Theodore Winthrop

“ Besides, not being flush made him one of my family, — and a big family it is!”
“We must not forget, Locksley, that while we discuss, he may be suffering.”
“That’s true. I must talk short, and talking short isn’t natural to my trade. Filing iron trains a man to be slow, just as hammering iron practises him to bounce his words like a sledge on an anvil. Well; I took Mr. Dreeme up-stairs, and showed him the studio overhead. ”

“ Just you run up, and lay your fist hard against Mr. Dreeme’s door, and if he don’t speak, and you can’t hear him snore through the keyhole, go to Mr. Churm, and whatever he says do, you do! Mr. Churm always threads the eye the first shove.’ So I went up, and rapped, and the more I knocked, the emptier and deader it sounded. Mr. Churm is gone. What shall we do, Mr. Byng? The young man may be up there on his back with a knife into him, or too weak to call out, and panting for brandy or opodildoc. My scare gets worse and worse. ”

“ Locksley smiled, then shook his head, and his worried look returned.
“No,” said he; “that kind of a girl makes a man want to be among folks and forget her. Mr. Dreeme has had a worse hurt than that. But whatever wounded him, for the last two weeks he’s been growing paler and punier every day. Some says the smell of paint is poison. I don’t believe there’s any strychnine so bad as moping off alone, and never seeing a laugh, and never playing at give and take, rough and smooth, out in the world.” ”

“ Dreeme. ‘What do you suppose has come to him?’ says she. ‘No answer when Dora went up with his breakfast; no answer when she knocked with his dinner. I mistrust he’s sick,’ says she. While she was talking, a scare — the biggest kind of a scare — come to me about him. ‘Wife,’ says I, ‘a scare has come to me about Mr. Dreeme.’ ‘Is it a prickly scare, William?’ says she. ‘Prickly outside and in,’ says I; ‘I feel as if I’d swallowed a peck of teazles, and was rolling in a bin of ’em.’ ‘William,’ says she, ‘scares is sent, and the prickly scares calls for hurries. ”

“ My advice is at your service, if it’s worth having, and you choose to trust a stranger.”
“O, I know you’re the right sort. We’ve made up our minds about that, big and little, down to the Janitory. But I don’t want to bother you.”
“Never mind! What is the trouble? Burglars? Or slow fire?”
“Why, you see, sir,” said Locksley, “I’m in considerable of a scare about that young painter up-stairs.”
He pointed to the centre-piece of the arabesqued ceiling. I looked up, almost expecting to see a pair of legs dangling through, according to my fancy of the afternoon. ”

“ The world and people are what he wants to dodge. I buy him all his materials. He took the last tenant’s furniture just as it stood, — and it’s only about Sing-Sing allowance. He don’t seem to need all sorts of old rubbish to put ideas into him, as the other painters do. ”

“ I was mighty near hiding in Hellgate.”
“How did he happen to shelter in Chrysalis?” I asked.
“I shall have to tell you all the little I know. I’ve halted because we Locksleys promised Mr. Dreeme not to be public about him. We’ve kept it close. But you’re one of the kind, Mr. Byng, that a man naturally wants to open his self to.”
“I’m not leaky; depend upon that!”
“Well,” said Locksley, fairly uncorked at last, and overrunning with his story; “Mr. Dreeme came in, after ten, one night about three months ago, and says he, ‘I’ve just got to town by the late train. ”