“That so? Where you going? Sit down! Sit down!”
“New York first,” Stacey answered cautiously.
Irene dropped into the seat beside Jimmy and crossed her legs. “I was looking for Effie Prince,” she remarked casually. “Supposed to be leaving on this train. Most likely couldn’t get her trunks packed in time. Never can. Here! You take the book I brought for her.”
“Thanks,” said Stacey. “Then you’re not going away? Sorry! I hoped you were when I saw you.”
The girl flushed faintly at this, but her embarrassment was covered by Julie, who gave a desperate choking cough.
“Here!” said her husband gravely. “Take another pastille, Julie,” and he drew a box from his pocket. “It’s that kid of ours,” he explained. “Given her whooping-cough—not a doubt of it. You’ll both have it now, probably.”
But the conductor was calling “All Aboard,” and the three departed hastily, Irene giving Stacey a mannish grip of the hand.
Stacey waved at them through the window, then stretched out in his seat and picked up Irene’s book. He laughed suddenly. It was “Les Chansons de Bilitis.”
It was, anyway, an amusing departure, and Stacey felt in quite a good humor.
But it was not a prelude to an amusing trip. Stacey wandered from city to city drearily. Except for being larger, they were no worse than Vernon; if they had been, they might have seemed less unbearable. They were merely empty—one after the other; empty places inhabited by empty people. New York sickened him. It wallowed in wealth, dazzled the eyes with it; rugs, imported motor cars, china, lights, theatres, food, more food,—there was an absorbed attempt to minister to every demand of the most exacting body, with, so far as Stacey could see, not a thought behind it all. The “Follies” were typical—gorgeous color, selected girls, riot of noise—not a word spoken that could reach beyond the intelligence of a sub-normal child. Stacey yawned through the show, to the justifiable annoyance of his companion, an old college friend, who had paid God knew what for the tickets. A hundred magazines stared at Stacey from the subway book-stalls, with a hundred pictures of sweet American girls on their covers, and who could tell how many hundred stories of thwarted Bolshevik plots among the advertisements inside?