“Are you going to keep it up right along?” he asked, sceptically.
“Why not?” Sears’s tone implied the usual chip on his shoulder.
“Well, it’s very good of you,” commented the other, with almost imperceptible exaggeration.
“Oh, hell!—now you’re giving me the geehee; I can tell that even if I can’t write anonymous sonnets for the ‘Monthly.’” He gave Haydock one of his athletic tributes of affection. “You know there’s nothing good about it. What difference does it make?”
Yet in spite of Wolcott’s characteristic attitude to his indigent unknown,—it was equivalent, briefly, to a shrug of the shoulders,—the two dropped into the habit of talking together about him. They referred to him after a time as “It,” or “Crœsus,” or “The Bloated Bondholder;” and one of Wolcott’s favourite amusements was to describe in detail, with an idiotic brilliancy of invention that Haydock had never given him credit for, what “It” was doing at that particular moment.
“‘It’ must be dressing for dinner, don’t you think?” Sears would ask, apropos of nothing at all.
“Oh, do you think so,—at six o’clock?” Haydock would take out his watch, and deliberate seriously, “You see he dines at eight, probably, and that gives him just time to get away from the Somerset and take in the last few numbers at the ‘Pop’ Concert.”
“Yes,—he won’t care for long dinners this warm weather,” Sears would add; “some clams, a clear soup, a bird, a truffle or two, salad perhaps; all a man really needs of course, but nothing heavy or elaborate.”
Or again: “‘It’ had better hurry up and put that boat of his into commission if he wants to get to Poughkeepsie for the race.”
“Will he go round with her?” Haydock would consider doubtfully.