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Rivers for a nickel to put in your bank." Mr.
Bessemer roused up. "Did that boy do that?" he inquired sharply of
Travis. "Well, well, he won't do it again," said Travis soothingly. The
old man glared for an instant at Howard, who shifted uneasily in his
seat. But meanwhile Snooky had clambered down to the outside door,
and before anything further could be said young Rivers came into the
dining-room.

Chapter II
FOR some reason, never made sufficiently clear, Rivers' parents had
handicapped him from the baptismal font with the prenomen of Conde,
which, however, upon Anglo-Saxon tongues, had been promptly
modified to Condy, or even, among his familiar and intimate friends, to
Conny. Asked as to his birthplace--for no Californian assumes that his
neighbor is born in the State--Condy was wont to reply that he was
"bawn 'n' rais'" in Chicago; "but," he always added, "I couldn't help that,
you know." His people had come West in the early eighties, just in time
to bury the father in alien soil. Condy was an only child. He was

educated at the State University, had a finishing year at Yale, and a few
months after his return home was taken on the staff of the San
Francisco "Daily Times" as an associate editor of its Sunday
supplement. For Condy had developed a taste and talent in the matter
of writing. Short stories were his mania. He had begun by an
inoculation of the Kipling virus, had suffered an almost fatal attack of
Harding Davis, and had even been affected by Maupassant. He "went
in" for accuracy of detail; held that if one wrote a story involving
firemen one should have, or seem to have, every detail of the
department at his fingers' ends, and should "bring in" to the tale all
manner of technical names and cant phrases. Much of his work on the
Sunday supplement of "The Times" was of the hack order--special
articles, write-ups, and interviews. About once a month, however, he
wrote a short story, and of late, now that he was convalescing from
Maupassant and had begun to be somewhat himself, these stories had
improved in quality, and one or two had even been copied in the
Eastern journals. He earned $100 a month. When Snooky had let him in,
Rivers dashed up the stairs of the Bessemers' flat, two at a time, tossed
his stick into a porcelain cane-rack in the hall, wrenched off his
overcoat with a single movement, and precipitated himself, panting,
into the dining-room, tugging at his gloves. He was twenty-eight years
old--nearly ten years older than Travis; tall and somewhat lean; his face
smooth-shaven and pink all over, as if he had just given it a violent
rubbing with a crash towel. Unlike most writing folk, he dressed
himself according to prevailing custom. But Condy overdid the matter.
His scarfs and cravats were too bright, his colored shirt-bosoms were
too broadly barred, his waistcoats too extreme. Even Travis, as she rose
to his abrupt entrance? told herself that of a Sunday evening a pink
shirt and scarlet tie were a combination hardly to be forgiven. Condy
shook her hand in both of his, then rushed over to Mr. Bessemer,
exclaiming between breaths: "Don't get up, sir--don't THINK of it!
Heavens! I'm disgustingly late. You're all through. My watch--this
beastly watch of mine--I can't imagine how I came to be so late. You
did quite right not to wait." Then as his morbidly keen observation
caught a certain look of blankness on Travis' face, and his rapid glance
noted no vacant chair at table, he gave a quick gasp of dismay.
"Heavens and earth! didn't you EXPECT me?" he cried. "I thought you

said--I thought--I must have forgotten--I must have got it mixed up
somehow. What a hideous mistake, what a blunder! What a fool I am!"
He dropped into a chair against the wall and mopped his forehead with
a blue-bordered handkerchief. "Well, what difference does it make,
Condy?" said Travis quietly. "I'll put another place for you." "No, no!"
he vociferated, jumping up. "I won't hear of it, I won't permit it! You'll
think I did it on purpose!" Travis ignored his interference, and made a
place for him opposite the children, and had Maggie make some more
chocolate. Condy meanwhile covered himself with opprobrium. "And
all this trouble--I always make trouble everywhere I go. Always a
round man in a square hole, or a square man in a round hole." He got
up and sat down again, crossed and recrossed his legs, picked up little
ornaments from the mantelpiece, and replaced them without
consciousness of what they were, and finally broke the crystal of his
watch as he was resetting it by the cuckoo clock. "Hello!" he exclaimed
suddenly, "where did