Queed | Page 3

When the cat's away?"
"Not at all. I am taking this richly earned vacation by his express
command."
"In that case, why mightn't we turn about and go a real walk--cease
picking our way through the noisome hum of commerce and set brisk
evening faces toward the open road--and all that? You and I and the
dog. What is his name? Rollo, I suppose?"
"Rollo! No! Or Tray or Fido, either! His name is Bee, short for
Behemoth--and I think that a very captivating little name, don't you?
His old name, the one I bought him by, was Fred--Fred!--but already
he answers to the pretty name of Bee as though he were born to it.
Watch." She pursed her lips and gave a whistle, unexpectedly loud and
clear. "Here, Bee, here! Here, sir! Look, look. He turned around right
away!"
West laughed. "Wonderfully gifted dog. But I believe you mentioned
taking a walk in the November air. I can only say that physicians
strongly recommend it, valetudinarians swear by it--"
"Oh--if I only could!--but I simply cannot think of it. Do you know, I
never have a holiday without wondering how on earth I could have
gotten on another day without it. You can't imagine what loads of
things I've done since two o'clock, and loads remain. The very worst

job of them all still hangs by a hair over my head. I must cross here."
West said that evidently her conception of a holiday was badly mixed.
As they walked he paid for her society by incessantly taking off his hat;
nearly everybody they met spoke to them, many more to him than to
her. Though both of them had been born in that city and grown up with
it, the girl had only lately come to know West well, and she did not
know him very well now. All the years hitherto she had joined in the
general admiration of him shyly and from a distance, the pretty
waiting-lady's attitude toward the dazzling young crown prince. She
was observant, and so she could not fail to observe now the cordiality
with which people of all sorts saluted him, the touch of deference in the
greeting of not a few. He was scarcely thirty, but it would have been
clear to a duller eye that he was already something of a personage. Yet
he held no public office, nor were his daily walks the walks of
philanthropic labor for the common good. In fact Semple & West's was
merely a brokerage establishment, which was understood to be cleaning
up a tolerable lot of money per annum.
They stood on the corner, waiting for a convenient chance to cross, and
West looked at her as at one whom it was pleasant to rest one's eyes
upon. She drew his attention to their humming environment. For a city
of that size the life and bustle here were, indeed, such as to take the eye.
Trolley cars clanged by in a tireless procession; trucks were rounding
up for stable and for bed; delivery wagons whizzed corners and
bumped on among them; now and then a chauffeur honked by, grim
eyes roving for the unwary pedestrian. On both sides of the street the
homeward march of tired humans was already forming and quickening.
"Heigho! We're living in an interesting time, you and I," said West. "It
isn't every generation that can watch its old town change into a
metropolis right under its eyes."
"I remember," said she, "when it was an exciting thing to see anybody
on the street you didn't know. You went home and told the family about
it, and very likely counted the spoons next morning. The city seemed to
belong to us then. And now--look. Everywhere new kings that know
not Joseph. Bee!"

"It's the law of life; the old order changeth." He turned and looked
along the street, into the many faces of the homeward bound. "The
eternal mystery of the people.... Don't you like to look at their faces and
wonder what they're all doing and thinking and hoping and dreaming to
make out of their lives?"
"Don't you think they're all hoping and dreaming just one thing?--how
to make more money than they're making at present? All over the
world," said Miss Weyland, "bright young men lie awake at night,
thinking up odd, ingenious ways to take other people's money away
from them. These young men are the spirit of America. We're having
an irruption of them here now ... the Goths sacking the sacred city."
"Clever rascals they are too. I," said West, "belong to the other group. I
sleep of nights and wake up in the morning to have your bright young
Goths take my money away from me."
He laughed and continued: "Little Bobby Smythe,