His father took the outstretched hand, lifted his faded eyes with a strange dumb look; and so they parted.
On Fifth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, Duane, swinging along at a good pace, turned westward, and half-way to Sixth Avenue encountered Guy Wilton going east, a packet under one arm, stick and hat in the other hand, the summer wind blowing the thick curly hair from his temples.
"Ah," observed Wilton, "early bird and worm, I suppose? Don't try to bolt me, Duane; I'm full of tough and undigested—er—problems, myself. Besides, I'm fermenting. Did you ever silently ferment while listening politely to a man you wanted to assault?"
Duane laughed, then his eye by accident, caught a superscription on the packet of papers under Wilton's arm: Yo Espero! His glance reverted in a flash to Wilton's face.
The latter said: "I want to write a book entitled 'Gentleman I Have Kicked.' Of course I've only kicked 'em mentally; but my! what a list I have!—all sorts, all nations—from certain domestic and predatory statesmen to the cad who made his beautiful and sensitive mistress notorious in a decadent novel!—all kinds, Duane, have I kicked mentally I've just used my foot on another social favorite——"
"Dysart!" said Duane, inspired, and, turning painfully red, begged Wilton's pardon.
"You've sure got a disconcerting way with you," admitted Wilton, very much out of countenance.
"It was rotten bad taste in me——"
Wilton grinned with a wry face: "Nobody is standing much on ceremony these days. Besides, I'm on to your trail, young man"—tapping the bundle under his arm—"your eye happened to catch that superscription; no doubt your father has talked to you; and you came to—a rather embarrassing conclusion."
Duane's serious face fell: