“It will do,” he said magnanimously. “And now, green Chartreuse, frappé and a demitasse.”

Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket he stood on the kerb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.

A joyful party of four—two women and two men—fell upon him with cries of delight. There was a dinner party on—where had he been for a fortnight past?—what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded and engulfed him—he must join them—tra la la—and the rest.

One, with a white hat-plume curving to the shoulder, touched his sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: “See what I can do with him!” and added her queen’s command to the invitations.

“I leave you to imagine,” said Morley, pathetically, “how it desolates me to forgo the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor-car at eight.”

The white plume tossed, and the quartette danced like midgets around an arc light down the frolicsome way.

Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and laughing gleefully to himself.

“‘Front,”’ he chanted under his breath; “‘front’ does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it in! Men, women and children—forgeries, water-and-salt lies—how they all take it in!”

An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling, grey beard and a corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street-cars to the sidewalk at Morley’s side.

“Stranger,” said he, “excuse me for troubling you, but do you know anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He’s my son, and I’ve come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know what I done with his street and number.”

“I do not, sir,” said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy in them. “You had better apply to the police.”

“The police!” said the old man. ‘I ain’t done nothin’ to call in the police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could——”

“I told you I did not,” said Morley coldly. “I know no one by the name of Smithers, and I advise you to——”

“Smothers, not Smithers,” interrupted the old man hopefully. “A heavy-sot man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth out, about five foot——”

“Oh, ‘Smothers’!” exclaimed Morley. “Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in the next house to me. I thought you said ‘Smithers.’ ”

Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forgo a gunmetal or the ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads—according to these watchmakers—are run by.

“The Bishop of Long Island,” said Morley, “was to meet me here at eight to dine with me at the Kingfishers’ Club. But I can’t leave the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St. Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall Street men have to work! Tired is no name for it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me. You must let me take you to Sol’s house, Mr. Smothers. But before we take the car I hope you will join me in——”