H. To five years ago?
E. Perhaps. (Returns just as she is leaving the room.) But, Harold, Harold, I thought an afternoon tea was so safe, or I should never have asked you.
H. And so did I—or I should never have come.
Curtain.
THE COMMONEST POSSIBLE STORY
By Bliss Perry
Philander Atkinson, bachelor of law and writer of light verse, sat one murky August evening in his hall-bedroom, with the gas turned low, wondering whether the night would be too hot for sleep. At a quarter before ten a loitering messenger-boy brought him a line from his friend Darnel: Come around at once. Just back. The very greatest news. Thereupon Atkinson discarded his smoking-jacket, reluctantly exchanged his slippers for shoes, and took the car down to Twelfth Street, remembering meanwhile that Darnel’s brief vacation from the Broadway Bank expired that day, and speculating as to the nature of the great news which the clerk had brought back from Vermont. The lawyer was a Vermonter too, and it was this fact, as well as a common literary ambition, that had drawn the young fellows together at first, long before Philander, on the strength of having two triolets paid for, had moved up to Thirty-first Street. Philander Atkinson liked Darnel, admired his feverish energy and his pluck, envied his acquaintance with books. He had always persisted in thinking that Darnel’s stories would sell, if only some magazine would print one for a starter; and he had patiently listened to most of these stories, and to some of them several times over. Yet Darnel had never had any luck; had never had even his deserts; and the sincerity of his congratulations whenever Atkinson’s verses saw the light always caused Philander to feel a trifle awkward. He knew that the indefatigable clerk had two or three manuscripts “out”—out in the mails—when the vacation began, and as he turned in at Darnel’s boarding-house he had almost persuaded himself that The Æon had accepted “Laki,” his friend’s Egyptian story. It was a long climb up to Darnel’s room, and the writer of light verse mounted deliberately, being fat with overmuch sitting in his office chair. On the third floor the air was heavy with orange-flowers and Bonsilene roses, and a caterer was carrying away ice-boxes. A whimsical rhyme came into Philander’s head, and he made a mental note of it. Just then Darnel appeared, leaning over the balustrade of the fourth-floor landing, his coat off, his collar visibly the worse for the railway journey, and an eager smile upon his thin, homely face.
“Hullo, D.,” said Philander. “Here I am. Been having a wedding here?” he added in a low voice, as he grasped Darnel’s hand.