"Well, Babette," Sam cried, "so you see I went out and I took my walk and I come back and nothing happened to me. Ain't it?"
Babette nodded.
"I'll get you your lunch right away," she said; and without removing her hat and jacket, she brought him a glass of buttermilk and six plain crackers. Sam watched her until she had ascended the stairs to the first floor; then he stole on tiptoe to the sink in the butler's pantry and emptied the buttermilk down the wastepipe. A moment later he opened the door of a bookcase that stood near the mantelpiece and deposited five of the crackers behind six full-morocco volumes entitled "Prayers for Festivals and Holy Days." He was busily engaged in eating the remaining cracker when Babette returned; and all that afternoon he seemed so contented and even jovial that Babette determined to permit him his solitary walk on the following day.
Thus Sam not only ate the chicken fricassee but three days afterward, when he visited Mrs. Schrimm upon the representation to Babette that he would sit all the morning in Mt. Morris Park, he suggested to Henrietta that he show some return for her hospitality by taking her to luncheon at a fashionable hotel downtown.
"My restaurant days is over," Mrs. Schrimm declared.
"To oblige me," Sam pleaded. "I ain't been downtown in—excuse me—such a helluva long time I don't know what it's like at all."
"If you are so anxious to get downtown, Sam," Mrs. Schrimm rejoined, "why don't you go down and get lunch with Henry? He'd be glad to have you."
"What, alone?" Sam cried. "Why, if Babette would hear of it——"
"Who's going to tell her?" Mrs. Schrimm asked, and Sam seized his hat with trembling fingers.
"By jimminy, I would do it!" he said, and then he paused irresolutely. "But how could I get home in time if I did?"