when it seems to office persons that the day's work never will end, even by a miracle, Mr. Wrenn was shaky about his duty to the firm. He was more so after an electrical interview with the manager, who spent a few minutes, which he happened to have free, in roaring "I want to know why" at Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular "why" that he wanted to know; he was merely getting scientific efficiency out of employees, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken from a business magazine that dilutes efficiency theories for inefficient employers.

At five-twenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on nothing in particular, and suggested that he stay late with Charley Carpenter and the stock-keeper to inventory a line of desk-clocks which they were closing out.

As Mr. Wrenn returned to his desk he stopped at a window on the corridor and coveted the bright late afternoon. The cornices of lofty buildings glistened; the sunset shone fierily through the glass-inclosed layer-like upper floors. He wanted to be out there in the streets with the shopping crowds. Old Goglefogle didn't consider him; why should he consider the firm?

CHAPTER II

HE WALKS WITH MISS THERESA

As he left the Souvenir Company building after working late at taking inventory and roamed down toward Fourteenth Street, Mr. Wrenn felt forlornly aimless. The worst of it all was that he could not go to the Nickelorion for moving pictures; not after having been cut by the ticket-taker. Then, there before him was the glaring sign of the Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with "Great Train Robbery Film Tonight" made his heart thump like stair-climbing—and he dashed at the ticket-booth with a nickel doughtily extended. He felt queer about the scalp as the cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be watching him so closely? As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one- nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned. It turned back of itself; he stared full at the man, half bowed—and received a hearty absent-minded nod and a "Fine evenin'." He sang to himself a monotonous song of great joy. When he stumbled over the feet of a large German in getting to a seat, he apologized as though he were accustomed to laugh easily with many friends.

The train-robbery film was—well, he kept repeating "Gee!" to himself pantingly. How the masked men did sneak, simply sneak and sneak, behind the bushes! Mr. Wrenn shrank as one of them leered out of the picture at him. How gallantly the train dashed toward the robbers, to the spirit-stirring roll of the snare-drum. The rush from the bushes followed; the battle with detectives concealed in the express-car. Mr. Wrenn was standing sturdily and shooting coolly with the slender hawk-faced Pinkerton man in puttees; with him he leaped to horse and followed the robbers through the forest. He stayed through the whole program twice to see the train robbery again.

As he started to go out he found the ticket-taker changing his long light-blue robe of state for a highly commonplace sack-coat without brass buttons. In his astonishment at seeing how a Highness could be transformed into an every-day man, Mr. Wrenn stopped, and, having stopped, spoke:

"Uh—that was quite a—quite a picture—that train robbery.
Wasn't it."

"Yuh, I guess—Now where's the devil and his wife flew away to with my hat? Them guys is always swiping it. Picture, mister? Why, I didn't see it no more 'n—Say you, Pink Eye, say you crab-footed usher, did you swipe my hat? Ain't he the cut-up, mister! Ain't both them ushers the jingling sheepsheads, though! Being cute and hiding my hat in the box-office. Picture? I don't get no chance to see any of 'em. Funny, ain't it?—me barking for 'em like I was the grandmother of the guy that invented 'em, and not knowing whether the train robbery—Now who stole my going-home shoes?… Why, I don't know whether the train did any robbing or not!"

He slapped Mr. Wrenn on the back, and the sales clerk's heart bounded in comradeship. He was surprised into declaring:

"Say—uh—I bowed to you the other night and you—well, honestly, you acted like you never saw me."

"Well, well, now, and that's what happens to me for being the dad of five kids and a she-girl and a tom-cat. Sure, I couldn't 've seen you. Me, I was probably that busy with fambly cares—I was probably thinking who was it et the lemon pie on me—was it Pete or Johnny, or shall I lick 'em both together, or just bite me wife."

Mr. Wrenn knew that the ticket-taker had never, never really considered biting his wife. He knew! His nod and grin and "That's the idea!" were urbanely sophisticated. He urged:

"Oh yes, I'm sure you didn't intend to hand me the icy mitt.
Say! I'm thirsty. Come on over to Moje's and I'll buy you a drink."

He was aghast at this abyss of money-spending into which he had leaped, and the Brass-button Man was suspiciously wondering what this person wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent saloon, a New York corner saloon, which of course "glittered" with a large mirror, heaped glasses, and a long shining foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn placed his Cum-Fee-Best shoe.

"Uh?" said the bartender.

"Rye, Jimmy," said the Brass-button Man.

"Uh-h-h-h-h," said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now that—wealthy citizen though he had become—he was in danger of exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn't choose his drink properly. "Stummick been hurting me. Guess I'd better just take a lemonade."

"You're the brother-in-law to a wise one," commented the Brass-button Man. "Me, I ain't never got the sense to do the traffic cop on the booze. The old woman she says to me, `Mory,' she says, `if you was in heaven and there was a pail of beer on one side and a gold harp on the other,' she says, `and you was to have your pick, which would you take?' And what 'd yuh think I answers her?"

"The beer," said the bartender. "She had your number, all right."

"Not on your tin-type," declared the ticket-taker.

"`Me?' I says to her. `Me? I'd pinch the harp and pawn it for ten growlers of Dutch beer and some man-sized rum!'"

"Hee, hee hee!" grinned Mr. Wrenn.

"Ha, ha, ha!" grumbled the bartender.

"Well-l-l," yawned the ticket-taker, "the old woman'll be chasing me best pants around the flat, if she don't have me to chase, pretty soon. Guess I'd better beat it. Much obliged for the drink, Mr. Uh. So long, Jimmy."

Mr. Wrenn set off for home in a high state of exhilaration which, he noticed, exactly resembled driving an aeroplane, and went briskly up the steps of the Zapps' genteel but unexciting residence. He was much nearer to heaven than West Sixteenth Street appears to be to the outsider. For he was an explorer of the Arctic, a trusted man on the job, an associate of witty Bohemians. He was an army lieutenant who had, with his friend the hawk-faced Pinkerton man, stood off bandits in an attack on a train. He opened and closed the door gaily.

He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn. His landlady stood on the bottom step of the hall stairs in a bunchy Mother Hubbard, groaning:

"Mist' Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you wouldn't just make all the noise you can. Ah don't see why Ah should have to be kept awake all night. Ah suppose it's the will of the Lord that whenever Ah go out to see Mrs. Muzzy and just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get insomina, but Ah don't see why anybody that tries to be a