“Why, you can’t be thinking of leaving us! Why, we expect to make a big man of you, Wrenn. I was joking about firing you. You ought to know that, after the talk we had at Mouquin’s the other night. You can’t be thinking of leaving us! There’s no end of possibilities here.”
“Sorry,” said the dogged soldier of dreams.
“Why—” wailed that hurt and astonished victim of ingratitude, Mr. Guilfogle.
“I’ll leave the middle of June. That’s plenty of notice,” chirruped Mr. Wrenn.
At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brass-button Man at his station before the Nickelorion, crying:
“Now what would you think? Me—oh no; I’m a Chinaman from Oshkosh!”
“No, honest, straight, tell me. I’ve got a chance to travel. What d’yuh think of that? Ain’t it great! And I’m going right away. What I wanted to ask you was, what’s the best place in Ireland to see?”
Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn joyously added the new point of interest to a list ranging from Delagoa Bay to Denver.
He skipped up-town, looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the end of Fourteenth Street. He stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of a Greek bootblack’s stand. Stars—steamer—temples, all these were his. He owned them now. He was free.
Lee Theresa sat waiting for him in the basement livingroom till ten-thirty while he was flirting with trainboards at the Grand Central. Then she went to bed, and, though he knew it not, that prince of wealthy suitors, Mr. Wrenn, had entirely lost the heart and hand of Miss Zapp of the F. F. V.
He stood before the manager’s god-like desk on June 14, 1910. Sadly:
“Good-by, Mr. Guilfogle. Leaving to-day. I wish—Gee! I wish I could tell you, you know—about how much I appreciate—”
The manager moved a wire basket of carbon copies of letters from the left side of his desk to the right, staring at them thoughtfully; rearranged his pencils in a pile before his ink-well; glanced at the point of an indelible pencil with a manner of startled examination; tapped his desk-blotter with his knuckles; then raised his eyes. He studied Mr. Wrenn, smiled, put on the look he used when inviting him out for a drink. Mr. Guilfogle was essentially an honest fellow, harshened by The Job; a well-satisfied victim, with the imagination clean gone out of him, so that he took follow-up letters and the celerity of office-boys as the only serious things in the world. He was strong, alive, not at all a bad chap, merely efficient.