At four o’clock the next afternoon Clinton, Hazlett and Stowell were sitting in the latter’s study. The fire roared in the grate and a northwest wind roared outside the curtained windows. There came a resounding thump on the door, and, without waiting a response, “Chick” Reeves bounded in. Standing just inside, he closed the portal, shook imaginary snowflakes from his cap, shivered and blew on his hands.
“Br-r-r,” he muttered, “’tis bitter cold! The river is caked with chokes of ice! I can not cross the river to-night! Hark, how the wind howls round the turret!”
Then, with sudden abandonment of melodrama, he made his way to the grate, spread his legs apart, and, with his back to the flames, grinned broadly upon Stowell. Gradually his grin grew into a laugh.
“You’re an awful idiot,” said Stowell.
“I know, I know,” chuckled Reeves. “But I’ve got the biggest joke you ever heard! It’s—it’s like a story. Listen, my children.” He turned to Stowell. “You remember ‘Mittens’?” Stowell nodded.
“I’ve been to see him, and——”
“Did you buy some mittens?” asked Hazlett, who, with Clinton, had at last heard of Stowell’s protégé.
“Yes, but listen. He lives in the queerest place you ever heard tell of; it’s down on one of those side streets toward the bridge; a regular tenement-house with brats all over the front steps and an eloquent, appealing odor of boiled cabbage and onions in the air. Well, I asked a woman in a calico wrapper where Mr. Shult lived and she directed me up two flights of stairs; told me to knock on the ‘sicond door to me roight.’ I knocked, a voice called, ‘Come in, Mrs. Brannigan,’ and I went in, politely explaining that, despite certain similarities of appearance, I was not Mrs. Brannigan. Well”—“Chick’s” risibilities threatened to master him again; he choked and went on. “Well, there was ‘Mittens.’ He was sitting in a sort of kitchen rocker with a Latin book on his knee and—and— Say, what do you think he was doing?”
“Grinding,” said Clinton.
“Sawing wood,” said Hazlett.