And he was an English robin--a little fellow not half the
size of the kind that hops about Central Park."

"Let me hear about that," said Mr. Vanderpoel.

It was a good story, and he told it well, though in his own junior
salesman phrasing. He began with his bicycle ride into the green
country, his spin over the fine roads, his rest under the hedge during
the shower, and then the song of the robin perched among the fresh wet
leafage, his feathers puffed out, his red young satin-glossed breast
pulsating and swelling. His words were colloquial enough, but they
called up the picture.

"Everything sort of glittering with the sunshine on the wet drops, and
things smelling good, like they do after rain--leaves, and grass, and
good earth. I tell you it made a fellow feel as if the whole world was
his brother. And when Mr. Rob. lit on that twig and swelled his red
breast as if he knew the whole thing was his, and began to let them
notes out, calling for his lady friend to come and go halves with him, I
just had to laugh and speak to him, and that was when Lord Mount Dunstan
heard me and jumped over the hedge. He'd been listening, too."

The expression Reuben S. Vanderpoel wore made it an agreeable thing to
talk--to go on. He evidently cared to hear. So Selden did his best,
and enjoyed himself in doing it. His style made for realism and brought
things clearly before one. The big-built man in the rough and shabby
shooting clothes, his way when he dropped into the grass to sit beside
the stranger and talk, certain meanings in his words which conveyed to
Vanderpoel what had not been conveyed to G. Selden. Yes, the man
carried a heaviness about with him and hated the burden. Selden quite
unconsciously brought him out strongly.

"I don't know whether I'm the kind of fellow who is always making
breaks," he said, with his boy's laugh again, "but if I am, I never made
a worse one than when I asked him straight if he was out of a job, and
on the tramp. It showed what a nice fellow he was that he didn't get hot
about it. Some fellows would. He only laughed--sort of short--and said
his job had been more than he could handle, and he was afraid he was
down and out."

Mr. Vanderpoel was conscious that so far he was somewhat attracted by
this central figure. G. Selden was also proving satisfactory in the
matter of revealing his excellently simple views of persons and things.

"The only time he got mad was when I wouldn't believe him whe