"I mean from your standpoint. I dare presume that the Milliken female has a holy horror of sprouting infants, like all landladies. She would naturally foresee a notice to quit from the old couple, disturbed in their slumbers, and extravagance in the use of hot water and linen would stare her in the face. You have made me sympathize with you for nothing, for your Murillo-woman will vanish into space and become the handmaiden of a scrub in the making. Henceforth, the case will only interest the Bureau of Vital Statistics and the manufacturers of improvements on mother's milk. Give me another cigarette."
I handed him the cardboard box, for, although I have a silver case, I never know where it is. If I did, I wouldn't use it since I don't believe in flaunting one's vices. He took a cigarette, tapped it on the back of his hand, and engaged in conversation the lonely policeman, who had strolled over to see that we were not flouting the majesty of the law by dozing on the bench. He remarked that the night was fine but warm, Gordon assenting. Then my friend suddenly asked him what kind of boots he wore, and put down the address most carefully on his cuff, thanking him effusively, after which the guardian walked off, ponderously.
"Will you kindly explain your object?" I asked Gordon, who has what the French call the coquetterie du pied and asserts there's only one man in New York who can make boots, a delusion that costs him about fifteen dollars a pair.
"You're not lacking in sympathy," he instructed me, "but, on your part, the feeling is but an unintelligent instinct. Any idiot can feel sorry for a cripple or a man compelled by poverty to smoke cheap tobacco. I now call your attention to the fact that this old minion is ancient and corpulent. He's on his feet during all working hours, and his cogitations must often turn to his nether extremities. He carefully nurses them, while he raps those of lawless slumberers on these seats. Civilly, I spoke to him of the subject uppermost in his mind, and now he has left us, happy in the thought that he has put a fellowman on the right road. That's what I call taking a sympathetic interest in a deserving old ass. You didn't suppose for a moment that I'd wear such beastly things, did you?"
"You would rather go barefooted," I told him.
"I would," he assented. "If Gordon McGrath appeared in the street, naked as to his toes, the papers would mention the fact. The Banner would send me the famed Cordelia, who would insist on photographing my feet for publication in a Sunday supplement, with a hint to the effect that I am a rather well known painter. It would be an advertisement."
"If I went without boots, benevolent old ladies would stop me and hand out copper pennies," I remarked, without jealousy.
"You just wait till the 'Land o' Love' is out, old man," he told me, "and the same old dames will write for your autograph."
Gordon is quite daffy over the book I sent to my publishers last week. He has read the first, one middle and the last chapter, and predicts great things for it. Of course, I know better, for it will be just like the others. From four to six thousand copies sold, a few flattering notices, mostly in journals unheard of, and swift oblivion after some months. But I care nothing that I may be a scrub among writers, for the occupation suits me. I am not ambitious, and I can rise late in the morning, pound the keys of my old machine for an hour before lunch, waste a good part of the afternoon in one of the libraries, and go to work again after the hand-organs and knife-grinders have been abed some hours. Then, some time before sunrise, the rattle of milk-carts remind me of Mrs. Milliken's bedspring and mattress, and I go to bed. I am not doing so badly, and sell one or two short stories every month. Last year I opened an account in the savings bank. The time may come when I shall be classed among the malefactors of great wealth.
"But one reader ever wrote to me," I finally answered. "It was a young person anxious to know whether I could recommend the 'City's Wrath' as a birthday present to a Baptist aunt. I advised against it, thus cheating myself out of ten per cent. royalty on a dollar thirty-five."