"I'll be around Wednesday night as usual," said Danny, turning and crossing the street.
Katy walked away with the green roses dangling indignantly.
Danny stopped two blocks away.He stood still with his hands in his pockets, at the curb on the corner.His face was that of a graven image.Deep in his soul something stirred so small, so fine, so keen and leavening that his hard fibres did not recognize it.It was something more tender than the April day, more subtle than the call of the senses, purer and deeper-rooted than the love of woman--for had he not turned away from green roses and eyes that had kept him chained for a year? And Danny did not know what it was.The preacher, who was in a hurry to go to his dinner, had told him, but Danny had had no libretto with which to follow the drowsy intonation.But the preacher spoke the truth.
Suddenly Danny slapped his leg and gave forth a hoarse yell of delight.
"Hippopotamus!" he shouted to an elevated road pillar."Well, how is that for a bum guess? Why, blast my skylights! I know what he was driving at now.
"Hippopotamus! Wouldn't that send you to the Bronx! It's been a year since he heard it; and he didn't miss it so very far.We quit at 469 B.C., and this comes next.Well, a wooden man wouldn't have guessed what he was trying to get out of him."Danny caught a crosstown car and went up to the rear flat that his labor supported.
Old man McCree was still sitting by the window.His extinct pipe lay on the sill.
"Will that be you, lad?" he asked.
Danny flared into the rage of a strong man who is surprised at the outset of committing a good deed.
"Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?"he snapped, viciously."Have I no right to come in?""Ye're a faithful lad," said old man McCree, with a sigh."Is it evening yet?"Danny reached up on a shelf and took down a thick book labeled in gilt letters, "The History of Greece." Dust was on it half an inch thick.He laid it on the table and found a place in it marked by a strip of paper.And then he gave a short roar at the top of his voice, and said:
"Was it the hippopotamus you wanted to be read to about then?""Did I hear ye open the book?" said old man McCree."Many and weary be the months since my lad has read it to me.I dinno; but Itook a great likings to them Greeks.Ye left off at a place.'Tis a fine day outside, lad.Be out and take rest from your work.I have gotten used to me chair by the windy and me pipe.""Pel-Peloponnesus was the place where we left off, and not hippopotamus," said Danny."The war began there.It kept something doing for thirty years.The headlines says that a guy named Philip of Macedon, in 338 B.C., got to be boss of Greece by getting the decision at the battle of Cher-Cheronaea.I'll read it."With his hand to his ear, rapt in the Peloponnesian War, old man McCree sat for an hour, listening.
Then he got up and felt his way to the door of the kitchen.Mrs.
McCree was slicing cold meat.She looked up.Tears were running from old man McCree's eyes.
"Do you hear our lad readin' to me?" he said."There is none finer in the land.My two eyes have come back to me again."After supper he said to Danny: "'Tis a happy day, this Easter.
And now ye will be off to see Katy in the evening.Well enough.""Who pays the rent and buys the food that is eaten in this house?"said Danny, angrily."Have I no right to stay in it? After supper there is yet to come the reading of the battle of Corinth, 146 B.C., when the kingdom, as they say, became an in-integral portion of the Roman Empire.Am I nothing in this house?"
