The Avenue darkened with black bees from the department stores; the traffic swelled into an interlaced jam; the busses were packed four deep like platforms above the thick crowd; but Sylvester, to whom the daily shift and change of the city was a matter only of sordid monotony, walked on, taking only quick sideward glances through his frowning spectacles.
He reached his hotel and was elevated to his four-room suite on the twelfth floor.
“If I dine downstairs,” he thought, “the orchestra will play either ‘Smile, Smile, Smile’ or ‘The Smiles that You Gave to Me.’ But then if I go to the Club I’ll meet all the cheerful people I know, and if I go somewhere else where there’s no music, I won’t get anything fit to eat.”
He decided to have dinner in his rooms.
An hour later, after disparaging some broth, a squab and a salad, he tossed fifty cents to the room waiter, and then held up his hand warningly.
“Just oblige me by not smiling when you say thanks?”
He was too late. The waiter had grinned.
“Now, will you please tell me,” asked Sylvester peevishly, “what on earth you have to smile about?”
The waiter considered. Not being a reader of the magazines he was not sure what was characteristic of waiters, yet he supposed something characteristic was expected of him.
“Well, Mister,” he answered, glancing at the ceiling with all the ingenuousness he could muster in his narrow, sallow countenance, “it’s just something my face does when it sees four bits comin’.”
Sylvester waved him away.
“Waiters are happy because they’ve never had anything better,” he thought. “They haven’t enough imagination to want anything.”
At nine o’clock from sheer boredom he sought his expressionless bed.
II
As Sylvester left the cigar store, Waldron Crosby followed him out, and turning off Fifth Avenue down a cross street entered a brokerage office. A plump man with nervous hands rose and hailed him.
“Hello, Waldron.”
“Hello, Potter—I just dropped in to hear the worst.”
The plump man frowned.
“We’ve just got the news,” he said.
“Well, what is it. Another drop?”
“Closed at seventy-eight. Sorry, old boy.”
“Whew!”
“Hit pretty hard?”
“Cleaned out!”
The plump man shook his head, indicating that life was too much for him, and turned away.
Crosby sat there for a moment without moving. Then he rose, walked into Potter’s private office and picked up the phone.
“Gi’me Larchmont 838.”
In a moment he had his connection.
“Mrs. Crosby there?”
A man’s voice answered him.
“Yes; this you, Crosby? This is Doctor Shipman.”
“Dr. Shipman?” Crosby’s voice showed sudden anxiety.
“Yes—I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. The situation’s changed and we expect the child tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes. Everything’s O.K. But you’d better come right out.”
“I will. Good-bye.”
He hung up the receiver and started out the door, but paused as an idea struck him. He returned, and this time called a Manhattan number.
“Hello, Donny, this is Crosby.”
“Hello, there, old boy. You just caught me; I was going——”
“Say, Donny, I want a job right away, quick.”
“For whom?”
“For me.”
“Why, what’s the——”
“Never mind. Tell you later. Got one for me?”
“Why, Waldron, there’s not a blessed thing here except a clerkship. Perhaps next——”
“What salary goes with the clerkship?”
“Forty—say forty-five a week.”
“I’ve got you. I start tomorrow.”
“All right. But say, old man——”
“Sorry, Donny, but I’ve got to run.”
Crosby hurried from the brokerage office with a wave and a smile at Potter. In the street he took out a handful of small change and after surveying it critically hailed a taxi.
“Grand Central—quick!” he told the driver.
III
At six o’clock Betty Tearle signed the letter, put it into an envelope and wrote her husband’s name upon it. She went into his room and after a moment’s hesitation set a black cushion on the bed and laid the white letter on it so that it could not fail to attract his attention when he came in. Then with a quick glance around the room she walked into the hall and upstairs to the nursery.
“Clare,” she called softly.
“Oh, Mummy!” Clare left her doll’s house and scurried to her mother.
“Where’s Billy, Clare?”
Billy appeared eagerly from under the bed.
“Got anything for me?” he inquired politely.
His mother’s laugh ended in a little catch and she caught both her children to her and kissed them passionately. She found that she was crying quietly and their flushed little faces seemed cool against the sudden fever racing through her blood.
“Take care of Clare—always—Billy darling——”
Billy was puzzled and rather awed.
“You’re crying,” he accused gravely.
“I know—I know I am——”
Clare gave a few tentative sniffles, hesitated, and then clung
