“My God!” he whispered—“my God!”
He picked up the suit-case and marched off—a tall, thin, determined young man with an odd trick of throwing his right leg out and around as he walked and toeing in with the right foot—marched straight across town, under the Sixth Avenue Elevated, on into Greenwich Village; let himself into a rather dingy apartment building and then into a bare little three-rooms-and-bath from which not two hours back he had helped carry a big trunk, and dropped into the armchair in the living-room. And his hands shook with excitement as he lighted his pipe.
“I'm a wild man!” he informed himself—“perfectly wild! It's not a bad thing!”
He slept, the last few hours of the night, on a bare mattress. But then a bachelor of a whimsical turn can make-shift now and then.
All this on the Saturday. On the Monday morning early, between eight and nine, there was giggling and fumbling at the apartment door, followed by a not over-resolute knock.
The Worm—pipe in mouth, wearing his old striped pajamas caught across the chest with a safety-pin,—dropped his pen, snorted with impatience, and strode, heedless of self to the door.
There stood an elated, abashed couple. Hy Lowe, still dapper, apparently very happy; Betty, glancing at him with an expression near timidity.
“Of all things!” she murmured, taking in the somewhat unconventional figure before her.
“You, Worm!” chuckled Hy blithely. “Why, you old devil!”
Henry Bates was looking impatiently from one to the other. “Well,” said he—“what do you want?”