“But what became of the man?” asked Breffny.
“When the police lieutenant spoke of having her body interred in Potter's Field, the husband spoke up indignantly. He brought forth two gold pieces, saying:
“'I have the money for her grave. I saved this through all my wanderings, because I thought that when I should find her she might be homeless and hungry and in need.'
“So he had her buried respectably in the suburbs somewhere, and I was too busy at that time to follow up his subsequent movements. It is enough for the story that he found his wife.”
XXIV. — NEWGAG THE COMEDIAN
It was not his real name or his stage name, but it was the one under which he was best known by those who best knew him. It had been thrown at him in a café one night by a newspaper man after the performance, and had clung to him. Its significance lay in the fact that his “gags”—supposedly comic things said by presumably comic men in nominal opera or burlesque—invariably were old. The man who bestowed the title upon him thought it a fine bit of irony.
Newgag received it without expressed resentment, but without mirth, and he bore its repetition patiently as seasons went by. He was accustomed to enduring calmly the jests, the indignities that were elicited by his peculiar appearance, his doleful expression, his slow and bungling speech and movement, his diffident manner.
He was one of the forbearing men, the many who are doomed to continual suffering of a kind that their sensitiveness and timidity make it the more difficult for them to bear.