Again the barber counted the change, again he totaled the numbers on the registered slip. They would not agree. That painful lack of a quarter could not be bridged.
"He said it was automatic bookkeeping," moaned the barber, glaring at the slip that would register nothing less than three dollars and sixty cents.
"The bookkeeping's all right," said the Watermelon, "it's the money that ain't."
He gathered up the coins, slowly, lovingly, and the barber turned away from the painful sight.
"Do you want a shave?" he asked crossly.
The Watermelon sank gracefully into the chair. "It's hard luck," said he sympathetically, "but you oughtn't to be so easy. Get wise, get wise."
CHAPTER III
ENTER MR. BATCHELOR
With hair nicely cut, face once more as smooth as a boy's, and three dollars and ten cents in his pocket, the Watermelon gazed fondly at himself in the glass and felt sorry for James. He gently patted his hair, wet, shiny and smelling of bay rum, arranged his hat with great nicety at just the graceful angle he preferred as doing the most justice to his charms, and sallied forth to look for a suit of clothes. He had scanned critically those he had encountered in the barber shop with an eye to future possession, but none of them, at least what he had been able to see of them, the coat having generally been conspicuous by its absence, had pleased him. They had the uncompromising cut of the country and the Watermelon felt that the attractions that gazed back at him from the mirror were worthy of something better. He had a vague fancy for light gray with a pearl-colored waistcoat and purple socks—a suit possessing the gentle folds and undulations of the city, not the scant, though sturdy, outlines of the country. The hotel seemed the best place to look for what he wanted, so he turned in that direction.
The hotel was several miles from the village. Its gables and chimneys could be seen rising in majestic aloofness from the woods on a distant hillside. The Watermelon paused where the road dipped down again into the valley and ran his eye over the intervening landscape. By the road, it would be at least five miles; through the woods, the distance dwindled to about three. The Watermelon took to the woods. They became thicker at every step, the quiet and shade deeper and deeper. A bird's call echoed clear and sweet as though among the pillars of some huge grotto. A brook laughed between its mossy banks, tumbling into foamy little waterfalls over every boulder that got in its path. The Watermelon determined to follow the brook, sure that in the end it would lead him to the hotel. City people had a failing for brooks and no hotel management would miss the chance of having one gurgling by, close at hand. The brook grew wider and wider, and through a break in the trees the Watermelon saw a lake, disappearing in the leafy distance. He heard a splash and saw the shiny white body of a man rise for one joyful moment from the green depths ahead and then dive from sight with another cool splash.