FullReads

“Glory be!” exclaimed Mr. Dyke. “I mean, that’s too bad,” he amended gracefully. “Won’t you let me take you where you want to go?”

“What’ll become of your van, then? Besides, I haven’t any idea where I want to go.”

“What! Are you, too, like myself, a wandering home-seeker on the face of an overpopulated earth, Miss?”

The “Miss” surprised her. Why the sudden lapse on the part of this extraordinary and self-confident young person into the terminology of the servant class?

“Yes, I am,” she admitted.

“A hundred thousand helpless babes in the wood,” he announced sonorously, “are wandering about, lost and homeless on this melancholy and moving day of October 1st, waiting for the little robins to come and bury them under the brown and withered leaves. Ain’t it harrowing, Miss! Personally I should prefer to have the last sad dirge sung over me by a quail on toast, or maybe a Welsh rabbit. What time did you breakfast, Miss? I had a ruined egg at six-fifteen.”

The girl surrendered to helpless and bewildered laughter. “You ask the most personal questions as if they were a matter of course.”

“By way of impressing you with my sprightly and entertaining individuality, so that you will appreciate the advantages to be derived from my continued acquaintance, and grapple me to your soul with hooks of steel, as Hamlet says. Or was it Harold Bell Wright? Do you care for reading, Miss? I’ve got a neat little library inside, besides an automatic piano and a patent ice-box…. By the way, Miss, is that policeman doing setting-up exercises or motioning us to move on? I think he is.”

“But I can’t move on,” she said pathetically.

“Couldn’t you work my van, Miss? It’s quite simple.”

She gave it a swift examination. “Yes,” said she. “It’s almost like my own car.”

“Then I’ll lead, and you follow, Miss.”

“But I can’t–I don’t know who–I don’t want your van. Where shall we–“

“Go?” he supplied. “To jail, I judge, unless we go somewhere else and do it now. Come on! We’re off!”

Overborne by his insistence and further influenced by the scowl of the approaching officer, she took the wheel. At the close of some involved but triumphant maneuverings the exchanged vans removed themselves from the path of progress, headed eastward to Fourth Avenue and bore downtownward. Piloting a strange machine through rush traffic kept the girl in the trailer too busy for speculation, until, in the recesses of a side street, her leader stopped and she followed suit. Mr. Dyke’s engaging and confident face appeared below her.

“Within,” he stated, pointing to a quaint Gothic doorway, “they dispense the succulent pig’s foot and the innocuous and unconvincing near-but-not-very-beer. It is also possible to get something to eat and drink. May I help you down, Miss?”

“No,” said the girl dolefully. “I want to go home.”

“But on your own showing, you haven’t any home.”

“I’ve got to find one. Immediately.”

“You’ll need help, Miss. It’ll take some finding.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me Miss,” she said with evidences of petulance.

“Have it your own way, Lady. We strive to please, as R.L. Stevenson says. Or is it R.H. Macy? Anyway, a little bite of luncheon Lady, while we discuss the housing problem–“

“Why are you calling me Lady, now?”

He shook a discouraged head. “You seem very hard to please, Sister. I’ve tried you with Miss and I’ve tried you with Lady–“

“Are you a gentleman or are you a–a–“

“Don’t say it, Duchess. Don’t! Remember what Tennyson says: ‘One hasty line may blast a budding hope.’ Or was it Burleson? When you deny to the companion of your wanderings the privilege of knowing your name, what can he do but fall back for guidance upon that infallible chapter in the Gents’ Handbook of Classy Behavior, entitled, ‘From Introduction’s Uncertainties to Friendship’s Fascinations’?”

“We haven’t even been introduced,” she pointed out.

“Pardon me. We have. By the greatest of all Masters of Ceremonies, Old Man Chance. Heaven knows what it may lead to,” he added piously. “Now, Miss–or Lady–or Sister, as the case may be; or even Sis (I believe that form is given in the Gents’ Handbook), if you will put your lily hand in mine–“