“You have answered,” said the boy. “God forgive me––but I can’t go away now.”
Thus Fate sported with two lives.
THE MADNESS OF WHISTLING WINGS
Chapter I––Sandford the Exemplary
Ordinarily Sandford is sane––undeniably so. Barring the seventh, upon any other day of the week, fifty-one weeks in the year, from nine o’clock in the morning until six at night––omitting again a scant half-hour at noon for lunch––he may be found in his tight little box of an office on the fifth floor of the Exchange Building, at the corner of Main Avenue and Thirteenth Street, where the elevated makes its loop.
No dog chained beside his kennel is more invariably present, no caged songster more incontestably anchored. If you need his services, you have but to seek his address between the hours mentioned. You may do so with the same assurance of finding him on duty that you would feel, if you left a jug of water out of 280 doors over night in a blizzard, that the jug, as a jug, would be no longer of value in the morning. He was, and is, routine impersonate, exponent of sound business personified; a living sermon against sloth and improvidence, and easy derelictions of the flesh.
That is to say, he is such fifty-one weeks out of the fifty-two. All through the frigid winter season, despite the lure of California limiteds or Havana liners, he holds hard in that den of his, with its floor and walls of sanitary tiling and its ceiling of white enamel, and hews––or grinds rather, for Sandford is a dental surgeon––close to the line.
All through the heat of summer, doggedly superior to the call of Colorado or the Adirondacks or the Thousand Islands, he comes and departs by the tick of the clock. Base-ball fans find him adamant; turf devotees, marble; golf enthusiasts, cold as the tiles beneath his feet.