knew what he wished to get and where it was sold, and so he had an advantage over ninety-nine out of a hundred of the anxious-looking shoppers who were scuttling from shop to shop, burdened with bundles, and making the evening the worst in the year for tired sales -girls and -men. Orville’s present was not exactly Christmassy, but he hoped that Miss Badeau would like it, and it was certainly the finest one on the velvet tray. Orville, it will be seen, was of a sanguine disposition.
He did not hang up his stocking; he had not done that for several years; but he did dream that Santa Claus brought him a beautiful doll from Paris, and just as he was saying, “There must be some mistake,” the doll turned into Miss Badeau, and said: “No, I’m for you. Merry Christmas!” Then he woke up and thought how foolish and yet how fascinating dreams are.
Christmas morning was spent in polishing up an old essay on “The Value of the Summer as an Invigorator.” It had long been a habit of his to work over old stuff on his holidays, and if he was about to marry he would need to sell everything he had—of a literary-marketable nature. But this morning a vision of a lovely girl who on the morrow was going to sail thousands of miles away came between him and the page, and at last he tossed the manuscript into a drawer and went out for a walk.
It was the draggiest Christmas he had ever known, and the warmest. He dropped in at the club, but there was hardly any one there; still, he did manage to play a few games of billiards, and at last the clock announced that it was time to go home and dress for the Christmas dinner.
It was half-past five when be left the club. It was twenty minutes to six when he slipped on a piece of orange-peel and measured his length on the sidewalk. He was able to rise and hobble up the steps on one foot, but the hall-boy had to help him to the elevator and thence to his room. He dropped upon his bed, feeling white about the gills.
Orville was a most methodical man. He planned his doings days ahead and seldom changed his schedule. But it seemed likely that unless he was built of sterner stuff than most of the machines called men, he would not run out of the round-house to-night. His fall had given his foot a nasty wrench.
Some engineers, to change the simile, would have argued that the engine was off the track and that therefore the train was not in running condition; but Orville merely changed engines. His own steam having been cut off, he ordered an automobile for twenty minutes to seven; and after he had bathed and bandaged his ankle he determined, with a grit worthy of the cause that brought it forth, to attend that dinner even if he paid for it in the hospital, with Annette as special nurse.
Old Mr. Nickerson, who lived across the hall, had heard of his misfortune, and called to proffer his services.
“Shall I help you get to bed?” said he.
“I am not due in bed, Mr. Nickerson, for many hours; but if you will give me a few fingers of your excellent old Scotch, with the bouquet of smoked herring, I will go on dressing for dinner.”
“Dear boy,” said the old gentleman, almost tearfully, “it is impossible for you to venture on your foot with such a sprain. It is badly swollen.”
Mr. Nickerson, my heart has received a worse wrench than my foot has, therefore I go out to dine.” At sound of which enigmatical declaration Mr. Nickerson hurried off for the old Scotch, and in a few minutes Orville’s faintness had passed off, and with help from the amiable old man he got into his evening clothes—with the exception of his left foot, which was incased in a flowered slipper of sunset red.
“Now, my dear Mr. Nickerson, I’m a thousand times obliged to you, and if I can get you to help me hop downstairs I will wait for the automobile on the front stoop.” (Orville had been born in Brooklyn, where they still have “stoops.”) “I’m on time so far.”
But if Orville was on time, the automobile was not, the driver not being a methodical man; and when it did come, it was all the motorman could do to stop it. It seemed restive.
“You ought to shut off on the oats,” said Orville, gaily, from his seat on the lowest step of the “stoop.”
The picture of a gentleman in immaculate evening clothes, with the exception of a somewhat rococo carpet slipper, seemed to amuse some street children who were passing. If they could have followed the “auto” they would have been even more diverted, but such was not to be their fortune. Mr. Nickerson helped his friend into the vehicle, and the driver started at a lively rate for Fifth Avenue.
Orville lived in Seventeenth Street, near Fifth Avenue; Mrs. Marten lived on Fifth Avenue, near Forty-first Street. Thirty-ninth Street and Fortieth Street were reached and passed without further incident than the fact that Orville’s ankle pained him almost beyond the bearing-point; but, as it is not the history of a sprained ankle that I am writing, if the vehicle had stopped at Mrs. Marten’s my pen would not have been set to paper.
But the motor-wagon did not even pause. It kept on as if the Harlem River were to be its next stop.
Orville had stated the number of his destination with distinctness, and he now rang the annunciator and asked the driver why he did not stop.
Calmly, in the even tones that clear-headed persons use when they wish to inspire confidence, the driver said: “Don’t be alarmed, sir, but I can’t stop. There’s something out of kilter, and I may have to run some time before I can get the hang of it. There’s no danger as long as I can steer.”
“Can’t you slacken up in front of the house, so that I can jump?”
“With that foot, sir? Impossible, and, anyway, I can’t slacken up. I think we’ll stop soon. I don’t know when it was charged, but a gentleman had it before I was sent out with it. It won’t he long, I think. I’ll run around the block, and maybe I can stop the next time.”
Orville groaned for a twofold reason: his ankle was jumping with pain, and he would lose the pleasure of taking Miss Badeau in to dinner, for it was a minute past seven.
He sat and gazed at his carpet slipper, and thought of the daintily shod feet of the adorable Annette, as the horseless carriage wound round the block. As they approached the house again, Orville imagined that they were slackening up, and he opened the door to be ready. It was now three minutes past seven, and dinner had begun beyond a doubt. The driver saw the door swing open, and said:
“Don’t jump, sir. I can’t stop yet. I’m afraid there’s a good deal of run in the machine.”
Orville looked up at the brownstone front of the house with an agonized stare, as if he would pull Mrs. Marten to the window by the power of his eyes. But Mrs. Marten was not in the habit of pressing her nose against the pane in an anxious search for tardy guests. In fact, it may be asserted with confidence that it is not a Fifth Avenue custom.
At that moment the purée was being served to Mrs. Marten’s guests, and to pretty Annette Badeau, who really looked disconsolate with the vacant chair beside her.
“Something has happened to Orville,” said Mrs. Marten, looking over her shoulder toward the hall door, “for he is punctuality itself.”
Mr. Joe Burton was a short, red-faced little man, with black mutton-chop whiskers of the style of ’76, and a way of looking in the most cheerful manner upon the dark side of things. “Dessay he’s been run over,” said he, choppily. “Wonder any one escapes. Steam-, gasoline-, electric-, horse-flesh-, man-propelled juggernauts. Ought to be prohibited.”
Annette could not repress a shudder. Her aunt saw it, and said: “Orville will never be run over. He’s too wide-awake. But it
