Mr. Stockton was a nervous man, especially so in the crises when he was compelled to buy anything so important as a suit, for usually Mrs. Stockton supervised the selection.  To-day his Unlucky star was in the zenith.  His watch pointed to close on two o’clock, and he was afraid he might be late for the steamer, which docked far uptown.  In his haste, and governed perhaps by some subconscious recollection of the humourist’s attractive shaggy tweeds, he allowed himself to be fitted with an ochre-coloured suit of some fleecy checked material grotesquely improper for his unassuming figure.  It was the kind of cloth and cut that one sees only in the windows of Nassau Street.  Happily he was unaware of the enormity of his offence against society, and rapidly transferring his belongings to the new pockets, he paid down the purchase price and fled to the subway.

When he reached the pier at the foot of Fourteenth Street he saw that the steamer was still in midstream and it would be several minutes before she warped in to the dock.  He had no pass from the steamship office, but on showing his newspaperman’s card the official admitted him to the pier, and he took his stand at the first cabin gangway, trembling a little with nervousness, but with a pleasant feeling of excitement no less.  He gazed at the others waiting for arriving travellers and wondered whether any of the peers of American letters had come to meet the poet.  A stoutish, neatly dressed gentleman with a gray moustache looked like Mr. Howells, and he thrilled again.  It was hardly possible that he, the obscure reviewer, was the only one who had been notified of Verne’s arrival.  That tall, hawk-faced man whose limousine was purring outside must be a certain publisher he knew by sight.

What would these gentlemen say when they learned that the poet was to stay with Kenneth Stockton, in New Utrecht?  He rolled up the mustard-coloured trousers one more round—­they were much too long for him—­and watched the great hull slide along the side of the pier with a peculiar tingling shudder that he had not felt since the day of his wedding.

He expected no difficulty in recognizing Finsbury Verne, for he was very familiar with his photograph.  As the passengers poured down the slanting gangway, all bearing the unmistakable air and stamp of superiority that marks those who have just left the sacred soil of England, he scanned the faces with an eye of keen regard.  To his surprise he saw the gentlemen he had marked respectively as Mr. Howells and the publisher greet people who had not the slightest resemblance to the poet, and go with them to the customs alcoves.  Traveller after traveller hurried past him, followed by stewards carrying luggage; gradually the flow of people thinned, and then stopped altogether, save for one or two invalids who were being helped down the incline by nurses.  And still no sign of Finsbury Verne.

Suddenly a thought struck him.  Was it possible that—­the second class?  His eye brightened and he hurried to the gangway, fifty yards farther down the pier, where the second-cabin passengers were disembarking.