the golf club, which had no quarters for the entertainment of
out-of-town guests. Every detail of his home life was of the shabby,
makeshift sort which is so dear to one's self but needs so much
explaining to outsiders. He even thought with a pang of Lorna Doone, the
fat, plebeian little mongrel terrier which had meals with the family and
slept with the children at night. Verne was probably used to staghounds
or Zeppelin hounds or something of the sort, he thought humorously.
English poets wear an iris halo in the eyes of humble American
reviewers. Those godlike creatures have walked on Fleet Street, have
bought books on Paternoster Row, have drunk half-and-half and eaten
pigeon pie at the Salutation and Cat, and have probably roared with
laughter over some alehouse jest of Mr. Chesterton.

Stockton remembered the photograph Verne had sent him, showing a lean,
bearded face with wistful dark eyes against a background of old folios.
What would that Olympian creature think of the drudge of New Utrecht, a
mere reviewer who sold his editorial copies to pay for shag tobacco!

Well, thought Stockton, as he crossed the bridge, rejoicing not at all
in the splendid towers of Manhattan, candescent in the April sun, they
had done all they could. He had left his wife telephoning frantically to
grocers, cleaning women, and florists. He himself had stopped at the
poultry market on his way to the trolley to order two plump fowls for
dinner, and had pinched them with his nervous, ink-stained fingers, as
ordered by Mrs. Stockton, to test their tenderness. They would send the
three younger children to their grandmother, to be interned there until
the storm had blown over; and Mrs. Stockton was going to do what she
could to take down the rotogravure pictures from the walls of what the
boys fondly called the Stockton Art Gallery. He knew that Verne had
children of his own: perhaps he would be amused rather than dismayed by