“Speaking of ‘needin’ nothin’ else,’” said he, “reminds me of Old Man Wetherwolks who used to live at Pompton when I was a kid. He used to get jagged as reg’lar as pay-day came ’round. Had a battin’ av’rage of seven nights a week. Then when he’d blowed his last nickel he’d make us boys pilot him home. It wasn’t any cinch, either. For his wife was always waitin’ at the door. An’ the chunks of language she’d hand out to us would a’ fried an iceberg. One night, I remember, we brought the ol’ sot home worse’n usual. She was right there with the tongue-lashin’. She told him what a swine he was to spend all his fam’ly’s cash on booze and how he was a disgrace to his town, an’ other nice comfortin’ things like that. She wound up by screechin’: ‘An’ you haven’t a single redeemin’ trait, you worthless drunkard!’ That was too much for Wetherwolks. He c’lapsed on the bottom step and began to cry. ‘You’re right, m’dear,’ he whines. ‘Ev’ry word you say is true. I haven’t a single redeemin’ trait. But,’ an’ here he throws his chest out an’ looks stern an’ noble, ‘But in ev’ry other respec’ I’m a dam’ fine man!’”
The anecdote somehow did not “go” as well as when Conover had told it in the back room of Kerrigan’s saloon. But if there was constraint in its reception, he did not observe it. Letty, dropping her voice, to shut him out of the general talk, inquired:
“Where is Pompton? I don’t think I ever heard of it. Did I? Are our Pompton Avenue and the Pompton Club named for it?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “It’s a little place, ’way up in the North Jersey hills. Swarmin’ with commuters, by now, I s’pose. I used to live there for a while, once, when I was learnin’ railroadin’. There’s a lake, with the soft green hills all closin’ down around it like they loved it. The sun used to set ’bout a mile from our house. It’d turn the lake all gold color. An’ then a blue sort of twilight would roll up through the valley. An’ the hills would seem to stretch out like they was goin’ to sleep.—Kind o’ pretty place,” he ended lamely.
“You are a poet!” the girl assured him with gushing uneasiness. “I had no idea you looked at nature through such roseate glasses.”
“Neither I do,” he replied, ashamed of his unwonted flight of fancy. “I was only tellin’ you how it used to seem to me when I was a half-baked kid. Since then I’ve been so busy livin’ that I’ve lost all the knack of gettin’ enthoosed over measly lan’scapes. They don’t mean anything to me now. As for po’try,—honest, I never wrote a rhyme in my life. Never read one neither when I could help it. Guess you was stringin’ me, weren’t you?”
Nevertheless he was inwardly flattered at her praise and began to look on her with an even more favoring eye. If marriage in such a set were really the keystone to social achievement, he felt he might do far worse than choose this comely, quivering-nosed damsel at his side.
“Fond of rabbits?” he asked—as unintentionally as irrelevantly.
“What an odd question!” she cried, her round eyes raising incipient distress signals. “Is it a joke?”
“No,” he answered, floundering, “I—I just happened to say it. You—you look just a little like one. A very pretty one of course,” he supplemented with mammoth gallantry.