They passed out of the Bowery, and turned into Twelfth Street. Most of the houses still had their eyelids shut in sleep, and their brick faces looked dull, lacking all interest in life, as if it were hardly worth while to wake up for another day patterned upon a dreary yesterday. But in the middle of the first block there was one house which showed some faint signs of life.
Originally it had resembled its neighbours in all essential features, but the front on the ground floor had been altered, a large window of plate glass having been put in; and from this window a sleepy, sulky, bullet-headed youth was in the act of removing a few gouts of mud splashed up by some passing cart. Above the wide window, in all the glory of red and gold paint not yet faded, was the legend: "This is Alexander the Great's." Inside, its face turned towards the glass, was a big, framed blackboard covered with pictorial advertisements of various dishes, done in chalks of violent hues, while from a gilded strip of cornice depended large squares of cardboard glorifying Alexander the Great and his system, in lettering of black and scarlet.
"Yesterday's show," explained Bill. "My work, the whole lot. The cards last out the week; but the meenoo on the blackboard's new every day. I tell you, it takes brain work! Hurry up, chum. I'm late."
The sleepy youth left the door open, and they went in, passing directly into a room fitted up as a restaurant. The walls were painted with lurid representations of Alexander the Great's battles, the costumes and scenery having been studied more with a view to sensational effect than accuracy of historical detail. There was a wild melée of warriors mixed with palm trees, against backgrounds of rose-red sky, and cobalt sea; and the face of Alexander—always a prominent figure in each scene—was evidently a portrait done from a Hebraic model.
"What do you think of it?" asked Bill, who was hastily unbuttoning his overcoat, to reveal a collar of immaculate celluloid and a jacket or "blazer" of blue and yellow stripes.
"It's very striking," replied Val.
"My idea," said Bill, proudly. "Got it from the name over the door, as I passed by that first day. Came to me like a shot. And then I thought of the picture meenoos. When they're goin' to have rabbit, give 'em a rabbit nibblin' a bit of lettuce—make it realistic. When they're goin' to hev punkin pie, just make their mouths water only to see its portrait in the window, so they've got to walk in and eat a chunk of the old original, if it takes their bottom nickel. Now, while I work like heat lightnin', you amuse yerself examinin' my Shay Doovers."
As he spoke, he darted to a door at the back of the room, in front of which hung a red curtain. Behind this curtain he disappeared with his cherished overcoat, returning in a moment without the coat and with the materials for his work, in a wooden box originally intended for starch. Whistling melodiously "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls," he mounted the low platform in the window, which supported the blackboard, and began to mop out yesterday's brilliant triumphs with a wet sponge.
A list of the principal dishes for the day had been jotted down for him in pencil on a bit of paper which he pinned to the frame of the blackboard lest memory prove treacherous in some succulent detail; and then, with true artistic abandonment, he forgot everything except his work.
Meanwhile, Loveland sought the neighbourhood of a huge stove which, its flaming mouth muzzled with talc, looked like a black, round-bodied goblin squatting, short-legged, on an island of zinc. The sulky boy had made up the fire; and carrying off a coal-scuttle full of grey ashes which he had raked out, he too vanished behind the red curtain.