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Page 11
To-day the Italian vender of plaster statuettes caught his eye. For an
hour now the poor wretch hadn't even drawn the attention of one of the
thousands passing. Fitzgerald felt sorry for him, and once the desire
came to go over and buy out the Neapolitan; but he was too comfortable
where he was, and beyond that he was expecting a friend.
Fitzgerald was thirty, with a clean-shaven, lean, and eager face,
russet in tone, well offset by the fine blue eyes which had the faculty
of seeing little and big things at the same time. He had dissipated in
a trifling fashion, but the healthy, active life he lived in the open
more than counteracted the effects. A lonely orphan, possessing a
lively imagination, is seldom free from some vice or other. There had
never been, however, what the world is pleased to term entanglements.
His guardian angel gave him a light step whenever there was any social
thin ice. Oh, he had some relatives; but as they were neither very
rich nor very poor, they seldom annoyed one another. He was, then, a
free lance in all the abused word implies; and he lived as he pleased,
spending his earnings freely and often carelessly, knowing that the
little his father had left him would keep a moderately hungry wolf from
the door. He had been born to a golden spoon, but the food from the
pewter one he now used tasted just as good.
"So here you are! I've been in the billiard-room, and the card-room,
and the bar-room."
"Talking of bar-rooms!" Fitzgerald reached for the button. "Sit down,
Hewitt, old boy. Glad to see you. Now, I'll tell you right off the
bat, nothing will persuade me. For years I've been jumping to the four
points of the compass at the beck of your old magazine and syndicate.
I'm going to settle down and write a novel."
"Piffle!" growled the editor, dropping his lanky form into a chair.
"Thank goodness, they haven't swivel chairs in the club. I've been
whirling round in one all day--a long, tall Scotch, please--but a
novel! I say, piffle!"
"Piffle it may be, but I'm going to have a whack at it. If I ever do
another article it will be as a millionaire's private secretary. I
should like to study his methods for saving his money. What is it this
time?"
"A dash to the North Pole."
"Never again north of Berlin or south of Assuan for mine. No."
"Come, Fitz; a great chance."
"When you sent me to Manila I explored hell for you, but I've cooled
off considerably since then. No ice for mine, except in silver
buckets."
"You've made a pretty good thing out of us; something like five
thousand a year and your expenses; and with the credentials we've
always given you, you have been able to see the world as few men see
it."
"That's just the trouble. You've spoiled me."
"Well, you may take my word for it, you won't have the patience to sit
down at home here and write a hundred thousand words that mean
anything. There's no reason why you can't do my work and write novels
on the side. We both know a dozen fellows who are doing it. We've got
to have this article, and you're the only man we dare trust alone on
it, if it will flatter you any to know it."
"Come, pussy, come!"
"If it's a question of more money--"
"Perish the thought!" cried Fitzgerald, clasping his knees and rocking
gently. "You know as well as I do, Hewitt, that it's the game and not
the cash. I've found a new love, my boy."
"Double harness?" with real anxiety. Hewitt bit his scrubby mustache.
When a special correspondent married that was the end of him.
"There you go again!" warned the recalcitrant. "If you don't stop
eating that mustache you'll have stomach trouble that no Scotch whisky
will ever cure. The whole thing is in a nutshell," a sly humor
creeping into his eyes. "I am tired of writing ephemeral things. I
want to write something that will last."
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