Phillip awoke the next forenoon with the sun shining warmly across his face, the church bells tolling and Tudor Maid anxiously awaiting breakfast. His first feeling was one of dissatisfaction at the nastiness of his mouth and the heaviness of his head. But before his eyes had blinked twice the memory of the preceding afternoon came to him. He smiled happily, turned over, laid his tousled brown head on one arm and stared unseeingly at the chimney of the next house. Twenty minutes passed. Maid arose, sniffed inquiringly at his hand, sighed, and flopped herself down again in the patch of sunlight. Phillip laughed aloud at some recollection and woke himself from his dreaming. Jumping blithely out of bed, he fed Maid from the store of biscuits kept in the closet for just such emergencies—a repast which the dog accepted under protest—took his bath and dressed himself, singing “Up the Street” martially and pausing suddenly in the middle of a bar to stand motionless and smile idiotically at his reflection in the mirror.
Phillip was in love. And he knew it. And he wouldn’t have been in any other condition for all the wealth of the world.
He was riotously happy; happy in spite of the fact that he had made a fool of himself the evening before, that his head felt as though it had been bored open and filled with lead, that his mouth, in spite of numerous draughts of water cold from the bathroom faucet, tasted as he imagined the inside of a brass pipe must taste, that he would have to go to a restaurant for breakfast, and that he didn’t want breakfast anyway.
He took Maid with him to a subterraneous lunch room in the square and fed her lamb chops and doughnuts, finding that his own appetite refused anything save coffee and toast. Afterward—it was too late for church—he walked up the avenue past Porter’s Station, struck off northward and got lost in darkest Somerville. Maid had a glorious time of it, and Phillip, when he at last reached The Inn for lunch, found that he had walked the lead out of his head and the bad taste from his mouth. When he had finished his lunch he went upstairs and found John and Laurence Baker.
“Are you going back to your room?” he asked the former. “I want to see you for a few minutes.”
“All right. Sit down. Have you had lunch?”
“Yes,” answered Phillip. “I’ll wait for you.” He sprawled himself out on the window-seat in the sunlight and tried to interest himself in the Sunday paper, aware all the while that Baker was eyeing him quizzically across the table.
“Have you seen my kid brother lately, Ryerson?” asked Baker presently.
“I was with him last night,” answered Phillip from behind the sheet. “We were in town.”
“Ah; indeed? Haven’t seen him this morning yet?”