“Well, how did you get to know about it?”

“I tell you I was only talking.”

He let it drop at that.  The street crowds held and interested him.  He liked to speculate about them; what life meant to them, in work and love and play; to what they were going on such hurrying feet.  A country boy, the haste of the city impressed him.

“Why do they hurry so?” he demanded, almost irritably.

“Hurrying home, most of them, because they’ve got to get up in the morning and go to work.”

“Do you ever wonder about the homes they are hurrying to?”

“Me?  I don’t wonder.  I know.  Most of them have to move fast to keep up with the rent.”

“I don’t mean houses,” he explained, patiently.  “I mean—­ A house isn’t a home.”

“You bet it isn’t.”

“It’s the families I’m talking about.  In a small town you know all about people, who they live with, and all that.”  He was laboriously talking down to her.  “But here—­”

He saw that she was not interested.  Something he had said started an unpleasant train of thought in her mind.  She was walking faster, and frowning slightly.  To cheer her he said: 

“I am keeping an eye out for the large young man in the sack suit, you know.  If he jumps me, just yell for the police, will you?  Because I’ll probably not be able to.”

“I wish you’d let me forget him.”

“I will.  The question is, will he?” But he saw that the subject was unpleasant.

“We’ll have to do this again.  It’s been mighty nice of you to come.”

“You’ll have to ask me, the next time.”

“I certainly will.  But I think I’d better let your family look me over first, just so they’ll know that I don’t customarily steal the silver spoons when I’m asked out to dinner.  Or anything like that.”

“We’re just—­folks.”

“So am I, awfully—­folks!  And pretty lonely folks at that.  Something like that pup that has adopted me, only worse.  He’s got me, but I haven’t anybody.”

“You’ll not be lonely long.”  She glanced up at him.

“That’s cheering.  Why?”

“Well, you are the sort that makes friends,” she said, rather vaguely.  “That crowd that drops into the shop on the evenings you’re there—­they’re crazy about you.  They like to hear you talk.”

“Great Scott!  I suppose I’ve been orating all over the place!”

“No, but you’ve got ideas.  You give them something to think about when they go home.  I wish I had a mind like yours.”

He was so astonished that he stopped dead on the pavement.  “My Scottish blood,” he said despondently.  “A Scot is always a reformer and a preacher, in his heart.  I used to orate to my mother, but she liked it.  She is a Scot, too.  Besides, it put her to sleep.  But I thought I’d outgrown it.”

“You don’t make speeches.  I didn’t mean that.”