Dear folk:
Lots of things have happened since you left, good, bad, and indifferent. Flick has disappeared. Where the deuce he’s landed is beyond me. He’s been gone two weeks and never sent a word. He started on a spree after selling the masterpiece to Wimpheimer & Goldfinch, for fifteen hundred dollars down and a royalty of five hundred a year. This must have been too much for him, for he started in to celebrate. Don’t blame him, do you? It almost made me take up drinking. As far as I can make out from what they tell me, the firm put one of their best little drinkers up against Flick, a fellow called Steinweld—quite a decent old sport, too. According to him, he started Flick at lunch, kept with him through the afternoon and evening, and ran him into a couple of their traveling men to take up the job. Flick not only cleaned up the contract, but matched the crowd for all their spare change and then kept on matching until he’d won about six trunks of spring styles which were waiting over in the depot to go out the next day. More than that, he ran them into some benefit ball up in Terrace Garden. You know Flick. The dance, they’re not sure it was at the garden, either, broke up with a free fight, and when they woke up the next day, they were enjoying the hospitality of the city. The last they remember of Flick he was leading the grand march with the winner of some popularity contest. They weren’t sure just where this was—they said they’d been so many places! However, Goldfinch was a sport, stuck by the bargain, said they’d been caught at their own game. But what do you think happened to Flick! The only clue I have had, was the arrival of a strange-looking pup, which Sassafras says is a coon-dog, which came here in a box, half starved and howling like mischief. Box was addressed to Flick from some point on a southern railroad line. Sounds as though he were still alive, doesn’t it?
When are you coming back? It’s awfully glum up here, you can imagine, with everyone away. I’ve been working hard, all summer, drawing like mad—think you’ll say I’m getting somewhere. As far as news goes, there are some queer turns. Old Pomello died some three months after the marriage, over in Italy—pneumonia, I believe. Belle Shaler had a note from Myrtle. Queer, isn’t it? Wonder what’ll become of her now. She inherits what the old fellow had, I suppose. The news excited everyone, of course. You see Madame Probasco, the time she had that séance, made some prophecy that fitted in with what happened. Millie Brewster is back after a visit home. Have an idea O’Leary cleared out on her account. “The baron” hasn’t been any too well, looks shaky, and then something happened that cut him up terribly. Hit me, too, for a while but now I’ve gotten hold again. Pansy went off with that old scoundrel Drinkwater. Seems they’d been seeing each other all along, and he must have got some hold over her, hypnotized her. Belle was as surprised as any of us and mad clean through and through. We don’t know just what happened—hope they’re married. That’s about all, but, Lord, it’s lonely without the crowd! Have you done great things? I’m crazy to see what you’re bringing back. My best to the missis.
Tootles.
The hilarity which Tootles’ elucidation of the mystery of the dress suits occasioned, died out at the news of Pansy’s elopement. Underneath the quiet of his announcement, they divined the hurt that lay near his heart. A few more letters remained among the chaff, which Dangerfield opened rapidly—announcements of fall exhibitions, which woke in him curious currents of impatience; a note from Steingall urging him to exhibit, another from Quinny with the news of the club. Then, all of a sudden his fingers struck one addressed to
Miss Inga Sonderson.
“The idea!” he exclaimed, in pretended wrath. “Never heard of such a person! What impudence!”
He tossed the letter over to her without curiosity, and took up Quinny’s letter for a more careful perusal. The echoes of the old world brought a strange fluttering to his heart. He wondered what they, the old friends, believed had happened to him all this time, and he wondered, looking out the doorway with a curious quivering smile, what they would say when they knew that he had not gone under, that he had won his fight and was coming back to his own.