“I would not demean myse’f to repeat what this human objec’ said, suh.”
“And what did you do then?”
“Mistuh Barres, suh, I totally igno’hed that man,” replied Aristocrates languidly.
“Quite right. But you tell Soane to enforce the rule against pedlars. Every day there are two or three of them ringing at the studio, trying to sell colours, laces, or fake oriental rugs. It annoys me. Selinda can’t hear the bell and I have to leave my work and open the door. Tell that persistless one-eyed man to keep away. Tell Soane to bounce him next time he enters Dragon Court. Do you understand?”
“Yaas, suh. But Soane, suh, he’s a might friendly Irish. He’s spo’tin’ ’round Grogan’s nights, ’longa this here one-eyed ’viduality. Yaas, suh. I done seen ’em co-gatherin’ on vahious occasionalities.”
“Oho!” commented Barres. “It’s graft, is it? This one-eyed pedlar meets Soane at Grogan’s and bribes him with a few drinks to let him peddle colours in Dragon Court! That’s the Irish of it, Aristocrates. I began to suspect something like that. All right. I’ll speak to Soane myself.... Leave the studio door open; it’s warm in here.”
The month of May was now turning somewhat sultry as it melted into June. Every pivot-pane in the big studio window had been swung wide open. The sun had already clothed every courtyard tree with dense and tender foliage; hyacinth and tulip were gone and Soane’s subscription geraniums blazed in their 104 place like beds of coals heaped up on the grass plot of Dragon Court.
But blue sky, sunshine of approaching summer, gentle winds and freshening rains brought only restlessness to New Yorkers that month of May.
Like the first two years of the war, the present year seemed strange, unreal; its vernal breezes brought no balm, its blue skies no content. The early summer sunlight seemed almost uncanny in a world where, beyond the sea, millions of men at arms swayed ceaselessly under sun and moon alike, interlocked in one gigantic death grip!—a horrible and blood-drenched human chain of butchery stretching half around the earth.