BY MARGARET DODGE.
THE man looked discouraged. As he stood on the corner of the avenue, his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets, his slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, he seemed to be posing for an end of the century statue of Resignation. For fifteen minutes he had been facing a purely Bostonese combination of east wind and drizzling rain, while he waited for one of the electric cars billed to pass that corner every five minutes. There was no cab station within a mile, and his train left at the other end of the town in half an hour. Besides, he lived in a city where east winds never blew, and where L trains and cable cars whizzed by with clockwork regularity. Consequently, he possessed few resources for killing time on street corners. After he had read his paper, looked over his memorandum book, and worn a path into the middle of the street by continued expeditions undertaken in hope of sighting the delayed car, he had backed up against the white trolley post, and fixed his lusterless eyes upon the row of brownstone apartment houses that lined the opposite side of the street.
Suddenly a gleam of hope lighted the gloomy eyes of the man at the trolley post. Had the car, after all, taken a "spurt"? Had the wind changed? No; the track was still clear as far as the eye could see; the vane on the nearest church pointed unwaveringly to the east; but the resigned man had made a pleasing discovery,—he had found a companion in misery.
In the third-story side window of an apartment house diagonally opposite, a picturesque, black-eyed youngster stood drumming on the window-pane and scowling out into the brick-paved area on which the window opened, with a disapproval that matched that of the man at the trolley post.
Bud, too, was a stranger within the city's gates, and he, too, was tired waiting for luck to take a turn. He had grown up in Texas, where the sun shines for three hundred and fifty days in the year, and where every day he could wander out upon the plains and kill something. And now he had come to this cold, dismal city where he had to wear shoes and a Fauntleroy suit, and stay in when the east wind blew. For two hours he had been waiting for the sun to come out, and he had almost reached the end of his resources.
Almost, but not quite. A moment later, as the resigned man watched the little Texan standing with his nose flattened against the pane, his round, bright eyes peering down into the mist, he saw him open the window and, through the iron grating of the balcony, survey the scene below. Then, with a coltish leap, Bud disappeared into the room.
A moment later his agile little body again wriggled out onto the balcony. It was a small, rounded affair, filled with potted plants, and situated on a perpendicular line with similar balconies which belonged to the suites above and below. In the one immediately under that on which the small boy stood was placed among the geranium plants and India-rubber trees a glass globe containing several large goldfish.
Hanging out over the railing, Bud fixed his round eyes on the glass globe and chuckled. Then he looked cautiously into the room behind him. Apparently no one was in sight. Producing from the pocket of his small trousers a fish-line and hook, he proceeded to lower it until the duly baited hook landed among the goldfish. There was a deft twist of the line, a splash, and a flop; something yellow and wiggling flashed through the air, and a moment later a large goldfish lay breathing its last in a big flower-pot, at the roots of an India-rubber tree.
Once more Bud chuckled. So did the man at the trolley post. He had now waited half an hour, but for the moment he had forgotten the east wind, the delayed car, and the train he wanted to catch.