A Man and His Money | Page 7

seem to mind taking the risk--reflectively. They
said he was a great success falling through the air, and they had him, in
consequence, fall from all kinds of places,--through drawbridges into
the water, for example. That's where he contracted a bad cold, and

when he had recovered, another man had been found for the
heavier-than-air rôle--
"What are you talking about?" The lady's back was stiffer than a poker.
"If ever you go to a moving-picture palace of amusement, Madam, and
see a streak in the air, you might reasonably conclude you are"--he
bowed--"beholding me. I went once; it seemed funny. I hardly
recognized myself in the part. I certainly seemed to be 'going some',"
he murmured seriously. "Is there anything else, Madam, you would
care to question me about?"
"I think," she said significantly, "what I have learned is quite sufficient.
If the occupations you have told me about are so disreputable--what
were those you have kept so carefully concealed? For example, where
were you and what were you doing four--five--six--years ago? You
have already refused to answer. You relate only a few inconsequential
and outré trifles. To cover up--What? What?" she repeated.
Then she transfixed him with her eye; the dogs transfixed him with
their eyes. Accusingly? Not all of them. Naughty's glance expressed
approval; his tail underwent a friendly agitation.
"Naughty!" said the lady sharply. Naughty gamboled around Horatio.
"How odd!" murmured the mistress, more to herself than the other.
"How very extraordinary!"
"What, Madam?" he ventured.
"That Naughty, who so seldom takes to strangers, should--" she found
herself saying.
"Perhaps it's the scent of the gasolene," he suggested.
"It's in spite of the gasolene," she retorted sharply.
And for some moments ruminated. It was not until afterward Mr.
Heatherbloom learned that her confidence in Naughty's instinct

amounted to a hobby. Only once had she thought him at fault in his
likes or dislikes of people; when he had showed a predilection for the
assistant rector's shapely calves. But after that gentleman's elopement
with a lady of the choir and his desertion of wife and children,
Naughty's erstwhile disrespect for the cloth, which Miss Van Rolsen
had grieved over, became illumined with force and significance.
Thereafter she had never doubted him; he had barked at all twelve of
Mr. Heatherbloom's predecessors--the dozen other answers to the
advertisement; but here he was sedulous for fondlings from Horatio.
Extraordinary truly! The lady hesitated.
"I suppose we shall all be murdered in our beds," she said half to
herself, "but," with sudden decision, "I've concluded to engage you."
"And my duties?" ventured Mr. Heatherbloom. "The advertisement did
not say."
"You are to exercise the darlings every day in the park."
"Ah!" Horatio's exclamation was noncommittal. What he might have
added was interrupted by a light footstep in the hall and the voice of
some one who stopped in passing before the door.
"I am going now, Aunt," said a voice.
Mr. Heatherbloom started; his hand tightened on the back of a chair;
from where he stood he could see but the rim of a wonderful hat. He
gazed at a few waving roses, fitting notes of color as it were, for the
lovely face behind, concealed from him by the curtain.
The elderly lady answered; Mr. Heatherbloom heard a Prince
Someone's name mentioned; then the roses were whisked back; the
voice--musical as silver bells--receded, and the front door closed. Mr.
Heatherbloom gazed around him--at the furnishings in the room--she
who stood before him. He seemed bewildered.
"And now as to your wages," said a voice--not silver bells!--sharply.

"I hardly think I should prove suitable--" he began in somewhat
panic-stricken tones, when--
"Nonsense!" The word, or the energy imparted to it, appeared to crush
for the moment further opposition on his part; his faculties became
concentrated on a sound without, of a big car gathering headway in
front of the door. Mr. Heatherbloom listened; perhaps he would have
liked to retreat then and there from that house; but it was too late! Fate
had precipitated him here. A mad tragic jest! He did not catch the
amount of his proposed stipend that was mentioned; he even forgot for
the moment he was hungry. He could no longer hear the car. It had
gone; but, it would return. Return! And then--? His head whirled at the
thought.
CHAPTER III
AN ENCOUNTER
Mr. Heatherbloom, a few days later, sat one morning in Central Park.
His canine charges were tied to the bench and while they chafed at
restraint and tried vainly to get away and chase squirrels, he scrutinized
one of the pages of a newspaper some person had left there. What the
young man read seemed to give him no great pleasure. He put down the
paper; then picked it up again and regarded a