t
back home before night?"
And then I began to feel that dull, leaden, soul-depressing sensation
known as the sense of duty. Why should that sense fall upon one as a
weight and a burden? I knew that I was doomed that day to give up the
bulk of my store of hard-wrung coin to the relief of this Ada Lowery.
But I swore to myself that Tripp's whiskey dollar would not be
forthcoming. He might play knight-errant at my expense, but he would
indulge in no wassail afterward, commemorating my weakness and
gullibility. In a kind of chilly anger I put on my coat and hat.
Tripp, submissive, cringing, vainly endeavoring to please, conducted
me via the street-cars to the human pawn-shop of Mother McGinnis. I
paid the fares. It seemed that the collodion-scented Don Quixote and
the smallest minted coin were strangers.
Tripp pulled the bell at the door of the mouldy red-brick
boarding-house. At its faint tinkle he paled, and crouched as a
rabbit makes ready to spring away at the sound of a hunting-dog.
I guessed what a life he had led, terror-haunted by the coming
footsteps of landladies.
"Give me one of the dollars--quick!" he said.
The door opened six inches. Mother McGinnis stood there with white
eyes--they were white, I say--and a yellow face, holding together at
her throat with one hand a dingy pink flannel dressing-sack. Tripp
thrust the dollar through the space without a word, and it bought us
entry.
"She's in the parlor," said the McGinnis, turning the back of her sack
upon us.
In the dim parlor a girl sat at the cracked marble centre-table
weeping comfortably and eating gum-drops. She was a flawless beauty.
Crying had only made her brilliant eyes brighter. When she crunched
a gum-drop you thought only of the poetry of motion and envied the
senseless confection. Eve at the age of five minutes must have been
a ringer for Miss Ada Lowery at nineteen or twenty. I was introduced,
and a gum-drop suffered neglect while she conveyed to me a naive
interest, such as a puppy dog (a prize winner) might bestow upon a
crawling beetle or a frog.
Tripp took his stand by the table, with the fingers of one hand spread
upon it, as an attorney or a master of ceremonies might have stood.
But he looked the master of nothing. His faded coat was buttoned
high, as if it sought to be charitable to deficiencies of tie and
linen.
I thought of a Scotch terrier at the sight of his shifty eyes in the
glade between his tangled hair and b
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