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Page 36

"Oh, if that's all that's necessary--" He stopped in the center
of the busy Ring with every evident intention of proposing again.

"Please, Peter!"

"Aha! Victory! Well, what about the Frau Professor Bergmeister?"

"She asks so many questions about America; and I cannot answer
them."

"For instance?"

"Well, taxes now. She's very much interested in taxes."

"Never owned anything taxable except a dog--and that wasn't a tax
anyhow; it was a license. Can't you switch her on to medicine or
surgery, where I'd be of some use?"

"She says to-morrow we'll talk of the tariff and customs duties."

"Well, I've got something to say on that." He pulled from his
overcoat pocket a largish bundle--Peter always bulged with
packages--and held it out for her to see. "Tell the Frau
Professor Bergmeister with my compliments," he said, "that
because some idiot at home sent me five pounds of tobacco,
hearing from afar my groans over the tobacco here, I have passed
from mere financial stress to destitution. The Austrian customs
have taken from me to-day the equivalent of ten dollars in duty.
I offered them the tobacco on bended knee, but they scorned it."

"Really, Peter?"

"Really."

Under this lightness Harmony sensed the real anxiety. Ten dollars
was fifty Kronen, and fifty Kronen was a great deal of money. She
reached over and patted his arm.

"You'll make it up in some way. Can't you cut off some little
extravagance?"

"I might cut down on my tailor bills." He looked down at himself
whimsically. "Or on ties. I'm positively reckless about ties!"

They walked on in silence. A detachment of soldiery, busy with
that eternal military activity that seems to get nowhere, passed
on a dog-trot. Peter looked at them critically.

"Bosnians," he observed. "Raw, half-fed troops from Bosnia, nine
out of ten of them tubercular. It's a rotten game, this military
play of Europe. How's Jimmy?"

"We left him very happy with your letter."

Peter flushed. "I expect it was pretty poor stuff," he
apologized. "I've never seen the Alps except from a train window,
and as for a chamois--"

"He says his father will surely send him the horns."

Peter groaned.

"Of course!" he said. "Why, in Heaven's name, didn't I make it an
eagle? One can always buy a feather or two. But horns? He really
liked the letter?"

"He adored it. He went to sleep almost at once with it in his
hands."

Peter glowed. The small irritation of the custom-house forgotten,
he talked of Jimmy; of what had been done and might still be
done, if only there were money; and from Jimmy he talked boy. He
had had a boys' club at home during his short experience in
general practice. Boys were his hobby.

"Scum of the earth, most of them," he said, his plain face
glowing. "Dirty little beggars off the street. At first they
stole my tobacco; and one of them pawned a medical book or two!
Then they got to playing the game right. By Jove, Harmony, I wish
you could have seen them! Used to line 'em up and make 'em
spell, and the two best spellers were allowed to fight it out
with gloves--my own method, and it worked. Spell! They'd spell
their heads off to get a chance at the gloves. Gee, how I hated
to give them up!"

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 22nd Dec 2025, 9:09

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart