“Don’t talk such stuff,” said Henry, fiercely.  “She et something.  I don’t know what you women like best to suck at, candy or horrors.”

Now Henry was forced to admit that he himself was confronted by something mysterious.  Why had Horace fairly flung that candy on the ground, and trampled on it, unless he had suddenly gone mad, or—?  There Henry brought himself up with a jolt.  He absolutely refused to suspect.  “I’d jest as soon eat all that’s left of the truck myself,” he thought, “only I couldn’t bear candy since I was a child, and I ain’t going to eat it for anybody.”

Henry had to pass the Ayres house.  Just as he came abreast of it he heard a hysterical sob, then another, from behind the open windows of a room on the second floor, whose blinds were closed.  Henry made a grimace and went his way.  He was bound for Sidney Meeks’s.  He found the lawyer in his office in an arm-chair, which whirled like a top at the slightest motion of its occupant.  Around him were strewn Sunday papers, all that could be bought.  On the desk before him stood a bottle of clear yellow wine, half-emptied.

Sidney looked up and smiled as Henry entered.  “Here I am in a vortex of crime and misrule,” he said, “and I should have been out of my wits if it had not been for that wine.  There’s another glass over there, Henry; get it and help yourself.”

“Guess I won’t take any now, thank you,” said Henry.  “It’s just before supper.”

“Maybe you are wise,” admitted the lawyer.  He slouched before Henry in untidy and unmended, but clean, Sunday attire.  Sidney Meeks was as clean as a gentleman should be, but there was never a crease except of ease in his clothes, and he was so buttonless that women feared to look at him closely.  “It might go to your head,” said Sidney.  “It went to mine a little, but that was unavoidable.  After one of those papers there my head was mighty near being a vacuum.”

“What do you read the papers for?” asked Henry.

“Because,” said Sidney, “I feel it incumbent upon me to be well informed concerning two things, although I verily believe it to be true that I have precious little of either, and they cannot directly concern me.  I want to know about the stock market, although I don’t own a blessed share in anything except an old mine out West on a map; and I want to know what evil is fermenting in the hearts of men, though I am pretty sure, in spite of the original sin part of it, that precious little is fermenting in mine.  About three o’clock this afternoon I came to the conclusion that we were in hell or Sodom, or else the newspaper men got saved from the general destruction along with Lot.  So I got a bottle of this blessed wine, and now I am fully convinced that I am on a planet which is the work of the Lord Almighty, and only created for an end of redemption and eternal bliss, and that the newspaper men are enough sight better than Lot ever thought of being, and are spending Sunday as they should, peacefully in the bosoms of their own families.  In fact, Henry, my mental and spiritual outlook has cleared.  What in creation is that wad of broken box you are carrying as if it would go off any minute?”