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Bernald wavered, torn between loyalty to his friends and the grotesqueness of answering in the affirmative. After all, it was none of his business to furnish Winterman with an estimate of Howland Wade. "Well, you see, you've never told me what your line is," he answered, temporizing. "No, because nobody's ever told me. It's exactly what I want to find out," said the other genially.
"Because I must hunt up my friend, who's not used to such late hours." "Your friend?" Mrs. Bain had to collect her thoughts. "Oh, Mr. Winterman, you mean? But he's gone already." "Gone?" Bernald exclaimed, with an odd twinge of foreboding. Remembering Pellerin's signal across the crowd, he reproached himself for not having answered it more promptly.
As long as he chose to remain John Winterman it was no one's business to gainsay him; and Bernald's scruples were really justifiable only in respect of his own presence on the scene. But even in this connection he ceased to feel them as soon as Howland Wade began to speak.
The other day something went wrong with the kitchen range, just as I was expecting some friends of Bob's for dinner; and do you know, when Mr. Winterman heard we were in trouble, he came and took a look, and knew at once what to do? I told him it was a dreadful pity he wasn't married!"
Wade to speak here, in the very inner sanctuary of Pellerinism, exactly as he would speak to the uninitiated to repeat, simply, his Kenosha lecture, 'What Pellerinism means'; and we ought all, I think, to listen to him with the hearts of little children just as you will, Mr. Winterman as if he were telling us new things, and we " "Alice, dear " Mrs.
"Oh, of course Howland's not what you'd call a popular writer; he despises that kind of thing. But whatever he says goes with well, with the chaps that count; and every one tells me he's written the book on Pellerin. You must read it when you get back your eyes." He paused, as if to let the name sink in, but Winterman drew at his pipe with a blank face.
"Well, it won't work it won't work," the doctor groaned. "What won't?" "I mean with Howland. Winterman won't. Howland doesn't take to him. Says he's crude frightfully crude. And you know how Howland hates crudeness." "Oh, I know," Bernald exulted. It was the word he had waited for he saw it now!
It appeared that Winterman, while lying insensible in the Park, had been robbed of the few dollars he possessed; and on leaving the hospital, still weak and half-blind, he had quite simply and unprotestingly accepted the Wades' offer to give him shelter till such time as he should be strong enough to go to work. "But what's his work?" Bernald interjected. "Hasn't he at least told you that?"
"I only mentioned that side of Winterman his name's Winterman because it was the side my mother noticed first. I suppose women generally do. But it's only a part a small part. The man's the big thing." "Really big?"
On his return to the drawing-room he found that the tide had set toward the supper-table, and when it finally carried him thither it was to land him in the welcoming arms of Bob Wade. "Hullo, old man! Where have you been all this time? Winterman? Oh, he's talking to Howland: yes, I managed it finally. I believe Mrs. Bain has steered them into the library, so that they shan't be disturbed.
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