“You feel that way this morning because you had to dress in a sleeper without your usual bath. A shower will set you up. You’re always rather savage when the luxuries of civilization are cut off.”
“You never can tell when a man is going to need the consolations of religion,” resumed Wingfield, reverting to Paddock. “Here I am turned into the forties, which means that I have crossed the summit and started down the shadowy side of the mountain. My last photographs cost me double—such a lot of retouching to keep me from looking like a wrinkled monkey. People are beginning to pick lint off of me—a sure sign of age. The seeds of mortal disease are abroad in my system. At night I often hear a stealthy step behind—the Ancient Destroyer taking my measure. I’m getting on. My old popularity as best man and light-footed usher is waning and I’ve passed from the active to the honorary pall-bearer list—a frank recognition of my senility. The jump from being the gay usher at a church wedding and finding aisle seats for all the prettiest girls, to marching in behind some poor devil who’s gone the long road—it jolts, my dear boy!”
“That’s what you get for being so respectable. I haven’t had any chances to carry the white ribbons since my first year at home. My social career stopped abruptly at about 3 A. M. that morning I cruised in from the country in my first motor and hit a bread wagon.”
“The popular construction placed upon that act always seemed most ungenerous,” mused Wingfield. “It was a deed of noblest benevolence, not a freak of inebriety. They are still picking up the buns you scattered from the Allegheny bridge—bread cast upon the waters turning up away down at New Orleans! I have always thought if I were to go in for that sort of thing I should attack milk wagons. They say most of our milk is impure anyhow.
“I suppose,” Wingfield continued, regarding with a frown a speck of soot on his cuff—“I suppose Mrs. Craighill will have a good time in Boston watching her husband at his gambollings with the saviours of the republic.”
“I dare say,” replied Wayne, rising and looking at his watch. “Which reminds me that I must go up to the office and sit on the lid.”
Wingfield rose at once. Wayne’s recent attendance upon his office had puzzled him. Sobriety and industry, as practised by Wayne Craighill, offered food for reflection; he was afraid to comment upon this new course in the usual terms of their raillery; he refrained from remarking upon it at all for fear of breaking the charm—whatever it might be—that had effected this change in his friend. He stood at the window of the reading-room and watched Wayne disappear toward the Craighill building.
At noon Joe reported at the Craighill offices, having brought the car down ostensibly to carry Wayne’s bag to the house, but in reality to make sure that his employer had returned in good order.
“I guess I’ll run up to the house with you and get some clean clothes, Joe. I’ll be down in a minute.”
Joe, satisfied by his inspection, lingered a moment at the door.