Our Mr Wrenn | Page 7

to beat it over and buy a pair of
socks before I go back."
Mr. Wrenn crept out of Drubel's behind him, very melancholy. Even
Charley admitted that he "had ought to stay," then; and what chance

was there of persuading the dread Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle that he
wished to be looked upon as one resigning? Where, then, any chance of
globe-trotting; perhaps for months he would remain in slavery, and he
had hoped just that morning-- One dreadful quarter-hour with Mr.
Guilfogle and he might be free. He grinned to himself as he admitted
that this was like seeing Europe after merely swimming the mid-winter
Atlantic.
Well, he had nine minutes more, by his two-dollar watch; nine minutes
of vagabondage. He gazed across at a Greek restaurant with signs in
real Greek letters like "ruins at--well, at Aythens." A Chinese
chop-suey den with a red-and-yellow carved dragon, and at an upper
window a squat Chinaman who might easily be carrying a _kris_, "or
whatever them Chink knives are," as he observed for the hundredth
time he had taken this journey. A rotisserie, before whose upright
fender of scarlet coals whole ducks were happily roasting to a shiny
brown. In a furrier's window were Siberian foxes' skins (Siberia! huts
of "awful brave convicks"; the steely Northern Sea; guards in blouses,
just as he'd seen them at an Academy of Music play) and a polar bear
(meaning, to him, the Northern Lights, the long hike, and the igloo at
night). And the florists! There were orchids that (though he only half
knew it, and that all inarticulately) whispered to him of jungles where,
in the hot hush, he saw the slumbering python and--"What was it in that
poem, that, Mandalay, thing? was it about jungles? Anyway:
"'Them garlicky smells, And the sunshine and the palms and the bells.'"
He had to hurry back to the office. He stopped only to pat the head of a
florist's delivery horse that looked wistfully at him from the curb. "Poor
old fella. What you thinking about? Want to be a circus horse and
wander? Le's beat it together. You can't, eh? Poor old fella!"
At three-thirty, the time when it seems to office persons that the day's
work never will end, even by a miracle, Mr. Wrenn was shaky about
his duty to the firm. He was more so after an electrical interview with
the manager, who spent a few minutes, which he happened to have free,
in roaring "I want to know why" at Mr. Wrenn. There was no particular
"why" that he wanted to know; he was merely getting scientific
efficiency out of employees, a phrase which Mr. Guilfogle had taken
from a business magazine that dilutes efficiency theories for inefficient
employers.

At five-twenty the manager summoned him, complimented him on
nothing in particular, and suggested that he stay late with Charley
Carpenter and the stock-keeper to inventory a line of desk-clocks which
they were closing out.
As Mr. Wrenn returned to his desk he stopped at a window on the
corridor and coveted the bright late afternoon. The cornices of lofty
buildings glistened; the sunset shone fierily through the glass-inclosed
layer-like upper floors. He wanted to be out there in the streets with the
shopping crowds. Old Goglefogle didn't consider him; why should he
consider the firm?


CHAPTER II
HE WALKS WITH MISS THERESA

As he left the Souvenir Company building after working late at taking
inventory and roamed down toward Fourteenth Street, Mr. Wrenn felt
forlornly aimless. The worst of it all was that he could not go to the
Nickelorion for moving pictures; not after having been cut by the
ticket-taker. Then, there before him was the glaring sign of the
Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with "Great Train Robbery Film
Tonight" made his heart thump like stair-climbing--and he dashed at
the ticket-booth with a nickel doughtily extended. He felt queer about
the scalp as the cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be
watching him so closely? As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he
tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one- nineteenth of
a second he kept his head turned. It turned back of itself; he stared full
at the man, half bowed--and received a hearty absent-minded nod and a
"Fine evenin'." He sang to himself a monotonous song of great joy.
When he stumbled over the feet of a large German in getting to a seat,
he apologized as though he were accustomed to laugh easily with many
friends.
The train-robbery film was--well, he kept repeating "Gee!" to himself

pantingly. How the masked men did sneak, simply sneak and sneak,
behind the bushes! Mr. Wrenn shrank as one of them leered out of the
picture at him.