However, the Canadian decided to stay in New York for the winter anyway; it was lively then, he was told, with the presence of returned "seasoners" and other summer absentees. He asked the cashier for promotion, and received it, along with two dollars increase in salary. He made up his mind to save five dollars a week; he could live and have considerable pleasure on the other twelve dollars.
Mardi Gras was over; not a straw hat was to be seen; the mornings grew chilly; theatres were in full swing. Then Miss Harris got Evan in with a "crowd"; the department stores hauled out their Christmas things; and with the first flurry of snow the whole town slid into winter.
The New York winter looked, at first, like a bluff. The man from Canada refused to wear an overcoat until one day a breeze came sweeping over the Atlantic and took him in hand; after that he had great respect for the climate.
Ethel Harris made good as a comrade. She knew how to keep things going. Evan was astonished at the ease with which he mixed in things; the boys seemed to have a way of fixing up that he could hardly catch, but they were a jovial bunch. An odd one was after the order of Castle, but most of them resembled Bill Watson in manner. The girls all expected to marry Riverside Drive property owners, but aside from that they were sane and congenial. Evan knew about how much money they made, and consequently took considerable delight in their exaggerations. They were practically all stenographers.
It takes New Yorkers to be friendly. The city is so big it resembles the world. In it there are as many countries as the world boasts, and when the members of a social set meet they come like so many travellers from the ends of the earth, bringing stories with them that Park Row reporters never hear about. There is real life and entertainment in a gathering of young Manhattanites.
Evan took great pleasure in those parties. Often he danced with some girl who had gone on the stage (for about one performance), and there was considerable romance in that. As the winter passed he wondered if he really wanted to leave those friends and that gaiety. Ethel treated him so well he was glad to spend all his spare money on her, at theatres, suppers and so on. But he always put away the five dollars a week just the same. He was led to believe that not many New York lads did that much for their future.
In February a Southerner came on the scene. The first night of his reception in the crowd he succeeded in breaking the hearts of half the girls; the other half succumbed the second night. The Southerner was not a flirt—that may have accounted for his elaborate success. He was so far from being a flirt that he fell in love with Ethel Harris and proposed to her.
Now, the real working-out kind of proposal is not so common in New York as, judging from the population, one might suppose. Ethel began to advise Nelson against spending so much money foolishly. For a while her objections to his "friendship" were overruled; but finally she got desperate and candidly told the Canuck he was up against Kentucky. He had to take the hint.
Thus, again, Evan was impressed with the uncertainty of things in the metropolis. He took Ethel's engagement to heart for a day or two, until an office-girl accidentally slipped while passing his desk and steadied herself on his neck. She proved to be a married woman, however, and Evan turned his attention to spring.
Appearances are against the ex-bankclerk, but he must not be judged too rashly on the head of his Manhattan experiences. It looks as if he had forgotten all about Toronto and Hometon; but he had not. He had never written Frankie, it is true, but he had heard about her from his sister and had a dim idea that some day he would go back and marry her. It is remarkable how a fellow sticks to his home-town girl! Through jealousies about other girls, like Ethel Harris, through the maze of a dance with actresses, he still sees the face that smiled on him across the school-room hack in the old town.