Our Mr. Wrenn

"Here's ten dollars. Please take it--aw--please, Charley."

"All right; anything to oblige."

"What 've you got in sight in the job line?"

"Well, there's a chance at night clerking in a little hotel where I was a bell-hop long time ago. The night clerk's going to get through, but I don't know just when--prob'ly in a week or two."

"Well, keep after it. And please come down to see me--the old place--West Sixteenth Street."

"What about the old girl with the ingrowing grouch? What's her name? She ain't stuck on me."

"Mrs. Zapp? Oh--hope she chokes. She can just kick all she wants to. I'm just going to have all the visitors I want to."

"All right. Say, tell us something about your trip."

"Oh, I had a great time. Lots of nice fellows on the cattle-boat. I went over on one, you know. Fellow named Morton--awfully nice fellow. Say, Charley, you ought to seen me being butler to the steers. Handing 'em hay. But say, the sea was fine; all kinds of colors. Awful dirty on the cattle-boat, though."

"Hard work?"

"Yuh--kind of hard. Oh, not so very."

"What did you see in England?"

"Oh, a lot of different places. Say, I seen some great vaudeville in Liverpool, Charley, with Morton--he's a slick fellow; works for the Pennsylvania, here in town. I got to look him up. Say, I wish we had an agency for college sofa-pillows and banners and souvenir stuff in Oxford. There's a whole bunch of colleges there, all right in the same town. I met a prof. there from some American college--he hired an automobubble and took me down to a reg'lar old inn--"

"Well, well!"

"--like you read about; sanded floor!"

"Get to London?"

"Yuh. Gee! it's a big place. Say, that Westminster Abbey's a great place. I was in there a couple of times. More darn tombs of kings and stuff. And I see a bishop, with leggins on! But I got kind of lonely. I thought of you a lot of times. Wished we could go out and get an ale together. Maybe pick up a couple of pretty girls."

"Oh, you sport!... Say, didn't get over to gay Paree, did you?"

"Nope.... Well, I guess I'd better beat it now. Got to move in--I'm at a hotel. You will come down and see me to-night, won't you?"

"So you thought of me, eh?... Yuh--sure, old socks. I'll be down to-night. And I'll get right after that job."

It is doubtful whether Mr. Wrenn would ever have returned to the Zapps' had he not promised to see Charley there. Even while he was carrying his suit-case down West Sixteenth, broiling by degrees in the sunshine, he felt like rushing up to Charley's and telling him to come to the hotel instead.