... Pidge and Rufe Melton went over to Bank Street for supper that evening. Rufus wasn’t hungry. He had bought a golf suit that looked very well on him, he said, but evidently now he was troubled how to use it. He hadn’t done any work so far to-day and felt less like it than ever. Pidge thoughtlessly mentioned that an Indian letter had come in to the office from Richard Cobden that day. “You folks are dippy about this Cobden,” Rufe said. “Every time an article of his comes out in the _Passé Square_, you gather together to read it as if it had come from the Messiah. What’s he to you, Pan--a little bit tender on your Dicky?” “A little bit tender,” she said. Rufus felt abused. He glared at her. This sort of thing had happened before. Rufe had come to look at Pidge as his picket pin. He had a long rope and everything was all right, so long as the pin held. But her manner now would uncenter any man. “I’d like to get out of Harrow Street,” he growled. “Every time I put my address on the top of a manuscript, I feel it’s a knock rather than a boost. I’ve been tempted to get an agent, for no other reason than to have his address for the magazines to work through. I was talking with Redge Walters who bought this story to-day, and he said, ‘Rufe, you sure fall for the little bobbed heads down in the Village, don’t you? Why don’t you come uptown and live in New York?’” “I like Harrow Street,” said Pidge. “You don’t make a secret of it, either,” he went on. “Of course, Miss Claes is kind and all that, but we pay for what we get, and there’s no question in my mind about the pictures in her gallery being hung crooked.” “If you’ve finished your supper, let’s go,” said Pidge. “She breathes! The Arctic princess!” Rufe shivered. Pidge didn’t answer. “And that second floor needs policing up,” Rufe resumed. “I haven’t taken it to heart so much about living in the Village, but that second floor’s a tenement patch. Every time I go up and down----” “Fanny’s my fault and Miss Claes accepts it with never a murmur,” Pidge said, wide-eyed. “I’d look well running off uptown and leaving Fanny there. Oh, Rufe, don’t you ever see any fault except on the outside?” Right then Rufe said something. “What’s the use of me looking after my own faults when you’ve got them all in hand like Shetland ponies?” Pidge arose. Black waters were welling up in her breast. It was so true. His faults were with her day and night, and the greatest of them was his entire irresponsibility. Also it touched her in the sorest quick to have him point out that Fanny lowered the values, not only of the second floor, but of the whole Harrow Street house.