, Wrinkles!" said Grief from the bed.

Wrinkles sat down with an air austere and virtuous. "Well, what are we
going to do?" he demanded of the others.

Grief, after swearing, said: "There, that's right! Now you're happy.
The holy office of the inquisition! Blast your buttons, Wrinkles, you
always try to keep us from starving peacefully! It is two hours before
dinner, anyhow, and----"

"Well, but what are you going to do?" persisted Wrinkles.

Pennoyer, with his head afar down, had been busily scratching at a
pen-and-ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter a plaintive
optimism. "The Monthly Amazement will pay me to-morrow. They ought to.
I've waited over three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and
perhaps I'll get it."

His friends listened with airs of tolerance. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old
man." But at last Wrinkles giggled pityingly. Over on the bed Grief
croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was said for a long time
thereafter.

The crash of the New York streets came faintly to this room.

Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors
of the begrimed building which squatted, slumbering, and old, between
two exalted commercial structures which would have had to bend afar
down to perceive it. The northward march of the city's progress had
happened not to overturn this aged structure, and it huddled there, lost
and forgotten, while the cloud-veering towers strode on.

Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the blurred windows of
the room. Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the
wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. "It's too dark to work." He
lit a pipe and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose
labour was valuable.

When the dusk came fully the youths grew apparently sad. The solemnity
of the gloom seemed to make them ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said
Grief fretfully.

The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with
sketches, the tousled bed in one corner, the masses of boxes and trunks
in another, a little dead stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover,
there were wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf,
high up, there were plaster casts, with dust in the creases. A long
stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction and then turned
impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some elaborate cobwebs
on the ceiling.

"Well, let's eat," said Grief.

"Eat,