Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
cupboard. "There are only two eggs and half a loaf of bread left," he
announced brutally.
"Heavens!" said Warwickson from where he lay smoking on the bed. He
spoke in a dismal 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 scowl, 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 austere and virtuous. "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 plaintive
optimism. "The Monthly Amazement 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 tolerance. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
man." But at last Wrinkles giggled pityingly. Over on the bed Grief
croaked 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 squatted, slumbering, and old, between
two exalted commercial structures which would have had to bend afar
down to perceive it. The northward march of the city's progress had
happened not to overturn this aged structure, and it huddled there, lost
and forgotten, while the cloud-veering towers strode on.
Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the blurred 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 fully the youths grew apparently 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
sketches, 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 creases. A long
stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction and then turned
impulsively 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 jeer; "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 affixing the
rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled, "Come in!"
The door opened, and Miss Florinda O'Connor, the model, dashed into the
room like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.
"Why, hello, Splutter!" they cried.
"Oh, boys, I've come to dine with you."
It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.
Grief spoke first. "Yes, you have?" he said incredulously.
"Why, certainly I have. What's the matter?"
They grinned. "Well, old lady," responded Grief, "you've hit us at the
wrong time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to
mention, and, what's more, we haven't got a sou."
"What? Again?" cried Florinda.
"Yes, again. You'd better dine home to-night."
"But I'll--I'll stake you," said the girl eagerly. "Oh, you poor old
idiots! It's a shame! Say, I'll stake you."
"Certainly not," said Pennoyer sternly.
"What are you talking about, Splutter?" demanded Wrinkles in an angry
voice.
"No, that won't go down," said Grief, in a resolute yet wistful tone.
Florinda divested herself of her hat, jacket, and gloves, and put them
where she pleased. "Got coffee, haven't you? Well, I'm not going to stir
a step. You're a fine lot of birds!" she added bitterly, "You've all
pulled me out of a whole lot of scrape--oh, any number of times--and now
you're broke, you go acting like a set of dudes."
Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to
watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was
balanced on a trunk, and two bundles of kindling was balanced on the
chair, and the gas stove was balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was
here accounted a feat.
Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. "There! I'll have to go
shy one."
Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at
the table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of
its litter.
Florinda assaulted Great Grief. "Here, that's not the way to make
coffee!"
"What ain't?"
"Why, the way you're making it. You want to take----" She explained some
way to him which he couldn't understand.
"For heaven's sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don't sit there like a
music box," said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas
stove.
Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction,
"Well, the coffee's good, anyhow."
"'Tis good," said Florinda, "but it isn't made right. I'll show you how,
Penny. You first----"
"Oh, dry up, Splutter," said Grief. "Here, take an egg."
"I don't like eggs," said Florinda.
"Take an egg," said the three hosts menacingly.
"I tell you I don't like eggs."
"Take--an--egg!" they said again.
"Oh, well," said Florinda, "I'll take one, then; but you needn't act
like such a set of dudes--and, oh, maybe you didn't have much lunch. I
had such a daisy lunch! Up at Pontiac's studio. He's got a lovely
studio."
The three looked to be oppressed. Grief said sullenly, "I saw some of
his things over in Stencil's gallery, and they're rotten."
"Yes--rotten," said Pennoyer.
"Rotten," said Grief.
"Oh, well," retorted Florinda, "if a man has a swell studio and
dresses--oh, sort of like a Willie, you know, you fellows sit here like
owls in a cave and say rotten--rotten--rotten. You're away off.
Pontiac's landscapes----"
"Landscapes be blowed! Put any of his work alongside of Billie Hawker's
and see how it looks."
"Oh, well, Billie Hawker's," said Florinda. "Oh, well."
At the mention of Hawker's name they had all turned to scan her face.