I think. Harry still read Tennyson, although that excellent poet is no longer fashionable, and kept on repeating what Tennyson said about Elaine. And finally Elaine could not help saying, “My Lancelot!” and melting into his arms.

Aubrey gave them a magnificent silver coffee-urn for a wedding present, and presently enlisted for service, first on the Mexican border and then in France, where he became a heroic and legendary figure, surrounded in Elaine's mind by the prismatic glamour of girlhood days.

That coffee-urn was a stunner! It was far the handsomest thing in the little suburban house, except, of course, Elaine herself. Beneath its shining caldron sat an alcohol lamp that rendered a blue flame and kept the coffee hot. Elaine's initials--her maiden initials--were engraved upon it, and those of the donor: E. A. A. A. The hand of the insidious silversmith had twined the A's together very gracefully.

Every time he looked at it, Harry felt subconsciously irritated, although he hardly realized why.

It stood on the little mission sideboard, outshining everything else in the pretty dining room. It was Elaine's particular pride, and was used only on special occasions. Often it was brought out for the little celebrations that young married couples have every now and then. And, curiously enough, these celebrations very often ended in tears. The polished dazzle of those silver curves was only too apt to suggest to Elaine's radiant little beauty-loving heart other handsome wares she would like to have, or unlucky comparison of the relative beauty of the wedding presents sent by _her_ friends and _his;_ or Harry would make some blunt remark about his not being able to give her all that some other husband might have.

Alas! Something of the sardonic spirit of the black-browed Aubrey seemed to radiate from his urn. Can a coffee-um hypnotize? Grotesque as it appears, little by little they realized that the innocent piece of silver was marring many an otherwise happy hour.

*****

All the way to town in the smoking car, Harry's mind rotated savagely about their absurd tiff.

Let's see, how was it? He had said: “I'm sorry, dearest; I shall have to be rather late tonight. The head of my department is away, and I've got an extra lot of work to do.” She said: “Oh, dear--oh, dear! Then we sha'n't be able to go to the theatre, shall we?” He said: “We can go next week, Brownie.” She said: “Something horrid always happens when we have this coffee-urn on the table.”

(N. B. Right here, when the danger topic was introduced, he should have put on an extra soft pedal. But did he? Not a bit. As soon as the urn was mentioned his eyes began to flash.)

“Well,” he said, “don't let's have it on so often!” She said: “Any one might think you were jealous of it. It's the only handsome piece of silver I've got.”

Here he did make one honest effort to steer away from danger:

“I'm awfully sorry about to-night, honey, but the work's just got to be done.” She said: “Why didn't you let me know sooner you were going to work late? I could have arranged to go and see Mother.” He said: “Oh, well, everything I do is always wrong, anyway! I suppose if I could buy you a roomful of silver like that old tureen, you wouldn't mind.”

And after that it was not far to the deluge. All conducted according to the recognized technique of quarrelling, passing through the seven stages of repartee outlined by Touchstone, which should never be forgotten by those happily married:

1 The retort courteous

2 The quip modest

3 The reply churlish

4 The reproof valiant

5 The counter-check quarrelsome

6 The lie with circumstance

7 The lie direct

All day both Mr. and Mrs. Bennett were unpleasantly conscious of their undigested altercation lying black and gloomy in the back of their minds. At lunch-time he tried to call her on the telephone; but the wire did not answer. Indeed, she had gone to spend the day in town with friends, and was to go to dinner and the theatre with them. She left no message for Harry, and gave the cook permission to go out overnight.

About nine o'clock he got home tired and eager to resume their usual blissful companionship. The house was dark and untenanted. In a rage, he threw away the box of candy he had brought, and got himself some bread and cheese from the ice-box.

In the dining room his eye fell upon the coffee-urn. He swore at it. Just then Elaine called him up, and in a cool, distant voice told him that she had decided to spend the night in town with her mother.

The next morning Elaine came home about ten o'clock, humming a merry little air as she walked down the quiet suburban street. She and Harry had patched things up over the telephone at breakfast-time.

The sun was shining brightly, and she was planning a specially nice dinner for poor Harry that evening. After all, it wasn't the dear boy's fault that he had to work so hard. It was horrible of her to run off and desert him that way. Tonight she would show him how much she loved him. They would have ice cream with hot chocolate sauce, and meringues and chicken salad; and she would buy him a cigar and hide it in his napkin. And the old coffee-um should go back in the glass cabinet.

*****

The cook, with a very grave face, opened the front door.

“Heavens, Emily, what's the matter?” cried Mrs. Bennett.

“Burgled!” said Emily, tragically. “Someone's been an' bruk in the dining-room winder. Footpads, I guess.”

Mrs. Bennett gave a little shriek of dismay She ran to the dining room.

One window stood an inch or two open, and one of the panes was broken. She glanced round the room. Nothing was disarranged, but her glance fell on the sideboard.

The coffee-urn was gone!

“Well,” she said, “that's very extraordinary. Mr. Bennett slept here last night, and he's a light sleeper. He always locks the windows before he goes to bed. Is anything else missing?”

“The apple pie's gone out o' the ice-box,” said Emily.

“Oh, well, that's Mr. Bennett, I'm sure,” said Elaine. “I'll call up the police right away, and see if they can do anything. My nice coffee-urn! Why, it's the finest thing we had in the whole house.”

Before the police arrived, Mrs. Bennett herself took a careful look round the outside of the house. She found nothing unusual except a cigar butt lying on the ground near the broken window. She picked it up gingerly. A section of the gilt band still adhered to the wrapper. She could read the name, _Florona._ She carried the fragment into the cellar and threw it into the ash-can.

Two policemen arrived shortly, examined everything, and asked innumerable questions. Mrs. Bennett gave them a careful description of the coffee-urn. They departed, promising to do everything possible to trace it. They said that a piece of silver so large and unusual would not be hard to locate with the aid of the pawnbrokers. Then Mrs. Bennett went upstairs to think.

It seemed very strange that the thieves should take the urn and nothing else, when there were other pieces of silver beside it on the sideboard. She called up Harry, who was horrified to learn of the loss. He had slept right through the night without hearing a sound. He offered to come home if he could do anything to help; but she would not hear of it.

That night Mrs. Bennett had a special little dinner waiting for her husband: his favourite soup, a tender steak, fried potatoes, ice cream with hot chocolate sauce. And after dinner they discussed the theft of the urn.

“I don't understand how it was that you didn't hear anything,” said Elaine. “You generally sleep so lightly. Did you sit up late?”

“No,” he said; “I sat in the dining room until about ten, eating cheese and apple pie, and smoking a cigar. Then I went to bed----”

“Oh, you just reminded me!” cried Elaine. “I bought you a nice cigar to smoke after your dinner, and I forgot to give it to you.”

From the mantelpiece she gave him a cigar with a _Florona_ band.

“Why, isn't that nice!” said he, “That's the kind I always smoke. I didn't think you knew one brand from the other.”

“I know more than you think, old man,” she said.

When Harry came home the next night, he brought a bulky parcel with him.

“I'm awfully sorry about the urn, Brownie,” he said. “I went to see the detectives to-day, and they think there's very little chance of getting it back; so I brought you this to take its place.” She opened the package. It was a big China coffee-jug of rose-and-white porcelain, flagrantly out of harmony with her silver and blue china.

“Honey,” she said, “I think it's just lovely. It's ever and ever so much nicer than that old urn.”

A week later, in the afternoon, the local chief of police called up Mrs. Bennett.

“Come down here to the police station,” he said. “We've found your coffee-pot. The most extraordinary thing you ever heard of. We found it buried in a haystack, back of Webster's barn. Why any one should leave it there is more than I know. The thief must have been frightened and hid it. Will you come down and identify it?”

Mrs. Bennett hastened down to the police station. There on the sergeant's table stood the famous urn, the pride of her heart. There was no doubt about it: the initials were there--it was hers. Tarnished and spotted by exposure, it was still the handsomest piece of silver she had ever seen. Involuntarily she gave a cry of delight. Then she hesitated. After all, compared to Harry's happiness and hers, what was a silver urn?

“Oh, captain,” she said, “I'm so disappointed. That's not mine! It's very much like it, but it isn't mine.”

THE BATTLE OF MANILA ENVELOPES

MR. BIRDLIP was a good old man, of unimpeachable simplicity. He had achieved enormous wealth in an honourable business, and then found (to his mild distress) that the great traffic he had built up conducted itself automatically. He had, in a way, been gently shouldered out of his own nest by the capable men whose fortunes he had made. But his zealous and frugal spirit required some sort of problem to feed upon, and he delighted his heart by owning a newspaper. _The Evening Lens_ was his toy and the child of his dotage.

So the Persian rugs and walnut panelling of his private suite in the huge Birdlip Building saw him rarely. He was supremely happy in the dingy sanctum at the back of the old _Lens_ office, where the hum of the presses and the racket of the city room (which he still, by an innocent misunderstanding, called the “sitting room”) delighted his guileless heart. He would sit turning over the pages of each edition as it came upstairs (putting his second finger up to his tongue before he turned each leaf) and poring industriously over the market reports, the comics, and the Woman's Page. With his pink cheeks, his dapper little figure in a brown suit and cream-coloured waistcoat, and his eager, shy, chirping manner, he was very like a robin. Although he was full of gigantic schemes, which he broached naively in the editorial council every now and then, he never wittingly interfered with his editor-in-chief, in whom he had full confidence. But his gentle and jejune mind had a disastrous effect on the paper no less. Almost unconsciously the Lens was written and edited down to his standard, as a roomful of adults will amiably prattle so as to carry along a child in the conversation.

Mr. Birdlip's amazing success in his original field had been due partly to his decent sagacity, honesty, and persistence, and partly to his sheer fortune in finding (at the very outset of his enterprise) several men of rugged ability, who became the pearls in his simple oyster-shell. As a result of this, it had become his fixed mental habit to believe that somewhere, some day, he would encounter the man or men who would make the _Lens_ the greatest newspaper in the country. This, indeed, was his candid ambition, and he never went anywhere without keeping his eyes open for the anticipated messiah.

He was greatly taken by broad primitive effects: when he noticed that a Chicago daily always called itself “The World's Greatest Newspaper” he was marvellously struck by the power of this slogan, and lamented that he had not thought of it first. The question as to whether the slogan were true or not never occurred to him. He liked to have the keynote sentences in the leading editorial emphasized in blackface type, so that there might be no danger of any one's missing the point. Desiring for his beloved sheet “this man's art and that man's scope,” as the sonnet puts it, every now and then he thought he had discovered the prodigy, and some new feature would be added to the paper at outrageous expense, only to be quietly shovelled out six months or a year later. In the meantime, the auditor was growing very gray, and even Mr. Birdlip's quick blue eye was sometimes hazed with faint perplexity when he studied the circulation charts. Perhaps it would have been kinder if someone could have told him that a boyhood spent in splitting infinitives is not sufficient training for one to become an Abraham Lincoln of the newspaper business.

As he trotted in and out of the _Lens_ office, with his rosy air of confidence and his disarming simplicity (which made his white hair seem a wanton cruelty on the part of Time, that would wither a man's cells while his mind was still on all fours), Mr. Birdlip was the object of furtive but very sharp study on the part of some cynical journalists whom he hired. It was a genuine amazement to Sanford, the dramatic critic, that the owner was so entirely unaware of his (Sanford's) abilities, which certainly (he thought) called for a salary of more than sixty dollars a week. Sanford often meditated about this, and not entirely in secret. In fact, it was generally admitted among the younger members of the staff, when they gathered at Ventriloquo's for lunch, that the Old Man was immaculately ignorant of all phases of the newspaper business. While the spaghetti and mushrooms cheered the embittered gossips, merry and quaint were the quips sped toward the unsuspecting target. Sanford's private grievance was that though for over a year he had been doing signed critiques of plays, which were really spirited and honest, not once had the Old Man condescended to mention them, or to show any sign of uttering an _Ecce Homo_ in his direction. As far as he was concerned, he felt that the weekly battle of Manila Envelopes was a conspicuous rout, and he frequently rehearsed the exact tone in which he would some day say to the managing editor: “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” Little did Sanford realize that the only time Mr. Birdlip had attempted to read the “Exits and Entrances” column he had met the name of Æschylus, had faltered, and retreated upon the syndicated sermon by the Rev. Frank Crane.

*****

“I saw 'Ruddigore' the other evening,” said Sanford to his cronies, as they called for a second round of coffee. “There's a line in it that describes old Birdie fore, aft, and amidships. Something like this: 'He is that particular variety of good old man to whom the truth is always a refreshing novelty'.”

They complauded. Rightly or wrongly, these high-spirited and sophisticated young men had decided that Mr. Birdlip's naïveté was so refreshingly complete that it gave them an aesthetic pleasure to contemplate it. It had the exquisite beauty of any absolute perfection. Their employer's latest venture, which had been to pay $200,000 for the exclusive right to publish and syndicate the mysterious formulae of a leading Memory Course, had shocked them very greatly.

It touched them in a tender spot to know that there had been all that money lying round the office, unused, which was now to be squandered (as they put it) on charlatanry, when they felt that they might just as well have had some of it.

“The Old Man is always looking for some special stunt, and trying to discover someone on the outside,” said one. “He can't see the material right under his nose.”

“It's really rather pathetic: he's crazy to get out a great newspaper, but he hasn't the faintest idea how to do it.”

“Yes, give him credit for sincerity. It isn't just circulation he wants.”

“Circulation's easy enough, if that's what you're after. The three builders of circulation are Sordid, Sensational, and Sex--”

“And the greatest of these is Sex.”

“Oh, he's decent enough. He won't pander.”

“He panders to stupidity. He's fallen for this Memory bunk. And when he finds that's a flivver, he'll try something else, equally fatuous. He's making the old _Lens_ ridiculous.”

They smoked awhile, meditatively.

“What I would like to figure out,” said Sanford, “is some way of making an impression on the Old Man. I've got to get more money. The trouble--some part of it is, I feel instinctively that he and I live in different worlds. We hardly even talk the same language. Well, there's no chance of his learning my way of thinking; so I suppose I'll have to learn his.”

“He's the man who puts the nil in the Manila envelope,” said one of the others.

“As far as we are concerned, yes. But there's plenty of the stuff going round on Fridays for the kind of people he understands.”

“He seems to be an absent-minded old bird. When I talk to him, it's as though I were trying to speak through a fog.”

“It looks to me as though his mind had overstayed its leave of absence.”

“He likes the kind of men who, as he says, 'have both feet on the ground'.”

“Yes, but you've got to have at least one foot in the air if you're going to get anywhere.”

“See here,” said the literary editor, who was more tolerant than the others. “What's the use of panning the Old Man? He's trying to put the paper over, just as hard as we are. Maybe harder. But he doesn't know. And I believe he knows he doesn't know. I think the chief trouble is, they all knuckle down to him so. They're scared of him. They think the only way they can hold their jobs is by agreeing with him. If someone could only put him wise----”

“But how _can_ you put him wise? He doesn't see anything unless it's laid out for him in a strip cartoon or a full-page ad. The kind of thing that interests him is the talk he hears in a Pullman smoker or club car.”

“That's a fact. You know he always says he likes to go travelling, because he picks up ideas from people on the train. 'Of course I place you! Mr. Mowbray Monk of Seattle. And is your Rotary Club still rotating?' That kind of talk.”

“I think you're right,” said Sanford. “He doesn't see us because we have too much protective colouring. We are only the patient drudges. We don't talk that Pullman palaver about Big Business. We've got to learn to talk his language. What is that phrase of Bacon's--we've got to bring ourselves home to his business and bosom----”

“Let's get back to the office,” said the disillusioned literary editor. “That's the way to bring home the bacon.”

*****

A few days later Sanford was at his desk, clipping and pasting press agents' flimsies for the Saturday Theatre Page. This was a task which he hated above all others, and he was meditating sourly on the scarcity of truth in human affairs. At this moment Mr. Birdlip happened to pass along the corridor outside the editorial rooms. Sanford heard him say:

“Miss Flaccus, will you get me a seat in the club car, ten o'clock train to-morrow? I've got to run over to New York to take lunch with Mr. Montaigne.”

Sanford put down his shears, relit his pipe, and began to pursue a fugitive idea round the suburbs of his mind. Presently he drew out his check book from a drawer and did some calculating on a sheet of paper. “A hundred dollars,” he said to himself. “I guess it's worth it.”

The following morning, dressed in a new suit and with shoes freshly burnished, Sanford was at the terminal twenty minutes before train time. With him was a young man carrying a leather portfolio. To observe the respectful demeanour of this young man, no one would have suspected that he was Sanford's young brother-in-law, rejoicing in cutting his classes at college for a day's masquerading. Sanford bought some cigars (a form of smoking which he detested) and carefully removed the bands from all but one of them.

Presently Mr. Birdlip appeared, cheerfully trotting up the stairs. Sanford and his companion followed discreetly. As Mr. Birdlip went through the gate, they were close behind. Entering the club car, Mr. Birdlip sat down and opened a morning paper. Sanford and his companion were prompt to take the two adjoining seats. Sanford began to look over _System_ and _Printers' Ink_, and perhaps his interest in these vigorous journals was not wholly unfeigned, for it was the first time he had studied them. The young man beside him drew out a mass of papers from his leather bag, and in a moment of stillness just before the train started said in a clear voice:

“Pardon, sir, but there is some important dictation here that ought to be attended to.”

Sanford assumed the air of a man wearied with tremendous affairs. .

“Very well, what comes first?”

“The New York _Budget_ has wired for an answer in regard to their proposition.”

Sanford blew a luxurious whiff of smoke. “Take this letter: My dear Mr. Ralston. Replying to your inquiries as to whether I would be willing to take charge of the editorial page of the _Budget_ for a few months, to put the paper on its feet, I am willing to consider the matter, and would be pleased to discuss it with you if you will run over to see me. I am very busy just now, and could not possibly undertake the work for some weeks. I have been retained in an advisory capacity by a big Western syndicate which was badly in need of some circulation building; and until I can put their paper up to a half-million figure I have not much spare time. Their paper has gone up a couple of hundred thousand since I mapped out a campaign for them, but I would not feel justified in discontinuing my services to them until these gains are properly consolidated. I will be in my office at ten o'clock next Tuesday morning if you care to see me. Very truly yours.”

Mr. Birdlip was hidden behind his paper, but something in the angle at which the sheets were held led Sanford to believe that the old gentleman was listening.

“Very well, Edwards,” he said. “What's next?”

“Here's this letter from Lord Southpeak of the London _Gazette_ asking if he can see you when he comes over next month.”

“Cable Southpeak I shall be very happy to see him if he gets here before the fifteenth. I am going on my vacation then.”

The attentive Edwards scribbled rapidly in his notebook.

“Just pick out the most urgent stuff,” said Sanford. “I don't care to bother with anything that isn't really pressing. I've got an important conference on in New York to-day, and I want to keep my mind clear. Blackwit of the Associated Press has asked me to say a few words to his directors on 'Journalism as a Function of Public Conscience'.”

Edwards ran rapidly through an imposing mass of documents.

“That long-distance call from the Chicago _Vox_,” he said. “You promised to give Mr. Groton some word this morning.”

“Call him up when we get to Penn. Station,” said Sanford. “Tell him I can't give him any decision yet awhile. Tell him that loyalty to my own city will keep me there for some time. You might tell him that I believe the _Lens_ has great possibilities if properly handled. I should not care to build up the property of a Chicago paper while there is a chance of the _Lens_ becoming the great evening paper of the East.”

“Yes, sir,” said Edwards, jotting down what, might pass for stenography.

The train was running smoothly through level green country, and Mr. Birdlip laid down his paper on his lap. Sanford was ready to catch his eye.

“Good morning, Mr. Birdlip,” he said, genially.

“Good morning,” said the owner of the _Lens_, whose bright gaze exhibited a lively tincture of interest.

“Here are the typed notes of your remarks on 'Newspaper Circulation as a Byproduct of the Multiplication Table',” said Edwards, in a loud voice.

“You can let those wait,” said Sanford, carelessly. “I don't want to be bothered with anything else this morning. Give me a memorandum of anything that needs to be attended to when we get to New York.” He turned to Mr. Birdlip. “I find that in these busy days one has to attend to some of one's work even on the train. It is about the only place where one is never interrupted.”

“Did I hear you say something about Circulation?” said Mr. Birdlip. “Are you specially interested in that problem?”

“I have given it a good deal of thought,” said Sanford. “But I would hardly dignify it by calling it a problem. It is perfectly simple. It is purely a matter of taking the right attitude toward it. So many newspaper proprietors regard it merely as a problem in addition. Now it should be considered rather as a matter of multiplication. Instead of trying to add ten to your figures, why not multiply by ten? The result is so much more satisfactory.”

This sounded so plausible that Mr. Birdlip felt ashamed to ask how it was to be done.

“Will you have a cigar, sir?” asked Sanford, handing out the only one with a band on it. Mr. Birdlip accepted it, and looked as though he were about to ask a question. Sanford went on rapidly.

“Speaking of circulation,” he said, “when I am consulted I am always surprised to note that newspaper proprietors are so prone to view the matter merely as a question of distribution; of--well, of merchandising,” he added, as his eye fell upon that word in his copy of _System_. “Indeed it rests upon quite another basis. The essence of merchandising” (he repeated the word with relish, noting its soothing effect on his employer) “is what?”

He made a dramatic pause, and Mr. Birdlip, carried away, wondered what indeed was the essence.