"'I haven't seen it,' I said very coldly.
"'Well, all right. Don't get cross about it. Out into the dark and cold, out into the wintry night, without a cent to have and hold, but landladies are always right.'
"He smiled appealingly but I frowned at him with my most ministerial air.
"'I am a poet,' he said apologetically. 'I can't help going off like that. It isn't a mental aberration. I do it for a living.'
"I had nothing to say.
"'My card.' He handed it to me with a flourish, a neatly engraved one, with the word 'advertisement' in the corner. I should have haughtily spurned it, but I was too curious to know his name. It was William Canfield Brewer.
"'Well, good night. May your sleep be undisturbed by my ghost stalking solitary through your slumbers. May no fumes from my pipe interfere with the violet de parme you represent. If you want any advertising done, just call on me, William Canfield Brewer. I write poetry, draw pictures, make up stories, and prove to the absolute satisfaction of the most skeptical public that any article is even better than you say it is. I command a princely salary,—but I can't command it long enough. Adieu, I go, my lady, fare thee well.'
"'Good night.'
"I could hardly wait for breakfast, I was so anxious to ask about him. I gleaned the following facts. The landlady had packed his belongings in an old closet and rented me the room in his absence, as he surmised. He is a darling old idiot who would rather buy the chauffeur a cigar than pay for his board. He says it is less grubby. He is too good a fellow to make both ends meet. He is too devoted to his friends to neglect them for business. He can write the best ads in Chicago and get the most money for it, but he can't afford the time. Mrs. Gaylord is a stingy old cat, she always gets her money if she waits long enough, and he pays three times as much as anything is worth when he does pay. Mrs. Gaylord's niece is infatuated with him, without reciprocation, and Mrs. Gaylord wanted her, the niece, to stick to the grocer's son; she says there is more money in being advertised than advertising others. Wouldn't Prudence faint if she could hear this gossip? Don't tell her,—and I wouldn't repeat it for the world.
"I hoped he would come back for another room,—there is lots of experience in him, I am sure, but he sent for his things. So that is over. I found his pipe. And I am keeping it so if he gets smokey and comes back he may have it.