towards the sleeping mite.

A TOP-FLOOR IDYL

CHAPTER I

THE NIGHT ALARM

I smiled at my friend Gordon, the distinguished painter, lifting up my
glass and taking a sip of the _table d'hote_ claret, which the Widow
Camus supplies with her famed sixty-five cent repast. It is, I must
acknowledge, a somewhat turbid beverage, faintly harsh to the palate,
and yet it may serve as a begetter of pleasant illusions. While drinking
it, I can close my eyes, being of an imaginative nature, and permit its
flavor to bring back memories of ever-blessed _tonnelles_ by the Seine,
redolent of fried gudgeons and mirific omelettes, and felicitous with
gay laughter.

"Well, you old stick-in-the-mud," said my companion, "what are you
looking so disgruntled about? I was under the impression that this feast
was to be a merry-making to celebrate your fortieth birthday. Something
like a grin just now passed over your otherwise uninteresting features,
but it was at once succeeded by the mournful look that may well follow,
but should not be permitted to accompany, riotous living."

At this I smiled again.

"Just a moment's wool-gathering, my dear fellow," I answered. "I was
thinking of our old feasts, and then I began to wonder whether the tune
played by that consumptive-looking young man at the piano might be a
wild requiem to solemnize that burial of two-score years, or a song of
triumphant achievement."

"I think it's what they call a fox-trot," remarked Gordon, doubtfully.
"Your many sere and yellow years have brought you to a period in the
world's history when the joy of the would-be young lies chiefly in wild
contortion to the rhythm of barbaric tunes. I see that they are getting
ready to clear away some of the tables and, since we are untrained in
such new arts and graces, they will gradually push us away towards the
doors. The bottle, I notice, is nearly half empty, which proves our
entire sobriety; had it been _Pommard_, we should have paid more
respectful attention to it. Give me a light, and let us make tracks."

We rose and went out. A few couples were beginning to gyrate among the
fumes of spaghetti and _vin ordinaire_. Gordon McGrath, unlike myself,
lives in one of the more select quarters of the city, wherefore we
proceeded towards Fifth Avenue. The partial solitude of Washington
Square enticed us, and we strolled towards it, sitting of common accord
upon one of the benches, in the prelude of long silence res