chase, pretty soon. Guess I'd better beat it. Much obliged for
the drink, Mr. Uh. So long, Jimmy."

Mr. Wrenn set off for home in a high state of exhilaration
which, he noticed, exactly resembled driving an aeroplane, and
went briskly up the steps of the Zapps' genteel but unexciting
residence. He was much nearer to heaven than West Sixteenth
Street appears to be to the outsider. For he was an explorer of
the Arctic, a trusted man on the job, an associate of witty
Bohemians. He was an army lieutenant who had, with his friend
the hawk-faced Pinkerton man, stood off bandits in an attack
on a train. He opened and closed the door gaily.

He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn. His landlady stood
on the bottom step of the hall stairs in a bunchy Mother
Hubbard, groaning:

"Mist' Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you
wouldn't just make all the noise you can. Ah don't see why Ah
should have to be kept awake all night. Ah suppose it's the
will of the Lord that whenever Ah go out to see Mrs. Muzzy and
just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get insomina, but Ah don't
see why anybody that tries to be a gennulman should have to go
and bang the door and just rack mah nerves."

He slunk up-stairs behind Mrs. Zapp's lumbering gloom.


"There's something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zapp--something
that's happened to me. That's why I was out celebrating last