THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
"Me. It took me only twelve minutes to say 'Good-by, Dolly Gray, I must leave you'. Huh?"
The clerk laughed.
"So I saddle the elephant in Bombay? Ye-ah. And say, have you got me labeled with the queer ones?"
"No, Mr. Grogan." The clerk laughed again. "You're the real thing; and I wish I were in your shoes. Everybody perks up when you drop in."
William pocketed his folder on Burma and departed. He found that he could not put completely from his mind the thought of the young woman. Her face haunted him persistently. Was she running away from her husband? Was there a Handsome-Is in the background somewhere? Like as not. William, it has already been remarked, retained few illusions; and he generally drew upon hard facts when in doubt. He never picked up a newspaper these benighted times that something of this sort wasn't going on. Wives were eternally running away from husbands, who didn't always bother to pursue them. The causes were as thick as the sparrows in the Park. Mismated; the devil did a good job there, was William's opinion. The hullabaloo of a Fifth Avenue wedding, money and caste, they generally came to this, flight and scandal. Not that he was particularly prejudiced against the rich; but they set a mighty bad example for the poor, who were more or less imitative, like the apes.
40
