Brass-button Man was suspiciously wondering what this person wanted of him; but they crossed to the adjacent saloon, a New York corner saloon, which of course “glittered” with a large mirror, heaped glasses, and a long shining foot-rail on which, in bravado, Mr. Wrenn placed his Cum-Fee-Best shoe. 

 “Uh?” said the bartender. 

 “Rye, Jimmy,” said the Brass-button Man. 

 “Uh-h-h-h-h,” said Mr. Wrenn, in a frightened diminuendo, now that—wealthy citizen though he had become—he was in danger of exposure as a mollycoddle who couldn’t choose his drink properly. “Stummick been hurting me. Guess I’d better just take a lemonade.” 

 “You’re the brother-in-law to a wise one,” commented the Brass-button Man. “Me, I ain’t never got the sense to do the traffic cop on the booze. The old woman she says to me, ‘Mory,’ she says, ‘if you was in heaven and there was a pail of beer on one side and a gold harp on the other,’ she says, ‘and you was to have your pick, which would you take?’ And what ’d yuh think I answers her?” 

 “The beer,” said the bartender. “She had your number, all right.” 

 “Not on your tin-type,” declared the ticket-taker. 

 “‘Me?’ I says to her. ‘Me? I’d pinch the harp and pawn it for ten growlers of Dutch beer and some man-sized rum!’” 

 “Hee, hee hee!” grinned Mr. Wrenn. 

 “Ha, ha, ha!” grumbled the bartender. 

 “Well-l-l,” yawned the ticket-taker, “the old woman’ll be chasing me best pants around the flat, if she don’t have me to 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 

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