exquisite art, and pulsing nature had been
combined into a love story that took you by the throat like the
quinsy. I broke into Pettit's room and beat him on the back and
called him names--names high up in the galaxy of the immortals that
we admired. And Pettit yawned and begged to be allowed to sleep.

On the morrow, I dragged him to an editor. The great man read, and,
rising, gave Pettit his hand. That was a decoration, a wreath of bay,
and a guarantee of rent.

And then old Pettit smiled slowly. I call him Gentleman Pettit now
to myself. It's a miserable name to give a man, but it sounds better
than it looks in print.

"I see," said old Pettit, as he took up his story and began tearing
it into small strips. "I see the game now. You can't write with ink,
and you can't write with your own heart's blood, but you can write
with the heart's blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before
you can be an artist. Well, I am for old Alabam and the Major's
store. Have you got a light, Old Hoss?"

I went with Pettit to the depot and died hard.

"Shakespeare's sonnets?" I blurted, making a last stand. "How about
him?"

"A cad," said Pettit. "They give it to you, and you sell it--love,
you know. I'd rather sell ploughs for father."

"But," I protested, "you are reversing the decision of the world's
greatest--"

"Good-by, Old Hoss," said Pettit.

"Critics," I continued. "But--say--if the Major can use a fairly good
salesman and book-keeper down there in the store, let me know, will
you?"

XIII

NEMESIS AND THE CANDY MAN

"We sail at eight in the morning on the _Celtic_," said Honoria,
plucking a loose thread from her lace sleeve.

"I heard so," said young Ives, dropping his hat, and muffing it as he
tried to catch it, "and I came around to wish you a pleasant voyage."

"Of course you heard it," said Honoria, coldly sweet, "since we have
had no opportunity of informing you ourselves."

Ives looked at her pleadingly, but with little hope.

Outside in the street a high-pitched voice chanted, not
unmusically, a commercial gamut of "Cand-ee-ee-ee-s! Nice, fresh
cand-ee-ee-ee-ees!"

"It's our old candy man," said Honoria, leaning out the window and
beckoning. "I want some of his motto kisses. There's nothing in the
Broadway shops half so good."

The candy man stopped his pushcart in front of the old Madison Avenue
home. He had a holiday and festival air unusual to street peddlers.
His tie was new an