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But as we have to labor hard for a little joy, it's best to get the joy, as much as you can, and not fret over the work." Dresser found the Keystone so agreeable that he came there to live. The doctor and Alves and Miss M'Gann with Webber and Dresser had a table to themselves in the stuffy basement dining room.
Half an hour later they climbed over the hills of shore ice, and he hurried away to the Keystone. Alves walked slowly south on the esplanade. The gray sea of ice was covered now with the winter sun. The pools and crevasses sent up sheets of steam. Her eyes followed the ice lingeringly.
He had two visits to make that he had neglected for Webber's case, but he would wait until the evening and take Alves with him. He had not seen her for hours. For the first time in months he indulged himself in a few petty extravagances as he crossed the city to get his train. The day had excited him, had destroyed the calm of his usual controlled, plodding habits.
The eleventh of June Sommers had gone to meet Alves at their usual rendezvous in the thicket at the rear of Blue Grass Avenue. The sultry afternoon had made him drowse, and when he awoke Alves was standing over him, her hands tightening nervously. "They have dropped you," he said, reading the news in her face.
As he had told Miss Hitchcock, he had not a friend in the world to whom he could apply for help. Even the last duties to Alves he must perform alone, and to those he turned himself now. As he passed the Athenian Building, he remembered Dr. Leonard and went up to his office. The old dentist was the one friend in Chicago whom Alves would want near her to-morrow. Dr.
Sommers closed the door softly and returned to the shrieking creature. "Keep quiet," Sommers ordered sternly, "while I think what to do with you." She held her tongue and sat as still as her quaking nerves permitted. Sommers reviewed rapidly the story as he had made it out. At first it occurred to him, as it had to Alves, that the woman had been drinking.
The cabo, a spirited young white, named Estulano Alves Carneiro, who has since risen to be a distinguished citizen of the new province of the Upper Amazons, soon after gave orders to get up the anchor. The men took to the oars, and in a few hours we crossed the broad mouth of the Rio Negro; the night being clear, calm, and starlit, and the surface of the inky waters smooth as a lake.
He laid his hand softly upon hers, and spoke her name for the first time, "Alves." A tear dropped on his hand beneath the lamp, then another and another. He started up from his seat and strode to the window, keeping his back turned to the quiescent woman. It was terrible! He knew that he was a fool, but none the less something awesome, cruel, forbidding, tainted the atmosphere.
"I hope he'll come to see us." Miss M'Gann looked at the men and lowered her voice. "I think he knows what was the reason for dismissing you. He wouldn't tell me; but if I see him again, I am going to get it out of him." "Why, what did he say?" Alves asked. "Nothing much.
As he retreated the clerk looked at him with a cynical smile. In the clerk's vernacular, he wasn't "in the push," not "the popular choice." These days Sommers had so little to do that he could meet Alves at the close of the afternoon session. At first he had gone to the Everglade School and waited while the pupils bustled out.
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