Stockton could not even put him up at a club, as he belonged to none but the golf club, which had no quarters for the entertainment of out-of-town guests.  Every detail of his home life was of the shabby, makeshift sort which is so dear to one’s self but needs so much explaining to outsiders.  He even thought with a pang of Lorna Doone, the fat, plebeian little mongrel terrier which had meals with the family and slept with the children at night.  Verne was probably used to staghounds or Zeppelin hounds or something of the sort, he thought humorously.  English poets wear an iris halo in the eyes of humble American reviewers.  Those godlike creatures have walked on Fleet Street, have bought books on Paternoster Row, have drunk half-and-half and eaten pigeon pie at the Salutation and Cat, and have probably roared with laughter over some alehouse jest of Mr. Chesterton.

Stockton remembered the photograph Verne had sent him, showing a lean, bearded face with wistful dark eyes against a background of old folios.  What would that Olympian creature think of the drudge of New Utrecht, a mere reviewer who sold his editorial copies to pay for shag tobacco!

Well, thought Stockton, as he crossed the bridge, rejoicing not at all in the splendid towers of Manhattan, candescent in the April sun, they had done all they could.  He had left his wife telephoning frantically to grocers, cleaning women, and florists.  He himself had stopped at the poultry market on his way to the trolley to order two plump fowls for dinner, and had pinched them with his nervous, ink-stained fingers, as ordered by Mrs. Stockton, to test their tenderness.  They would send the three younger children to their grandmother, to be interned there until the storm had blown over; and Mrs. Stockton was going to do what she could to take down the rotogravure pictures from the walls of what the boys fondly called the Stockton Art Gallery.  He knew that Verne had children of his own:  perhaps he would be amused rather than dismayed by the incongruities of their dismantled guestroom.  Presumably, the poet was aver here for a lecture tour—­he would be entertained and feted everywhere by the cultured rich, for the appreciation which Stockton had started by his modest little essay had grown to the dimension of a fad.

He looked again at the telegram which had shattered the simple routine of his unassuming life.  “On board Celtic dock this afternoon three o’clock hope see you.  Verne.”  He sneezed sharply, as was his unconscious habit when nervous.  In desperation he stopped at a veterinary’s office on Frankfort Street, and left orders to have the doctor’s assistant call for Lorna Doone and take her away, to be kept until sent for.  Then he called at a wine merchant’s and bought three bottles of claret of a moderate vintage.  Verne had said something about claret in one of his playful letters.  Unfortunately, the man’s grandfather was a Frenchman, and undoubtedly he knew all about wines.