第34章

He had not neglected him through carelessness, and apparently the table understood that fact.The spectacle was making Mrs.Marsh very uncomfortable.She had the look of one who hopes against hope that the impossible may happen.But as the impossible did not happen, she finally ventured to speak up and remind her husband that Nat Brady hadn't been helped to the Irish stew.

Marsh lifted his head and gasped out with mock courtliness, "Oh, he hasn't, hasn't he? What a pity that is.I don't know how I came to overlook him.Ah, he must pardon me.You must indeed Mr--er--Baxter--Barker, you must pardon me.I--er--my attention was directed to some other matter, I don't know what.The thing that grieves me mainly is, that it happens every meal now.But you must try to overlook these little things, Mr.Bunker, these little neglects on my part.They're always likely to happen with me in any case, and they are especially likely to happen where a person has--er--well, where a person is, say, about three weeks in arrears for his board.You get my meaning?--you get my idea? Here is your Irish stew, and--er--it gives me the greatest pleasure to send it to you, and I hope that you will enjoy the charity as much as I enjoy conferring it."A blush rose in Brady's white cheeks and flowed slowly backward to his ears and upward toward his forehead, but he said nothing and began to eat his food under the embarrassment of a general silence and the sense that all eyes were fastened upon him.Barrow whispered to Tracy:

"The old man's been waiting for that.He wouldn't have missed that chance for anything.""It's a brutal business," said Tracy.Then he said to himself, purposing to set the thought down in his diary later:

"Well, here in this very house is a republic where all are free and equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt.Yet here on the threshold I find an inequality.There are people at this table who are looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common one of being poor.Equality ought to make men noble-minded.In fact I had supposed it did do that."After supper, Barrow proposed a walk, and they started.Barrow had a purpose.He wanted Tracy to get rid of that cowboy hat.He didn't see his way to finding mechanical or manual employment for a person rigged in that fashion.Barrow presently said:

"As I understand it, you're not a cowboy.""No, I'm not."

"Well, now if you will not think me too curious, how did you come to mount that hat? Where'd you get it?"Tracy didn't know quite how to reply to this, but presently said, "Well, without going into particulars; I exchanged clothes with a stranger under stress of weather, and I would like to find him and re-exchange."

"Well, why don't you find him? Where is he?""I don't know.I supposed the best way to find him would be to continue to wear his clothes, which are conspicuous enough to attract his attention if I should meet him on the street.""Oh, very well," said Barrow, "the rest of the outfit, is well enough, and while it's not too conspicuous, it isn't quite like the clothes that anybody else wears.Suppress the hat.When you meet your man he'll recognize the rest of his suit.That's a mighty embarrassing hat, you know, in a centre of civilization like this.I don't believe an angel could get employment in Washington in a halo like that."Tracy agreed to replace the hat with something of a modester form, and they stepped aboard a crowded car and stood with others on the rear platform.Presently, as the car moved swiftly along the rails, two men crossing the street caught sight of the backs of Barrow and Tracy, and both exclaimed at once, "There he is!" It was Sellers and Hawkins.

Both were so paralyzed with joy that before they could pull themselves together and make an effort to stop the car, it was gone too far, and they decided to wait for the next one.They waited a while; then it occurred to Washington that there could be no use in chasing one horse-car with another, and he wanted to hunt up a hack.But the Colonel said:

"When you come to think of it, there's no occasion for that at all.

Now that I've got him materialized, I can command his motions.I'll have him at the house by the time we get there."Then they hurried off home in a state of great and joyful excitement.

The hat exchange accomplished, the two new friends started to walk back leisurely to the boarding house.Barrow's mind was full of curiosity about this young fellow.He said, "You've never been to the Rocky Mountains?""No."

"You've never been out on the plains?"

"No."

"How long have you been in this country?""Only a few days."

"You've never been in America before?"