Our Mr Wrenn | Page 5

as the President's guest in the admiral's barge and was frightened
by the stare of a sauntering shop-girl and arrived home before dusk, to
Mrs. Zapp's straitened approval.
Dusk made incantations in his third-floor-front. Pleasantly fagged in
those slight neat legs, after his walk, Mr. Wrenn sat in the wicker
rocker by the window, patting his scrubby tan mustache and reviewing
the day's wandering. When the gas was lighted he yearned over pictures
in a geographical magazine for a happy hour, then yawned to himself,
"Well-l-l, Willum, guess it's time to crawl into the downy."
He undressed and smoothed his ready-made suit on the rocking-chair
back. Sitting on the edge of his bed, quaint in his cotton night-gown,
like a rare little bird of dull plumage, he rubbed his head sleepily.
Um-m-m-m-m! How tired he was! He went to open the window. Then
his tamed heart leaped into a waltz, and he forgot third-floor-fronts and
sleepiness.
Through the window came the chorus of fog-horns on North River.
"Boom-m-m!" That must be a giant liner, battling up through the fog.
(It was a ferry.) A liner! She'd be roaring just like that if she were off
the Banks! If he were only off the Banks! "Toot! Toot!" That was a tug.
"Whawn-n-n!" Another liner. The tumultuous chorus repeated to him
all the adventures of the day.
He dropped upon the bed again and stared absently at his clothes. Out
of the inside coat pocket stuck the unopened letter from Cousin John.
He read a paragraph of it. He sprang from the bed and danced a
tarantella, pranced in his cottony nightgown like a drunken Yaqui. The
letter announced that the flinty farm at Parthenon, left to Mr. Wrenn by
his father, had been sold. Its location on a river bluff had made it
valuable to the Parthenon Chautauqua Association. There was now to
his credit in the Parthenon National Bank nine hundred and forty
dollars!
He was wealthy, then. He had enough to stalk up and down the earth
for many venturesome (but economical) months, till he should learn the

trade of wandering, and its mysterious trick of living without a job or a
salary.
He crushed his pillow with burrowing head and sobbed excitedly, with
a terrible stomach-sinking and a chill shaking. Then he laughed and
wanted to--but didn't--rush into the adjacent hall room and tell the total
stranger there of this world-changing news. He listened in the hall to
learn whether the Zapps were up, but heard nothing; returned and
cantered up and down, gloating on a map of the world.
"Gee! It's happened. I could travel all the time. I guess I won't be--very
much--afraid of wrecks and stuff. . . . Things like that. . . . Gee! If I
don't get to bed I'll be late at the office in the morning!"
Mr. Wrenn lay awake till three o'clock. Monday morning he felt rather
ashamed of having done so eccentric a thing. But he got to the office on
time. He was worried with the cares of wealth, with having to decide
when to leave for his world-wanderings, but he was also very much
aware that office managers are disagreeable if one isn't on time. All
morning he did nothing more reckless than balance his new fortune,
plus his savings, against steamship fares on a waste half-sheet of paper.
The noon-hour was not The Job's, but his, for exploration of the parlous
lands of romance that lie hard by Twenty-eighth Street and Sixth
Avenue. But he had to go out to lunch with Charley Carpenter, the
assistant bookkeeper, that he might tell the news. As for Charley, He
needed frequently to have a confidant who knew personally the
tyrannous ways of the office manager, Mr. Guilfogle.
Mr. Wrenn and Charley chose (that is to say, Charley chose) a table at
Drubel's Eating House. Mr. Wrenn timidly hinted, "I've got some big
news to tell you."
But Charley interrupted, "Say, did you hear old Goglefogle light into
me this morning? I won't stand for it. Say, did you hear him--the old--"
"What was the trouble, Charley?"
"Trouble? Nothing was the trouble. Except with old Goglefogle. I made
one little break in my accounts. Why, if old Gogie had to keep track of
seventy-'leven accounts and watch every single last movement of a fool
girl that can't even run the adding-machine, why, he'd get green around
the gills. He'd never do anything but make mistakes! Well, I guess the
old codger must have had a bum breakfast this morning. Wanted some
exercise to digest it. Me, I was the exercise--I was the goat. He calls me

in, and he calls me _down_, and me--well, just lemme tell you, Wrenn,
I calls his bluff!"
Charley Carpenter stopped his rapid tirade, delivered