Absentminded Beggar

This is about John Knowles. When his sister Charlotte was nine years old, she heard her mother tell Mrs. Prendergast that John, then aged twelve, was a wool-gatherer, just like his father before him. Mr. Knowles had died when Charlotte was too young to know or care what business he was in, but it kind of surprised her to learn that he had gathered wool for a living; she didn’t see how a man could make much money at that, yet her father had left his family fairly well off.

And it certainly puzzled her when her mother said John was in the same line, for John went to school every day, had a hard struggle keeping up and was obliged to study, with Mrs. Knowles’ help, evenings; or when Mrs. Knowles had company or went out to dinner, John sat in his room and wrote endless lines of poetry. Charlotte decided that Mrs. Prendergast was being kidded.

John’s teachers had nothing but words of praise for his efforts in English and English literature, and later for his English translations of Greek and Latin verse, but things like mathematics, history and physics interested him not at all and he was hardly ever able to answer a question in class. Sometimes he ignored the questions entirely, seeming not to have heard them. The women teachers were lenient with him because of his good looks and it was for this reason and the fact that he memorized whole pages of textbooks just before examination time that he was able to get by.

His absentmindedness seemed to grow worse and worse as the years passed and on his high-school commencement night he afforded his classmates much glee by appearing at the church in dinner shirt and trousers and a dark brown coat. A girl, Beth Beasley, who had loved him madly for four years, though he had never given her the slightest hope, grabbed him by the arm, led him away from the rest, explained the error in his costume and urged him to hurry home and get the right coat.

He went home and found Nora, the maid, who asked what on earth he was doing away from the church when it was just about time for the ceremonies to begin.

“There’s something the matter with my clothes,” he said.

“A hole in the trousers? I can patch it in a second.”

“No. It’s something about my coat. They told me it was the wrong color.”

“Of course!” exclaimed Nora. “You’ve got on brown when it ought to be black. Well, let’s hurry and find the black one. And you’ll have to run all the way back there.”

She found his black coat and left him in his room to make the change. He took off the brown coat, sat down on his bed a moment, mumbling what sounded like poetry; then rose and put the brown coat on again. Nora was not around to see him off.

He set out for the church once more, walking slowly. When he came to the little city park, he sat on one of the benches and mumbled more verse, much more verse. The ceremonies had been long under way and his mother and Charlotte, to say nothing of Beth Beasley, were panicky at his nonappearance among his classmates.

At length he got up and walked on. He came to a big arc-light and noted that he had not made the proper change in coats. “Well,” he said to himself, “it’s too late now. I’ll just go home and wait for Mother and Charlotte. They can tell me what happened.”

Mrs. Knowles and Charlotte appeared at half past ten and found him in the living-room, writing.

“Why, John! What was the matter with you? You’ve frightened us to death!”

“You oughtn’t to have left home ahead of me,” said John. “I was there on time, but that Beasley girl discovered I’d put on this coat with my black pants and white vest and insisted that I come home and change.”

“But you could have hurried home and changed and still have been only a little late.”

“I did hurry home and Nora hunted up the right coat for me, but she didn’t stay to see me put it on and I happened to get into this one again. I found it out just the other side of Wilson Park. And of course there was nothing to do then but come here and wait for you.”

“He’s crazy, Mother!” said Charlotte.

“I honestly believe he is! John, John, what am I going to do?”

“Well, you might tell me what went on.”

“Oh, there were prayers and singing and the baccalaureate address by Doctor Stetson. He was perfectly wonderful!”

“What did he say?”

“He told why this was called ‘Commencement’; that while you young men and women were ending your high-school careers, you were really just commencing life. And that’s why it’s called ‘Commencement.’ He was wonderful!”

“And they presented the diplomas,” said Charlotte. “I suppose Beth Beasley got yours.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s wild about you and that will give her an excuse to see you again soon.”

“Does she need an excuse?”

“Girls don’t like⁠—”

“Listen,” interrupted John. “Does this sound any good?”

He read from the scrap paper on which he had been writing:

But let no man who does not court quick death
So much as whisper, breathe the softest breath
Of scandal in the presence of De Setto
Against this sloe-eyed princess of the Ghetto,
Whose infidelity has been notorious,
But who, to him, is pure, angelic, glorious.
Not those who’ve given him for years their loyalty
Dare hint that she is something less than royalty.

“It sounds pretty,” said Mrs. Knowles. “What is it?”

“It’s a thing I’ve been working on for over eight months. It’s part of a libretto.”

“A libretto for what?”

“For an American grand opera.”

“Who’s going to write the music?”

“How can I tell? How can I know whether any of our great composers will like it? But when it is finished, which I will be in three or four months more, I intend to take it to New York and try to get somebody interested.”

“In three months you’ll be going to college.”

“Mother, I don’t want to go to college.”

“But I want you to, John. You must do this one thing for me. Your high-school diploma saves you the bother of an entrance examination and I understand that the university practically allows you your choice of subjects. You can take the literary course, which certainly won’t hurt your writing talent, and you can find time to work slowly and carefully on this opera thing until you have it perfect. You’ve got to do this, John. Your father wanted you to. He didn’t go himself and was always sorry. Please say you will.”

So John said he would and in mid-September he started for the station to catch the train for his state university, Michigan. His mother was not feeling well and neither she nor Charlotte, who had a tennis date with her boyfriend, Wallie Blair, came down to see him off. This proved unfortunate. There were two trains in the station and John, without questioning anyone, boarded the one westbound.

The conductor, taking his ticket, informed him that he was going in the wrong direction for Ann Arbor and advised him to get off at Niles and catch the next train east. John took the advice, but left his handbag and suitcase on the Chicago train. As he had also lost his trunk check, it was some days before he really got settled.

We will be brief about his one year in college. It was terribly hard to escape a complete flunk. It was harder to live alone. He never remembered to send out laundry until there was nothing left to wear. He was never able to concentrate on what went on in the classroom and never listened to a lecture. One day he wore one black shoe and one tan shoe, and four or five of his classmates followed him across the campus, reciting:

Diddle-diddle dumpling, my son Jack;
One shoe brown and one shoe black.

He was always late in paying for his board and lodging because his mind was on something else.

He went home at Christmas and for spring vacation, but forgot to take along certain garments in need of a woman’s tender care.

June came at last and John miraculously managed to get away from Ann Arbor with the loss of one spring overcoat, four shirts, a pair of shoes, half a dozen ties and the mates of a dozen socks. He had packed in a hurry because he knew that a co-ed living next door would be over to bid goodbye if he didn’t leave way ahead of time. She was not the only co-ed who had tried to become friendly. In spite of the occasional eccentricity of his attire, the girls were strong for him.

One day in July, John read in a Chicago paper that a famous American composer, whom we will call Deems Taylor, had sailed for Europe, where he intended to hide until he had written a libretto of his own.

John excitedly summoned his mother, asked her whether she could afford to send he abroad, told her why he wanted to go, gained her consent and bought his ticket for New York. This time Mrs. Knowles and Charlotte put him on the right train.

The paper had not given a hint of the composer’s hideaway excepting that it would be somewhere in Europe, but to John, Europe and Paris were synonymous and he went direct to the steamship offices to find out when the next boat left for Cherbourg. It was there that he learned he must have a passport, and at the passport office that it was necessary to supply a certificate of birth. It was five days before he had received the document from his mother, had got his passport and passage and was ready to go.

The boat was to leave at midnight and to make sure of being on time, John left his hotel and entered a taxi at half past ten. That is, he thought it was half past ten. His watch had always kept perfect time and he trusted it implicitly, paying no attention to the New York clocks. Actually it was half past eleven in New York, whatever it was in Michigan.

Moreover, the driver of the taxi he selected was very drunk. He did not help with the baggage; merely waited till John had put it in the car and then asked, “Where to, buddy?”

“The Cunard docks.”

“Oh, crossing the old pond, hey?”

“Yes.”

“America’s good enough for me.”

The starter wouldn’t work and the driver had to get out and crank. The first three attempts resulted in the crank slipping out of the cranker’s hand and the cranker sitting down abruptly on the pavement. In about twelve minutes he had the engine going.

“Now then, where did you say?”

“The Cunard Line.”

“Where is it at? What street? What pier?”

“I suppose I’ve got the number of the pier on my ticket, but it’s a lot of trouble to get it out. I don’t know what street it’s on, but you certainly ought to.”

“What do you want to see Europe for? Ain’t America good enough for you?”

“Come on; let’s go.”

“What’s the use of going if you don’t know where?”

“Ask somebody where the Cunard pier is.”

“Oh, we can do it easier than that. Let’s see, we’re at Seventieth Street. I’ll run over to the river and then cruise downtown till we see the sign. We can’t miss it that way.”

Well, the story goes that they got as far as Pier 97 and a big liner was just whistling its last warning, and by running as fast as he could with his heavy bags, John just managed to dash up the gangplank before they pulled it in.

In five minutes he learned from the purser that his watch was an hour slow, that he was aboard an Italian boat bound for Naples and that under no circumstances would the boat stop at any port in France and drop him off.

We know nothing of his experiences abroad excepting that he spent four months searching Paris for the composer and learned later that the latter had been in Naples all the time, but had completed his libretto and gone back to America; that this was such a blow to John that he stayed in Paris four years, drinking and writing French libretti, two of which were accepted, set to music and tried out at the Opéra Comique, where they were terrible flops; that he never found his trunk which had come to Cherbourg on the Cunard Line, and that he grew better-looking and more absentminded every day of his life.

He finally went to Havre and boarded a boat for home. Some of his friends said he probably thought the boat was bound for Finland. But the truth was that his mother had written to warn him that her investments had gone bad and she couldn’t send him any more money.

At the hometown station to meet him were his sister Charlotte and Beth Beasley, the latter squeezing his hand until it hurt and giving him a barrage of adoring looks that made him feel silly. He learned from Charlotte that his mother was bedridden and nearly broke. (She did not add that a great deal of the Knowles money had been burnt up in supplying her with sport cars, sport clothes, evening boyfriends, notably Wallie Blair.) It was, gowns and liquor with which to entertain her however, Miss Beasley’s car that they were using now, a car that couldn’t have cost under twelve thousand.

For Miss Beasley was the daughter of one of the town’s two wealthiest men, J. L. Beasley and H. N. Comerford. I mean she was J. L.’s daughter and not the daughter of both of them. H. N. had a daughter of his own, Irene. The Comerfords had moved to town a year or so after John Knowles’ departure, and Comerford and Beasley had established a brokerage office, with ticker service and a blackboard and everything. They couldn’t count the money they were making.

“Wait till you meet Irene Comerford,” said Charlotte. “She’s simply beautiful and all the men are crazy about her.”

“But you’d better not let yourself be,” said Beth. “She’s engaged to Sam Drake.”

“How long has Mother been sick?” asked John.

“Oh, since last winter.”

“Sam Drake is a regular Ed Wynn,” said Beth. “You’ll die!”

They were at the house. John jumped out, corralled his baggage and rushed in, forgetting to thank Miss Beasley for the ride.

“He’s just as absentminded as ever,” said Charlotte apologetically. “More so, I believe.”

“But oh! how wonderful-looking!” said Beth in a voice that contained a tear.

“You’ll come in a minute, won’t you?”

“Well, only for a minute, if you think I won’t be in the way. I’ve got to go for Daddy in a quarter of an hour.”

But if “Daddy” was really waiting for her, he waited two hours and a quarter, for Beth was not going to leave until she had seen John again, and John was upstairs a long time, talking to his mother.

When he came down, Charlotte went up, leaving Beth and him alone.

“Oh, John, it’s so heavenly to have you home again! We all missed you terribly, and I guess you know who missed you most.”

“Mother did seem glad to see me.”

“I wasn’t speaking of your mother.”

“Did you get over to Chicago during the opera season?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I was wondering if they did Taylor’s new opera there and how it went.”

“Did you fall in love with a French girl?”

“The only ones I saw were opera-singers and I’m not blind.”

“You’ll fall head over heels in love with Irene Comerford. She’s the most attractive girl I ever met.”

There seemed to be no reply to this.

“John, tell me who’s the most attractive girl you ever met.”

“I never thought about it.”

“Do you think I’m terribly unattractive?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Why, John! I believe you’re warming up.”

“A fella that’s lived in those Paris pensions four years won’t have any trouble warming up over here.”

“John, will you bring me an ashtray?”

He wasn’t listening and Miss Beasley had to get it herself. But when she sat down again, it was in a chair almost touching his and an instant later she was holding his hand.

“John, dear, I want to know all about you. I want to know your plans.”

“Well, we don’t seem to be overwhelmed with money, so my first plan is to get a job.”

“That’s just what I wanted you to say.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives me a chance to help you.”

“How?”

“Daddy wants a young man in his office and I’ll see that you’re the one.”

“Me in a broker’s office! I’d certainly go over big!”

“You could learn. Besides, the work wouldn’t be hard. It’s youth and good looks he wants more than anything else.”

“What for?”

“To attract women customers.”

“Listen, I’d drive more of them away than I’d attract. I can’t talk to women.”

“Oh, Johnny, not even to me?”

Charlotte had descended the stairs quietly and Beth, seeing her, released John’s hand.

“You caught us in the act, Charley,” said Beth, trying to be embarrassed. “But it isn’t really serious. Just a reunion of two good pals.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, I must rush! Daddy will kill me! Goodbye, Charley. Goodbye, John. You might tell your sister our scheme.”

“What’s the matter with her?” asked John.

“You know perfectly well,” said Charlotte. “But tell me, what’s the scheme?”

“She said her father wanted a young man in his office and that she could get me the job.”

“Are you going to take it?”

“No! What do I know about business?”

“John, you’ve got to take it! It doesn’t make any difference what you know. They’ll tell you what they want you to do. And they’ll pay you good money. That’s what’s important right now. Mother is flat broke and she needs special food, special nursing; she’ll worry herself to death over our financial status. You can save her, John, and you’ve got to do it! It would be criminal of you not to. Oh, Johnny, please! Say you will!”

“I’ll think about it.”

“And I know you’ll think right. Now I’ve got to run over to Butch Harper’s and get some gin. Wallie’s coming in from the lake for dinner. And Irene Comerford and Sam Drake said they might stop for cocktails. It’s a shame Irene’s engaged, though I’m afraid she wouldn’t⁠—I mean she likes men who talk a lot and are funny. That’s what attracts her to Sam. He’s full of the devil, telling stories all the time or getting up practical jokes on somebody. If they should come before I get back, you’ll entertain them, won’t you?”

“I shouldn’t think she’d need any more entertainment than he can give her.”

“Well, don’t forget to laugh at his stories. And another thing, John. If Wallie should call up while I’m gone you take the message. And please, John, decide to accept that offer.”

John, left alone, sat and stared at the empty fireplace for five minutes. Then he went to a table, took a cigarette from the box and lighted it. A few puffs and he took another, igniting the second from the first. It surprised him to find he was smoking two at once and it embarrassed him when a young couple entered without knocking and caught him at it.

“And I thought I was a fiend!” said the man who John knew at once was Sam Drake.

“Honey,” he said to the girl, “you get sore at me lots of times for smoking one cigarette after another. What would you do if I smoked them in pairs?”

John was looking into the girl’s eyes. Beautiful! Attractive! What silly words!

She spoke: “I’m Irene Comerford and this is Mr. Sam Drake. I presume you are Mr. Knowles. Charlotte asked us in for a cocktail.”

John was dumb.

“Is Charlotte out?”

He managed to answer yes.

“Oh, then we’ll run along.”

“She told me you were to wait,” said John.

“Well, if we’re going to wait, let’s sit down and take a load off our dogs,” said Sam.

The callers seated themselves on the couch and John, after laying both his cigarettes on the tray, sat in a chair facing them. Never once did he take his eyes off Miss Comerford’s face.

“You’re just back from gay Paree, I hear,” said Sam.

“Yes.”

“How long were you over there?”

“I don’t know.”

Irene suppressed a smile at Sam’s evident discomfiture. Then she spoke again:

“I think Charlotte was right.”

She waited for John’s question, but he asked none.

“Beth and I were talking one day,” she continued, “and we were talking about men, for a change. We agreed that they were all alike. Charlotte said we would eat our words if we knew you as well as she did. Then Beth said that⁠—Well, I won’t make you blush.”

The telephone rang, but John made no move. It continued to ring and Irene asked whether he intended to answer it. He was still silent.

“Shall I answer it, then?”

“If you like.”

It was Wallie Blair and he wanted Charlotte to be told that his boat had been stalled on the lake for two hours and he couldn’t possibly be there before half past eight. Irene sat down again and delivered the message to John, in case she and Sam would have to go before Charlotte came back. John seemed to be paying attention, but he was not.

“Well, Knowles,” said Sam, “if you’re just back in the country, maybe you haven’t heard all the new stories; I mean parlor stories; Irene won’t let me tell the other kind. Did you hear the one about the two colored caddies at Palm Beach last winter?”

“No.”

“Well, a couple of the big boys⁠—I think it was Replogle and Hutton or somebody like that⁠—started a round out at the Everglades Club and they happened to get two caddies who were twice as big as they were⁠—”

He was interrupted by a laugh, John’s laugh. It came so unexpectedly that Sam and Irene Comerford were frightened.

“Not time to laugh yet,” said the raconteur.

“I’m sorry,” said John.

“Well, one of the players hit the ball into an unplayable lie and asked his caddy to pick it up. The caddy grinned at him and said⁠—”

Again an interruption, but this time not a laugh. John, looking straight at the girl, softly recited:

I’ll never know the glory of the moon
Until I see it shining in your eyes;
I’ll never know the loveliness of June
Till we look up together at its clear, magnificent, azure skies.
Each day will be just morning, night and noon
Till you are mine, my loved one, sweetheart, wife,
And then I’ll know the glory of the moon,
And then I’ll know the loveliness of life.

“Well, for!” exclaimed Sam Drake. “Come on, Irene. I want to get you away from this bird. I can’t compete with Eddie Guest.”

Miss Comerford got up. “I do think we ought to go,” she said. “Please tell Charlotte how sorry we were not to see her.”

John rose and began to act the polite host.

“Don’t let me drive you away with my doggerel! Charlotte won’t forgive me.”

“Honestly we must go,” said Irene. “I would like you to tell me what that was.”

“I think it will be part of a libretto I’m writing, a libretto I’ve been writing for five years.”

“When did you make up those lines?”

“Since you came, most of them.”

“Hot apple sauce! Come on, Irene. You’re supposed to be my inspiration, not his,” said Sam.

“Just a second,” said John. “Do you often go to your father’s office?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Oh, never mind.”

“I go there once or twice a week.”

“Whenever she’s flat,” said Sam.

They saw one of John’s infrequent smiles.

“Here’s hoping you’re frequently flat.”

“Why?”

But he had started up the stairs without waiting to bow them out.

Charlotte came home about half past six, hot and in a bad temper. She had had two blowouts, one of them halfway home from her bootlegger’s, two miles out in the country, and five cars had disregarded her SOS. The sixth one’s occupant was an old farmer who knew as much about changing tires as she did. It had taken them half an hour to do the job. John told her Miss Comerford and Mr. Drake had been in for a while. She asked him what he thought of Irene. He made no reply at all, but Charlotte was used to that. Then she asked him whether Wallie Blair had telephoned and he said no, really thinking he was telling the truth.

At seven she gave Wallie up and dined alone with John. But when Wallie came a little after eight swore he had talked with Irene and that the latter had promised to deliver the message, there was a further display of temper, first directed toward Miss Comerford and then toward John, when John, to save Irene, admitted that she might have given him the message and he might have forgotten about it. Charlotte was pacified by his promise that he would accept Mr. Beasley’s offer if Mr. Beasley made one.

Mr. Beasley made one next morning, a salary of two hundred dollars a week for work that could be taught him easily. He was given a private office with a desk and two chairs. No one came in to instruct him in his duties and he would have been happy polishing up his libretto if Beth Beasley had not made his room a second home.

“Do you like me now?” she asked, perched on his desk too close for comfort. It was his fourth day on the “job.”

“Why now?”

“I mean because I got you this chance.”

“I liked you before that,” he said.

“Dear, do you know what you’re saying?”

“Certainly.”

“Can’t you say it more plainly, that you’re fond of me, that you care a little? I know how shy you are and I have to do the talking for you. I hate to. But you won’t do it yourself.”

“What am I to say?”

“Just that you care for me.”

“I do.”

“John, does that mean it’s an understanding?”

“What kind of understanding?”

“That we care for one another.”

“I guess we do.”

“Aren’t you going to be⁠—not so cold and distant?”

“Listen, Beth,” said John nervously, “I don’t know whether I can make good here or not. And until I am sure of myself and where I stand, I can’t think of⁠—of other things.”

“Daddy would never turn you out.”

“I’ll turn myself out if I can’t do what he wants me to. I’ve got to make good on my own account, without any outside influence. If you’ll just understand that!”

“I’ve waited this long, I guess I can wait a little longer,” said Beth, and left him.

Well, the fifth day was something entirely different. One of the partners. H. N. Comerford, was in Chicago. At a quarter of nine, the other partner, J. L. Beasley, called up to say he was going fishing; he knew that old Fred Howard, his chief and only clerk unless you counted John Knowles was capable of running the whole works single-handed. The rest of the office force was made up of the telegraph operator the telephone girl, the marker and the pretty new stenographer Miss Davenport.

Old Howard was usually on deck at nine o’clock sharp. This morning his wife telephoned at ten after nine that he had broken a leg trying to get on a streetcar. Miss Davenport came into John’s room to tell him the news and he nearly fainted. When he had pulled himself together, he rushed into the main office and instructed the telephone girl to put all calls on his wire; he would keep Miss Davenport with him and when orders came in, he would write them down and repeat them aloud so she could write them down, too, and there would be less chance of mistakes.

The telegraph operator reminded him that the daily market letter must be got out and sent to all customers and prospective customers. John decided that it was best to start this letter at once; his ignorance of what a market letter should contain was colossal and it would take all his spare time to write it.

“Make it optimistical,” was the only hint the operator offered.

He hoped for help from Miss Davenport, but that good-looking young lady was proof of the saying, “You can’t have everything.”

“Did Mr. Howard ever dictate one to you?” John asked her.

“Yes, every day since I’ve been here, but that’s only a week.”

“How does he start them?”

“I forget.”

It never occurred to John that there must be dozens or hundreds of old ones around the office. He must work out one of his own.

“Well,” he said, “get me a paper with the market reports and we’ll see what we can do.”

She brought him the paper and sat down at the desk opposite him ready to take dictation.

“Here we go,” he said. “To customers of Beasley and Comerford: We do not like to advise you to buy stocks that are not likely to go higher or at least not go lower⁠—”

The telephone rang. It was Wallie Blair asking him to come to the lake Saturday afternoon and stay over Sunday. He said he couldn’t leave his mother alone.

“Charlotte’s going to stay with her.”

“Well, let me think it over.”

“No. You’ve got to say yes right now. You’ve got no excuse in the world. I’m in the Maynard cottage and anybody can tell you where it is. I’ll expect you Saturday afternoon.”

Perhaps if it hadn’t been for the market letter, John would have argued. As it was he said all right, so he could go on with his work.

“All right, Miss Davenport. What have we said?”

“ ‘We do not like to advise you to buy stocks that are not likely to go higher or at least not go lower.’ ”

“But we cannot help feeling a feeling of optimism.”

“How do you spell that last word?”

“O-p-t-i-m-i-s-m. As the summer promises to be hot, we might recommend the purchase of American Ice preferred; still, one cannot always depend on the weather predictions. General Motors is another good stock.” The telephone rang. It was J. M. McInerny and he wanted to place an order for two hundred shares of Murray Corporation at the market. John wrote down the order, repeated it aloud as it was given to him so Miss Davenport could get it, too. She took the slip to the telegraph operator and returned for more dictation. But the telephone was ringing again.

“This is Irene Comerford.”

“Yes,” in a voice that shook a little.

“I just wanted to speak to the telephone girl, but she gave me you. Aren’t you Mr. Knowles?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I expected to drop in the office today and my father was going to send me a telegram there. If one comes, will you mail it to me at the lake? In care of Mrs. Charles Parrish. I’ll be there over the weekend.”

“I’ll attend to it, Miss Comerford.”

“Thanks. Goodbye.”

He wrote down Mrs. Charles Parrish’s name and then looked out the window. Miss Davenport waited five minutes before she asked whether the market letter was all done.

“No. I was figuring what to put in next.” The telegraph operator came in and suggested that as business seemed to be slow, the telephone operator might call him instead of John to take the orders and he would keep a record of them and give it to John later.

“I’ll just take this one,” said John as the telephone rang again. “Then you can handle them the rest of the day.”

“K.O.,” said the operator.

A man named Francis Elliott wanted six hundred shares of American Linseed. John and Miss Davenport wrote it down. Then John looked at the paper to be sure there was such a stock.

“Great heavens!” he exclaimed. “There are two of them, common and preferred. I’m pretty sure he said common. No, I’m sure he said preferred.”

“Why not call back and ask him?”

“That would be silly, because I’m positive he said preferred.”

Miss Davenport took the order out to the operator and came back to John’s desk.

“Where were we?”

“ ‘General Motors is another good stock,’ ” read Miss Davenport.

“Oh, yes. Well, U.S. Steel is always a good buy. So are the railroads, as people do a great deal of traveling these days especially during the summer. People go south in the winter and north in the summer, so at this time of year the stocks of the northbound railroads would be the best ones to buy. Automobile stocks are also pretty good stocks to buy at this time of year as many of the tourists and vacationists travel by motor rather than by rail. They prefer it. Railroad travel is perhaps safer, but that does not affect the value of the stocks.”

He ran on in this way for nearly a thousand words, four times as many as the letter usually contained. He made a tremendous effort to talk sensibly to customers and was immensely relieved when four o’clock struck.

On the way home he worried a little about that American Linseed order, but decided that a man who would order as many as six hundred shares would certainly deal in preferred stock instead of common.

He told Charlotte about his invitation from her friend Wallie Blair. It was no news to her. He didn’t want to go, but she said he must or Wallie would feel hurt.

Mr. Beasley was back next morning, which was Friday, and congratulated John on his smooth work in a pinch. Luckily, he did not see the market letter and more luckily he was shut up in his office when Francis Elliott came in to how his Linseed was going. The telegraph operator told John who he was and John invited Mr. Elliott into his own room.

“Mr. Elliott,” he said, “I’m a novice at this game and I am likely to make mistakes. Would you mind telling me what your order was yesterday? Was it for the common or preferred?”

“For the common, of course,” said Mr. Elliott, “and it’s off two and a quarter points.”

“But the preferred,” said John, “is up eight points, and that is what I bought you.”

For an instant young Mr. Knowles was in imminent danger of being kissed by a man with a mustache. But he dodged behind the desk and asked Mr. Elliott if he would mind not telling either of the partners of the error. “Tell! No, sir. What I’ll do is sell. And you’re going to get a hundred dollars for being a novice.”

At three o’clock Saturday afternoon, John started for the lake in Charlotte’s car.

He had not foreseen the problem that would upset him almost as soon as he had left the city limits; namely, which cottage Wallie Blair was living in, the Maynards’ or the Parrishes’. He knew he had made notes of both those names, but simply could not remember which one had been told him by Wallie and which by Miss Comerford.

Two miles from the lake he was sure his destination was the Maynards’. A mile more and he was convinced it was the Parrishes’. This conviction held and after asking directions from a cottager mowing his lawn, he soon pulled up in front of the wrong place.

A male servant came out to the car and grabbed his two pieces of baggage.

“What name, sir?”

“John Knowles.”

Without another word, the servant carried the baggage onto the porch, opened the screen door to permit John to enter, and followed him in. A woman rose at his entrance.

“Mr. John Knowles,” said the servant. “Is he to have the south room?”

“John Knowles!” said the woman half under her breath. “I’m afraid there is some⁠—But wait a minute till I run upstairs.”

Upstairs she rapped briskly on Irene’s door and went in. “Dearie,” she said, “did you invite here a beautiful sheik named John Knowles?”

Irene gasped. “I did not!”

“Well, he’s downstairs and he’s brought his baggage and he seems to think he was expected.”

“Heavens! What in the world could make him think that?”

“Do you know him?”

“I’ve met him once. He works in Father’s office. But I certainly never asked him to come here or anywhere else.”

“Well, there’s evidently a misunderstanding. I wish you would go down and talk to him.”

“I’ll see him and find out how it happened,” said Irene.

She was cross with him for what she believed his freshness and thought of sarcastic things to tell him as she hurried downstairs. But when she saw him, with the servant near by standing over his bags, she knew he never could be a “crasher” and that it was truly a mistake that had brought him there. She smiled and said:

“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Knowles.”

John stared at her as if she were a ghost. Then he found his voice.

“I suppose I’m the world’s biggest sap. I want to explain this intrusion and then I’ll get right out. Last Thursday, the day you telephoned, a friend of mine here at the lake also telephoned and asked me out for the weekend. He gave me the name of the cottage where he is staying and you gave me the name of yours. I wrote the names down, but left the slips in the office and I couldn’t remember which was which. The two names were Maynard and Parrish. On the way out here I thought and thought and thought, and of course came to the wrong conclusion. And I never can tell you how sorry and humiliated I am.”

Irene heard herself saying: “But I’m glad you did guess wrong because now we can have you and you can visit your friend some other time.”

“Not for anything in the world!”

“Not even if I beg you?”

“There’s no reason you should beg me, no reason you should want me.”

“It happens that I do.”

“If I could believe that, I’d tell my friend to let me off.”

Irene noticed the servant still hovering.

“Edward, take Mr. Knowles’ bags to the south room.” And when Edward had gone upstairs, “We’re going on a party tonight, you and I and Mrs. Parrish and Sam Drake. It won’t be a late party and I don’t believe it will bore you much.”

“I can’t do that, Miss Comerford. I brought no dinner clothes.”

“Nobody will care.”

“I would. No, Miss Comerford, you’d better let me take my bags and go over to Wallie’s.”

“It’s already settled. You’re not going there.”

“And I’m not going to any party.”

“All right then. Sit here quietly and read. No. Write more of your libretto and I can boast that you got your inspiration from me.”

“I’m afraid it won’t be much to boast of.”

“Oh, hush! Come up now and I’ll show you your room. And of course you won’t have to dress because you’ll be dining all alone.”

He followed her up the stairs and was properly introduced to Mrs. Parrish, whom they met in the hall. Explanations followed and the hostess acted as if she were glad he had come.

John went to his room, changed into some clothes that were not quite so wrinkled, then sat and waited for events. He was not in the least conscience-stricken about Wallie Blair.

He would go over after dinner and give a special version of what had happened. What really had happened was that he was in love for the first time in his life and it was impossible for him to resist Irene’s voice and eyes.

He was summoned downstairs, where he found Mrs. Parrish, Sam Drake and Irene in evening dress. They all had cocktails, Sam drinking five as fast as he could get them down. He had greeted John very coldly and had not uttered a word during his exhibition of rapid guzzling. Mrs. Parrish took him to task:

“Sam, you’re an old grouch! Get happy and tell us a story.”

“I’ll tell no story in the presence of a so-and-so cheap poet who hasn’t the manners to keep his mouth shut.”

“Sam!” said Irene sharply.

“I don’t like to be around with a so-and-so tramp and grafter who crashes into places where he is not invited or wanted.”

“I assure you he is wanted.”

“By whom?”

“By me!”

“Well, you don’t want me if you want him. We may as well get that straight right now!”

“Just as you say.”

“Miss Comerford,” said John, “I really ought to go over to my friend’s.”

“I want you to stay right here, and what’s more, I’m going to stay here with you. I don’t intend to go anywhere with Sam in his present condition.”

“If I leave here without you, I’ll never come back.”

“Suit yourself about that. I’m not going!”

“Irene, dear,” said Mrs. Parrish, “you know I’ve got to go, don’t you? It’s the Tuttles and I’ve refused them so often.”

“Of course, Ellen, you must. I’m only sorry you haven’t a decent escort.”

“Her escort,” said Sam, “is at least as decent as the snake you’re throwing him over for.”

“I’m not throwing anyone over.”

“You are! You love this guttersnipe and I guess you’re welcome to him.”

“Come on, Sam,” said Mrs. Parrish.

“And in parting, Mr. Drake,” said John, “let me warn you that the first time we meet where no ladies are present, you’ll go home looking like the late Tom Heeney.”

Irene Comerford and John were alone.

“Mr. Knowles, please tell me you didn’t believe what he said about my loving you.”

“He said you loved a guttersnipe.”

“He was referring to you and you know it. And I don’t want you to believe him.”

“There’s no danger, dear. But oh, how I’d like to!”

“Why?”

“Because I love you so.”

“And what about Beth?”

The man servant announced dinner.

“Well,” said John when they were seated at a table too big for two, “what about Beth?”

“She told me you were engaged.”

“She told me that, too, but I was in a position to know better.”

John asked the servant where the Maynard cottage was and learned it was only four cottages away. “I’d like to go down there and square myself with Wallie Blair.”

“You must go right after dinner,” said Irene, “but you mustn’t stay too long.”

“No danger.”

But there was danger, danger John should have foreseen and avoided by staying right where he was. He mixed with Blair’s ribald crew for only half an hour, but on the way back the moon on the lake brought the accursed libretto back into his head and drove Irene entirely out of it. He sat on somebody’s dock and outlined a whole new scene, and when he finally returned, it was eleven o’clock and Miss Comerford had disappeared.

He was sorry, but it didn’t seem strange to him. Nor did her failure to acknowledge his greeting when he found her alone in the dining-room next morning strike him as queer. And after five or ten minutes of silence, he said:

“You’re a lot like me. There are times when you don’t want to talk to anybody.”

“Mr. Knowles, it isn’t ‘anybody’ I don’t want to talk to. It’s you.”

“But why?”

“Can you ask after what you did last night?”

“Do you mean my staying out so long?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what I was doing?”

“I can imagine.”

“Well, I wasn’t at Blair’s, drinking. I was sitting on a dock, blocking out a new scene for my silly opera.”

“Couldn’t you have done it here?”

“Do you think I could concentrate on work if I were with you?”

“You did, at least you said you did, the other day. You said you made up that verse while I was right there with you.”

“Dear, you know I am crazy and absentminded and of a queer temperament. Can’t you care for me as I am?”

“I’m afraid I can.”

“How soon will Mrs. Parrish be down?”

“Any minute.”

“Then let’s settle this thing quick. I’m not engaged to Beth. You’re not engaged to Sam. Let’s be engaged to each other.”

“I’m afraid you’re engaged to your work.”

“I’ll tear it up.”

“I won’t let you do that. But I’ll insist on your doing whatever is left to be done right in my presence, looking right at me.”

“I don’t believe it’s possible, but I’ll try.”

“Then we’re engaged.”

“And remember, Miss Comerford, that being engaged to you means the loss of my job.”

“What for? Maybe you don’t know it, but my father owns more stock than Mr. Beasley.”