ess
of the city stretched itself in a great triangle, its apex the
harbour, its sides the dull silver of the East and Hudson Rivers.
Directly before him, crowned with its white lantern, the Metropolitan
Tower reared its graceful height to the stars. And all around, in the
windows of the tall buildings that looked from this bastion on which
he stood almost squat, a million lights stared up at him, the
unsleeping eyes of New York. It was a scene of which Wally, always
sensitive to beauty, never tired: but to-night it had lost its appeal.
A pleasant breeze from the Jersey shore greeted him with a quickening
whisper of springtime and romance, but it did not lift the heaviness
of his heart. He felt depressed and apprehensive.

CHAPTER XIV

MR. GOBLE MAKES THE BIG NOISE

I

Spring, whose coming the breeze had heralded to Wally as he smoked
upon the roof, floated graciously upon New York two mornings later.
The city awoke to a day of blue and gold and to a sense of hard times
over and good times to come. In his apartment on Park Avenue, Mr Isaac
Goble, sniffing the gentle air from the window of his breakfast-room,
returned to his meal and his _Morning Telegraph_ with a resolve to
walk to the theatre for rehearsal: a resolve which had also come to
Jill and Nelly Bryant, eating stewed prunes in their boarding-house in
the Forties. On the summit of his sky-scraper, Wally Mason, performing
Swedish exercises to the delectation of various clerks and
stenographers in the upper windows of neighbouring buildings, felt
young and vigorous and optimistic, and went in to his shower-bath
thinking of Jill. And it was of Jill, too, that young Pilkington
thought, as he propped his long form up against the pillows and sipped
his morning cup of tea. For the first time in several days a certain
moodiness which had affected Otis Pilkington left him, and he dreamed
happy day-dreams.

The gaiety of Otis was not, however, entirely or even primarily due to
the improvement in the weather. It had its source in a conversation
which had taken place between himself and Jill's Uncle Chris on the
previous night. Exactly how it had come about, Mr. Pilkington was not
entirely clear, but, somehow, before he was fully aware of what he was
saying, he had begun to pour into Major Selby's sympathetic ears the
story of his romance. Encouraged by the other's kindly receptiveness,
he had told him all--his love for Jill, his hopes that some day it
might