living without a job or a salary.

He crushed his pillow with burrowing head and sobbed excitedly,
with a terrible stomach-sinking and a chill shaking. Then he
laughed and wanted to--but didn't--rush into the adjacent hall
room and tell the total stranger there of this world-changing news.
He listened in the hall to learn whether the Zapps were up,
but heard nothing; returned and cantered up and down, gloating
on a map of the world.

"Gee! It's happened. I could travel all the time. I guess I
won't be--very much--afraid of wrecks and stuff. . . . Things like
that. . . . Gee! If I don't get to bed I'll be late at the
office in the morning!"

Mr. Wrenn lay awake till three o'clock. Monday morning he felt
rather ashamed of having done so eccentric a thing. But he got
to the office on time. He was worried with the cares of wealth,
with having to decide when to leave for his world-wanderings,
but he was also very much aware that office managers are
disagreeable if one isn't on time. All morning he did nothing
more reckless than balance his new fortune, plus his savings,
against steamship fares on a waste half-sheet of paper.

The noon-hour was not The Job's, but his, for exploration of the
parlous lands of romance that lie hard by Twenty-eighth Street
and Sixth Avenue. But he had to go out to lunch with Charley
Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper, that he might tell the news.
As for Charley, He needed frequently to have a confidant who knew
personally the tyrannous ways of the office manager, Mr. Guilfogle.