“Yes, you’ve said that three times already. Now give us the details. Elevation, openings, cornice, roof line, and——”
Again Joe roared, this time with his head thrown back, his white teeth glistening. “That’s just like you, Sam, you never had a soul above bricks and mortar, and you never——”
“Well, I don’t go out of my head over every petticoat I come across.” He was inside the drafting-room now, and was holding the door open between them. “And, another thing, Joe, take my advice and stop where you are. The girl no doubt’s all right, and the mother may be all right, but the father is a queer one. Looks like a cross between a tract distributer and a lightning-rod man. Go slow, Joe,” and he shut the door between them.
By the end of the week the Fords had settled down in their new quarters, so far as outside activities were concerned. But what was going on inside the unlucky suite of rooms, no one but Matilda knew. Moses had volunteered the remark, that when a carpet was full of holes “it didn’t make no diff’unce which side you laid down.” But whether this mutilation was discovered in one of Fords’ Axminsters or in his own floor coverings, Joe did not catch, nor did he press the inquiry.
His impatience, however, to get inside the sacred precinct was not cooled, and he was still at fever heat. Nor had the proposed entertainment been abandoned, Joe forcing the topic whenever the opportunity offered, Sam invariably side-tracking it whenever it was possible. To-night, however, Joe was going to have it out, and Sam, being entirely comfortable, was prepared to listen. Neither of them had engagements which would take them from their rooms, and so Joe had donned his brown velvet jacket, and Atwater had slipped his thin body into what Joe called his “High Church” pajamas, an embroidered moiré-antique dressing-gown, cut after the pattern of a priest’s robe, which a devoted aunt had made for him with her own hands, and which, to quote Joe, “should always be worn with smoked glasses as safeguards against certain dangerous forms of ophthalmia.”
Joe, finding another mail heaped up on his pad—there was always a mail for Joe—had seated himself at his desk, his legs stretched out like a ten-inch gun, his shapely feet in thin-soled, patent-leather shoes, resting on one corner of the colonial. Sam occupied the sofa, the slim curve of his girth almost parallel to the straight line of the Hidalgo’s favorite lounge.
Several schemes looking to a further and more lasting acquaintance had been discussed and rejected. One was to leave their own door ajar, be in wait until Fords’ was opened, and then in the most unexpected manner meet some one of the family on the stairs, Joe’s affability to do the rest.
Another was to waylay Ford as he entered from the street, engage him in conversation, and keep it up until he had reached his door, when Joe would be invited in and asked to make himself at home. This last was Atwater’s. Indeed, both of these “vulgar absurdities” (Joe’s view-point) were Atwater’s.
“Well, then,” retorted Sam, “go down like a man—now. It isn’t too late. It’s only nine o’clock. Ring the bell or pound on his door, and present your card. That’s the way you would do anywhere up-town. Try it here. Chuck that box of matches this way, Joe, my pipe’s out.”
Joe chucked, stretched his shapely legs another inch, and resumed: