Blue-Bird Weather

Marche, buried under a mountain of bed clothes, dreamed that people were

rapping noisily on his door, and grinned in his dream, meaning to let

them rap until they tired of it. Suddenly a voice sounded through his

defiant slumbers, clear and charming as a golden ray parting thick

clouds. The next moment he found himself awake, bolt upright in the icy

dusk of his room, listening.

"Mr. Marche! Won't you please wake up and answer?" came the clear,

young voice again.

"I beg your pardon!" he cried. "I'll be down in a minute!"

He heard her going away downstairs, and for a few seconds he squatted

there, huddled in coverings to the chin, and eying the darkness in a

sort of despair. The feverish drive of Wall Street, late suppers, and

too much good fellowship had not physically hardened Marche. He was

accustomed to have his bath tempered comfortably for his particular

brand of physique. Breakfast, also, was a most carefully ordered

informality with him.

The bitter chill smote him. Cursing the simple life, he crawled gingerly

out of bed, suffered acutely while hunting for a match, lighted the

kerosene lamp with stiffened fingers, and looked about him, shivering.

Then, with a suppressed anathema, he stepped into his folding tub and

emptied the arctic contents of the water pitcher over himself.

Half an hour later he appeared at the breakfast table, hungrier than he

had been in years. There was nobody there to wait on him, but the dishes

and coffee pot were piping hot, and he madly ate eggs and razor-back,

and drank quantities of coffee, and finally set fire to a cigarette,

feeling younger and happier than he had felt for ages.

Of one thing he was excitedly conscious: that dreadful and persistent

dragging feeling at the nape of his neck had vanished. It didn't seem

possible that it could have disappeared overnight, but it had, for the

present, at least.

He went into the sitting room. Nobody was there, either, so he broke his

sealed shell boxes, filled his case with sixes and fives and double B's,

drew his expensive ducking gun from its case and took a look at it,

buckled the straps of his hip boots to his belt, felt in the various

pockets of his shooting coat to see whether matches, pipe, tobacco,

vaseline, oil, shell extractor, knife, handkerchief, gloves, were in

their proper places; found them so, and, lighting another cigarette,

strolled contentedly around the small and almost bare room, bestowing a

contented and patronizing glance upon each humble article and decoration

as he passed.