anliness
Find sixpence in her shoe?

A bright dune does very well as a sixpenny piece.

We always lunch at Moretti's on Saturday: it is the recognized beginning
of an adventure. The Moretti lunch has advanced from a quarter to thirty
cents, I am sorry to say, but this is readily compensated by the Grump
buying Sweet Caporals instead of something Turkish. A packet of
cigarettes is another curtain-raiser for an adventure. On other days
publishers' readers smoke pipes, but on Saturdays cigarettes are
possible.

"Antipasto?"

"No, thanks."

"Minestrone or consomme?"

"Two minestrone, two prime ribs, ice cream and coffee. Red wine,
please." That is the formula. We have eaten the "old reliable Moretti
lunch" so often that the routine has become a ritual. Oh, excellent
savor of the Moretti basement! Compounded of warmth, a pungent pourri of
smells, and the jangle of thick china, how diverting it is! The
franc-tireur in charge of the wine-bin watches us complaisantly from his
counter where he sits flanked by flasks of Hoboken chianti and a case of
brittle cigars.

How good Moretti's _minestrone_ tastes to the unsophisticated tongue.
What though it be only an azoic extract of intense potato, dimly tinct
with sargasso and macaroni--it has a pleasing warmth and bulk. Is it not
the prelude to an Adventure?

Well, where shall we go to-day? No two explorers dickering over azimuth
and dead reckoning could discuss latitude and longitude more earnestly
than Titania and I argue our possible courses. Generally, however, she
leaves it to me to chart the journey. That gives me the pride of
conductor and her the pleasure of being surprised.

According to our Mercator's projection (which, duly wrapped in a
waterproof envelope, we always carry on our adventures) there was a
little known region lying nor' nor'west of Blackwell's Island and
plotted on the map as East River Park. I had heard of this as a
picturesque and old-fashioned territory, comparatively free from
footpads and lying near such places as Astoria and Hell Gate. We laid a
romantic course due east along 35th Street, Titania humming a little
snatch from an English music-hall song that once amused us:

"My old man's a fireman
Now what do you think of that?
He wears goblimey breeches
And a little goblimey hat."

She always quotes this to me when (she says) I wear my hat too far on
the back of my head.

The cross slope of Murray Hill drops stee