“He keeps them a-roll, that merry old soul—
The wheels of industree;
A-roll and a-roll, for his pipe and his bowl
And his college facultee!”
The train arrived in Pedro, and Hal took a hack at the station and drove to the hotel. He still carried the widow's weeds rolled into a bundle. He might have left them in the train, but the impulse to economy which he had acquired during the last ten weeks had become a habit. He would return them to Mrs. Zamboni. The money he had promised her might better be used to feed her young ones. The two pillows he would leave in the car; the hotel might endure the loss!
Entering the lobby, the first person Hal saw was his brother, and the sight of that patrician face made human by disgust relieved Hal's headache in part. Life was harsh, life was cruel; but here was weary, waiting Edward, that boon of comic relief!
Edward demanded to know where the devil he had been; and Hal answered, “I've been visiting the widows and orphans.”
“Oh!” said Edward. “And while I sit in this hole and stew! What's that you've got under your arm?”
Hal looked at the bundle. “It's a souvenir of one of the widows,” he said, and unrolled the garments and spread them out before his brother's puzzled eyes. “A lady named Mrs. Swajka gave them to me. They belonged to another lady, Mrs. Zamboni, but she doesn't need them any more.”
“What have you got to do with them?”
“It seems that Mrs. Zamboni is going to get married again.” Hal lowered his voice, confidentially. “It's a romance, Edward—it may interest you as an illustration of the manners of these foreign races. She met a man on the street, a fine, fine man, she says—and he gave her a lot of money. So she went and bought herself some new clothes, and she wants to give these widow's weeds to the new man. That's the custom in her country, it seems—her sign that she accepts him as a suitor.”
Seeing the look of wonderment growing on his brother's face, Hal had to stop for a moment to keep his own face straight. “If that man wasn't serious in his intention, Edward, he'll have trouble, for I know Mrs. Zamboni's emotional nature. She'll follow him about everywhere—”
“Hal, that creature is insane!” And Edward looked about him nervously, as if he thought the Slavish widow might appear suddenly in the hotel lobby to demonstrate her emotional nature.