There it was again: discontent with the good common ways. Babbitt laid down the book and listened to the stillness. The inner doors of the house were open. He heard from the kitchen the steady drip of the refrigerator, a rhythm demanding and disquieting. He roamed to the window. The summer evening was foggy and, seen through the wire screen, the street lamps were crosses of pale fire. The whole world was abnormal. While he brooded, Verona and Ted came in and went up to bed. Silence thickened in the sleeping house. He put on his hat, his respectable derby, lighted a cigar, and walked up and down before the house, a portly, worthy, unimaginative figure, humming “Silver Threads among the Gold.” He casually considered, “Might call up Paul.” Then he remembered. He saw Paul in a jailbird’s uniform, but while he agonized he didn’t believe the tale. It was part of the unreality of this fog-enchanted evening. If she were here Myra would be hinting, “Isn’t it late, Georgie?” He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire. Through the mist came a man at so feverish a pace that he seemed to dance with fury as he entered the orb of glow from a street-lamp. At each step he brandished his stick and brought it down with a crash. His glasses on their broad pretentious ribbon banged against his stomach. Babbitt incredulously saw that it was Chum Frink. Frink stopped, focused his vision, and spoke with gravity: “There’s another fool. George Babbitt. Lives for renting howshes--houses. Know who I am? I’m traitor to poetry. I’m drunk. I’m talking too much. I don’t care. Know what I could’ve been? I could’ve been a Gene Field or a James Whitcomb Riley. Maybe a Stevenson. I could’ve. Whimsies. ’Magination. Lissen. Lissen to this. Just made it up: Glittering summery meadowy noise Of beetles and bums and respectable boys. Hear that? Whimzh--whimsy. I made that up. _I_ don’t know what it means! Beginning good verse. Chile’s Garden Verses. And whadi write? Tripe! Cheer-up poems. All tripe! Could have written-- Too late!” He darted on with an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward yet never quite falling. Babbitt would have been no more astonished and no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head. He accepted Frink with vast apathy; he grunted, “Poor boob!” and straightway forgot him.