"Hello, old chap! Glad to see you.What sort of a voyage? How did you leave the royal family? Glad to get back?"They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping him on the back, as they hustled him gleefully back to the corner table and made him sit down.
"Say, garsong," said Nick Baumgarten to their favourite waiter, who came at once in answer to his summons, "let's have a porterhouse steak, half the size of this table, and with plenty of mushrooms and potatoes hashed brown.Here's Mr.
Selden just returned from visiting at Windsor Castle, and if we don't treat him well, he'll look down on us."G.Selden grinned."How have you been getting on, Sam?" he said, nodding cheerfully to the man.They were old and tried friends.Sam knew all about the days when a fellow could not come into Shandy's at all, or must satisfy his strong young hunger with a bowl of soup, or coffee and a roll.Sam did his best for them in the matter of the size of portions, and they did their good-natured utmost for him in the affair of the pooled tip.
"Been getting on as well as can be expected," Sam grinned back."Hope you had a fine time, Mr.Selden?""Fine! I should smile! Fine wasn't in it," answered Selden."But I'm looking forward to a Shandy porterhouse steak, all the same.""Did they give you a better one in the Strawnd?" asked Baumgarten, in what he believed to be a correct Cockney accent.
"You bet they didn't," said Selden."Shandy's takes a lot of beating." That last is English.
The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at them.Their eager, hearty young pleasure in the festivity of the occasion was a healthy thing to see.As they sat round the corner table, they produced the effect of gathering close about G.Selden.They concentrated their combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their folded arms, to watch him as he talked.
"Billy Page came back in August, looking pretty bum,"Nick Baumgarten began."He'd been painting gay Paree brick red, and he'd spent more money than he'd meant to, and that wasn't half enough.Landed dead broke.He said he'd had a great time, but he'd come home with rather a dark brown taste in his mouth, that he'd like to get rid of.""He thought you were a fool to go off cycling into the country," put in Wetherbee, "but I told him I guessed that was where he was 'way off.I believed you'd had the best time of the two of you.""Boys," said Selden, "I had the time of my life." He said it almost solemnly, and laid his hand on the table."It was like one of those yarns Bert tells us.Half the time Ididn't believe it, and half the time I was ashamed of myself to think it was all happening to me and none of your fellows were in it.""Oh, well," said Jem Belter, "luck chases some fellows, anyhow.Look at Nick, there.""Well," Selden summed the whole thing up, "I just FELLinto it where it was so deep that I had to strike out all I knew how to keep from drowning.""Tell us the whole thing," Nick Baumgarten put in; "from beginning to end.Your letter didn't give anything away.""A letter would have spoiled it.I can't write letters anyhow.I wanted to wait till I got right here with you fellows round where I could answer questions.First off," with the deliberation befitting such an opening, "I've sold machines enough to pay my expenses, and leave some over.""You have? Gee whiz! Say, give us your prescription.
Glad I know you, Georgy!"
"And who do you suppose bought the first three?" At this point, it was he who leaned forward upon the table--his climax being a thing to concentrate upon."Reuben S.
Vanderpoel's daughter--Miss Bettina! And, boys, she gave me a letter to Reuben S., himself, and here it is."He produced a flat leather pocketbook and took an envelope from an inner flap, laying it before them on the tablecloth.
His knowledge that they would not have believed him if he had not brought his proof was founded on everyday facts.
They would not have doubted his veracity, but the possibility of such delirious good fortune.What they would have believed would have been that he was playing a hilarious joke on them.Jokes of this kind, but not of this proportion, were common entertainments.
Their first impulse had been towards an outburst of laughter, but even before he produced his letter a certain truthful seriousness in his look had startled them.When he laid the envelope down each man caught his breath.It could not be denied that Jem Belter turned pale with emotion.Jem had never been one of the lucky ones.
"She let me read it," said G.Selden, taking the letter from its envelope with great care."And I said to her: `Miss Vanderpoel, would you let me just show that to the boys the first night I go to Shandy's?' I knew she'd tell me if it wasn't all right to do it.She'd know I'd want to be told.And she just laughed and said: `I don't mind at all.I like "the boys." Here is a message to them.`Good luck to you all.' ""She said that?" from Nick Baumgarten.
"Yes, she did, and she meant it.Look at this."This was the letter.It was quite short, and written in a clear, definite hand.
"DEAR FATHER: This will be brought to you by Mr.G.
Selden, of whom I have written to you.Please be good to him.
"Affectionately, "BETTY."
Each young man read it in turn.None of them said anything just at first.A kind of awe had descended upon them--not in the least awe of Vanderpoel, who, with other multi-millionaires, were served up each week with cheerful neighbourly comment or equally neighbourly disrespect, in huge Sunday papers read throughout the land--but awe of the unearthly luck which had fallen without warning to good old G.S., who lived like the rest of them in a hall bedroom on ten per, earned by tramping the streets for the Delkoff.
"That girl," said G.Selden gravely, "that girl is a winner from Winnersville.I take off my hat to her.If it's the scheme that some people's got to have millions, and others have got to sell Delkoffs, that girl's one of those that's entitled to the millions.It's all right she should have 'em.
There's no kick coming from me."