he
finally agreed to phone his managingeditor and propose I'd "come clean"
for twenty dollars. While he was on this errand I added pie and coffee
to the check. It is well to be provident and I'd paid for my meal in
more than money.

Jacson Gootes came limply from the phonebooth, his bumptiousness gone.
"No soap." He shook his head dejectedly. "Old Man said only pity for the
lower mammals prevented him from letting me go to work for Hearst right
away. Sorry."

His nerves appeared quite shattered; capable of restoration only by Old
Grandad. After tossing down a couple of bourbons he seemed a little
recovered, but hardly quite well enough to use an accent or perform a
trick.

"I'm sorry also," I said. "Since we can be of no further use to each
other--"

"Don't take a powder, chum," he urged plaintively. "What about a last
gander at the weed together?"

As we walked back I reflected that at any rate I was saved from
submitting Miss Francis to vulgar publicity. Everything is for the
best--Ive seen a hundred instances to prove it. Perhaps--who
knew--something might yet happen to make it possible for me to profit by
the freak growth.

"Needs a transfusion," remarked Gootes as we stood on the sidewalk
before it.

Indeed it was anemically green; uneven, hacked and ragged; shorn of its
emerald beauty. A high fog filtered the late afternoon light to show Mr
Barelli's task accomplished and the curious watchers gone. It was no
smoothly clipped carpet, yet it was no longer a freakish, exotic thing.
Rather forlorn it looked, and crippled.

"Paleface pay out much wampum to get um cut every day."

"Oh, it probably won't take long till the strength is exhausted."

"Says you. Well, Ive got half a story. Cheerio."

I sighed. If only Miss Francis could control it. A fortune ...

I walked home, trying to figure out what I was going to do tomorrow.

_8._ I thought I was prepared for anything after the shocks of the day
before; I know I was prepared for nothing at all--to find the grass as
I'd left it or even reverted to its original decay. Indeed, I was not
too sure that my memory was completely accurate; that the thing had
happened so fantastically.

But the devilgrass had outdone itself and made my anticipations foolish.
It waved a green crest higher than the crowd--a crowd three times the
size of yesterday's and increasing rapidly. All the scars inflicted on
it, the indignities of scythe and mower, were covered by a ne