“I’m sorry. Did—did you write anything?”
“I began an epic,” answered the poet, touched, for the moment, by this unexpected sympathy. “An epic in blank verse, on ‘Disappointment.’”
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” continued Elaine, coldly. “And that reminds me. I have hunted through my room, in every possible place, and found nothing.”
A flood of painful emotion overwhelmed the poet, and he buried his face in his hands. In a flash, Elaine was violently angry, though she could not have told why. She marched out of the dining-room and slammed the door. “Delicate, sensitive soul,” she said to herself, scornfully. “Wants people to hunt for money he thinks may be hidden in his room, and yet is so far above sordidness that he can’t hear it spoken of!”
Seeing Mr. Chester pacing back and forth moodily at some distance from the house, Elaine rushed out to him. “Dick,” she cried, “he is a lobster!”
Dick’s clouded face brightened. “Is he?” he asked, eagerly, knowing instinctively whom she meant. “Elaine, you’re a brick!” They shook hands in token of absolute agreement upon one subject at least, and the girl’s right hand hurt her for some little time afterward.
Left to himself, Mr. Perkins mused upon the dread prospect before him. For years he had calculated upon a generous proportion of his Uncle Ebeneezer’s estate, and had even borrowed money upon the strength of his expectations. These debts now loomed up inconveniently.
The vulgar, commercial people from whom Mr. Perkins had borrowed filthy coin were quite capable of speaking of the matter, and in an unpleasant manner at that. The fine soul of Mr. Perkins shrank from the ordeal. He had that particular disdain of commercialism which is inseparable from the incapable and unsuccessful, and yet, if the light of his genius were to illuminate a desolate world, Mr. Perkins must have money.
He might even have to degrade himself by coarse toil—and hitherto, he had been too proud to work. The thought was terrible. Pegasus hitched to the plough was nothing compared with the prospect of Mr. Perkins being obliged to earn three or four dollars a week in some humble, common capacity.
Then a bright idea came to his rescue. “Mr. Carr,” he thought, “the gentleman who is now entertaining me—he is doing my own kind of work, though of course it is less fine in quality. Perhaps he would like the opportunity of going down to posterity as the humble Mæcenas of a new Horace.”