“Jock Scrabble—no, but say! By golly, there was a fellow up in the Big Woods that came from St. Cl—St. Cloud? Yes, that was it. He was telling us about the town. I remember he said your brother had great chances there.”
The Englishman meditatively accepted a bad cigar from Mr. Wrenn. Suddenly: “You chaps can sleep in the stable-loft if you’d like. But you must blooming well stop smoking.”
So in the dark odorous hay-mow Mr. Wrenn stretched out his legs with an affectionate “good night” to Morton. He slept nine hours. When he awoke, at the sound of a chain clanking in the stable below, Morton was gone. This note was pinned to his sleeve:
DEAR OLD MAN,—I still feel sure that you will not enjoy the hiking. Bumming is not much fun for most people, I don’t think, even if they say it is. I do not want to live on you. I always did hate to graft on people. So I am going to beat it off alone. But I hope I will see you in N Y & we will enjoy many a good laugh together over our trip. If you will phone the P. R. R. you can find out when I get back & so on. As I do not know what your address will be. Please look me up & I hope you will have a good trip.
Yours truly,
HARRY P. MORTON.
Mr. Wrenn lay listening to the unfriendly rattling of the chain harness below for a long time. When he crawled languidly down from the hay-loft he glowered in a manner which was decidedly surly even for Bill Wrenn at a middle-aged English stranger who was stooping over a cow’s hoof in a stall facing the ladder.
“Wot you doing here?” asked the Englishman, raising his head and regarding Mr. Wrenn as a housewife does a cockroach in the salad-bowl.
Mr. Wrenn was bored. This seemed a very poor sort of man; a bloated Cockney, with a dirty neck-cloth, vile cuffs of grayish black, and a waistcoat cut foolishly high.
“The owner said I could sleep here,” he snapped.
“Ow. ’E did, did ’e? ’E ayn’t been giving you any of the perishin’ ’osses, too, ’as ’e?”