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The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and be over.

But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides.

“I know it’s cheeky as the devil,” he began in a quick, cheerful voice, while he had yet some distance to come, “but I can’t help it. I’ve been looking for you for weeks, and–“

“What is it that I can do for you?” I asked pleasantly.

“You can give me your head.” He said it with an appealing and delighted smile. “I’m a sort of artist–” he explained.

“Show me,” I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book.

“Nothing but notes in it,” he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through all the pages and–for we Poles have an instinct in such matters–saw that the work was good.

“Do you wish to draw me, Master?” I said.

He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased.

“Will you sit for me?” he asked. “I will–“

But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money.

“Very cheerfully,” I said. “It is easy for the old to sit–especially when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become immortal. I have a room two flights up–where you will not be disturbed.”

“Splendid!” he said. “You are splendid! Everything’s splendid!”

When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him more than another’s.

“How do I know?” he said. “Instinct–you seem a cheerful man and yet I have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for–for–please take me as I am, I don’t ever mean to offend–steadiness in sorrow…. I am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol–a man of your age who looks as–as late October would look if it had a face….”

Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this and that.

“Funny thing,” he said, “I had a knife when I started and it’s disappeared.”

“Things have that habit,” I said.

“Yes,” said he, “things and people, and often people disappear as suddenly and completely as things–chin quarter of an inch lower–just so–thank you forever–“

“And what experience have you had with people disappearing?” I asked. “And you so young and masterful.”

“I?” he said. “Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the most regular and explicit order–“

I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold.

“And, do you know,” here the young man dawdled with his pencil and presently ceased working for the moment, “I’ve always felt as if I had had a hand in it–though I was only seven. I’d done something so naughty and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father’s home-coming as a sinner looks forward to going to hell. My father had never punished me. But he would this time, I knew–and I was terribly afraid and–sometimes I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to God that my father might never come home. I’m not sure I prayed that–but I have a sneaking suspicion that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there was. My mother nearly went insane–“