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It was full to overflowing with printed books in fine bindings, short tales in Bragdon's familiar hand in copy-books, manuscripts almost without number, three Russia-leather record-books containing, the title-page told me, that which I most dreaded to find, The Poems of Thomas Bragdon, and dedicated to "His Dearest Friend" myself.
As I remember the matter, this plan was Bragdon's own, and its first suggestion by him was received by me with a smile of derision; but the quaintness of the idea in time won me over, and after the first trial, when we made a spirit trip to Beloochistan, I was so fascinated by my experience that I eagerly looked forward to a second in the series, and was always thereafter only too glad to bear my share of the trouble and expense of our annual journeyings.
So on the spur of the moment he had suggested to the artist the new book, though he knew that his publisher would demur. For his fame had raised him altogether out of Bragdon's class. But it was the only tangible way of putting out that helping hand the artist so obviously needed just then.
But when, some days later, I received a note from his executors stating that they had found in the store-room of Bragdon's house a large packing-box full of papers and books, upon the cover of which was tacked a card bearing my address, I began to wonder whether or not, after all, the imagination of my dead friend had really led him to believe that he possessed literary ability.
This was, indeed, a commonplace enough inscription, but it gathered unexpected force when I turned over a leaf and my eyes rested on the title, where Bragdon's love of substitutes had led him to put my name where Milton's had been. The discovery was too much for my equanimity.
In this way we became tolerably familiar with several places of interest which neither of us had ever visited, and which, in my case, financial limitations, and in Bragdon's, lack of time, were likely always to prevent our seeing.
So Hazel Fredericks took Virginia to the Reddons and left Milly for this night and day to collect herself from her blow and decide with her brother-in-law's help just what she should do. The large "studio" room of the apartment had an unfamiliar air of disorderliness about it. Bragdon's easel was there and his uncleaned palette. Also a number of canvases were scattered about.
Certainly there could be but one way in which Bragdon's substitution of my name for Milton's could prove injurious or offensive to me who was his friend, and that was by his putting that copy out before the world to be circulated at random, which avenue to my discomfiture he had effectually closed by leaving the book in my hands, to do with it whatsoever I pleased.
You need well, you need just me." But Mrs. Valentine had seen him as he stood revealed, and came up in search of Peggy. It was almost morning, she told her, and quite time to go back to the hotel and sleep. So in Bragdon's charge they wandered off, a bit reluctantly, a bit lingeringly.
Bragdon's efforts were so supremely concentrated on rolling his own small cart in the push, that he had little spirit to bestow elsewhere, however well he might wish people like the Reddons and others not in his immediate game. "I thought you liked the Reddons," Milly said, half accusingly. "I do what makes you think I don't?" he asked, taking up a pipe preparatory to work.
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