feeling, half pity and half shame, of those yellowed old seed catalogues which had come, varnished and brilliant and new, year after year, so long ago, which he’d looked at so hard and so long, in the evenings, and put away to get yellow and sallow like his face . . . and his hopes.  It must be almost time to “make garden,” he thought.  He had heard them saying at the store that the sap was beginning to run in the maple-trees.  He would have just time to get himself settled in his house . . . he felt an absurd young flush come up under his grizzled beard at this phrase . . . “his house,” his own house, with bookshelves, and a garden.  How he loved it all already!  He sat very still, feeling those savagely lopped-off tendrils put out their curling fingers once more, this time unafraid.  He sat there in the comfortable old arm-chair at rest as never before.  He thought, “This is the way I’m going to feel right along, every day, all the time,” and closed his eyes.

He opened them again in a moment, moved subconsciously by the life-time habit of making sure what Vincent was up to.  He smiled at the keen look of alert, prick-eared attention which the other was still giving to that room!  Lord, how Vincent did love to get things all figured out!  He probably had, by this time, an exact diagram of the owners of the house all drawn up in his mind and would probably spend the hour of their call, seeing if it fitted.  Not that they would have any notion he was doing anything but talk a blue streak, or was thinking of anything but introducing an old friend.

One thing he wanted in his garden was plenty of gladioli.  Those poor, spindling, watery ones he had tried to grow in the window-box, he’d forget that failure in a whole big row all along the terrace, tall and strong, standing up straight in the country sunshine.  What was the address of that man who made a specialty of gladioli?  He ought to have noted it down.  “Vincent,” he asked, “do you remember the address of that Mr. Schwatzkummerer who grew nothing but gladioli?” Vincent was looking with an expression of extreme astonishment at the sheet of music on the piano.  He started at the question, stared, recollected himself, laughed, and said, “Heavens, no, Mr. Welles!” and went back into his own world.  There were lots of things, Mr. Welles reflected, that Vincent did not care about just as hard as he cared about others.

In a moment the younger man came and sat down on the short, high-armed sofa.  Mr. Welles thought he looked puzzled, a very unusual expression on that face.  Maybe, after all, he hadn’t got the owners of the house so well-plotted out as he thought he ought to.  He himself, going on with his own concerns, remarked, “Well, the name must be in the Long Island telephone directory.  When you go back you could look it up and send me word.”

“Whose name?” asked Vincent blankly.

“Schwatzkummerer,” said the other.

“What!” cried Vincent incredulously, and then, “Oh yes,” and then, “Sure, yes, I’ll look it up.  I’m going back Thursday on the night train.  I won’t leave the Grand Central without going to a telephone booth, looking it up, and sending it to you on a postcard, mailed there.  It ought to be here on the morning mail Saturday.”