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During Babson's desertion the managing editor called Una in and demanded, "Did Mr. Babson give you some copy about the Manning Wind Shield? No? Will you take a look in his desk for his notes about it?" While Una was fumbling for the notes she did not expect to find, she went through all the agony of the little shawled foreign wife for the husband who has been arrested.
It attacked the shivering form of a lonely little cur who took his tail between his legs and scurried away down the road in search of some sheltering barn or shed; it nipped little Hi Babson's ears and snatching his cap, tossed it over the wall and across the field where it lay, held fast in a clump of bushes.
In nothing do the inarticulate "million hall-room boys who want to be geniuses," the ordinary, unshaved, not over-bathed, ungrammatical young men of any American city, so nearly transcend provincialism as in an enthusiasm over their favorite minor cynic, Elbert Hubbard or John Kendrick Bangs, or, in Walter Babson's case, Mr. Fitzgerald's variations on Omar.
A titter danced along the benches and some fool in the back of the room clapped his hands. Judge Babson's face grew hard and his eyes narrowed to steel points. "The witness stands committed for contempt," he announced bitingly. "I direct that she be confined in the city prison for thirty days and pay a fine of two hundred and fifty dollars. Madam, you will go with the officer."
For I constantly teased Aunt Millie to make her scream and cry. "Granma," I used to call out, on waking in the morning.... "Yes, Johnnie darling, what is it?" "Granma, yesterday ... in the woods back of Babson's barn, I killed three Indians, one after the other." A silence.... "Granma, don't you believe me?" "Yes, of course, I believe you."
She knew all of Walter Babson's life from those two or three sentences of his. §
Una did not dare to make private reservations regarding what "the right woman" ought to mean in this case, but she burned at the thought of Walter Babson's marrying, and for an instant she saw quite clearly the film of soft dark hair that grew just below his sharp cheek-bone.
Colville, at his risotto, almost the room's length away, could hear what they thought, one and another, of Botticelli and Michelangelo; of old Piloty's things at Munich; of the dishes they had served to them, and of the quality of the Chianti; of the respective merits of German and Italian tobacco; of whether Inglehart had probably got to Venice yet; of the personal habits of Billings, and of the question whether the want of modelling in Simmons's nose had anything to do with his style of snoring; of the overrated colouring of some of those Venetian fellows; of the delicacy of Mino da Fiesole, and of the genius of Babson's tailor.
I searched the shallows and ripples of Hickory River for miles ... I followed Babson's brook over the hills nearly to its source. One day, peering through reeds into a shallow cove, I saw a fish-fin thrust up out of the water. I crept cautiously forward. It was a big fish that lay there. Trembling all over with excitement, I made a mad thrust.
The other stenographers winked at him, and he teased them about their coiffures and imaginary sweethearts.... For three days the women's coat-room boiled with giggles over Babson's declaration that Miss MacThrostle was engaged to a burglar, and was taking a correspondence course in engraving in order to decorate her poor dear husband's tools with birds and poetic mottoes.
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