She squeezed back of Minnie, and scampered through the restaurant door.
Hiram stood watching the streams of water—that is, he looked that way.
CHAPTER VII
HIRAM, THE BUTTERFLY
"Mother, I've come home to die!" gasped Playmate Tweet.
He was seated in one of the yellow chairs near a window of the lounging room. He had dropped his newspaper and was staring at Hiram Hooker as he strode through the door.
Hiram seated himself on the edge of a chair and grinned uncomfortably.
The ordeal of appearing before Tweet in his new clothes, at first poignantly dreaded, had been absent from his thoughts for the past hour. Standing there before the jeweler's store after Lucy Dalles had left him, tingling blissfully in every vein, the mundane thought that Tweet was probably awaiting him in the lodging house had obtruded itself and hurried him up the street. As he opened the lounging-room door he thought once more of his clothes.
Tweet rubbed his eyes and looked again. "Christopher Columbus!" he added in an undertone. He blinked his eyes three times, then threw himself back and laughed uproariously.