Читать книгу Felix O'Day - Francis Hopkinson Smith - Страница 9

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If O'Day's presence was a welcome addition to Kitty's household, it was nothing compared to the effect produced at Kling's. Long before the month was out he had not only earned his entire wages five times over by the changes he had wrought in the arrangement and classification of the stock, but he had won the entire confidence of his employer. Otto had surrendered when an old customer who had been in the habit of picking up rare bits of china, Japanese curios, and carvings at his own value had been confronted with the necessity of either paying Felix's price or going away without it, O'Day having promptly quadrupled the price on a piece of old Dresden, not only because the purchaser was compelled to have it to complete his set but because the interview had shown that the buyer was well aware he had obtained the former specimens at one-fourth of their value.

And the same discernment was shown when he was purchasing old furniture, brass, and so-called Sheffield plate to increase Otto's stock. If the articles offered could still boast of either handle, leg, or back of their original state and the price was fair, they were almost always bought, but the line was drawn at the fraudulent and “plugged-up” sideboards and chairs with their legs shot full of genuine worm-holes; ancient Oriental stuffs of the time of the early Persians (one year out of a German loom), rare old English plate, or undoubted George III silver, decorated with coats of arms or initials and showing those precious little dents only produced by long service—the whole fresh from a Connecticut factory. These never got past his scrutiny. While it was true, as he had told Kling, that he knew very little in the way of trade and commerce—nothing which would be of use to any one—he was a never-failing expert when it came to what is generally known as “antiques” and “bric-a-brac.”

Masie—Kling's only child—a slender, graceful little creature with a wealth of gold-yellow hair flying about her pretty shoulders and a pair of blue eyes in which were mirrored the skies of ten joyous springs, had given her heart to him at once. She had never forgotten his gentle treatment of her dog Fudge, whose attack that first morning Felix had understood so well, lifting and putting the refractory animal back in her arms instead of driving him off with a kick. Fudge, whose manners were improving, had not forgotten either and was always under O'Day's feet except when being fondled by the child.

Until Felix came she had had no other companions, some innate reserve keeping her from romping with the children on the street, her sole diversion, except when playing at home among her father's possessions or making a visit to Kitty, being found in the books of fairy-tales which the old hunchback, Tim Kelsey, had lent her. At first this natural shyness had held her aloof even from O'Day, content only to watch his face as he answered her childish appeals. But before the first week had passed she had slipped her hand into his, and before the month was over her arms were around his neck, her fresh, soft cheek against his own, cuddling close as she poured out her heart in a continuous flow of prattle and laughter, her father looking on in blank amazement.

For, while Kling loved her as most fathers love their motherless daughters, Felix had seen at a glance that he was either too engrossed in his business or too dense and unimaginative to understand so winning a child. She was Masie, “dot little girl of mine dot don't got no mudder,” or “Beesvings, who don't never be still,” but that was about as far as his notice of her went, except sending her to school, seeing that she was fed and clothed, and on such state occasions as Christmas, New Year's, or birthdays, giving her meaningless little presents, which, in most instances, were shut up in her bureau drawers, never to be looked at again.

Kitty, who remembered the child's mother as a girl with a far-away look in her eyes and a voice of surprising sweetness, always maintained that it was a shame for Kling, who was many years her senior, to have married the girl at all.

“Not, John, dear, that Otto isn't a decent man, as far as he goes,” she had once said to him, when the day's work was over and they were discussing their neighbors, “and that honest, too, that he wouldn't get away with a sample trunk weighing a ton if it was nailed fast to the sidewalk, and a good friend of ours who wouldn't go back on us, and never did. But that wife of his, John! If she wasn't as fine as the best of em, then I miss my guess. She got it from that father of hers—the clock-maker that never went out in the daytime, and hid himself in his back shop. There was something I never understood about the two of 'em and his killing himself when he did. Why, look at that little Masie! Can't ye see she is no more Kling's daughter than she is mine? Ye can't hatch out hummin'-birds by sittin' on ducks' eggs, and that's what's the matter over at Otto's.”

“Well, whose eggs were they?” John had inquired, half asleep by the stove, his tired legs outstretched, the evening paper dropping from his hand.

“Oh, I don't say that they are not Kling's right enough, John. Masie is his child, I know. But what I say is that the mother is stamped all over the darling, and that Otto can't put a finger on any part and call it his own.”

Whether Kitty were right or wrong regarding the mystery is no part of our story, but certain it was that the soul of the unhappy young mother looked through the daughter's eyes, that the sweetness of the child's voice was hers, and the grace of every movement a direct inheritance from one whose frail spirit had taken so early a flight.

To Felix this companionship, with the glimpses it gave him of a child's heart, refreshed his own as a summer rain does a thirsty plant. Had she been his daughter, or his little sister, or his niece, or grandchild, a certain sense of responsibility on his part and of filial duty on hers would have clouded their perfect union. He would have had matters of education to insist upon—perhaps of clothing and hygiene. She would have had her secrets—hidden paths on which she wandered alone—things she could never tell to one in authority. As it was, bound together as they were by only a mutual recognition, their joy in each other knew no bounds. To Masie he was a refuge, some one who understood every thought before she had uttered it; to O'Day she was a never-ending and warming delight.

And so this man of forty-five folded his arms about this child of ten, and held her close, the opening chalice of her budding girlhood widening hourly at his touch—a sight to be reverenced by every man and never to be forgotten by one privileged to behold it.

And with the intimacy which almost against his will held him to the little shop, there stole into his life a certain content. Springs long dried in his own nature bubbled again. He felt the sudden, refreshing sense of those who, after pent-up suffering, find the quickening of new life within.

Mike noticed the change in the cheery greetings and in the passages of Irish wit with which the new clerk welcomed him whenever he appeared in the store, and so did Kling, and even the two Dutchies when Felix would drop into the cellar searching for what was still good enough to be made over new. And so did Kitty and John and all at their home.

Masie alone noticed nothing. To her, “Uncle Felix,” as she now called him, was always the same adorable and comprehending companion, forever opening up to her new vistas of interest, never too busy to answer her questions, never too preoccupied to explain the different objects he was handling. If she were ever in the way, she was never made to feel it. Instead, so gentle and considerate was he, that she grew to believe herself his most valuable assistant, daily helping him to arrange the various new acquisitions.

One morning in June when they were busy over a lot of small curios, arranging bits of jade, odd silver watches, seals, and pinchbeck rings, in a glass case that had been cleaned and revarnished, the door opened and an old fellow strolled in—an odd-looking old fellow, with snow-white hair and beard, wearing a black sombrero and a shirt cut very low in the neck. But for a pair of kindly eyes, which looked out at you from beneath the brim of the hat, he might have been mistaken for one of the dwarfs in “Rip Van Winkle.” Fudge, having now been disciplined by Felix, only sniffed at his trousers.

“I see an old gold frame in your window,” began the new customer. “Might I measure it?”

“Which one, sir?” replied Felix. “There are half a dozen of them, I believe.”

“Well; will you please come outside? And I will point it out. It is the Florentine, there in the corner—perhaps a reproduction, but it looks to me like the real thing.”

“It is a Florentine,” answered Felix. “There are two or three pictures in the Uffizi with similar frames, if I recall them aright. Would you like a look at it?”

“I don't want to trouble you to take it out,” said the old man apologetically. “It might not do, and I can't afford to pay much for it anyway. But I would like to measure it; I've got an Academy picture which I think will just fit it, but you can't always tell. No, I guess I'll let it go. It's all covered up, and you would have to move everything to reach it.”

“No, I won't have to move a thing. Here, you bunch of sunshine! Squeeze in there, Masie, dear, and let me know how wide and high that frame is—the one next the glass. Take this rule.”

The child caught up the rule and, followed by Fudge, who liked nothing so well as rummaging, crept among the jars, mirrors, and candelabra crowding the window, her steps as true as those of a kitten. “Twenty inches by thirty-one—no, thirty,” she laughed back, tucking her little skirts closer to her shapely limbs so as to clear a tiny table set out with cups and saucers.

“You're sure it's thirty?” repeated the painter.

“Yes, sir, thirty,” and she crept back and laid the rule in O'Day's hand.

“Thank you, my dear young lady,” bowed the old gnome. “It is a pleasure to be served by one so obliging and bright. And I am glad to tell you,” he added, turning to O'Day, “that it's a fit—an exact fit. I thought I was about right. I carry things in my eye. I bought a head once in Venice, about a foot square, and in Spain three months afterward, on my way down the hill leading from the Alhambra to the town, there on a wall outside a bric-a-brac shop hung a frame which I bought for ten francs, and when I got to Paris and put them together, I'll be hanged if they didn't fit as if they had been made for each other.”

“And I know the shop!” broke out Felix, to Masie's astonishment. “It's just before you get to the small chapel on the left.”

“By cracky, you're right! How long since you were there?”

“Oh, some five years now.”

“Picking up things to sell here, I suppose. Spain used to be a great place for furniture and stuffs; I've got a lot of them still—bought a whole chest of embroideries once in Seville, or rather, at that hospital where the big Murillo hangs. You must know that picture—Moses striking water from the rock—best thing Murillo ever did.”

Felix remembered it, and he also remembered many of the important pictures in the Prado, especially the great Velasquez and the two Goyas, and that head of Ribera which hung on the line in the second gallery on the right as you entered. And before the two enthusiasts were aware of what was going on around them, Masie and Fudge had slipped off to dine upstairs with her father, Felix and the garrulous old painter still talking—renewing their memories with a gusto and delight unknown to the old artist for years.

“And now about that frame!” the gnome at last found time to say. “I've got so little money that I'd rather swap something for it, if you don't mind. Come down and see my stuff! It's only in 10th Street—not twenty minutes' walk. Maybe you can sell some of my things for me. And bring that blessed little girl—she's the dearest, sweetest thing I've seen for an age. Your daughter?”

Felix laughed gently. “No, I wish she were. She is Mr. Kling's child.”

“And your name?”

“O'Day.”

“Irish, of course—well, all the same, come down any morning this week. My name is Ganger; I'm on the fourth floor—been there twenty-two years. You'll have to walk up—we all do. Yes, I'll expect you.”

Kling, whom Felix consulted, began at once to demur. He knew all about the building on 10th Street. More than one of his old frames—part of the clearing-out sale of some Southern homestead, the portraits being reserved because unsalable—had resumed their careers on the walls of the Academy as guardians and protectors of masterpieces painted by the denizens of this same old rattletrap, the Studio Building. Some of its tenants, too, had had accounts with him—which had been running for more than a year. Bridley, the marine painter; Manners, who took pupils; Springlake, the landscapist; and half a dozen others had been in the habit of dropping into his shop on the lookout for something good in Dutch cabinets at half-price, or no price at all, until Felix, without knowing where they had come from, had put an end to the practice.

“Got a fellow up to Kling's who looks as if he had been a college athlete, and knows it all. Can't fool him for a cent,” was the talk now, instead of “Keep at the old Dutchman and you may get it. He don't know the difference between a Chippendale sideboard and a shelf rack from Harlem. Wait for a rainy day and go in. He'll be feeling blue, and you'll be sure to get it.”

Kling, therefore, when he heard some days later, of Felix's proposed visit, began turning over his books, looking up several past-due accounts. But Felix would have none of it.

“I'm going on a collecting tour, Mr. Kling, this lovely June morning,” he laughed, “but not for money. We will look after that later on. And I will take Masie. Come, child, get your hat. Mr. Ganger wanted you to come, and so do I. Call Hans, Mr. Kling, if the shop gets full. We will be back in an hour.”

“Vell, you know best,” answered Kling in final surrender. “Ven it comes to money, I know. You go 'long, little Beesvings. I mind de shop.”

“And I'll take Fudge,” the child cried, “and we'll stop at Gramercy Park.”

Fudge was out first, scampering down the street and back again before they had well closed the door, and Masie was as restless. “Oh, I'm just as happy as I can be, Uncle Felix. You are always so good. I never had any one to walk with until you came, except old Aunty Gossberger, and she never let me look at anything.”

Days in June—joyous days with all nature brimful with laughter—days when the air is a caress, the sky a film of pearl and silver, and the eager mob of bud, blossom, and leaf, having burst their bonds, are flaunting their glories, days like these are always to be remembered the world over. But June days about Gramercy Park are to be marked in big Red Letters upon the calendar of the year. For in Gramercy Park the almanac goes to pieces.

Everything is ahead of time. When little counter-panes of snow are still covering the baby crocuses away off in Central Park, down in Gramercy their pink and yellow heads are popping up all over the enclosure. When the big trees in Union Square are stretching their bare arms, making ready to throw off the winter's sleep, every tiny branch in Gramercy is wide awake and tingling with new life. When countless dry roots in Madison Square are still slumbering under their blankets of straw, dreading the hour when they must get up and go to work, hundreds of tender green fingers in Gramercy are thrust out to the kindly sun, pleading for a chance to be up and doing.

And the race keeps up, Gramercy still ahead, until the goal of summer is won, and every blessed thing that could have burst into bloom has settled down to enjoy the siesta of the hot season.

Masie was never tired of watching these changes, her wonder and delight increasing as the season progressed.

In the earlier weeks there had been nothing but flower-beds covered with unsightly clods, muffled shrubs, and bandaged vines. Then had come a blaze of tulips, exhausting the palette. And then, but a short time before—it seemed only yesterday—every stretch of brown grass had lost its dull tints in a coat of fresh paint, on which the benches, newly scrubbed, were set, and each foot of gravelled walks had been raked and made ready for the little tots in new straw hats who were then trundling their hoops and would soon be chasing their first butterflies.

And now, on this lovely June morning, summer had come—REAL SUMMER—for a mob of merry roses were swarming up a trellis in a mad climb to reach its top, the highest blossom waving its petals in triumph.

Felix waited until she had taken it all in, her face pressed between the bars (only the privileged possessing a key are admitted to the gardens within), Fudge scampering up and down, wild to get at the two gray squirrels, which some vandal has since stolen, and then, remembering his promise to Ganger, he called her to him and continued his walk.

But her morning outing was not over. He must take her to the marble-cutter's yard, filled with all sorts of statues, urns, benches, and columns, and show her again the ruts and grooves cut in the big stone well-head, and tell her once more the story of how it had stood in an old palace in Venice, where the streets were all water and everybody went visiting in boats. And then she must stop at the florist's to see whether he had any new ferns in his window, and have Felix again explain the difference between the big and little ferns and why the palms had such long leaves.

She was ready now for her visit to the two old painters, but this time Felix lingered. He had caught sight of a garden wall in the rear of an old house, and with his hand in hers had crossed the street to study it the closer. The wall was surmounted by a solid, wrought-iron railing into which some fifty years or more ago a gardener had twisted the tendrils of a wistaria. The iron had cut deep, and so inseparable was the embrace that human skill could not pull them apart without destroying them both.

As he reached the sidewalk and got a clearer view of the vine, tracing the weave of its interlaced branches and tendrils, Masie noticed that he stopped suddenly and for a moment looked away, lost in deep thought. She caught, too, the shadow that sometimes settled on his face, one she had seen before and wondered over. But although her hand was still in his, she kept silent until he spoke.

“Look, dear Masie,” he said at last, drawing her to him, “see what happens to those who are forced into traps! It was the big knot that held it back! And yet it grew on!”

Masie looked up into his thoughtful face. “Do you think the iron hurts it, Uncle Felix?” she asked with a sigh.

“I shouldn't wonder; it would me,” he faltered.

“But it wasn't the vine's fault, was it?”

“Perhaps not. Maybe when it was planted nobody looked after it, nor cared what might happen when it grew up. Poor wistaria! Come along, darling!”

At last they turned into 10th Street, Fudge scurrying ahead to the very door of the grim building, where a final dash brought him to Ganger's, his nose having sniffed at every threshold they passed and into every crack and corner of the three flights of stairs.

Felix's own nostrils were now dilating with pleasure. The odor of varnish and turpentine had brought back some old memories—as perfumes do for us all. A crumpled glove, a bunch of withered roses, the salt breath of an outlying marsh, are often but so many fairy wands reviving comedies and tragedies on which the curtains of forgetfulness have been rung down these many years.

Something in the aroma of the place was recalling kindred spirits across the sea, when the door was swung wide and Ganger in a big, hearty voice, cried:

“Mr. O'Day, is it? Oh, I am glad! And that dear child, and—Hello! who invited you, you restless little devil of a dog? Come in, all of you! I've a model, but she doesn't care and neither do I. And this, Mr. O'Day, is my old friend, Sam Dogger—and he's no relation of yours, you imp!”—with a bob of his grizzled head at Fudge—“He's a landscape-painter and a good one—one of those Hudson River fellows—and would be a fine one if he would stick to it. Give me that hat and coat, my chick-a-biddy, and I'll hang them up. And now here's a chair for you, Mr. O'Day, and please get into it—and there's a jar full of tobacco, and if you haven't got a pipe of your own you'll find a whole lot of corncobs on the mantelpiece and you can help yourself.”

O'Day had stood smiling at the painter, Masie's hand fast in his, Fudge tiptoeing softly about, divided between a sense of the strangeness of the place and a certainty of mice behind the canvases. Felix knew the old fellow's kind, and recognized the note of attempted gayety in the voice—the bravado of the poor putting their best, sometimes their only, foot foremost.

“No, I won't sit down—not yet,” he answered pleasantly; “I will look around, if you will let me, and I will try one of your pipes before I begin. What a jolly place you have here! Don't move”—this to the model, a slip of a girl, her eyes muffled in a lace veil, one of Ganger's Oriental costumes about her shoulders—“I am quite at home, my dear, and if you have been a model any length of time you will know exactly what that means.”

“Oh, she's my Fatima,” exclaimed Ganger. “Her real name is Jane Hoggson, and her mother does my washing, but I call her Fatima for short. She can stop work for the day. Get down off the platform, Jane Hoggson, and talk to this dear little girl. You see, Mr. O'Day, now that the art of the country has gone to the devil and nobody wants my masterpieces, I have become an Eastern painter, fresh from Cairo, where I have lived for half a century—principally on Turkish paste and pressed figs. My specialty at present—they are all over my walls, as you can see—is dancing-girls in silk tights or without them, just as the tobacco shops prefer. I also do sheiks, muffled to their eyebrows in bath towels, and with scimitars—like that one above the mantel. And very profitable, too; MOST profitable, my dear sir. I get twenty doldars for a real odalisk and fifteen for a bashi-bazouk. I can do one about every other day, and I sell one about every other month. As for Sam Dogger here—Sam, what is your specialty? I said landscapes, Sam, when Mr. O'Day came in, but you may have changed since we have been talking.”

The wizened old gentleman thus addressed sidled nearer. He was ten years younger than Ganger, but his thin, bloodless hands, watery eyes, their lids edged with red, and bald head covered by a black velvet skull-cap made him look that much older.

“Nat talks too much, Mr. O'Day,” he piped in a high-keyed voice. “I often tell Nat that he's got a loose hinge in his mouth, and he ought to screw it tight or it will choke him some day when he isn't watching. He! He!” And a wheezy laugh filled the room.

“Shut up, you old sardine! You don't talk enough. If you did you'd get along better. I'll tell you, Mr. O'Day, what Sam does. Sam's a patcher-up—a 'puttier.' That's what he is. Sam can get more quality out of a piece of sandpaper, a pot of varnish, and a little glue than any man in the business. If you don't believe it, just bring in a fake Romney, or a Gainsborough, or some old Spanish or Italian daub with the corners knocked off where the signature once was, or a scrape down half a cheek, or some smear of a head, with half the canvas bare, and put Sam to work on it, and in a week or less out it comes just as it left the master's easel—'Found by his widow after his death' or 'The property of an English nobleman on whose walls it has hung for two centuries.' By thunder! isn't it beautiful?” He chuckled. “Wonderful how these bullfrogs of connoisseurs swallow the dealers' flies! And here am I, who can paint any blamed thing from a hen-coop to a battle scene, doing signs for tobacco shops; and there is Sam, who can do Corots and Rousseaus and Daubignys by the yard, obliged to stick to a varnish pot and a scraper! Damnable, isn't it? But we don't growl, do we, Sammy? When Sammy has anything left over, he brings half of it down to me—he lives on the floor above—and when I get a little ahead and Sammy is behind, I send it up to him. We are the Siamese twins, Sammy and I, aren't we, Sam? Where are you, anyway? Oh, he's after the dog, I see, moving the canvases so the little beggar won't run a thumb-tack in his paw. Sam can no more resist a dog, my dear Mr. O'Day, than a drunkard can a rum-mill, can you, Sam?”

“At it again, are you, Nat?” wheezed the wizened old gentleman, dusting his fingers as he reappeared from behind the canvases, his watery eyes edged with a deeper red, due to his exertions. “Don't pay any attention to him, Mr. O'Day. What he says isn't half true, and the half that is true isn't worth listening to. Now tell me about that frame he's ordered. He don't want it, and I've told him so. If you are willing to lend it to him, he'll pay you for it when the picture is sold, which will never be, and by that time he'll—”

“Dry up, you old varnish pot!” shouted Ganger, “how do you know I won't pay for it?”

“Because your picture will never be hung—that's why!”

“Mr. Ganger did not want to buy it,” broke in Felix, between puffs from one of his host's corn-cob pipes. “He wanted to exchange something for it—'swap' he called it.”

“Oh, well,” wheezed Sam, “that's another thing. What were you going to give him in return, Nat? Careful, now—there's not much left.”

“Oh, maybe some old stuff, Sammy. Move along, you blessed little child—and you, too, Jane Hoggson! You're sitting on my Venetian wedding-chest—real, too! I bought it forty years ago in Padua. There are some old embroideries down in the bottom, or were, unless Sam has been in here while I—Oh, no, here they are! Beg pardon, Sammy, for suspecting you. There—what do you think of these?”

Felix bent over the pile of stuffs, which, under Ganger's continued dumpings, was growing larger every minute—the last to see the light being part of a priest's Cope and two chasubles.

“There—that is enough!” said Felix. “This chasuble alone is worth more than the frame. We will put the Florentine frame at ten dollars and the vestment at fifteen. What others have you, Mr. Ganger? There's a great demand for these things when they are good, and these are good. Where did you get them?”

“Worth more than the frame? Holy Moses!” whistled Ganger. “Why, I thought you'd want all there was in the chest! And you say there are people out of a lunatic asylum looking for rags like this?” And he held up one end of the cope.

“Yes, many of them. To me, I must say, they are worth nothing, as I don't like the idea of mixing up church and state. But Mr. Kling's customers do, and if they choose to say their prayers before a chasuble on a priest's back on Sunday and make a sofa cushion of it the next day, that is their affair, not mine. And now, what else? You spoke of some costumes this morning.”

“Yes, I did speak of my costumes, but I'm afraid they are too modern for you—I make 'em up myself. Get up, Jane, and let Mr. O'Day see what you've got on!”

Jane jumped to her feet, looking less Oriental than ever, her spangled veil having dropped about her shoulders, her red hair and freckled face now in full view.

“I think her dress is beautiful, Uncle Felix,” whispered Masie.

“Do you, sweetheart? Well, then, maybe I might better look again. What else have you in the way of Costumes, Mr. Ganger?”

Dogger stepped up. “He hasn't got a single thing worth a cent; he buys these pieces down in Elizabeth Street, out of push-carts, and Jane Hoggson's mother sews them together. But, my deary”—here he laid his hand on Masie's head—“would you like to see some REAL ONES, all-gold-and-silver lace—and satin shoes—and big, high bonnets with feathers?”

Masie clapped her hands in answer and began whirling about the room, her way of telling everybody that she was too happy to keep still.

“Well, wait here; I won't be a minute.”

“Sam's fallen in love with her, too,” muttered Ganger, “and I don't blame him. Come here, you darling, and let me talk to you. Do you know you are the first little girl that's ever been inside this place for ever—and ever and EVER—so long? Think of that, will you? Not one single little girl since—Oh, well, I just can't remember—it's such an awful long time. Dreadful, isn't it? Hear that old Sam stumbling down-stairs! Now let's see what he brings you.”

Dogger's arms were full. “I've a silk dress,” he puffed, “and a ruffled petticoat, and a great leghorn hat—and just look at these feathers, and you never saw such a pair of slippers and silk stockings! And now let's try 'em on!”

The child uttered a little scream of delight. “Oh, Uncle Felix! Isn't it lovely? Can't I have them? Please, Uncle Felix!” she cried, both hands around his shirt collar in supplication.

“Take 'em all, missy,” shouted Sam. Then, turning to Felix: “They belonged to an actor who hired half of my studio and left them to pay for his rent, which they didn't do, not by a long chalk, and—Oh, here's another hat—and, oh, such a lovely old cloak! Yes, take 'em all, missy—I'm glad to get rid of 'em—before Nat claps them on Jane and goes in for Puritan maidens and Lady Gay Spankers. Oh, I know you, Nat! I wouldn't trust you out of my sight! Take 'em along, I say.” He stopped and turned toward Felix again.

“Couldn't you bring her down here once in a while, Mr. O'Day?” he continued, a strange, pathetic note in his wheezing voice. “Just for ten minutes, you know, when she's out with the dog, or walking with you. Nobody ever comes up these stairs but tramps and book agents—even the models steer clear. It would help a lot if you'd bring her. Wouldn't you like to come, missy? What did you say her name was? Oh, yes—Masie—well, my child, that's not what I'd call you; I'd call you—well, I guess I wouldn't call you anything but just a dear, darling little girl! Yes, that's just what I'd call you. And you are going to let me give them to her, aren't you, Mr. O'Day?”

Felix grasped the old fellow's thin, dry hand in his own strong fingers. For an instant a strange lump in his throat clogged his speech. “Of course, I'll take the costumes, and many thanks for your wish to make the child happy,” he answered at last. “I am rather foolish about Masie myself; and may I tell you, Mr. Dogger, that you are a very fine old gentleman, and that I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, and that, if you will permit me I shall certainly come again?”

Dogger was about to reply when Masie, Looking up into the wizened face, cried: “And may I put them on when I like, if I'm very, very—oh, so VERY careful?”

“Yes, you buttercup, and you can wear them full of holes and do anything else you please to them, and I won't care a mite.”

And then, with Jane Hoggson's help, he put on Masie's own hat and coat, which Ganger had hung on an easel, and Masie called Fudge from his mouse-hole, and Felix shook hands first with Nat and then with Sam, and last of all with Jane, who looked at him askance out of one eye as she bobbed him half a courtesy. And then everybody went out into the hall and said good-by once more over the banisters, Felix with the bundle under his arm, Masie throwing kisses to the two old gnomes craning their necks over the banisters, Fudge barking every step of the way down the stairs.