“Oh, comrade, but I'm glad to meet you.”
“I think you know Mr. Farnum.”
The man propped up in bed nodded a little grin at the lawyer. “We've met. It was years ago in Jeff's rooms.”
“Oh—er—yes. Yes, I remember.”
Presently Jeff and Sam Miller dropped in to see the invalid. From chance remarks the lawyer gathered that the little cobbler had brought himself so low by giving his overcoat one bitter night to a poor girl he had found shivering in the streets.
The frankness with which they discussed before Alice Frome things never referred to in good society shocked James.
It appeared that the story of this little factory girl who had been led astray was still urgent in Marchant's mind. At the time of their arrival he had just finished scribbling some verses hot from his heart. Jeff read them aloud, in spite of the poet's modest insistence that they were only a first draft.
“This is a story that two may tell,
I am the one, the other's in hell;
A story of passionate amorous fire,
With the glamor of love to attune the lyre.
She traveled the road at breakneck speed,
I opened the gates and saddled the steed;
“Ride free!” I cried as we dashed along.
Her sweet voice echoed a mocking song.”
“'Fraid it doesn't always scan. They seldom do,” apologized the author of the verses.
Jeff rapped for order. “The sense of the meeting is that the blushing poet will please not interrupt.”