The Bacillus of Beauty

"Glad to see you, Burke," said Hynes, as dutifully we laughed together at the time-honoured jest.

I knew from the look of him that he was a good fellow, and he had an honest grip; though out where I come from we might call him a dude. All New Yorkers seem to dress pretty well.

Presently Managing Clerk Crosby came, and Mr. Magoun, as lean, brusque and mosquito-like as his partner is elephantine; and after a few words with them I was called into the Judge's private room, where a great lump rose in my throat when I tried, and miserably failed, to thank him for all his great kindness.

"Consider, if it pleases you," he said, to put me quite at my ease, "that I have proposed our arrangement, not so much on your own account as because I loved your father and must rely upon his son. It brings back my youth to speak his name--your name, Johnny Burke!"

Yes, I remember the words, I remember the tremour in the kind voice and the mist of unshed tears through which he looked at me. I'm not dreaming; sometimes I wish I were, almost.

When I left the Judge, of course I pasted right up to Union Square, though I felt sure that Helen would be at college. No. 2 proved to be a dingy brick building with wigs and armour and old uniforms and grimy pictures in the windows, and above them the signs of a "dental parlour" and a school for theatrical dancing.

It seemed an odd place in which to look for Nelly, but I pounded up the worn stairs--dressmakers' advertisements on every riser--until I reached the top floor, where a meal-bag of a woman whose head was tied up in a coloured handkerchief confronted me with dustpan and broom.

"I'm the new leddy scrubwoman, and not afther knowin' th' names av th' tinants," she said, "but av ut's a gir-rul ye're seekin', sure they's two av thim in there, an' both out, I'm thinkin'."

I pushed a note for Nelly under the door she indicated--it bore the cards of "Miss Helen Winship" and "Miss Kathryn Reid"--and hurried away to look up this gem of a hall bedroom where I am writing; you could wear it on a watch chain, but I pay $3 a week for it. The landlady would board me for $8, but regular dinners at restaurants are only twenty-five cents; good, too. And anybody can breakfast for fifteen.

Then I went back to Union Square, where I hung about, looking at the statues. Once I walked as far as Tammany Hall and rushed back again to watch Helen's door. Finally I sat down on a bench from which I could see her windows; and there in the brief December sunlight, with the little oasis around me green even in winter, and the roar of Dead Man's Curve just far enough away, I suppose I spent almost the happiest moments of my life.