Xenophon Curry, impresario extraordinary, sat sipping his breakfast coffee and perusing the morning paper. He looked extremely optimistic.  
The day before he had shown an obliging chandlery clerk over the Skipping Goone, “upstairs and down,” and the clerk had an eagle eye for such missing items as deck hose and cabin door knobs; and though the clerk was but a humble clerk, and although his contribution to the progress of events was frankly minor, the impresario nevertheless felt himself appreciably nearer the realization of his daring project. He and the clerk had partaken of ice cream soda together afterward in a queer little confection emporium near the waterfront. And, all in all, it had seemed a highly important day.
 
Another cause for optimism was the fact that rehearsals were going surprisingly well. He would make people sit up after the tour had got under way! Indeed, his songbirds were artists to be proud of—not so much, perhaps, because of special genius as for their almost uncanny sticking proclivities. It was, in truth, an organization of the most amazing sort, which had built itself up gradually about Xenophon Curry’s vast heart. Surely no organization was ever before so supremely an affair of the heart. Curry had drawn his songbirds to him from all over the world. Essentially a cosmopolitan himself (“I’m a dyed-in-the-wool hybrid”) he had kept open house in his heart for all sorts and conditions of people. Under his wing, one by one, he had gathered the struggling, the discouraged, the heavy-laden—even a soul now and then that called itself plainly down and out. And not only songbirds, but a tiny orchestra had been drawn in, too, by patient degrees: now a violinist with aspiring soul rescued from some dreadful little café chantant in Vienna; now a flute player off the hills of Sicily; again a lowly snare drummer in a band somewhere in Kentucky, who had a deep-seated passion for the kettles. They knew they could count on him to the last ditch, and so were willing to follow anywhere he led. It was really a little touching. Certainly in no other way would it have been possible for Mr. Curry to do the things he had done, for, from a worldly point of view, no impresario, barring none, ever met with such shocking and consistent adversity.
 
Over his eggs the impresario read of an auction sale to be held that afternoon at Crawl Hill and the list sounded promising. Mr. Curry made it a point to attend auctions whenever possible, for in this manner he was sometimes able to pick up odd bits to use as properties in his necessarily heterogeneous productions. He decided to stroll around and nose for bargains that might fit into the world tour.
 
The weather being delightful, Curry literally did stroll. But when he had at length covered some considerable distance he began to ask himself where Crawl Hill was, after all. He remembered it vaguely, and was certain of the general neighbourhood; but just how to get there was developing into another matter. He would have to begin inquiring. He half paused. And as he did so a pleasant voice challenged him at his elbow.
 
The impresario turned and faced a tall, quite handsome lady, near his own age, gowned expensively and somewhat complexly. Her eyes were frank, her demeanour that of one who has been much about and feels at home in the combinations of a moving life without sacrificing a rather unusual fund of freshness.
 
“I beg your pardon,” she said, smiling easily and just a[44] little grandly, “but I wonder if you could tell me how to get to Crawl Hill?”
 
Mr. Curry............