“I’d bu’st the door in,” said
the little man.
Bartley turned and gazed at him as if the little man
were a much more estimable person than he had supposed.
He passed his arm through the little man’s,
which the other had just crooked to lift his whiskey
to his mouth. “Look here,” said Bartley,
“tha’s jus’ what I told her.
I want you to go home ‘th me; I want t’
introduce you to my wife.”
“All right,” answered the little man.
“Don’t care if I do.” He dropped
his tumbler to the floor. “Hang it up,
Charley, glass and all. Hang up this gentleman’s
nightcaps—my account. Gentleman asks
me home to his house, I’ll hang him—I’ll
get him hung,—well, fix it to suit yourself,—every
time!”
They got themselves out of the door, and the manager
said to the bar-keeper, who came round to gather up
the fragments of the broken tumbler, “Think
his wife will be glad to see ’em, Charley?”
“Oh, they’ll be taken care of before they
reach his house.”
When they were once out under the stars, Bartley,
who still, felt his brain clear, said that he would
not take his friend home at once, but would show him
where he visited when he first came to Boston.
The other agreed to the indulgence of this sentiment,
and they set out to find Rumford Street together.
“You’ve heard of old man Halleck,—Lestor
Neather Interest? Tha’s place,—there’s
where I stayed. His son’s my frien’,—damn
stuck-up, supercilious beast he is, too! I
do’ care f’r him! I’ll show
you place, so’s’t you’ll know it
when you come to it,—’f I can ever
find it.”
They walked up and down the street, looking, while
Bartley poured his sorrows into the ear of his friend,
who grew less and less responsive, and at last ceased
from his side altogether. Bartley then dimly perceived
that he was himself sitting on a door-step, and that
his head was hanging far down between his knees, as
if he had been sleeping in that posture.
“Locked out,—locked out of my own
door, and by my own wife!” He shed tears, and
fell asleep again. From time to time he woke,
and bewailed himself to Ricker as a poor boy who had
fought his own way; he owned that he had made mistakes,
as who had not? Again he was trying to convince
Squire Gaylord that they ought to issue a daily edition
of the Equity Free Press, and at the same time persuading
Mr. Halleck to buy the Events for him, and let him
put it on a paying basis. He shivered, sighed,
hiccupped, and was dozing off again, when Henry Bird
knocked him down, and he fell with a cry, which at
last brought to the door the uneasy sleeper, who had
been listening to him within, and trying to realize
his presence, catching his voice in waking intervals,
doubting it, drowsing when it ceased, and then catching
it and losing it again.
“Hello, here! What do you want? Hubbard!
Is it you? What in the world are you doing here?”
