Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around a certain booth.  The Earl of Hitesbury stood near by pulling a pale blond and puzzled whisker.

“Miss McRamsey has fainted,” some one explained.

XIX

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the Minerva Magazine, and deflected him from his course.  He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette.  Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square.

The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a pastoral; the color motif was green—­the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation.

The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn.  The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner.  The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with “true” and “Sue” and “coo.”  The one natural and frank color visible was the ostensible green of the newly painted benches—­a shade between the color of a pickled cucumber and that of a last year’s fast-black cravenette raincoat.  But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape appeared a masterpiece.

And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor’s mind.

Editor Westbrook’s spirit was contented and serene.  The April number of the Minerva had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of the month—­a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies more if he had ’em.  The owners of the magazine had raised his (the editor’s) salary; he had just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and the morning papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers’ banquet.  Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he left his up-town apartment that morning.  She was taking enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practising early and diligently.  When he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged him for joy at his praise.  He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards of the convalescent city.

While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park benches (already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held.  Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his captor was—­Dawe—­Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteel scarcely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby.