Our Mr. Wrenn

He hadn't been able to think of what Miss Warrington says beyond "I have come to tell you that I am married, papa," and that didn't sound just right; not for a first line it didn't, anyway.

At dinner next night--Saturday--Tom was rather inclined to make references to "our author," and to remark: "Well, I know where somebody was last night, but of course I won't tell. Say, them authors are a wild lot."

Mr. Wrenn, who had permitted the teasing of even Tim, the hatter, "wasn't going to stand for no kidding from nobody--not when Nelly was there," and he called for a glass of water with the air of a Harvard assistant professor forced to eat in a lunch-wagon and slapped on the back by the cook.

Nelly soothed him. "The play is going well, isn't it?"

When he had, with a detached grandeur of which he was immediately ashamed, vouchsafed that he was already "getting right down to brass tacks on it," that he had already investigated four more plays and begun the actual writing, every one looked awed and asked him assorted questions.

At nine-thirty that evening he combed and tightly brushed his hair, which he had been pawing angrily for an hour and a half, went down the hall to Nelly's hall bedroom, and knocked with: "It's Mr. Wrenn. May I ask you something about the play?"

"Just a moment," he heard her say.

He waited, panting softly, his lips apart. This was to be the first time he had ever seen Nelly's room. She opened the door part way, smiling shyly, timidly, holding her pale-blue dressing-gown close. The pale blueness was a modestly brilliant spot against the whiteness of the room--white bureau, hung with dance programs and a yellow Upton's Grove High School banner, white tiny rocker, pale-yellow matting, white-and-silver wall-paper, and a glimpse of a white soft bed.

He was dizzy with the exaltation of that purity, but he got himself to say: "I'm kind of stuck on the first part of the play, Miss Nelly. Please tell me how you think the heroine would speak to her dad. Would she call him `papa' or `sir,' do you think?"

"Why--let me see--"

"They're such awful high society--"

"Yes, that's so. Why, I should think she'd say `sir.' Maybe oh, what was it I heard in a play at the Academy of Music? `Father, I have come back to you!'"

"Sa-a-ay, that's a fine line! That'll get the crowd going right from the first.... I told you you'd help me a lot."

"I'm awfully glad if I have helped you," she said, earnestly. Good night--and good, "awfully glad, but luck with the play. Good night."