The proprietor turned to the door in a listening attitude.
"I believe I hear that feller coming back," he said.
Archie gulped.
"How about trying it on?" he said. "I'm not sure, after all, it isn't fairly ripe."
"That's the way to talk," said the proprietor, cordially. "You try it on. You can't judge a suit, not a real nice suit like this, by looking at it. You want to put it on. There!" He led the way to a dusty mirror at the back of the shop. "Isn't that a bargain at seventy dollars?... Why, say, your mother would be proud if she could see her boy now!"
A quarter of an hour later, the proprietor, lovingly kneading a little sheaf of currency bills, eyed with a fond look the heap of clothes which lay on the counter.
"As nice a little lot as I've ever had in my shop!" Archie did not deny this. It was, he thought, probably only too true.
"I only wish I could see you walking up Fifth Avenue in them!" rhapsodised the proprietor. "You'll give 'em a treat! What you going to do with 'em? Carry 'em under your arm?" Archie shuddered strongly. "Well, then, I can send 'em for you anywhere you like. It's all the same to me. Where'll I send 'em?"
Archie meditated. The future was black enough as it was. He shrank from the prospect of being confronted next day, at the height of his misery, with these appalling reach-me-downs.
An idea struck him.
"Yes, send 'em," he said.
"What's the name and address?"
"Daniel Brewster," said Archie, "Hotel Cosmopolis."
It was a long time since he had given his father-in-law a present.
Archie went out into the street, and began to walk pensively down a now peaceful Ninth Avenue. Out of the depths that covered him, black as the pit from pole to pole, no single ray of hope came to cheer him. He could not, like the poet, thank whatever gods there be for his unconquerable soul, for his soul was licked to a splinter. He felt alone and friendless in a rotten world. With the best intentions, he had succeeded only in landing himself squarely amongst the ribstons. Why had he not been content with his wealth, instead of risking it on that blighted bet with Reggie? Why had he trailed the Girl Friend, dash her! He might have known that he would only make an ass of himself, And, because he had done so, Looney Biddle's left hand, that priceless left hand before which opposing batters quailed and wilted, was out of action, resting in a sling, careened like a damaged battleship; and any chance the Giants might have had of beating the Pirates was gone--gone--as surely as that thousand dollars which should have bought a birthday present for Lucille.
A birthday present for Lucille! He groaned in bitterness of spirit. She would be coming back to-night, dear girl, all smiles and happiness, wondering what he was going to give her tomorrow. And when to-morrow dawned, all he would be able to give her would be a kind smile. A nice state of things! A jolly situation! A thoroughly good egg, he did NOT think!
It seemed to Archie that Nature, contrary to her usual custom of indifference to human suffering, was mourning with him. The sky was overcast, and the sun had ceased to shine. There was a sort of sombreness in the afternoon, which fitted in with his mood. And then something splashed on his face.
It says much for Archie's pre-occupation that his first thought, as, after a few scattered drops, as though the clouds were submitting samples for approval, the whole sky suddenly began to stream like a shower-bath, was that this was simply an additional infliction which he was called upon to bear, On top of all his other troubles he would get soaked to the skin or have to hang about in some doorway. He cursed richly, and sped for shelter.
The rain was setting about its work in earnest. The world was full of that rending, swishing sound which accompanies the more violent summer storms. Thunder crashed, and lightning flicked out of the grey heavens. Out in the street the raindrops bounded up off the stones like fairy fountains. Archie surveyed them morosely from his refuge in the entrance of a shop.
And then, suddenly, like one of those flashes which were lighting up the gloomy sky, a thought lit up his mind.
"By Jove! If this keeps up, there won't be a ball-game to-day!"
With trembling fingers he pulled out his watch. The hands pointed to five minutes to three. A blessed vision came to him of a moist and disappointed crowd receiving rain-checks up at the Polo Grounds.
"Switch it on, you blighters!" he cried, addressing the leaden clouds. "Switch it on more and more!"
It was shortly before five o'clock that a young man bounded into a jeweller's shop near the Hotel Cosmopolis--a young man who, in spite of the fact that his coat was torn near the collar and that he oozed water from every inch of his drenched clothes, appeared in the highest spirits.. It was only when he spoke that the jeweller recognised in the human sponge the immaculate youth who had looked in that morning to order a bracelet.
"I say, old lad," said this young man, "you remember that jolly little what-not you showed me before lunch?"
"The bracelet, sir?"
"As you observe with a manly candour which does you credit, my dear old jeweller, the bracelet. Well, produce, exhibit, and bring it forth, would you mind? Trot it out! Slip it across on a lordly dish!"
"You wished me, surely, to put it aside and send it to the Cosmopolis to-morrow?"
The young man tapped the jeweller earnestly on his substantial chest.
"What I wished and what I wish now are two bally separate and dashed distinct things, friend of my college days! Never put off till to- morrow what you can do to-day, and all that! I'm not taking any more chances. Not for me! For others, yes, but not for Archibald! Here are the doubloons, produce the jolly bracelet Thanks!"
The jeweller counted the notes with the same unction which Archie had observed earlier in the day in the proprietor of the second-hand clothes-shop. The process made him genial.
"A nasty, wet day, sir, it's been," he observed, chattily.
Archie shook his head.
"Old friend," he said, "you're all wrong. Far otherwise, and not a bit like it, my dear old trafficker in gems! You've put your finger on the one aspect of this blighted p.m. that really deserves credit and respect. Rarely in the experience of a lifetime have I encountered a day so absolutely bally in nearly every shape and form, but there was one thing that saved it, and that was its merry old wetness! Toodle-oo, laddie!"
"Good evening, sir," said the jeweller.
CHAPTER XVI
ARCHIE ACCEPTS A SITUATION
Lucille moved her wrist slowly round, the better to examine the new bracelet.
"You really are an angel, angel!" she murmured.
"Like it?" said Archie complacently.
"LIKE it! Why, it's gorgeous! It must have cost a fortune."
"Oh, nothing to speak of. Just a few hard-earned pieces of eight. Just a few doubloons from the old oak chest."
"But I didn't know there were any doubloons in the old oak chest."
"Well, as a matter of fact," admitted Archie, "at one point in the proceedings there weren't. But an aunt of mine in England--peace be on her head!--happened to send me a chunk of the necessary at what you might call the psychological moment."
"And you spent it all on a birthday present for me! Archie!" Lucille gazed at her husband adoringly. "Archie, do you know what I think?"
"What?"
"You're the perfect man!"
"No, really! What ho!"
"Yes," said Lucille firmly. "I've long suspected it, and now I know. I don't think there's anybody like you in the world."
Archie patted her hand.
"It's a rummy thing," he observed, "but your father said almost exactly that to me only yesterday. Only I don't fancy he meant the same as you. To be absolutely frank, his exact expression was that he thanked God there was only one of me."
A troubled look came into Lucille's grey eyes.
"It's a shame about father. I do wish he appreciated you. But you mustn't be too hard on him."