Meredith Nicholson

“ He was a happier man than he had been in the old days, and he accepted the presence of the Ideals as a mitigating circumstance of the journey to Kernville. The lively conversation about him at once caused his eyes to roam unseeingly over his newspaper. A diffident man, McGillicuddy, he had grown immensely curious of late as to the employments and habits of fragments of the human race that were wholly alien to wholesale dry goods. ”

“ Watkins' repetition of the words “sheriff” and “habeas corpus” evoked a shriek from Mrs. Watkins that was plainly audible to McGillicuddy. Time was lost while the perturbed lady was again quieted.
“I want your wife to take charge of the girl until she can be married. What's that? No! No! I'm not going to marry her! There's a young fellow at the hotel that's ready to marry her. What? Of course I stand for it! Yes; of course I'm all right! Get your machine out; come in the back way so they wont see you from the hotel, and I'll be ready to go up to your house with the girl. ”

“ ROGER G. McGILLICUDDY had never traveled with an opera company before. Indeed, he did not immediately realize that the young ladies and gentlemen, thirty in number, who had sleepily jostled him on the Fostoria platform were members of a profession adorned by Geraldine Farrar and Enrico Caruso. He was more concerned with the fact that No. 18 did not carry a parlor-car, though the common carrier to which he had confidingly intrusted his person had, through its officers and agents, promised him that luxury. ”

“ The lawyer who had precipitated the crisis in the affairs of the Ideals now appeared and berated the house-manager for conniving at Forbes' flight. The sheriff threatened him with dire consequences if he ever played such a trick upon him again. McGillicuddy's tender heart was struck with fear for the Ideals. Unless three hundred dollars was immediately forthcoming, they would be out of business. He took the attorney's receipt for the claims in full and regained his box in the middle of the second act just in time to hear Irene speak her only line—and it was a stupid one. ”

“ Florette continued. “But you got to get that out o' your system. A girl like her, who aint naturally fitted for a professional career, and cries when she gets a call-down, had better get married and play the girl with the hoe in her own little garden. Lord! If Forbes talked to me the way he does to Irene, I'd sure retire to private life!”
McGillicuddy hated Forbes for his lack of consideration for Irene. He had observed Forbes at the lunch-counter and had formed the lowest opinion of him. McGillicuddy felt deeply that a man with so many young lives in his keeping should be a gentleman. ”

“ His chief purpose in life seemed to be to escape from the presence of the stout burglar who had had invaded the sacred precincts of the Watkins emporium.
McGILLICUDDY turned off the light, opened the window by the desk, loosened the shutter and peered through the crack. Apparently the hotel was in a state of panic. Lights shone in all the windows, and men and women in night dress were bending out, watching the result of the search. A man bearing a lantern ran through the alley, shouting to some one in the street. ”

“ All that Myrtle wanted was her pearl-handled nail-file, and when Florette declared that she would not open her suit-case again to please anyone, Myrtle said, “Oh, very well!” and added in an undertone a critical comment of a general nature as to the nerve of some people—some people being presumably Florette—who borrow pearl-handled nail-files and then conceal them in inaccessible suit-cases.
Being a lover of mankind, McGillicuddy was distressed to find that, judging by their acrimonious conversation, these young people apparently hated each other and all the world. ”

“ He drew out a roll of bills and thrust them upon the young man.
“When you've got through honeymooning, come to Chicago and I'll talk to you about your future.”
The dawn was just breaking as Mabel and Richard stood up before the minister in the Watkins parlor. Mrs. Watkins wept a little as the vows were spoken; Watkins had never so greatly admired McGillicuddy as when that gentleman stepped forward with great dignity to give the bride away.
“How pretty your suit is!” said Mrs. Watkins as they sat down to a five o'clock breakfast. “That's the very newest model!” ”

“ McGillicuddy had visited Fostoria for the praiseworthy purpose of inspecting a monument he had just reared to the memory of his Buckeye ancestors, and had promised himself the pleasure of spending a day at Kernville, the Gem City of the Wabash, to renew old ties with Jim Watkins, a former employee of his house who was now sole proprietor of the Gem City's leading department-store. Watkins had married a highly successful buyer of notions for the McGillicuddy house, and McGillicuddy had helped Watkins to finance his new venture. Watkins was a shrewd and successful man ”

“ But it's the only life!”
Illustration: It was not in McGillicuddy's soul to suffer any girl to famish in his presence. He told the train-boy to pass the basket down the aisle and bring the bill to him. When the boy reappeared, the basket had been emptied. McGillicuddy was so pleased with the generous spirit in which the Ideals had availed themselves of his hospitality that he gave the boy a five-dollar bill and told him to keep the change. Where McGillicuddy sat became the center of the car. Anyone seeing the Ideals fluttering about him might have thought him an old friend and comrade. ”

“ Even the comedian, who had found it possible to minimize the arrears of his salary by promoting sundry small games of cards with Forbes as the predestined and foreordained victim, gloomily surveyed the manager's austere and forbidding back and was convinced of the truth of the persistent evil rumors that the angel who had sent the Ideals wandering through the Ohio Valley in “The Prince of Charmingville” was suffering from an acute attack of cold feet and had ceased his remittances,
ADVENTURE had knocked late at McGillicuddy's door, but the knock had been insistent. ”

“ McGillicuddy was surprised but in no wise disconcerted. He followed the sheriff to the box-office, from which Forbes had already departed with the company's share of the receipts—indeed, he had even now caught an interurban car for Indianapolis and all points south, leaving the company to whistle for two weeks' salary. ”

“ Illustration: “I hope Papa wont hurt Dick!” Irene moaned. “Don't worry about Dick!” McGillicuddy admonished. “We'll take care of that later.” He bade her flatten herself against the wall, and he addressed himself to the business of inserting the pipe through a crack in an iron shutter of the dry-goods store. It opened far more easily than he had expected, and he made mental note that he must caution Watkins against such carelessness.
McGillicuddy convoyed Irene and Florette to the stage-door of the Grand Opera House and promised them supper after the performance. ”

“ His palms still stung from his slide on the gravel roof, and he was sensible of bruises on his legs, the result of bumps against the millinery tables.
When they reached the stairs on their way to the ground floor, the imprisoned negro could be heard kicking the door with a rhythmical staccato possible only to a man who is lying on his back and using both feet.
“The room is rather small,” McGillicuddy remarked in reply to Mabel's frightened whisper, “but I think the lock will hold.” ”

“ My father is rich, for a place like that. Papa and Mamma want me to marry Papa's partner,—a widower with two children!—and they made me very unhappy about it. So I ran away to Chicago and got a place in the Ideal Company. ”