There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was
beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in
that residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.

His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in
April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes
nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more
than people could afford to pay.

His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was
babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on
the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed;
his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon
the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous,
extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared
this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable
grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet
Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic
than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.

For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie
Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the
darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from
the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends,
sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they
crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so
eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for
him, that they would sail--

Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.

Babbitt moaned; turned over; struggled back toward his dream. He could
see only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the
basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully
into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the
rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomach
constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar
and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah,
snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with
the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of
the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again
began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah--a round, flat sound, a shivering
cold-morning sound, a sound