The Arizonan backed off in apparent alarm. "Say, is this a weddin'
garment you're onload'n' on me? Do I have to sashay down a church
aisle and promise I do?"
Mr. Bernstein explained that this was not obligatory. All he meant was
that the suit was good enough to be married in, or for that matter to
be buried in.
"Or to be born anew in when Billy Sunday comes to town and I hit the
sawdust trail," suggested the purchaser.
Mr. Bernstein caressed it again. "One swell piece of goods," he told
himself softly, almost with tears in his eyes.
"All wool, you say?" asked Clay, feeling the texture. He had made up
his mind to buy it, though he thought the price a bit stiff.
Mr. Bernstein protested on his honor that there was not a thread of
cotton in it. "Which you could take it from me that when I sell a suit
of clothes it is like I am dealing with my own brother," he added.
"Every garment out of this store takes my personal guarantee."
Clay tried on the trousers and looked at himself in the glass. So far
as he could tell he looked just like any other New Yorker.
The dealer leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. Apparently he was
ashamed of his softness of heart. "Fifty-five dollars--to you."
"I'll take it," the Westerner said.
The clothier called his tailor from the rear of the store to make an
adjustment in the trousers. Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags which
told him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven dollars and
seventy-five cents.
Half an hour later Clay sat on top of a Fifth-Avenue bus which was
jerking its way uptown. His shoes were shined to mirror brightness.
He was garbed in a blue serge suit with a little stripe running through
the pattern. That suit just now was the apple of his eye. It proved
him a New Yorker and not a wild man from the Arizona desert.
CHAPTER IV
A NEW USE FOR A WATER HOSE
The motor-bus ran up Fifth Avenue, cut across to Broadway, passed
Columbus Circle, and swept into the Drive. It was a day divinely young
and fair. The fragrance of a lingering spring was wafted to the
nostrils. Only the evening before the trees had been given a bath of
rain and the refreshment of it showed in every quivering leaf. From
its little waves the Hudson reflected a million sparkles of light.
Glimpses of the Park tempted Clay. Its winding paths! The children
playing on the grass while their maids in neat caps and aprons gossiped
together on the benches near! This was the most human spot the man
from Arizona had seen in the metropolis.
Somewhere in the early three-figure streets he descended from the top
of the bus and let his footsteps follow his inclinations into the Park.
A little shaver in a sailor suit ran across the path and fell sprawling
at the feet of Clay. He picked up and began to comfort the howling
four-year-old.
"That sure was a right hard fall, sonny, but you're not goin' to make
any fuss about it. You're Daddy's little man and--"
A sharp, high voice cut into his consolation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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