He had a great scene with his wife, one evening when I was present. He still clung to the Bowery drinking-place, and she had found out about it. She drew the most dreadful picture of Cyria growing up and becoming a drunkard. Mr. Bonstone didn’t know whether to laugh or get cross with her, for as Gringo says, “My boss’s heart isn’t on the water-waggon.” He believes in drink in moderation.
Well, Mrs. Bonstone cried, and at last her husband comforted her, and said he would never sell another drop of liquor as long as he lived.
“Nor drink it,” she sobbed.
“Well,” he said, “I never have touched it—don’t think it wrong, but hated the taste.”
He had to promise, of course. A nice woman can do anything with a man, so now the Bonstones’ house, like ours, was strictly teetotal, and if any persons fainted, they were revived pretty quick with some hot stuff that I think was mostly cayenne pepper, by the way it made persons jump.
To come back to the evening of my adventure. I slipped down Broadway, running close to the stores and keeping the people between me and the gutter. One seldom meets a policeman near shop windows. It was a lovely evening, with a warm spring-like feeling in the air, and this nice, wide, clean Broadway fascinated me more than ever, and everybody looked so happy and pleasant and well-dressed that I concluded all the people with troubles had stayed at home. Nearly every person had on new spring shoes. I really think that nowhere in the world, except in Paris, does one see such pretty, well-shod feet as in New York. I danced along, meeting quite a number of dogs, some of whom I spoke to, some of whom I did not notice. The most of them were led, and of course all had muzzles on.
I had passed several moving picture places and a few vaudeville houses, when it suddenly dawned on me that I was getting too far down Broadway, and had better return home. I cut down a side street, but did not get far, for just as I had gone a few steps, I smelt a smell, that took me back to Boston, and several years ago.
I was living then on Beacon Hill, and [in the house next to me was a fine little toy spaniel called Amarilla]. She was a little darling, and had a way of tossing her long ears as if they were curls. One day she disappeared most mysteriously. No one could ever find out what had become of the lost Amarilla, though it was suspected she had been stolen.
