"Heavens!" said Warwickson from where he lay smoking on the bed. He in a voice. This tone, it is said, had earned him his popular name of Great Grief.
From different points of the compass Wrinkles looked at the little cupboard with a tremendous , as if he intended thus to frighten the eggs into becoming more than two, and the bread into becoming a loaf. "Plague take it!" he exclaimed.
"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles!" said Grief from the bed.
Wrinkles sat down with an air and . "Well, what are we going to do?" he demanded of the others.
Grief, after swearing, said: "There, that's right! Now you're happy. The holy office of the inquisition! Blast your buttons, Wrinkles, you always try to keep us from starving peacefully! It is two hours before dinner, anyhow, and——"
"Well, but what are you going to do?" persisted Wrinkles.
Pennoyer, with his head afar down, had been busily scratching at a pen-and-ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter a optimism. "The Monthly will pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I've waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and perhaps I'll get it."
His friends listened with airs of . "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old man." But at last Wrinkles pityingly. Over on the bed Grief deep down in his throat. Nothing was said for a long time thereafter.
The crash of the New York streets came faintly to this room.
Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of the begrimed building which , , and old, between two commercial structures which would have had to bend afar down to perceive it. The march of the city's progress had happened not to overturn this structure, and it there, lost and forgotten, while the cloud-veering towers strode on.
Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the windows of the room. Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. "It's too dark to work." He lit a pipe and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.
When the dusk came the youths grew sad. The solemnity of the gloom seemed to make them ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said Grief fretfully.
The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with , the tousled bed in one corner, the masses of boxes and trunks in another, a little dead stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover, there were wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf, high up, there were plaster casts, with dust in the . A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction and then turned toward a hole in the wall. There were some elaborate cobwebs on the ceiling.
"Well, let's eat," said Grief.
"Eat," said Wrinkles, with a ; "I told you there was only two eggs and a little bread left. How are we going to eat?"
Again brought face to face with this problem, and at the hour for dinner, Pennoyer and Grief thought profoundly. "Thunder and turf!" Grief finally announced as the result of his deliberations.
"Well, if Billie Hawker was only home——" began Pennoyer.
"But he isn't," objected Wrinkles, "and that settles that."
Grief and Pennoyer thought more. Ultimately Grief said, "Oh, well, let's eat what we've got." The others at once agreed to this suggestion, as if it had been in their minds.
Later there came a quick step in the passage and a confident little thunder upon the door. Wrinkles arranging the tin pail on the gas stove, Pennoyer engaged in slicing the bread, and Great Grief
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
