"It is an absolute miracle!" brightened the stranger quite precipitously.
With a shrug of his shoulders Jaffrey Bretton resumed the lighting of his cigarette.
"The days—of miracles—are reputedly over," he confided very casually between puffs. "But the natural phenomenon of a formal apology is still occasionally observed, I believe, in the case where either a very crude or a very cruel injustice has been done."
With a click of his own heels the stranger added at least an inch to his otherwise slouching height.
"I apologize in all languages!" he hastened to affirm. 75
"'Jeg beklager at jeg har været uhöflig.' That's it in Norwegian, I believe! Now in Spanish——"
"What is just 'Plain Sorry?'" interrupted Jaffrey Bretton.
"I am!" cried the stranger. Like a sign post pointing "This way to the Smile!" the faint white scar that slashed across his face seemed to twitch suddenly towards the astonishing dimple in his left cheek. Robbed for that single instant of its frowning, furtive-eyed emphasis, his whole haggard young face assumed an expression of extraordinary ingenuousness. "Certainly, you've been awfully decent to me!" he smiled. "Thank you for being so— so decent! But—but—whatever in the world made you so decent?" he began to waver ever so slightly. "Most fa—fathers you know, would have knocked me down!"
"I—don't—knock—sick men down," said Jaffrey Bretton quite simply.
"Sick men?" flared the stranger, all eyes again.