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You come up to see me, didn't you? You're m' friend, ain't you, eh? I got an awful hang-over, ain't I? You don't care, do you, ol' Wrenn?" Mr. Wrenn stared at him weakly, but only for a minute. Perhaps it was his cattle-boat experience which now made him deal directly with such drunkenness as would have nauseated him three months before; perhaps his attendance on a weary Istra.
He found himself in the position of a man scheduled to address the Brewers' Association and the W. C. T. U. at the same hour. Valiantly he attempted: "Miss Nash oughta be a good person for our picnics. She's a regular shark for outdoor tramping." "Oh yes, Mr. Wrenn and I tramped most all night in England one time," said Istra, innocently. The eyes of the table asked Mr. Wrenn what he meant by it.
He was feeling rather resentful at everything, including Istra, as he finally knocked and heard her "Yes? Come in." There was in her room a wonderful being lolling in a wing-chair, one leg over the chair-arm; a young young man, with broken brown teeth, always seen in his perpetual grin, but a godlike Grecian nose, a high forehead, and bristly yellow hair.
From Tom: "Yes, you're a hot dancer, all right. I suppose you can do the Boston and all them swell dances. Wah-h-h-h-h!" " but Istra, oh, gee! you're like poetry like all them things a feller can't get but he tries to when he reads Shakespeare and all those poets." "Oh, dear boy, you mustn't! We will be good friends. I do appreciate having some one care whether I'm alive or not.
Sometimes he yearned for a sight of Istra's ivory face. Sometimes, with a fierce compassion that longed to take the burden from her, he pictured Nelly working all day in the rushing department store on which the fetid city summer would soon descend. They did have their walk the next night, Istra and Mr. Wrenn, but Istra kept the talk to laughing burlesques of their tramp in England.
He trembled on the ferry till Nelly, with a burst of motherly tenderness in her young voice, suddenly asked: "Why, you're shivering dreadfully! Did you get a chill?" Naturally, he wanted the credit of being known as an invalid, and pitied and nursed, but he reluctantly smiled and said, "Oh no, it ain't anything at all." Then Istra called him again, and he fumed over the slowness of their landing.
Let up after reception etc. I suppose. I feel like calling up Istra, after all, but mustn't. I ought to hit the hay, but I couldn't sleep. Poor Tad Warren. Ericson's usual scrawl. September 11: Off to Kokomo, to fly for Farmers' Alliance. Dandy party given for me after it, by Thomas J. Watersell, the steel man. Have read of such parties.
True that at lunch with two VanZile automobile salesmen he ate Wiener Schnitzel and shot dice for cigars, with no signs of a mystic change. It is even true that, dining at the Brevoort with Charley Forbes, he though of Istra Nash, and for a minute was lonely for Istra's artistic dissipation. Yet the change was there.
With a tender big-brotherliness he sought the room that was his, not Jack's. No longer was this the house of Other People, but one in which he belonged. "No," he heard himself explain, "she isn't beautiful. Istra Nash was nearer that. But, golly! she is such a good pal, and she is beautiful if an English lane is.
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