And rapidly laugh till all this world is warm."
Bennie listened, as Rhoda spoke the lines, spellbound at the poet's imagination.
"By golly," he cried, in admiration, "that's more wonderful than—than actually doing it!"
III
Bentham T. Tassifer had paused, as usual, at the Metropolitan Club, on his way home from the Department of Justice, and, as a natural consequence, was exuding his regular post-meridian benignity. In his own little official occupation of the day—the joker in the contract for the new post-office at Pocalla, Texas—he had entirely forgotten the disappearance of his niece, as well as the anticipated collision between the wandering asteroid and the earth which he so honored by living upon it. He had followed his ordinary custom of going directly to the bar and consuming a sherry and bitters with an audible, guzzling satisfaction, something between the gurgles of a dying bathtub and the intake of a hippopotamus. Then his lordly little eye fell upon the lank form of his golfing friend Judson, of the Department of Agriculture, leaning in contemplation before a tumbler from which o'erlapped a sprig of mint.
"'Lo!" he remarked, with an intonation signifying 'Behold, minion; King John, your king and England's, doth approach!'
"'Lo yuhself!" returned Judson. "Djuh see somethin' happened to that comet?"
"Eh?" demanded the solicitor. "Comet? You mean the asteroid, I suppose? What's happened to it?"
Judson took a sip from the tumbler and turned savagely upon Tassifer.