The next morning found him wavering again, but he put all his troubled thoughts away and spent the day in sight-seeing. He came in at night tired and feeling strange and lonesome. "Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad," we used to say; but all that is changed now, and whom the devil wishes to get, he first makes lonesome. Then the victim is up to anything.
Brent had finished his supper when Perkins came in, but he brightened at the
young clerk's cheery salute, "Hello, there! ready to go, are you?"
"Been ready all day," he replied, with a laugh. "It 's been pretty slow."
"'Ain't made much out, then, seeing the sights of this little village of ours? Well, we 'll do better to-night, if the people don't see that black tie of yours and take you for a preacher getting facts for a crusade."
Brent blushed and bit his lip, but he only said, "I 'll go up and change it while you 're finishing your supper."
"Guess you 'd better, or some one will be asking you for a sermon." Perkins laughed good-naturedly, but he did not know how his words went home to his companion's sensitive feelings. He thought that his haste in leaving the room and his evident confusion were only the evidence of a greenhorn's embarrassment under raillery. He really had no idea that his comrade's tie was the badge of his despised calling.
Brent was down again in a few minutes, a grey cravat having superseded the offending black. But even now, as he compared himself with his guide, he appeared sombre and ascetic. His black Prince Albert coat showed up gloomy and oppressive against
young Perkins's natty drab cutaway relieved by a dashing red tie. From head to foot the little clerk was light and dapper; and as they moved along the crowded streets the preacher felt much as a conscious omnibus would feel beside a pneumatic-tired sulky.
"You can talk all you want to about your Chicago," Perkins was rattling on, "but you can bet your life Cincinnati 's the greatest town in the West. Chicago 's nothing but a big overgrown country town. Everything looks new and flimsy there to a fellow, but here you get something that 's solid. Chicago 's pretty swift, too, but there ain't no flies on us, either, when it comes to the go."