V LUNCHEON AT SHARPE’S RICHARD COBDEN and John Higgins were lunching at Sharpe’s Chop House. It was one-thirty, and at the height of the day’s business. The tables were packed close. “You were telling me about that Asiatic landlady down in the Village,” Higgins said, lifting his spectacles to wipe his red-rimmed eyes. “I wasn’t telling you much,” said Dicky. “She’s too deep for me--looks to thrive on coffee and cigarettes--eyes that have seen too much, a lot of laughter in them, but no hope.... And what would you think of a basement room, with flowers in winter and a fireplace with hickory embers, a Byzantine jar in the corner and a cabinet of porcelain which I haven’t seen the like of on this side?” “Go on--don’t mind me,” said John Higgins. “... Little old Harrow Street,” Dicky mused. “Harrow Street curves, you know. There is quite a mass of rooming houses on each side, and number Fifty-four, with a green front, is Miss Claes’ house. And our Mr. Naidu works there with his hands; only they call him Nagar in that house--spelled with an ‘a’ but pronounced ‘nog.’... By the way, he told me twice, yesterday, that it isn’t a fiction story we’ve bought, but a handling of things that actually happened in Africa--Little Man an actual human being named Gandhi or something of the sort.” “Can’t be done. Fiction and life are different,” said John Higgins. Dicky resumed: “Some of Miss Claes’ lodgers happened in for the tea party. No one barred apparently. I must have seen most of the houseful: couple of girl-pals; one works in a restaurant to support the other who is to become a prima donna; a couple of decayed vaudeville artists looking for a legacy--a regular houseful, but I don’t believe all of them pay, as they would have to in other houses.” “Landlady supports those who can’t?” “That’s the way I see it. The green front in Harrow Street took hold of me. I must have stayed over two hours. Our Mr. Naidu made some coffee to go with that cabinet of porcelain. Also there was a little girl--from Los Angeles, I think they said--red head, brown wool dress and eyes of a blue you see on illumined vellum out of Italy----” “Some cerulean,” said John Higgins. “They weren’t large, particularly,” Dicky went on at his literary best, “but that extraordinary blue like the ocean. Ruffled on top, but calm and still in the depth! Never saw such eyes. They come back to me now----” “They do to me, Dicky.” “You’re not getting all I mean, John. Uptown here, we think we’re the center of the world, the heart of New York yanking up toward the Park--but down there those old rooming houses are filling up with the boys and girls from all the States west, and the second growths from the families of European immigrants--filling up because they are cheap, with the boys and girls who will do the surgery ten years from now, and the painting and writing and acting----” “I’ve heard about all that,” said John Higgins. “You’ll do a big story yourself one day.”