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CHAPTER II

IT BECOMES NECESSARY TO EAT

In spite of the continued efforts of idealists to belittle it, there is scarcely a fact of human experience capable of more universal substantiation than that in order to live it is necessary to eat. The corollary is equally true: in order to eat it is necessary to pay.

Yet until now Pendleton had been in a position to ignore, if not to refute, the latter statement. There was probably no detail of his daily existence calling for less thought or effort than this matter of dining. Opportunities were provided on every hand,––at the houses of his friends, at his club, at innumerable cafés and hotels,––and all that he was asked to contribute was an appetite.

It was not until he had exhausted his twelve dollars and sixty-three cents that Don was in any position to change his point of view. But that was very soon. After leaving the office of Barton & Saltonstall at eleven, he took a taxi to 12 the Harvard Club, which immediately cut down his capital to ten dollars and thirteen cents. Here he met friends, Higgins and Watson and Cabot of his class, and soon he had disposed of another dollar. They then persuaded him to walk part way downtown with them. On his return, he passed a florist’s, and, remembering that Frances was going that afternoon to a thé dansant, did the decent thing and sent up a dozen roses, which cost him five dollars. Shortly after this he passed a confectioner’s, and of course had to stop for a box of Frances’s favorite bonbons, which cost him another dollar.

Not that he considered the expense in the least. As long as he was able to reach in his pocket and produce a bill of sufficient value to cover the immediate investment, that was enough. But it is surprising how brief a while ten dollars will suffice in a leisurely stroll on Fifth Avenue. Within a block of the confectionery store two cravats that took his fancy and a box of cigarettes called for his last bill, and actually left him with nothing but a few odd pieces of silver. Even this did not impress 13 him as significant, because, as it happened, his wants were for the moment fully satisfied.

It was a clear October day, and, quite unconscious of the distance, Don continued up the Avenue to Sixtieth Street––to the house where he was born. In the last ten years he had been away a good deal from that house,––four years at Groton, four at Harvard,––but, even so, the house had always remained in the background of his consciousness as a fixed point.

Nora opened the door for him, as she had for twenty years.

“Are you to be here for dinner, sir?” she inquired.

“No, Nora,” he answered; “I shall dine out to-night.”

Nora appeared uneasy.

“The cook, sir, has received a letter––a very queer sort of letter, sir––from a lawyer gentleman.”

“Eh?”

“He said she was to keep two accounts, sir: one for the servants’ table and one for the house.”

“Oh, that’s probably from old Barton.”

“Barton––yes, sir, that was the name. Shall I bring you the letter, sir?”

“Don’t bother, Nora. It’s all right. He’s my new bookkeeper.”

“Very well, sir. Then you’ll give orders for what you want?”

“Yes, Nora.”

In the library an open fire was burning brightly on the hearth, as always it had been kept burning for his father. With his hands behind his back, he stood before it and gazed around the big room. It seemed curiously empty with the old man gone. The machinery of the house as adjusted by him still continued to run on smoothly. And yet, where at certain hours he should have been, he was not. It was uncanny.

It was a little after one; Don