Написання частини книжки:316 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
Azalea Adair seemed to reflect.
'I have never thought of it that way,' she said, with a kind of sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. 'Isn't it in the still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could have leaned out one's windows and heard the drop of mud splashing from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the noisiest project in the world - the building of the tower of Babel - result in finally? A page and a half of Esperanto in the North American Review.'
'Of course,' said I platitudinously, 'human nature is the same everywhere, but there is more color - er - more drama and movement and - er - romance in some cities than in others.'
'On the surface,' said Azalea Adair. 'I have traveled around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings - print and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bow-string with his own hands one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered - with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown, I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart, but I wish you could have seen the fine little smile she carried from table to table. Oh yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses, mud, stores, and lumber yards.'
Someone knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound. She came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders.
'You must have a cup of tea before you go,' she said, 'and a sugar cake.'
She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small negro girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in mouth and bulging eyes.
Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in
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two pieces and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was one of the bills I had given the piratical negro - there was no doubt of it.
'Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy,' she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, 'and get a quarter of a pound of tea - the kind he always sends me - and ten cents worth of sugar cakes. Now, hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted,' she explained to me.
Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek - I was sure it was hers - filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible words.
Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared. For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then something like an oath and a light scuffle, and she returned calmly to her chair.
'This is a roomy house,' she said, 'and I have a tenant for part of it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps tomorrow Mr. Baker will be able to supply me.'
I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name. But tomorrow would do.
That same day I started on the course of iniquity that this uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to be an accomplice - after the fact if that is the correct legal term - to a murder.
As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the polychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeon door of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster, and began his ritual: 'Step right in, boss. The carriage is clean - just got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any - '
And then he knew me and grinned broadly. ' 'Scuse me, boss; you is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you kindly, suh.'
'I am going out to 861 again tomorrow afternoon at three,' said I, 'and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss Adair?' I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill.
'I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh,' he replied.
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'I judge that she is pretty poor,' I said. 'She hasn't much money to speak of, has she?'
For an instant, I looked again at the fierce countenance of King Cetewayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old negro hack-driver.
'She ain't gwine to starve, suh,' he said slowly. 'She has resources, suh; she has resources.'
'I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip,' said I.
'Dat is perfectly correct, suh,' he answered humbly; 'I just had to have dat two dollars dis morning, boss.'
I went to the hotel and stayed by electricity. I wired the magazine: 'A. Adair holds out for eight cents a word.'
The answer that came back was: 'Give it to her quick, you duffer.'
Just before dinner 'Major' Wentworth Caswell bore down upon me with the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me; therefore I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping thereby to escape another, but he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bibbers who must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies.
With an air of producing millions, he drew two one-dollar bills from a pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was my dollar bill again. It could have been no other.
I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary, eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clue to a tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleepily: 'Seems as if a lot of people here own stock in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends promptly, too. Wonder if - ' Then I fell asleep.
King Cetewayo was at his post the next day and rattled my bones over the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I was ready.
Azalea Adair looked paler cleaner and frailer than she had looked on the day before. After she had signed the contract at eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of her chair.
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Without much trouble, I managed to get her up on the antediluvian horsehair sofa and then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-colored Pirate to bring a doctor. With a wisdom that I had not suspected in him, he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, grey-haired, and capable man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each) I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of mystery. He bowed with stately understanding and turned to the old negro.
'Uncle Cæsar,' he said calmly, 'run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive - run. I want you to get back sometime this week.'
It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the speeding powers of the land pirates' steeds. After Uncle Cæsar was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he had decided that I might do.
'It is only a case of insufficient nutrition,' he said. 'In other words, the result of poverty, pride, and starvation. Mrs. Caswell has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she will accept nothing except that old negro, Uncle Cæsar, who was once owned by her family.'
'Mrs. Caswell!' said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the contract and saw that she had signed it 'Azalea Adair Caswell.'
'I thought she was Miss Adair,' I said.
'Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir,' said the doctor. 'It is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant contributes toward her support.'
When the milk and wine had been brought, the doctor soon revived Azalea Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that were then in season and their height of color. She referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart. Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him to the door. I told him that it was within my power and intentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.
'By the way,' he said, 'perhaps you would like to know that you have had royalty for a coachman. Old Cæsar's grandfather was a king in Congo. Cæsar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed.'
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As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Cæsar's voice inside: 'Did he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?'
'Yes, Cæsar,' I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I went in and concluded business negotiations with our contributor. I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain. And then Uncle Cæsar drove me back to the hotel.
Here ends the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The rest must be only bare statements of facts.
At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Cæsar was at his corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his duster, and began his depressing formula: 'Step right in, such. Fifty cents to anywhere in the city - hack's quickly clean, such - jus' got back from a funeral - '
And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine strings were more frayed and ragged, and the last remaining button - the button of yellow horn - was gone. A motley descendant of kings was Uncle Caesar.
About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of a drug store. In a desert where nothing happens, this was manna; so I edged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of Major Wentworth Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. He decided that it was conspicuous by its absence.
The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and brought by curious and ennui citizens to the drug store. The late human being had been engaged in a terrific battle - the details showed that. Loafer and reprobate though he had been, he had been also a warrior. But he had lost. His hands were yet clenched so tightly that his fingers would not be opened. The gentle citizens who had known him stood about and searched their vocabularies to find some good words, if it were possible, to speak of him. One kind-looking man said, after much thought: 'When "Cas" was about fourteen he was one of the best spellers in school.'
While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of 'the man that was,' which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and dropped something at my feet. I covered it with one foot quietly, and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned that in his last struggle, his hand must have seized that object unwittingly and held it in a death grip.
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At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of listeners:
'In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by some of these no-account niggers for his money. He had fifty dollars this afternoon which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel. When he was found the money was not on his person.'
I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was crossing the bridge over the Cumberland River I took out of my pocket a yellow, horn, overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece, with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out of the window into the slow, muddy waters below.
I wonder what's doing in Buffalo!
LI
Compliments of the Season
THERE ARE NO MORE Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; and newspaper items the next best, are manufactured by clever young Journalists who have married early and have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced to two very questionable sources - facts and philosophy. We will begin with - whichever you choose to call it. Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end? We exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we grovel in the dust of a million years and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat trap. As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs. Now come the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion, and the Twenty-fifth of December. On the tenth of that month, the Child of the Millionaire lost her rag-doll. There were many servants in the Millionaire's palace on the Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds, but without finding the lost treasure. The Child was a girl of five and one of those perverse little beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy parents by fixing their affections upon some vulgar,
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'P-pardon, lady,' he said, 'but couldn't leave without exchangin' comments season with a lady the house. ' 'Gainst principles gentleman do sho.' And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in the House when men wore lace ruffles and powder. 'The blessings of another year - ' Fuzzy's memory failed him. The Lady prompted: '- Be upon this hearth.' '- The guest - ' stammered Fuzzy. '- And upon her who - ' continued the Lady, with a leading smile. 'Oh, cut it out,' said Fuzzy ill-manneredly. 'I can't remember. Drink hearty.' Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of her caste. James enveloped Fuzzy and re-conducted him toward the front door. The harp music still softly drifted through the house. Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate. 'I wonder,' said the Lady to herself, musing 'who - but there were so many who came. I wonder whether memory is a curse or a blessing to them after they have fallen so low.' Fuzzy and his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called: 'James!' James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, with his brief spark of the divine fire gone. Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his section of gas pipe. 'You will conduct this gentleman,' said the Lady, 'downstairs. Then tell Louis to get out of the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes to go.'
LII
Proof of the Pudding
SPRING WINKED a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook, of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course. He had lunch in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in
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Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue and meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square.
The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a pastoral; the color motif was green - the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation.
The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that hallroom poets rhyme with 'true' and 'Sue' and 'coo.' The one natural and frank color visible was the ostensible green of the newly painted benches - a shade between the color of pickled cucumber and that of last year's fast-back caravanette raincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape appeared a masterpiece.
And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor's mind.
Editor Westbrook's spirit was contented and serene. The April number of the Minerva had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of the month - a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies more if he had had 'em. The owners of the magazine had raised his (the editor's) salary; he had just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and the morning papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers' banquet. Also, there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he left his uptown apartment that morning. She was taking an enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practicing early and diligently. When he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards of the convalescent city.
While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between rows of park benches (already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his captor was - Dawe - Shackleford Dawe,
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dingy, almost ragged, the genteel scarcely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby.
While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight biography of Dawe is offered.
He was a fiction writer and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances. At one time they might have called each other old friends. Dawe had some money in those days and lived in a decent apartment house near Westbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinners together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became 'dearest' friends. Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the Gramercy Park neighborhood, where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one's trunk under eight branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble mantels and watch the mice play upon the floor. Dawe thought to live by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted many to Westbrook. The Minerva printed one or two of them; the rest were returned. Westbrook sent a careful personal letter with each rejected manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasons for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had a clear conception of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe was mainly concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of food that she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had been spouting to her about the excellences of certain French writers. At dinner, they sat down to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp. Dawe commented.
'It's Maupassant hash,' said Mrs. Dawe. 'It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry.'
As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor Westbrook's sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Dawe in several months.
'Why, Shack, is this you?' said Westbrook somewhat awkwardly, for the form of this phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance.
'Sit down for a minute,' said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. 'This is my office. I can't come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down - you won't be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber. They won't know you are only an editor.'
'Smoke, Shack?' said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously
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upon the virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield.
Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a chocolate cream.
'I have just - ' began the editor.
'Oh, I know; don't finish,' said Dawe. 'Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn't read the "Keep off the Grass" signs.'
'How goes the writing?' asked the editor.
'Look at me,' said Dawe, 'for your answer. Now don't put on that embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a job as a wine agent or a cab driver. I'm in the fight to a finish. I know I can write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'll make you change the spelling of "regrets" to "c-h-e-q-u-e" before I'm done with you.'
Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression - the copyrighted expression of the editor beleaguered by the unavailable contributor.
'Have you read the last story I sent you - "The Alarum of the Soul"?' asked Dawe.
'Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret - '
'Never mind the regrets,' said Dawe grimly. 'There's neither salve nor sting in 'em anymore. What I want to know is why. Come, now; out with the good points first.'
'The story,' said Westbrook deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, 'is written around an almost original plot. Characterization - the best you have done. Construction - almost as good, except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good story, except - '
'I can write English, can't I?' interrupted Dawe.
'I have always told you,' said the editor, 'that you had a style.'
'Then the trouble is the - '
'Same old thing,' said Editor Westbrook. 'You work up to your climax like an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don't know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, Shack, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer. Now
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and then photography, despite its impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic scenes, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes at your door.'
'Oh, fiddles and footlights!' cried Dawe derisively. 'You've got that old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: "May high heaven witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of a mother's vengeance!"
' Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.
'I think,' said he, 'that in real life the woman would express herself in those words or very similar ones.'
'Not in six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage,' said Dawe hotly. 'I'll tell you what she'd say in real life. She'd say: "What! Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's one trouble after another! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police station. Why wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know. For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll never get ready. Not that hat - the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she's usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I'm upset!"
'That's the way she'd talk,' continued Dawe. 'People in real life don't fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can't do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas a little more, that's all.'
'Shack,' said Editor Westbrook impressively, 'did you ever pick up the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?'
'I never did,' said Dawe. 'Did you?' 'Well, no,' said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. 'But I can well imagine what she would say.'
'So can I,' said Dawe.
And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the oracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for an
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unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes and heroines of the Minerva Magazine, contrary to the theories of the editor thereof.
'My dear Shack,' said he, 'if I know anything of life I know that every sudden, deep, and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an apposite, concordant, conformable, and proportionate expression of feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art, would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level of his senile vapourings. But it is also true that all men and women have what may be called a subconscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion - a sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance and histrionic value.'
'And in the name of seven sacred saddle blankets of Sagittarius, where did the stage and literature get the stunt?' asked Dawe.
'From life,' answered the editor triumphantly.
The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his dissent.
On a bench nearby by a frowsy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that his moral support was due to a downtrodden brother.
'Punch him one, Jack,' he called hoarsely to Dawe. 'What's he come makin' a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gentlemen that come in the Square to set and think?'
Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure.
'Tell me,' asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, 'what special faults in "The Alarum of the Soul" caused you to throw it down.'
'When Gabriel Murray,' said Westbrook, 'goes to his telephone and is told that his fiancée has been shot by a burglar, he says - I do not recall the exact words, but - '
'I do,' said Dawe. 'He says: "Damn Central; she always cuts me off." (And then to his friend): "Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a big hole? It's kind of hard luck, isn't it? Could you get me a drink from the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side." '
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'And again,' continued the editor, without pausing for argument, 'when Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are - let me see - '
'She says,' interposed the author: ' "Well, what do you think of that!" '
'Absurdly inappropriate words,' said Westbrook, 'presenting an anti-climax - plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; they mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy.'
'Wrong,' said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. 'I say no man or woman ever spouts highfalutin talk when they go up against a real climax. They talk naturally, and a little worse.'
The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside information.
'Say, Westbrook,' said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, 'would you have accepted "The Alarum of the Soul" if you had believed that the actions and words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story that we discussed?'
'I would likely if I believed that way,' said the editor. 'But I have explained to you that I do not.'
'If I could prove to you that I am right?'
'I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further just now.'
'I don't want to argue,' said Dawe. 'I want to demonstrate to you from life itself that my view is the correct one.'
'How could you do that?' asked Westbrook in a surprised tone.
'Listen,' said the writer seriously. 'I have thought of a way. It is important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as correct by the magazines. I've fought for it for three years, and I'm down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due.'
'I have applied the opposite of your theory,' said the editor, 'in selecting the fiction for the Minerva Magazine. The circulation has gone up from ninety thousand to - '
'Four hundred thousand,' said Dawe. 'Whereas it should have been boosted to a million.'
'You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory.'
'I will. If you'll give me about half an hour of your time I'll prove to you that I am right. I'll prove it by Louise.'
'Your wife!' exclaimed Westbrook. 'How?'
'Well, not exactly by her, but with her,' said Dawe. 'Now, you
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know how devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the only genuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor's signature. She's been fonder and more faithful than ever since I've been cast for the neglected genius part.'
'Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion,' agreed the editor. 'I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bring Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those informal chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much.'
'Later,' said Dawe. 'When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you my scheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast - if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast - Louise told me she was going to visit her aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return home at three o'clock. She is always on time to a minute. It is now - '
Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket.
'Twenty-seven minutes to three,' said Westbrook, scanning his timepiece.
'We have just enough time,' said Dawe. 'We will go to my flat at once. I will write a note, address it to her, and leave it on the table where she will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining room concealed by the portieres. On that note, I'll say that I have fled from her forever with an affinity who understands the needs of my artistic soul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one - yours or mine.'
'Oh, never!' exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. 'That would be inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings played upon in such a manner.'
'Brace up,' said the writer. 'I guess I think as much of her as you do. It's for her benefit as well as mine. I've got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It'll last for only a minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You owe it to me to give me the chance, Westbrook.'
Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us.
Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity 'tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea pigs to go around.
O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES 337
The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward and then to the south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood. Within its high iron railings, the little park had put on its smart coat of vernal green and was admiring itself in its fountain minor. Outside the railings, the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. Sic transit gloria urbis.
A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flat house burdened with a floridly over-decorated façade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door of one of the front flats.
When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and meagrely the rooms were furnished.
'Get a chair, if you can find one,' said Dawe, 'while I hunt up pen and ink. Hello, what's this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning.'
He picked up an envelope that lay on the center table and tore it open. He began to read the letter that he drew out of it, and once having begun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the words that Editor Westbrook heard:
DEAR SHACKLEFORD, -
'By the time you get this, I will be about a hundred miles away and still a-going. I've got a place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera Co., and we start on the road today at noon. I didn't want to starve to death, so I decided to make my living. I'm not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, iceberg, and dictionary, and she's not coming back, either. We've been practicing the songs and dances for two months in the quiet. I hope you will be successful, and get along all right. Good-bye.
'LOUISE.'
Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and cried out in a deep vibrating voice:
'My God, why hast Thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, then let Thy Heaven's fairest gifts, faith, and love, become the jesting bywords of traitors and friends!'
Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips:
338 O HENRY - 100 SELECTED STORIES
'Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you off your perch, Shack? Ain't it hell, now, Shack - ain't it?'
LIII
Past One at Rooney's
ONLY ON THE LOWER East Side of New York do the Houses of Capulet and Montague survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have work cut out for your steel. On Broadway, you may drag your man along a dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch, but in the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutio, you must observe the niceties of deportment to the wink of an eyelash and an inch of elbowroom at the bar when its patrons include foes of your house and kin. So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted into Dutch Mike's for a stein of beer and came upon a bunch of Montagues making merry with the suds, he began to observe the strictest parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with his thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the mirror supplied the cognizance of the enemy's movements that his indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; experience whispered to him that the finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering steins at Dutch Mike's that night. Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio, companion of his perambulations. Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry Hill Gang and two of the Dry Dock Gang minding their P's and Q's so solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek safety whenever the ominous politeness of the rival associations congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel. But we have nothing to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry Docks. We must to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom. Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio, but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his


Got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn book and a tract, and then the teacher charged in and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see any diamonds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there were loads of them there, anyway; and he said there were A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I wasn't so ignorant, but had read a book called " Don Quixote," I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there were hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians, and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday school, just out of spite. I said all right, then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer
said I was a numskull.
"Why," says he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church."
"Well," I say, "s'pose we got some genies to help us- can't we lick the other crowd then ?"
"How are you going to get them?"
"I don't know. How do they get them?"
"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then
the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man."
" Who makes them tear around so?"
"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long, out of diamonds, and fill it full of chewing gum, or

It at all—nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you—the six thousand and all."
He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out.
He says :
"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"
I say, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please.
You'll take it-won't you?"
He says :
"Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter ?"
"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing I won't have to tell no lies."
He studied a while, and then he says:
"Oho-o. I think I see. You want to sell all your property to me—not give it. That's the correct idea."
Then he wrote something on a paper read it over, and said:
"There—you see it says ' for a consideration.' That means I have bought it from you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now, you sign it."
So I signed it and left.
Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hairball as big as your fist, which had been taken out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knew everything. So I went to him that. Night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know, was, what he was going to do, and whether was he going to stay. Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees put his ear against it and listened. But it wasn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without slipping into the kitchen and getting some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to risk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill on the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jitn's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterward, Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees Again and hung his hat on a limb to show who had done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrously proud about it, and he got so he would hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers
would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece around his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil gave to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody.

Slip into the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to risk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back, we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by-and-by fetched up on the steep top of the hill on the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jit's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterward, Jim said the witches bewitched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again and hung his bat on a limb to show who had done it. And the next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New. Orleans; and after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrously proud about it, and he got so he would hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece around his neck with a string and said it was a charm the devil gave to him with his own hands and told him he could cure anybody.

To kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do-everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry, but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson— they could kill her. Everybody said :
"Oh, she'll do, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.
Now, says Ben Rogers, what`s the line of business of this Gang?"
"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.
"But who are we going to rob? houses-or cattle—
"Stuff! Stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery, it's burglary," says Tom Sawyer. « We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money."
"Must we always kill the people?" "Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think differently, but mostly it's considered best to kill them. Except some that you bring to the cave here and keep them till they're ransomed."
" Ransomed? What's that?"
"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books, and so of course that's what we've got to do."
"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is ?"
" Why blame it all, we've got to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?"
"Oh, that's all very fine to say, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't

Know how to do it to them? That's the thing I want to get at. Now what do you reckon it is? "
"Well, I don't know. But perhaps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead."
"Now, that's something like. That'll answer. Why couldn't you say that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death—and a bothersome lot they'll be, too, eating up everything and always trying to get loose."
"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg? "
"A guard. Well, that is good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"
"Because it ain't in the books so—-that's why. Now Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you?— that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people who made the books know what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon you can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and regularly regularly ransom them."
"Alright. e in the end; but ay its' aofol way, nay- "Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the women too?
“Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn`t let on. Kill the women? No nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them, and by-and-by they fall in love with you and never want to go home anymore."
"Well, if that's the way, I agree, but I don't take no stock in it. Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."

Not come out again until all the dwarves had gone away. Suddenly he found that the music and the singing had stopped, and they were all looking at him with eyes shining in the dark.
"Where are you going?" said Thorin, in a tone that seemed to show that he guessed both halves of the hobbit's mind.
"What about a little light?" said Bilbo apologetically.
"We like the dark," said all the dwarves. "Dark for dark business! There are many hours before dawn."
"Of course!" said Bilbo, and sat down in a hurry. He missed the stool and sat in the fender, knocking over the poker and shovel with a crash.
"Hush!" said Gandalf. "Let Thorin speak!" And this is how Thorin began.
"Gandalf, dwarves, and Mr. Baggins! We are met together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious hobbit - may the hair on his toes never fall out! All praise to his wine and ale!-" He paused for breath and a polite remark from the hobbit, but the compliments were quite lost on poor Bilbo Baggins, who was wagging his mouth in protest at being called audacious and worst of all fellow conspirator, though no noise came out, he was so flummoxed. So Thorin went on:
"We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy, and devices. We shall soon before the break of day start on our long journey, a journey from which some of

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves heard the tramp of doom. They fled their hall to dying fall.
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.
Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons, deep and caverns dim We must away, ere break of day,
To win our harps and gold from him! As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and ajealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, hear the pine trees and the waterfalls, explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking- stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water, a flame leaped probably somebody lighting a wood fire— and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again.
He got up trembling. He had less than half a mind to fetch the lamp, and more than half a mind to pretend to, and go and hide behind the beer barrels in the cellar, and

Thorin. They came back with viols as big as themselves and with Thorin's harp wrapped in a green cloth. It was a beautiful golden harp, and when Thorin struck it the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that Bilbo forgot everything else, and was swept away into dark lands under strange moons, far over The Water and very far from his hobbit-hole under The Hill.
The dark came into the room from the little window that opened in the side of The Hill; the firelight flickered - it was April still they played on, while the shadow of Gandalf's beard wagged against the wall.
The dark filled the room, and the fire died down, and the shadows were lost, and still, they played on. And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes; and this is like a fragment of their song, if it can be like their song without their music.
Far over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold.
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells.

And of course, they did none of these dreadful things, and everything was cleaned and put away safe as quick as lightning, while the hobbit was turning round and round in the middle of the kitchen trying to see what they were doing. Then they went back and found Thorin with his feet on the fender smoking a pipe. He was blowing the most enormous smoke rings, and wherever he told one to go, I went —out the chimney, or behind the clock on the mantelpiece, or under the table, or round and round the ceiling, but wherever it went it was not quick enough to escape Gandalf. Pop! he sent a smaller smoke ring from his short clay pipe straight through each one of Thorin's. Then Gandalf's smoke ring would go green and come back to hover over the wizard's head. He had a cloud of them about him already, and in the dim light, it made him look strange and sorcerous. Bilbo stood still and watched - he loved smoke rings— and then he blushed to think how proud he had been yesterday morning of the smoke rings he had sent up the wind over The Hill.
"Now for some music!" said Thorin. "Bring out the instruments!"
Kili and Fili rushed for their bags and brought back little fiddles; Dori, Nori, and Ori brought out flutes from somewhere inside their coats; Bombur produced a drum from the hall; Bifur and Bofur went out too, and came back with clarinets that they had left among the walking-sticks. Dwalin and Balin said: "Excuse me, I left mine on the porch!" "Just bring my ni with you!" said

"Put on a few eggs, there's a good fellow!" Gandalf called after him, as the hobbit stumped off to the pantries. "And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles!"
"Seems to know as much about the inside of my larders as I do myself!" thought Mr. Baggins, who was feeling positively flummoxed, and was beginning to wonder whether a most wretched adventure had not come right into his house. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, red in the face, and annoyed.
"Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!" he said aloud. "Why don't they come and lend a hand?" Lo and behold! There stood Balin and Dwalin at the door of the kitchen, and Fili and Kili behind them, and before he could say knife they had whisked the trays and a couple of small tables into the parlor and set out everything afresh. Gandalf sat at the head of the party with the thirteen dwarves all around: and Bilbo sat on the astool at the fireside, nibbling at a biscuit (his appetite was quite taken away), and trying to look as if this was all perfectly ordinary and not in the least an adventure. The dwarves ate and ate, and talked and talked, and time got on. At last, they pushed their chairs back, and Bilbo made a move to collect the plates and glasses.
"I suppose you will all stay to supper?" he said in his politest unpressing tones.

"Carefully! Carefully!" he said. "It is not like you, Bilbo, to keep friends waiting on the mat, and then open the door like a pop-gun! Let me introduce Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and especially Thorin!"
"At your service!" said Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur standing in a row. Then they hung up two yellow hoods a pale green one; and also a sky-blue one with a long silver tassel. This last belonged to Thorin, an enormously important dwarf, in fact, no other than the great Thorin Oakenshield himself, who was not at all pleased at falling flat on Bilbo's mat with Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur on top of him. For one thing, Bombur was immensely fat and heavy. Thorin indeed was very haughty, and said nothing about service; but poor Mr. Baggins said he was sorry so many times, that at last, he grunted "Pray don't mention it," and stopped frowning.
"Now we are all here!" said Gandalf, looking at the row of thirteen hoods - the best detachable party hoods— and his hat hanging on the pegs. "Quite a merry gathering! I hope there is something left for the late-comers to eat and drink! What's that? Tea! No, thank you! A little red wine, I think for me."
"And for me," said Thorin.
"And raspberry jam and apple tart," said Bifur.
"And mince pies and cheese," said Bofur.
"And pork pie and salad," said Bombur.
"And more cakes —and —ela and coffee, if you don't mind" called the other dwarves through the door.

Stay to supper. Then the bell rang again louder than ever, and he had to run to the door. It was not four, after all, it was five. Another dwarf had come along while he was wandering in the hall. He had hardly turned the knob, before they were all inside, bowing and saying "at your service" one after another. Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, and Gloin were their names; and very soon two purple hoods, a grey hood, a brown hood, and a white hood were hanging on the pegs, and they marched with their broad hands stuck in their gold and silver belts to join the others. Already it had almost become a throng. Some called for ale, some for porter, and one for coffee, and all of them for cakes; so the hobbit was kept very busy for a while.
A big jug of coffee had just been set in the hearth, the seed cakes were gone, and the dwarves were starting on a round of buttered scones when there came— a loud knock. Not a ring, but a hard rat-tat on the hobbit's beautiful green door. Somebody was banging with a stick!
Bilbo rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and butchered —this was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered. He pulled open the door with a jerk, and they all fell in, one on top of the other. More dwarves, four more! And there was Gandalf behind, leaning on his staff and laughing. He had made quite a dent in the beautiful door; he had also, by the way, knocked out the secret mark that he had put there the morning before.

Hung his red one next to it, and "Balin at your service!" he said with his hand on his breast.
"Thank you!" said Bilbo with a gasp. It was not the correct thing to say, but they have begun to arrive had flustered him badly. He liked visitors, but he liked to know them before they arrived, and he preferred to ask them himself. He had a horrible thought that the cakes might run short, and then—eh as the host: he knew his duty and stuck to it however painful - he might have to go without.
"Come along in, and have some tea!" he managed to say after taking a deep breath.
"A little beer would suit me better if it is all the same to you, my good sir," said Balin with the white beard. "But I don't mind some cake - seed cake if you have any." "Lots!" Bilbo found himself answering, to his surprise; and he found himself scuttling off, too, to the cellar to fill a pint of beer, and then to a pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed cakes that he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel.
When he got back Balin and Dwalin were talking at the table like old friends (as a matter of fact they were brothers). Bilbo plumped down the beer and the cake in front of them, when loud came a ring at the bell again, and then another ring.
"Gandalf for certain this time," he thought as he puffed along the passage. But it was not. It was two more dwarves, both with blue hoods, silver belts, and yellow
"I am so sorry to keep you waiting!" he was going to say, when he saw that it was not Gandalf at all. It was a dwarf with a blue beard tucked into a golden belt, and very bright eyes under his dark-green hood. As soon as the door was opened, he pushed inside, just as if he had been expected.
He hung his hooded cloak on the nearest peg, and "Dwalin at your service!" he said with a low bow.
"Bilbo Baggins at yours!" said the hobbit, too surprised to ask any questions for the moment. When the silence that followed had become uncomfortable, he added: "I am just about to take tea; pray come and have some with me." A little stiff perhaps, but he meant it kindly. And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation? They had not been at the table long, in fact, they had hardly reached the third cake when there came another even louder ring at the bell.
"Excuse me!" said the hobbit, and he went to the door.
"So you have got here at last!" That was what he was going to say to Gandalf this time. But it was not Gandalf. Instead, there was a very old-looking dwarf on the step with a white beard and a scarlet hood; and he too hopped inside as soon as the door was open, just as if he had been invited.
"I see they have begun to arrive already," he said when he caught sight of Dwalin's green hood hanging up. He

Very amusing for me, very good for you —and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it."
"Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to —at any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Goodbye!" With that the hobbit turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seem rude. Wizards after all are wizards. "What on earth did I ask him to tea for!" he said to himself, as he went to the pantry. He had only just had breakfast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright.
Gandalf in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly. After a while, he stepped up, and with the spike on his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit's beautiful green front door. Then he strode away, just about the time when Bilbo was finishing his second cake and beginning to think that he had escaped adventures very well.
The next day he had almost forgotten about Gandalf. He did not remember things very well unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet: like this: Gandalf. Tea Wednesday. Yesterday he had been too flustered to do anything of his kind.
Just before tea time, there came a tremendous ring on the front doorbell, and then he remembered! He rushed and put on the kettle, and put out another cup and saucer, and an extra cake or two, and ran to the door. Diamond studs that fastened themselves and never came undone till ordered? Not the fellow who used to tell such wonderful tales at parties, about dragons and goblins and giants and the rescue of princesses and the unexpected luck of widows' sons? Not the man that used to make such particularly excellent fireworks! I remember those! Old Took used to have them on Midsummer's Eve. Splendid! They used to go up like great lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire and hang in the twilight all evening!" You will notice already that Mr. Baggins was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, and also that he was very fond of flowers. "Dear me!" he went on. "Not the Gandalf who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures? Anything from climbing trees to visiting elves- or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! Bless me, life used to be quite inter - I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time. I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business."
"Where else should I be?" said the wizard. "All the same I am pleased to f