ul expectancy, the air of one
who confides, counting upon a delicate understanding. But Sam O'Neill,
though perfectly willing to be delicate, could only say, after an
anti-climacteric pause: "Is that right? Well, that bunch needed to
grovel all right"--which was a little vague, say what you would of it,
chilling somewhat....

"Well, what's your coryphees' ball but life?" muttered Vivian, knocking
the ashes from the dead pipe he had been holding....

And then, turning away with the fire gone out of him, he added:

"All I say about these people is they'd be so much happier with their
shells hammered off. What's getting rich but building a wall between
yourself and the great common?... Seems to me God meant us all to be
citizens of the world ..."

"That's right," said Sam, reassuringly. And then, as the two men walked
toward the door: "Oh, I don't say that letter there'll do any _harm_,
V.V. Maybe a little stirring 'em up's just as well ..."

At the door, O'Neill recollected, and spoke again: "Oh, say, V.V.! Saw
your gay young friend Dalhousie just now. Had a pretty nice little load
of bananas too ..."

V.V. halted dead, his look changing abruptly. Trouble gathered on his
brow.

"Where?"

"Driving down Centre Street in a hack, looking sober as a judge, but--"

"What sort of hack?" demanded Vivian, as if a good deal might depend on
that.

"Reg'lar sea-going," answered the Commissioner, confirming the worst.
"Kind with the fold-back top, like you see principally at nigger
funerals and aldermen's parades...."

But it was evidently no merry matter to V.V.

"Then he's off," said he, slowly, and glanced at his watch.... "He
seemed all right when I saw him last night. Only you never can tell,
with him.... I wonder if I could catch him...."

The Commissioner thought not. "He was headed straight for Centre Street
Station, and that was a half-hour ago. Had a bag out front in the
sea-going, too. Oh, thunder, he's all right. Little trip'll do
him good...."

Left alone in his office, V. Vivian stood still, staring intently into
space.

New-returned to his old home town, this young man was deep in love with
twenty gallant schemes, from the general reform of the world, by his own
system, to the repairment of the stomachic equipment of Tubby Miggs,
aged six. But O'Neill's tidings of the vehicular lad knocked them all
from his mind. He forgot the Huns; forgot John the Baptist; forgot even
his sick, till one of the well