“Nazimova is doing Ibsen uptown,” suggested Jack, “and I have a couple of tickets. Let's go and see Ibsen lb a little.”
“Nope,” said Tommy. “Ibsen's got too much sense. I want something silly. Me for a cabaret, or some kind of a hop garden.”
V
But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble, sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts.
The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the day before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on either side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly in spite of his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived only in the rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that had once been sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only assertive thing about him. His manner was far from aggressive.
An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk again and inquired timidly of the clerk, “There's a fire near here?”
“Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk.
“I heard the—the engines,” said the guest apologetically.
“Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk again. And then, “Nervous about fire?”
The old party seemed startled.