University of Virginia Library

4. IV

"But Bert did worry, an' so did I. I liked Miss Martin, an' I was gettin' scared for fear this Wiggins was goin' to play the part outright up to the altar an' spend like a prince till the weddin'-bells rung for him. I knew what would happen to Lily Martin if he ever got her that far. She'd never lay eyes on a thin dime from the time she once said `I do.' Can you imagine what Henry Wiggins would turn into after spendin' what he had spent to get a woman, an' gettin' her? Well, I can!

"Wiggins was on my nerves, too. He was so blamed triumphant! Every time he come over to the stand here to buy a paper he'd tip me a quarter. Him that had never bought papers before! Him that had always sneaked into the lobby an' picked up the news of the day second-hand from some crumpled sheet that a

human being had read and thrown away. He'd buy his own an' tip me a quarter!

"`You're doin' pretty well,' I says to him one day, real snappy.' But don't bother to hand me any more quarters,' I says. `I don't want blood-money,' I says. `You act as if you liked it, an' you act pretty well; but I know you bleed internally from the rupture every time you jar yourself loose from one of these two-bit pieces.'

"`You remember what I told you?' he says, still smilin'. `I was never stingy. I was simply saving my money to buy happiness with when I saw what I knew would make me happy. I've seen it, and I don't think any one can acuse me now of being a tightwad.'

"`No,' I says, `not now; but I know that the punishment you're undergoin' is somethin' frightful. You're doin' well, but you can't stand the pain forever.'

"`I'm having the time of my life,' he says, with a smile still workin'. `This is what I've had the strength to wait for.'

"Oh, Wiggins was game! He had the money, an' he sure spent it like a drunken sailor. Miss Martin said something about liking to take a little trip among the islands in the Sound, and Wiggins just carelessly steps out and buys the White Wave, a forty-five-foot yacht, to take her where she wanted to go. Can you beat it? He could have rented something, but he buys it! That little boat was second-hand, but it stood him in a good five hundred dollars in real money — an' just because she said she would like the trip! It had me beat.

"They made up a party for the voyage, an' got the boss here to let me off to go along as a kind of general ladies' maid an' stewardess. Bert Edgeley was along, an' five others besides Wiggins an' the Martins, Bert was just as happy as a Mexican hairless dog at the north pole. He was playin' Wiggins's cards for him right along, the poor simp! Bert knew what Wiggins really was. Miss Martin had never seen him in his natural state, so poor Bert's grouch goes with her for unmanly jealousy of a generous and gentlemanly rival — an' he acts accordingly.

"`I tried to give her the low-down on this fellow Wiggins,' he says to me. `I suppose it doesn't seem right to knock him when I'm his guest, but great Scott, you an' I know that he's not human! I just can't sit by and see Lily fooled by a thing like him; but when I try to tell her what he is, she thinks I'm jealous of him. An' I am,' he says. `He's carried his bluff so far, I'm worried white!'

"`He'll crack,' I says, an' tried to think I meant it; but I couldn't. Henry Wiggins had my goat.