It was at this point in Polly’s independent speech that the door opened and Mr. Dalken came in with his two repentant lovers. Tom saw that the clouds had been dispersed and now there seemed to be a clear sky for Paul. But he was curious to hear what had happened during the short time he had been smoking that cigarette.

Polly also saw Paul return with Nolla, and when she saw the happy smiles on both faces, she groaned, and turned to go to the library where, so little time before, the tragic lover had escaped with a determination to never look at another girl as long as he lived—excepting his mother.

Tom followed Mr. Dalken to the dining-room to learn the particulars about the two individuals who had meekly followed the host back to the apartment; while Polly sank down in one of the Turkish arm-chairs recently occupied by the two plotting match-makers.

Mr. Dalken rolled his eyes ceiling-ward and complained: “I can’t understand why I should be chosen by Providence to act as peace-maker between jealous lovers, or quarrelsome husbands and wives. It is one of the most thankless jobs a man can have.”

Tom laughed in spite of his eagerness to be told the details. “Maybe it is because you have so much feeling for heartsick mortals,” said he.

Mr. Dalken looked serious. “Yes, Tom my boy, you spoke the truth there. If anyone knows the misery caused by fools and faithlessness, I’m that one. Perhaps that is the reason I can mediate for my friends.”

“I was going to ask you to mediate for me, with Polly, but I haven’t the heart to ask you, now,” ventured Tom.

“Why, you big ninny, I’ve done nothing else but try to mediate between you two for the past two years. If matters haven’t reached a crisis by this time, I’d better give up the case and let you get a specialist,” exclaimed Mr. Dalken.

“Tell me exactly where I stand now, and I’ll excuse you from further annoyance on my part.”

“Great Scott, Man! Can’t you tell where you stand? How can I judge. You surely don’t want me to propose for you, do you?”

Tom couldn’t afford to feel indignant, as he had to ask his friend what had happened to Paul and Eleanor, during his temporary absence from the others. So Mr. Dalken told as much of the story as he had been able to understand, concluding with the admonition: “Now that Jack can’t wile away time with Nolla, he will, doubtless, turn his full attention to Polly.”

That was the only malicious remark the poor man permitted himself to indulge in. But Tom took it seriously and said: “Thanks awfully, for the hint. I’ll keep after Polly myself, until Baxter gives up the chase.” And with that he hurried away to find Polly.

He found Paul and Eleanor sitting in the deep window-seat where Polly had been the early part of the evening, and as he wandered about for a glimpse of his “Heart’s Desire,” the Jap came over with a tray and said:

“Mis’r Tom look fer supper? Taki keep nice patty for him.”

Jack Baxter was near enough to hear Taki, and he laughed jeeringly as he said: “Oh, what a fine man you are, Taki! You know exactly what your master’s guests are wanting—patties or Pollies!”

Taki grinned but failed to grasp the young man’s meaning. Tom did, however, and leaving the oyster patty on the tray, he stalked across to Jack and said, threateningly:

“How dare you speak like that? Mentioning Miss Brewster’s name in the same breath as an oyster patty or a poll-parrot.”

But the truth of the matter was, Jack had never meant to convey the meaning, when he said “Pollies,” that he spoke of parrots. So he instantly took the stand of the offended one.

“How dare you even hint at such an insult to a friend of mine? I consider Miss Brewster too far above either you or me to discuss her with you, about such matters.”

Wise Taki had disappeared quickly and in another moment the harassed host came hurrying from the serving board. He glowered upon Tom and Jack, and grasping each one by the arm, he hustled them out into the main hall of the building and then spoke.

“You two bullies go down in the street and fight it out. I’ll do you the favor to ring up the police station and call a cop to come around and take you both in custody—that’s where you belong, until you come to your senses. If I were a girl I’d never look at either of you again.”

But this advice cooled their anger, and the moment Mr. Dalken turned to go back to his apartment both men laughed at the situation. Tom offered his hand and Baxter shook it. Then each apologised to the other, and in a few minutes they started for the door of the apartment.

But the door was locked, and, in front of it on the mat, were two small heaps: one was composed of Tom’s coat and hat, with a patty and sandwich on a wooden plate, on top of it. The other small heap was Jack’s dress-cape, with his silk hat topping it, and in the hat, were his gloves and the plate with refreshments. His cane hung on the door-knob.

All the bell-ringing Tom indulged in, thereafter, failed to bring any answer. So the two young men, highly amused by their host’s farewell act, ate the scanty refreshments handed out, and then left the two wooden plates in front of the door, with a note on each. The pencilled scrawls said: “Two hungry beggars thank the rich man who threw them the crumbs from his table.”

After they had gone down to the ground floor, Jack said: “I’ll try to get Dalken on the telephone and ask him to send us down enough company to keep us from going to sleep in the reception room.”

Tom laughed and stood eagerly waiting to hear the reply. But the operator smiled and reported: “Mr. Dalken called down a few minutes ago, and said that he was not at home to anyone—not even to friends—until tomorrow morning.”

So the two chagrined young men left, and whatever they did during the next few hours, no one ever knew, but from that evening both forgot their rivalry and became fast friends. Jack suddenly decided to go West and finish his engineering studies in the mountains about Pebbly Pit. And Tom decided to make one last stand for Polly, and should she still refuse him on the basis that she must finish a business experience first, then he would knuckle down to hard work and forget all about her, forever.

It was easier for Jack to carry out his purpose than for Tom to leave New York and forget Polly. But Jack managed to do as he had outlined, and before Christmas Day he had said good-by and was on his way to Denver.

Tom spent so much time and preparation before the mirror in his room, perfecting himself in the art of proposing to Polly, in such a way that she would be impressed, that he became quite self-conscious of his pose and words. On Christmas Day, he planned to coax her away by herself, and then fall upon his knees and tell his story. He had a magnificent solitaire in his pocket, waiting to be displayed at the right moment.

No one saw Tom all that Christmas morning, although his friends called on the telephone, both at his home and at the hotel. He did not reply to any calls. But late in the afternoon he sauntered forth from his room, looking more like a silly dandy than a big sensible young man who was one of the best engineers in the West.

He got in a taxi and gave directions. In front of Mr. Fabian’s house, he paid the driver and went up the steps. After he had rung the bell, he felt in his pocket to make sure the ring-box was there. This was about the twentieth time he had assured himself.

The maid opened the door, and looked sorry for him.

“Miss Polly? Are the ladies in?” stammered Tom.

“No’m—no-sir, I mean,” returned the maid, confused at his certainty of finding them at home. “They went out an hour ago, after tryin’ to get you on the ’phone. They says they won’t be back till after midnight, sir.”

“Did they say where they were going?” asked Tom.

“No’m—No-sir! But I hear’n Miss Polly talk to someone on the ’phone and she says: ‘Oh how lovely! We’ll all go with you. And we’ll meet you there for dinner,’” repeated the maid. “You see, I was openin’ th’ door to take more presents for the young ladies, so I hear’n that much of the talk from the table ’phone in the back hall.”

Tom thanked her with a sinking heart, and turned away. Once more his fingers mechanically felt for the ring box but he experienced no thrill this time, when he found it was safe.

He walked slowly cross-town and recklessly passed over Broadway with its traffic in full swing, looking neither to the right nor to the left. The officer shouted to rouse him from his apathy, but it failed to work.

He reached the park and found a bench. There he sat down without looking at the seat. A frantic boy ran over and yelled: “Get up, mister! Get up—you’se sittin’ on my Chrismus candy!”

Tom got up as mechanically as an automaton, but a few of the gummy candies clung to his coat-tails, while the boy fearful of losing such treasure ran after the man to pick off the sticky sweets.

When he found another bench that was clear, and no boys nearby to worry his soul, Tom sat down and sulked. Having practised so faithfully all that day, in adding the finishing touches of grace to his lesson of proposing, it was a bitter dose to find all his work was wasted. Polly had joyfully accepted someone else’s invitation to go away and have a good time, leaving him alone and heart-broken.

Sleet and drizzle began falling, and Tom was soon soaked through, but he was heedless of clinging clothes and wet shoes.

After an hour of self-pity, he got up and started down the drive. By this time he was almost frozen, but he congratulated himself on the fact that he might have pneumonia and die. Then Polly might feel sorry for her coldness!

Following the suggestion this idea presented, Tom wilfully waded through the slush in the gutters, and thoroughly drenched his patent-leather shoes in crossing the streets, until his feet were not only wet but freezing inside the shoes.

He found a cheap restaurant where the show-windows displayed baskets of artificial fruit; and as a center-piece of this decoration, there was a great block of ice holding up a dressed goose, with red holly twined about it.

Tom detested quick-lunch places where the steam satisfied a man’s hunger, the moment he came in contact with its heavy odors, but he reveled in this evening’s opportunity to be a martyr, so he sat down and ordered corn-beef and cabbage because he loathed it.

Although he could not eat much of the delectable dish he had ordered, he was determined to finish his day accordingly. So he ordered Neapolitan ice-cream and coffee. The ice-cream was served with the tissue paper still wrapped about the cake—to prove that no hands had been in contact with the dessert before serving it. But the highly colored stripes of the soapy cream that refused to melt, even when he dropped a spoonful into his oily coffee, cured him of further martyrdom to the cause of love.

He hastily got up from the table, paid his ticket and ran out. By this time, he felt so sick and chilled that he gloated in the assurance that soon he would be in a raging fever. He pictured Polly’s regrets when she should return home at midnight and hear that he had been taken to a hospital, with a fatal case of double pneumonia. He had decided on having it double, after he left the restaurant, as that would kill him sooner. In this state of mind he had to dodge a taxi and slipped to fall into a mud puddle.

But Tom could not resist the desire to see his mother once more, before he died; and after fighting off this inclination for another hour or two, he was feeling so perfectly awful, that he knew his last call had come for him.

He had been sneezing every few minutes for the past hour, and his eyes were running like twin rivers. His nose was so stuffy that he could hardly enunciate the words, when he told a cabby to “Ta-ge me to sig siggy-sig West End Avenoo.”

During the short time he was in the cab, he could not breathe, and he had to keep his mouth open to be able to inhale any air at all. He paid off the taxi, and went to his mother’s apartment. Before he could change his mind about calling, he had pushed the bell-button.

He heard someone coming down the hall, and at the same time a door in front opened and the laughter and noise of many merry voices reached him as he stood waiting on the doormat.

“Good evening, Mr. Tom—a merry Christmas,” said the maid, smilingly.

“Goo’ ebeneeg, Kadrina,” mumbled Tom, scowling as he looked towards the front room whence came the merry-making.

“Don’ dell anyone I’m here, but dell Modder I’m sig and wand do see her ride away,” explained Tom, snuffingly.

“You got a bad cold in your nose, ain’t chew?” said Katrina, sympathetically.

“No!” shouted Tom, furiously. “I god’da case ob double pneumonia!”

Katrina jumped at the unexpected shout, and hurried to the front room to call her mistress. Instead of remembering to keep Tom’s presence a secret, she whispered loud enough for Polly to hear:

“Mr. Tom jus’ come in an’ his nose is red as a beet. His eyes is runnin’, too, an’ he needs a atmosizer to blow in his head, to clear out the snuffles so’s he kin open his lungs, widdout keepin’ his mouth open all th’ time.”

Instead of fainting with horror as Tom had pictured she might, Polly laughed at Katrina’s description, and Mrs. Latimer smiled and turned to her guests to excuse herself, by saying:

“Tom just came in, poor boy, with a stuffy cold in his head. I’ll put his feet in mustard and see that he drinks a hot glass of doctored lemonade, then I’ll be back.”

So Tom, instead of bidding his mother an eternal farewell and dying alone and abandoned, as he had planned, in a hospital ward, was soon made to scald his feet in hot mustard water, while his mother’s flannel kimono replaced his bedraggled clothing, and a heavy blanket was wrapped about him, and he was offered a nasty drink of lemonade, but what else was in it other than lemon only his mother knew!

By this time he felt so wretched that he cared nothing for solitaires or fiancÉes; all he wanted was to get one good long breath through his nose once more before he choked to death.

His mother had returned to the merry-making in the parlors, and Tom sat huddled in his unbecoming bedding in his mother’s dressing-room. Every few minutes he had to use Katrina’s “atmosizer” for his nose, or gasp for breath.

Just as the perspiration began to pour out of every pore, and his feet felt like scalded lobsters, and the vaseline his mother had smeared in his eyes and over his nose, to void any chaffing, had been trickled all over his face, Polly tiptoed into the room that opened to the dressing-room where he sat.

He held his breath, fearing lest she hear him gasp and find him in this awful predicament. He could not see her after she closed the hall-door, but he wondered what she was doing. At this moment, a tickling in his nose began and he knew it portended a sneeze! He must prevent it, or Polly would track him down. If she ever saw him in this condition, after all his hard study to propose gracefully, he would take poison!

But the sneeze was imperative, and it burst forth in such an explosion, that Polly screamed faintly from just behind the door of the little room.

“Go’way! I won’d see anyone,” commanded Tom.

“But you’ll let me come and see how you are, won’t you, Tom dear?” coaxed Polly, appearing at the open door.

“No! You above everyone. I’m goin’ to a hozpidal as zoon ads the ambulance gomes, and I never wand to zee any ob my frien’z again. I’ll leave word no one ids to gome to my funeral, eider.”

“Tom, dearest, don’t talk like that! Where have you been today, to catch such an awful cold in your head?” said Polly.

“Id’z my lungz, I dell you! Double pneumonia. Leabe me to my fade, and forged me, Polly!” tears rose in his eyes at this pitiful picture of his lonely demise.

But Polly was practical, and stubborn to a degree. She refused to go, and when Mrs. Latimer came back, she told her that Tom ought to be in bed and given a great big dose of quinine—then he’d be all right in the morning.

“That’s exactly what we planned to do, Polly,” said Mrs. Latimer. “I sent Katrina to the drugstore for the pills, just now. But you run back and enjoy yourself, dear, as you can do nothing for Tom. He’s like all men—as grouchy as a bear with a sore head, the minute anything ails them.”

His mother laughed, and Polly stood smiling. Tom fumed. “Was this all the sympathy he was to win for his self-appointed martyrdom?”

Just as he had lost the last vestige of hope in life, Polly said to his mother: “I haven’t seen Tom before, today, to wish him a merry Christmas and to give him my present.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Mrs. Latimer, wisely, and slipped from the room, closing the hall door very quietly after her.

Tom opened one eye and began to wonder if it was worth while—this living business? When Polly smiled so angelically upon him, in spite of his ludicrous pose and appearance, he thought he might make one more trial of temporal existence.

Then Polly said, “I am sorry I could not reach you by telephone today, Tom. I had a little surprise for you, that I’m sure you will like. Shall I show you now?”

“Maybe it ids egsadtly wha’d I wads plannig to ags you?” said Tom, sitting up with interest, and forgetting the tub of hot water with his feet slowly par-boiling in it.

“Here it is. Isn’t it neat and business-like?” said Polly, as she handed him a small paste-board card.

Tom read:

Tom’s shocked surprise at the unexpected announcement, so different from what he had expected, rendered him speechless for a full minute. During this pause, Polly patted his damp hair just as she might have patted her brother John’s head, or a faithful Newfoundland’s shaggy dome. This latter was Tom’s thought.

The gentle touch, combined with his resentful feelings about the business announcement, made him lose all self-control. He was so furious that he could not find his voice, and if he had, his words would have been unintelligible because of the head-cold. He sprang up from the chair, forgetful of his blanket swaddlings, and the large basin in which his feet were still immersed.

He lifted his hand above his head in a melodramatic way of denunciation, but the tragic effect was completely ruined when the porcelain basin began slipping across the hard-wood floor. He wildly threw out both hands to clutch at something for support, but the low chair he had occupied was not near the dressing table nor any other article of furniture in the room.

Polly tried to save him from a fall, but he threw off her rescuing hands; and thus he was falling to his ungraceful finish, when he managed to free one foot and planted it on the rug as a balance. But the basin with its wet porcelain bottom kept sliding ever farther away, and Tom still rolled in the swaddling robes suddenly sat down unceremoniously upon the floor.

Polly faintly screamed when the basin overturned and the mustard water ran in numerous streamlets across the waxed wood and center rug. Just at this critical moment, Mrs. Latimer came back to give her son the dose of quinine.

“Why, Tom! Why are you sitting on the floor?” asked she, in amazement.

That was the last straw. Polly had to smother a laugh but Tom flared out and the thick denunciations of all the female sex, particularly western girls, would have driven such a girl mad with anger. But Polly understood her friend too well to believe a word he said.

Even while he still hurled every expletive he could remember and try to enunciate, Polly sprang over to help Mrs. Latimer raise the beswaddled young man back into the chair. He fought off her assistance, but she stubbornly held on to his arms until he was seated in a proper position once more.

Then she said: “Tom dear, I’m so sorry you have had such a wretched Christmas Day. Had we but known you had such a cold we would have called and taken you home with us. But now that Christmas is over, and I haven’t had time to say a word to you, I’ll just whisper that, as a sort of late greeting: ‘If I don’t find anyone I like better than you, during the next two years, I’ll make a partnership proposition to you.’”

“Oh, Bolly! Whad do you mean?” gasped Tom, expectation high once more.

“I like you better than any other friend I ever had, Tom, but I am determined to try business first. Then, in two years’ time if you are still of the same mind as now, I will consider what you have so often planned. But not before then. Until that time we will be the best of good pals.”

“Oh, Bolly! Whad a Gridsmad’s gifd you habe giben me!” exclaimed Tom, his face shining radiantly with love and vaseline.