After half an hour's stroll I goes in, takes a lamp off the hall table, and climbs up to No. 7. It's as warm and cheerful as an underground beer vault. Also I finds the window nailed down. Huntin' for someone to fetch me a hammer was what sent me roamin' through the hall and took me past No. 11, where the door was part way open. And in there, with an oil-stove to keep 'em from freezin', I see Mr. and Mrs. Bob Cathaway sittin' at a little marble topped table playin' double dummy bridge. Say, do you know, that unexpected glimpse of this little private hard luck proposition of theirs kind of got me in the short ribs. And next thing I knew I had my head in the door. "For the love of Mike," says I, "how do you stand it?" "Eh?" says Bob, droppin' his cards and starin' at me. "I--I beg pardon?" Well, with that I steps in, tells him who I am, and how I'd just had a talk with Brother DeLancey. Do I get the glad hand? Why, you'd thought I was a blooming he angel come straight from the pearly gates. Bob drags me in, pushes me into the only rocker in the room, shoves a cigar box at me, and begins to haul decanters from under the washstand. They both asks questions at once. How is everybody, and who's married who, and are so and so still living together? I reels off society gossip for an hour before I gets a chance to do some pumpin' on my own hook. What I wants to know is why in blazes they're hidin' in a hole like Clam Creek. Bob only shrugs his shoulders. "Why not here as well as anywhere?" says he. "When you can't afford to live among your friends, why--you live in Clam Creek." "But two years of it!" says I. "What do you find to do?" "Oh, we manage," says he, wavin' at the double dummy outfit. "Babe and I have our little game. It's only for a dime a point; but it helps pass away the time. You see, when our monthly allowance comes in we divide it equally and take a fresh start. The winner has the privilege of paying our bills." How was that for excitement? And Bob whispers to me, as we starts out for a little walk before turnin' in, "I generally fix it so Babe--er, Mrs. Cathaway--can win, you know." From other little hints I gathers that their stay in Clam Creek has done one thing for 'em, anyway. It had put 'em wise to the great fact that the best way for two parties to get along together is to cut out the hammer music. "So you had a talk with DeLancey?" says Bob on the way back. "I suppose he--er--sent no message?" It had taken Bob Cathaway all this while to work up to that question, and he can't steady down his voice as he puts it. And that quaver tells me the whole story of how he's been hoping all along that Brother DeLancey would sometime or other get over his grouch. Which puts it up to me to tell him what a human iceberg he's related to. Did I? Honest, there's times when I ain't got much use for the truth.