ELL'S first idea had been flight—to get away from these stately mansions by the Hudson and lose himself in the great city below.
"To look at me," he thought, with a groan, as he turned into the upper reaches of Broadway, "one would never think that I had been wounded so." And indeed he was right. Except for his expression, which had something pathetic in it, you would never have suspected that he had just been dealt a mortal thrust.
"Marry you after this?" Margaret had said to him. "Not if you were the last man on earth!" Which said wasn't exactly original, when all is said and done. "We have absolutely nothing in common," she had continued, watching him closely for winces: "you can't talk: you can't ride; you can't understand; you can't take a joke; you can't dance" He winced then. "I don't believe that a clumsier man ever stepped out on a floor. 'Old Bumblefoot,' they call you"
"It's a lie!" he had growled. The next moment she had given him back his ring and Mell had left her with the face of a man who she is hurrying out to self-destruction.
"Don't do anything rash!" she had called after him mockingly.
"I'd like to see myself!" he scoffed, as he swung down Madison avenue,
In his resentment, Mell did not notice that his around his speedometer was trembling around "40," nor did he see the three enormous trucks that were coming out of the side street, one closely following the other, like three friendly mastodons going down to the river to drink.
"Good night!" said Mell, as he stepped upon his brake.
It was too late. Ahead of him the three leviathans completely blocked the street. To the right was a lamp post and a photographer's shop. Mell looked at the trucks and he looked at the post.
As the lesser of two evils he chose the post.
S Mell's perceptions grew clearer he became aware that his resting place was a photographer's dressing room, and that, bending over him, was a doctor and a business-like young woman, who was evidently in charge of the shop.
"A narrow escape," said the doctor.
It seemed to Mell that the good physician spoke almost with regret—though this was no doubt imagination, for he was still light-headed.
"How's the car?" he asked in a small, faint voice.
"A wreck," said the doctor.
"Would you like us to take a photograph of it?" eagerly inquired the
young woman.
Mell weakly nodded—in a way it was a sort of repayment for her hospitality—and she and the doctor went out.
"Seems like a nightmare," said Mell, who was feeling as though he would float if he tried to walk, "and I guess it will be a nightmare, too, when Aunt Agnes hears about the car." His mind returning then to first causes, he added: "Lucky I wasn't killed, or Margaret would always have thought that I had done it because she jilted me."
He drew a deep breath and looked up at the framed photographs that hung around him on the walls.
"I'll bet it took most of them half an hour to get those careless-looking poses," he thought, with the trace of a grin. "But say—here's a peach"
The photograph over the couch at which he was staring showed a quiet, serious-eyed girl who was standing by a table on which a pug-nosed Pomeranian was perched, looking up at the girl with adoring eyes. It couldn't have been her dress that attracted Mell, for it was evidently a dark suit of the simplest possible design—and it couldn't have been her hat, which was nothing but a dark straw with a narrow band of ribbon around it. And it couldn't have been her studied pose, for she had none.
He was still looking at the picture, deep calling to deep, although he didn't know it—when the brisk young taken manageress entered. "We've taken the car." she said. "How many prints would you like?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Mell carelessly. "But tell me," he added, looking up at the picture which had interested him so, "Who's this? Does she live around here?"
"I only wish I knew!" The young woman frowned. "She came in here about three months ago and foolishly enough I didn't take a deposit. We made up a dozen and have them yet. We tried to deliver them at the address which she wrote down for us, but she had moved away and left no other address.… Still it learned me a lesson. If the Prince of Wales himself came into this shop for a sitting tomorrow, he would have to pay a deposit."
When Mell left the photographer's shop ten minutes later, he had the twelve pictures underneath his arm, and the raised flap on the cash register said "$20." And not only did he have the pictures, but he had the card on which the girl with the dog had written her name and address.