That evening he got from Bridget the address of her brother, Professor Flaherty, the physical trainer and body builder.
In the morning he examined himself in the mirror, a fever of restlessness and impatience afflicting him with the desire to be once more presentable to the world. He had been encouraged by the fact that Butler had offered no comment on the black rims around his eyes. They must be disappearing.
With his chin in his hands he sat across the 103 room staring at his reflection in the glass, a gloomy, desolate figure.
“It wouldn’t be wise to apply for a job until these eyes are all right again,” he was saying to himself, bitterly. “Nobody would hire a man with a pair of black eyes and a busted lip—especially a druggist. I’ll simply have to wait a few days longer. Heigh-ho! To-morrow’s Sunday again. I—I wonder if Nellie will be out to see us.”
But Nellie did not come out. She journeyed far and fast in a big green car, but it was in another direction.
Thursday of the next week witnessed the sallying forth of Harvey What’s-His-Name, moved to energy by a long dormant and mournfully acquired ambition. The delay had been irksome.
Nellie’s check for the month’s expenses had arrived in the mail that morning. He folded it carefully and put it away in his pocketbook, firmly resolved not to present it at the bank. He intended to return it to her with the announcement that he had secured a position and hereafter would do the providing.
Spick and span in his best checked suit, his 104 hat tilted airily over one ear, he stepped briskly down the street. You wouldn’t have known him, I am sure, with his walking-stick in one hand, his light spring overcoat over the other arm. A freshly cleaned pair of grey gloves, smelling of gasoline, covered his hands. On the lapel of his coat loomed a splendid yellow chrysanthemum. Regular football weather, he had said.
The first drug store he came to he entered with an air of confidence. No, the proprietor said, he didn’t need an assistant. He went on to the next. The same polite answer, with the additional information, in response to a suggestion by the applicant, that the soda-water season was over. Undaunted, he stopped in at the restaurant in the block below. The proprietor of the place looked so sullen and forbidding that Harvey lost his courage and instead of asking outright for a position as manager he asked for a cup of coffee and a couple of fried eggs. As the result of this extra and quite superfluous breakfast he applied for the job.
The man looked him over scornfully.