But the door clicked in answer to our ring, and up we marched, the three darkies first, instructed to inquire for her and then insist on leaving the goods, while we lagged behind to see how she would take it.

The stage arrangement worked as planned.  My sister opened the door and from the steps below we could hear her protesting that she had ordered nothing, but the door being open the negroes walked in and a moment or two afterwards ourselves.  The packages were being piled on table and floor, while my sister, unable quite to grasp this sudden visitation and change of heart, stared.

“Just thought we’d come around and have supper with you, E——­, and maybe dinner tomorrow if you’ll let us,” my brother chortled.  “Merry Christmas, you know.  Christmas Eve.  The good old home stuff—­see?  Old sport here and I thought we couldn’t stay away—­tonight, anyhow.”

He beamed on her in his most affectionate way, but she, suffering regret over the recent estrangement as well as the difficulties of life itself and the joy of this reunion, burst into tears, while the two little ones danced about, and he and I put our arms about her.

“There, there!  It’s all over now,” he declared, tears welling in his eyes.  “It’s all off.  We’ll can this scrapping stuff.  Thee and I are a couple of bums and we know it, but you can forgive us, can’t you?  We ought to be ashamed of ourselves, all of us, and that’s the truth.  We’ve been quarreling, too, haven’t spoken for a week.  Ain’t that so, sport?  But it’s all right now, eh?”

There were tears in my eyes, too.  One couldn’t resist him.  He had the power of achieving the tenderest results in the simplest ways.  We then had supper, and breakfast the next morning, all staying and helping, even to the washing and drying of the dishes, and thereafter for I don’t know how long we were all on the most affectionate terms, and he eventually died in this sister’s home, ministered to with absolutely restless devotion by her for weeks before the end finally came.

But, as I have said, I always prefer to think of him at this, the very apex or tower window of his life.  For most of this period he was gay and carefree.  The music company of which he was a third owner was at the very top of its success.  Its songs, as well as his, were everywhere.  He had in turn at this time a suite at the Gilsey House, the Marlborough, the Normandie—­always on Broadway, you see.  The limelight district was his home.  He rose in the morning to the clang of the cars and the honk of the automobiles outside; he retired at night as a gang of repair men under flaring torches might be repairing a track, or the milk trucks were rumbling to and from the ferries.  He was in his way a public restaurant and hotel favorite, a shining light in the theater managers’ offices, hotel bars and lobbies and wherever those flies of the Tenderloin, those passing lords and celebrities of the sporting, theatrical,