Ralph Henry Barbour

“ Suddenly he became aware that he had a neighbor. Beside him, two or three paces nearer the entrance, stood a person who, like Jack, had stepped aside out of the throng, perhaps to await a friend, perhaps to merely watch the ever-changing picture. He was tall, strikingly good-looking, immaculately attired in afternoon dress. Everything about him, from his speckless spats to the white gardenia in the lapel of his frock coat, was absolutely flawless.
Jack studied him with growing disfavor. He had been long enough in the West to acquire the Westerner's suspicion of immaculateness in male attire. ”

“ Doubtless there were plenty of worried faces in those passing streams, but they were so outnumbered by the merry, radiant ones that they passed unnoted by Jack. To him it seemed that all New York was happily intent on the purchase of Christmas presents, that every one was going to give to every one else, and that, in short, out of all those millions about him, he alone was the only one with no interest in the place, the people, or the spirit of the occasion, the only one to whom the season meant well-nigh nothing. ”

“ Good Lord! So it would be! Jack's heart sank; and as a moment before it had been floating blissfully about in empyrean heights, the fall was stupendous and almost took his breath away. When that hansom came it would be all over, everything; New York would be the dirty old hole it really was, and he would again be merely the utter outsider, of interest to none save the hotel servants—and to them only while his money lasted. ”

“ As though resenting the unuttered aspersion, the stranger turned and viewed Jack curiously and a trifle superciliously.
“Huh!” grunted Jack under his breath, returning the other's glance with frank antipathy. “Any one can take off his hat. I can do it myself, even though I don't know six persons in the city. And,” he added, partly from a natural love of mischief and partly because of a desire to irritate his neighbor, “I'll do it, too, as often as you do.” ”

“ I SUPPOSE,” thought Jack Crosby, “that the geographical center of the Sahara Desert on the Fourth of July would be some quiet, but darned if New York at Christmas time hasn't got it thrown and hog-tied for genuine loneliness! It sure has!”
He flattened himself out against the front of the building, as the throng at the entrance grew momentarily larger, and lighted a cigarette. He was a good-looking chap; broad-shouldered and broad-hipped; straight-backed, with a well-shaped head set easily on a rather short neck. ”

“ They're awfully sweet, aren't they? We don't have them out our way,” he added regretfully. “I wonder if you'd miss them very much?”
She turned a startled glance toward him and Jack felt the color rushing into his face.
“Please don't think me a bally idiot,” he begged. “I won't open my mouth again, honest! What's she stopping here for?”
“This is where I live,” she answered.
“By Jove, is it?” asked Jack, viewing the brown stone front with wondering eyes. “Think of that! Why, it looks like any other house. I beg pardon.” And he leaped to the sidewalk to help her out. ”

“ He wanted to buy things and give them to folks; he wanted the glow inside that comes of that sort of thing; he wanted—hang it! He wanted to belong to the bunch and not be a darned old maverick such as he felt himself to be!
“Any old body,” he said to himself, “can put their brand on me that wants to. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1944, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 79 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”