Our Mr. Wrenn

"Still, an author's got to go to college and stuff like that." Mr. Wrenn spoke as though he would be pleased to have the objection overruled at once, which it was with a universal: "Oh, rats!"

Crunching oysters in a brown jacket of flour, whose every lump was a crisp delight, hearing his genius lauded and himself called Bill thrice in a quarter-hour, Mr. Wrenn was beatified. He asked the waiter for some paper, and while the four hotly discussed things which "it would be slick to have the president's daughter do" he drew up a list of characters on a sheet of paper he still keeps. It is headed, "Miggleton's Forty-second Street Branch." At the bottom appear numerous scribblings of the name Nelly.

{the full page is covered with doodling as well} "I think I'll call the heroine `Nelly,'" he mused.

Nelly Croubel blushed. Mrs. Arty and Tom glanced at each other. Mr. Wrenn realized that he had, even at this moment of social triumph, "made a break."

He said, hastily; "I always liked that name. I--I had an aunt named that!"

"Oh--" started Nelly.

"She was fine to me when I was a kid, "Mr. Wrenn added, trying to remember whether it was right to lie when in such need.

"Oh, it's a horrid name," declared Nelly. "Why don't you call her something nice, like Hazel--or--oh--Dolores."

"Nope; Nelly's an elegant name--an elegant name."

He walked with Nelly behind the others, along Forty-second Street. To the outsider's eye he was a small respectable clerk, slightly stooped, with a polite mustache and the dignity that comes from knowing well a narrow world; wearing an overcoat too light for winter; too busily edging out of the way of people and guiding the nice girl beside him into clear spaces by diffidently touching her elbow, too pettily busy to cast a glance out of the crowd and spy the passing poet or king, or the iron night sky. He was as undistinguishable a bit of the evening street life as any of the file of street-cars slashing through the wet snow. Yet, he was the chivalrous squire to the greatest lady of all his realm; he was a society author, and a man of great prospective wealth and power over mankind!

"Say, we'll have the grandest dinner you ever saw if I get away with the play," he was saying. "Will you come, Miss Nelly?"

"Indeed I will! Oh, you sha'n't leave me out! Wasn't I there when--"

"Indeed you were! Oh, we'll have a reg'lar feast at the Astor--artichokes and truffles and all sorts of stuff.... Would--would you like it if I sold the play?"