"Humpf! Help yourself, then."
"Mr. b.u.t.ters, what kind of type is this?"
"What type?"
"This type."
"What good "11 it do to tell you? You won"t remember it, if I do."
"Yes, I will."
"You won"t know ten minutes after I tell you."
"Go on, Mr. b.u.t.ters. Tell me."
"Well, if you must know, it"s b"geois."
"B-what?"
"B"geois, I tell you, and I won"t tell you again, either."
"How do you spell it, Mr. b.u.t.ters?"
"Say, what do you think I am? I haven"t got time to sit here all day and answer questions."
"But how do you spell it, Mr. b.u.t.ters?"
"Dictionary"s handy, isn"t it?"
"You ought to know how to spell it," I remarked, fluttering the dictionary.
"Who said I didn"t know how to spell it?"
"You told me to look it up."
"Did, hey? And what d" I do it for? D" you think I"ve got time to be talking to every young sprig like you?"
"Here it is, Mr. b.u.t.ters. It"s spelled b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s."
"Precisely," said the editor--"b-o-u-r-g-o-i-s, bur-joyce."
"No--g-_e_-o-i-s, Mr. b.u.t.ters."
"Just what I said."
"You left out the "e.""
"Why, confound you, what do you mean by telling me I don"t know my own business?"
"I was only fooling, Mr. b.u.t.ters. You did say the "e," of course."
"You"re a liar!" he promptly answered. "I didn"t say the "e," and you know it!"
He broke off into a roar of triumphant laughter, but well I knew who had won the day. He was mine--he and "The Pide Bull," and the story of his wife"s uncle"s old yellow rooster, and the twenty legends of Tommy Rice, the s.e.xton, who "stuttered in his walk, by George!"--yes, and the famous narrative of how Mr. b.u.t.ters thrashed the barkeep--all, all his darling memories were mine till sunset if I chose to listen.
He took me to luncheon at the Palace Hotel near by his shop, and afterwards mellowed perceptibly over his pipe, as we sat together in the clutter of paper about his desk waiting for the one-o"clock whistle to blow him to work again.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Eighteen," said I, half ashamed I was no more.
"Beautiful age," he mused, nodding his head and stroking his warm, black bowl. "Beautiful age, my boy." He spoke so mildly that I waited, silent and a little awed to have come so near him unawares, and feeling the presence of some story he had never told before.
But the whistle blew one o"clock and he rose and put on his ap.r.o.n, and went back to his case again, talking some nonsense about the weather; and though I lingered all afternoon, he was nothing but the old, gruff printer, and never afterwards did I catch him nooning and thinking of the age he said was beautiful.
It was six when I took up my fishing-tackle and went home to supper, whistling. I found the mater in the kitchen.
"Ah," she said. "What luck, Bertram?"
"None," I replied. "The fish weren"t biting."
"_Oh_, that"s too bad. You must be tired."
"I am, and hungry. Is father home?"
"Not yet. Come, you must meet--"
But I ran up the kitchen staircase to the hall above. Safe in my room, I could hear a murmuring from Let.i.tia"s. Hers was a front room, mine a rear one, and a long hall intervened, so I made nothing of the voices.
I scrubbed and lathered till my nose was red and shining beautifully.
Then I drew on my Sunday suit, in which I always stood the straighter, and my best black shoes, in which I always stamped the louder, and my highest, whitest collar, and my best light silk cravat--a Christmas present from Let.i.tia, a wondrous thing of pale, sweet lavender, "in which not Solomon--though it _would_ hike up behind. It was not like other ties, and while I was struggling there I heard the supper knell. I pulled fiercely. The soft silk crumpled taut--and the bow stuck up seven ways for Sunday. So I unravelled it again--looped it once more with trembling fingers, for I heard the voices on the stairs, and jerked it into place--but what a jumble!
"Bertram! Bertram!" It was father"s voice. "Supper, Bertram."
"In a minute."
The face in the gla.s.s was red as a sunset in harvest-time. The eyes I saw there popped wildly.
"Bertram!"
"Yes; I hear you! [Confound it.]"
"Supper, Bertram. We are all waiting."
I deigned no answer.
Then father rang. Oh, I knew it was father. I looped desperately and hauled again like a sailor at his cordage, and so, muttering, wrung out a bow-knot. Then in the mirror I took a last despairing look, leaped for the doorway, slipped, stumbled, and almost fell upon the stairs, hearing below me a l.u.s.ty warning--"Here he comes!"--and so emerged, rosy, a youth-illumined, with something lavender, they tell me, fluttering in my teeth (and something blood-red, I could tell them, trembling in my heart).