hat there were depths of
unprofessional tenderness in his nature. He was good to his mother, and
he sent her money, and wrote to her in the little Indiana town where he
had left her when he came to Chicago. After he got that invitation from
the Bird of Prey, he explored his heart for some affection that he had
not felt for him before, and he found a wish that his employer should
not know it was he who had invented that nickname for him. He promptly
avowed this in the newspaper office which formed one of the eyries of
the Bird of Prey, and made the fellows promise not to give him away.
He failed to move their imagination when he brought up as a reason for
softening toward him that he was from Burnamy's own part of Indiana,
and was a benefactor of Tippecanoe University, from which Burnamy was
graduated. But they, relished the cynicism of his attempt; and they were
glad of his good luck, which he was getting square and not rhomboid,
as most people seem to get their luck. They liked him, and some of them
liked him for his clean young life as well as for his cleverness. His
life was known to be as clean as a girl's, and he looked like a girl
with his sweet eyes, though he had rather more chin than most girls.

The conductor came to reverse his seat, and Burnamy told him he guessed
he would ride back with him as far as the cars to the Hoboken Ferry, if
the conductor would put him off at the right place. It was nearly nine
o'clock, and he thought he might as well be going over to the ship,
where he had decided to pass the night. After he found her, and went
on board, he was glad he had not gone sooner. A queasy odor of drainage
stole up from the waters of the dock, and mixed with the rank, gross
sweetness of the bags of beet-root sugar from the freight-steamers;
there was a coming and going of carts and trucks on the wharf, and on
the ship a rattling of chains and a clucking of pulleys, with sudden
outbreaks and then sudden silences of trampling sea-boots. Burnamy
looked into the dining-saloon and the music-room, with the notion
of trying for some naps there; then he went to his state-room. His
room-mate, whoever he was to be, had not come; and he kicked off his
shoes and threw off his coat and tumbled into his berth.

He meant to rest awhile, and then get up and spend the night in
receiving impressions. He could not think of any one who had done the
facts of the eve of sailing on an Atlantic liner. He thought he would
use th