"How dare you even hint at such an insult to a friend of mine? I consider Miss Brewster too far above either you or me to discuss her with you, about such matters."

Wise Taki had disappeared quickly and in another moment the hara.s.sed host came hurrying from the serving board. He glowered upon Tom and Jack, and grasping each one by the arm, he hustled them out into the main hall of the building and then spoke.

"You two bullies go down in the street and fight it out. I'll do you the favor to ring up the police station and call a cop to come around and take you both in custody--that's where you belong, until you come to your senses. If _I_ were a girl I'd never look at either of you again."

But this advice cooled their anger, and the moment Mr. Dalken turned to go back to his apartment both men laughed at the situation. Tom offered his hand and Baxter shook it. Then each apologised to the other, and in a few minutes they started for the door of the apartment.

But the door was locked, and, in front of it on the mat, were two small heaps: one was composed of Tom's coat and hat, with a patty and sandwich on a wooden plate, on top of it. The other small heap was Jack's dress-cape, with his silk hat topping it, and in the hat, were his gloves and the plate with refreshments. His cane hung on the door-k.n.o.b.

All the bell-ringing Tom indulged in, thereafter, failed to bring any answer. So the two young men, highly amused by their host's farewell act, ate the scanty refreshments handed out, and then left the two wooden plates in front of the door, with a note on each. The pencilled scrawls said: "Two hungry beggars thank the rich man who threw them the crumbs from his table."

After they had gone down to the ground floor, Jack said: "I'll try to get Dalken on the telephone and ask him to send us down enough company to keep us from going to sleep in the reception room."

Tom laughed and stood eagerly waiting to hear the reply. But the operator smiled and reported: "Mr. Dalken called down a few minutes ago, and said that he was not at home to anyone--not even to friends--until tomorrow morning."

So the two chagrined young men left, and whatever they did during the next few hours, no one ever knew, but from that evening both forgot their rivalry and became fast friends. Jack suddenly decided to go West and finish his engineering studies in the mountains about Pebbly Pit. And Tom decided to make one last stand for Polly, and should she still refuse him on the basis that she must finish a business experience first, then he would knuckle down to hard work and forget all about her, forever.

It was easier for Jack to carry out his purpose than for Tom to leave New York and forget Polly. But Jack managed to do as he had outlined, and before Christmas Day he had said good-by and was on his way to Denver.

Tom spent so much time and preparation before the mirror in his room, perfecting himself in the art of proposing to Polly, in such a way that she would be impressed, that he became quite self-conscious of his pose and words. On Christmas Day, he planned to coax her away by herself, and then fall upon his knees and tell his story. He had a magnificent solitaire in his pocket, waiting to be displayed at the right moment.

No one saw Tom all that Christmas morning, although his friends called on the telephone, both at his home and at the hotel. He did not reply to any calls. But late in the afternoon he sauntered forth from his room, looking more like a silly dandy than a big sensible young man who was one of the best engineers in the West.

He got in a taxi and gave directions. In front of Mr. Fabian's house, he paid the driver and went up the steps. After he had rung the bell, he felt in his pocket to make sure the ring-box was there. This was about the twentieth time he had a.s.sured himself.

The maid opened the door, and looked sorry for him.

"Miss Polly? Are the ladies in?" stammered Tom.

"No'm--no-sir, I mean," returned the maid, confused at his certainty of finding them at home. "They went out an hour ago, after tryin' to get you on the 'phone. They says they won't be back till after midnight, sir."

"Did they say where they were going?" asked Tom.

"No'm--No-sir! But I hear'n Miss Polly talk to someone on the 'phone and she says: 'Oh how lovely! We'll all go with you. And we'll meet you there for dinner,'" repeated the maid. "You see, I was openin' th' door to take more presents for the young ladies, so I hear'n that much of the talk from the table 'phone in the back hall."

Tom thanked her with a sinking heart, and turned away. Once more his fingers mechanically felt for the ring box but he experienced no thrill this time, when he found it was safe.

He walked slowly cross-town and recklessly pa.s.sed over Broadway with its traffic in full swing, looking neither to the right nor to the left. The officer shouted to rouse him from his apathy, but it failed to work.

He reached the park and found a bench. There he sat down without looking at the seat. A frantic boy ran over and yelled: "Get up, mister! Get up--you'se sittin' on my Chrismus candy!"

Tom got up as mechanically as an automaton, but a few of the gummy candies clung to his coat-tails, while the boy fearful of losing such treasure ran after the man to pick off the sticky sweets.

When he found another bench that was clear, and no boys nearby to worry his soul, Tom sat down and sulked. Having practised so faithfully all that day, in adding the finishing touches of grace to his lesson of proposing, it was a bitter dose to find all his work was wasted. Polly had joyfully accepted someone else's invitation to go away and have a good time, leaving him alone and heart-broken.

Sleet and drizzle began falling, and Tom was soon soaked through, but he was heedless of clinging clothes and wet shoes.

After an hour of self-pity, he got up and started down the drive. By this time he was almost frozen, but he congratulated himself on the fact that he might have pneumonia and die. Then Polly might feel sorry for her coldness!

Following the suggestion this idea presented, Tom wilfully waded through the slush in the gutters, and thoroughly drenched his patent-leather shoes in crossing the streets, until his feet were not only wet but freezing inside the shoes.

He found a cheap restaurant where the show-windows displayed baskets of artificial fruit; and as a center-piece of this decoration, there was a great block of ice holding up a dressed goose, with red holly twined about it.

Tom detested quick-lunch places where the steam satisfied a man's hunger, the moment he came in contact with its heavy odors, but he reveled in this evening's opportunity to be a martyr, so he sat down and ordered corn-beef and cabbage because he loathed it.

Although he could not eat much of the delectable dish he had ordered, he was determined to finish his day accordingly. So he ordered Neapolitan ice-cream and coffee. The ice-cream was served with the tissue paper still wrapped about the cake--to prove that no hands had been in contact with the dessert before serving it. But the highly colored stripes of the soapy cream that refused to melt, even when he dropped a spoonful into his oily coffee, cured him of further martyrdom to the cause of love.

He hastily got up from the table, paid his ticket and ran out. By this time, he felt so sick and chilled that he gloated in the a.s.surance that soon he would be in a raging fever. He pictured Polly's regrets when she should return home at midnight and hear that he had been taken to a hospital, with a fatal case of double pneumonia. He had decided on having it double, after he left the restaurant, as that would kill him sooner.

In this state of mind he had to dodge a taxi and slipped to fall into a mud puddle.

But Tom could not resist the desire to see his mother once more, before he died; and after fighting off this inclination for another hour or two, he was feeling so perfectly awful, that he knew his last call had come for him.

He had been sneezing every few minutes for the past hour, and his eyes were running like twin rivers. His nose was so stuffy that he could hardly enunciate the words, when he told a cabby to "Ta-ge me to sig siggy-sig West End Avenoo."

During the short time he was in the cab, he could not breathe, and he had to keep his mouth open to be able to inhale any air at all. He paid off the taxi, and went to his mother's apartment. Before he could change his mind about calling, he had pushed the bell-b.u.t.ton.

He heard someone coming down the hall, and at the same time a door in front opened and the laughter and noise of many merry voices reached him as he stood waiting on the doormat.

"Good evening, Mr. Tom--a merry Christmas," said the maid, smilingly.

"Goo' ebeneeg, Kadrina," mumbled Tom, scowling as he looked towards the front room whence came the merry-making.

"Don' dell anyone I'm here, but dell Modder I'm sig and wand do see her ride away," explained Tom, snuffingly.

"You got a bad cold in your nose, ain't chew?" said Katrina, sympathetically.

"No!" shouted Tom, furiously. "I G.o.d'da case ob double pneumonia!"

Katrina jumped at the unexpected shout, and hurried to the front room to call her mistress. Instead of remembering to keep Tom's presence a secret, she whispered loud enough for Polly to hear:

"Mr. Tom jus' come in an' his nose is red as a beet. His eyes is runnin', too, an' he needs a atmosizer to blow in his head, to clear out the snuffles so's he kin open his lungs, widdout keepin' his mouth open all th' time."

Instead of fainting with horror as Tom had pictured she might, Polly laughed at Katrina's description, and Mrs. Latimer smiled and turned to her guests to excuse herself, by saying:

"Tom just came in, poor boy, with a stuffy cold in his head. I'll put his feet in mustard and see that he drinks a hot gla.s.s of doctored lemonade, then I'll be back."

So Tom, instead of bidding his mother an eternal farewell and dying alone and abandoned, as he had planned, in a hospital ward, was soon made to scald his feet in hot mustard water, while his mother's flannel kimono replaced his bedraggled clothing, and a heavy blanket was wrapped about him, and he was offered a nasty drink of lemonade, but what else was in it other than lemon only his mother knew!

By this time he felt so wretched that he cared nothing for solitaires or fiancees; all he wanted was to get one good long breath through his nose once more before he choked to death.

His mother had returned to the merry-making in the parlors, and Tom sat huddled in his unbecoming bedding in his mother's dressing-room. Every few minutes he had to use Katrina's "atmosizer" for his nose, or gasp for breath.

Just as the perspiration began to pour out of every pore, and his feet felt like scalded lobsters, and the vaseline his mother had smeared in his eyes and over his nose, to void any chaffing, had been trickled all over his face, Polly tiptoed into the room that opened to the dressing-room where he sat.

He held his breath, fearing lest she hear him gasp and find him in this awful predicament. He could not see her after she closed the hall-door, but he wondered what she was doing. At this moment, a tickling in his nose began and he knew it portended a sneeze! He must prevent it, or Polly would track him down. If she ever saw him in this condition, after all his hard study to propose gracefully, he would take poison!

But the sneeze was imperative, and it burst forth in such an explosion, that Polly screamed faintly from just behind the door of the little room.

"Go'way! I won'd see anyone," commanded Tom.