"Like a coat of paint," he murmured aloud.
The cowpuncher grinned. He understood the business that went with selling a suit in some stores. But it happened that he liked this suit himself. "How much?" he repeated.
The owner of the store dwelt on the merits of the suit, its style, its durability, the perfect fit. He covered his subject with artistic thoroughness. Then, reluctantly, he confided in a whisper the price at which he was going to sacrifice this suit among suits.
"To you, my friendt, I make this garment for only sixty-five dollars."
He added another secret detail. "Below wholesale cost."
A little devil of mirth lit in Lindsay's eye. "I'd hate to have you rob yoreself like that. And me a perfect stranger to you too."
"Qvality, y' understan' me. Which a man must got to live garments like I done to appreciate such a suit. All wool. Every thread of it. Unshrinkable. This is a qvality town. If you want the best it costs a little more, but you got anyhow a suit which a man might be married in without shame, understan' me."
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.
"Cedric, come here!"
The little boy went, bawling lustily to win sympathy. The nursemaid shook him impatiently. "How many times have I told you to look where you're going? Serves you just right. Now be still."
There was a deep instinct in Clay to stand by those in trouble when they were weak. A child or a woman in distress always had a claim on him.
"I reckon the li'l' fellow was in a hurry, Miss," he said, smiling. "I 'most always was at his age. But he ain't hurt much."
The maid looked Clay up and down scornfully before she turned her back on him and began to talk with another nurse.
Beneath the tan of the range-rider's cheeks the color flamed. This young woman had not mistaken the friendliness of the West for the impudence of a street masher. The impulse of snobbery had expressed itself in her action.
The cowpuncher followed a path that took him back to the street. He grinned, but there was no smile in his heart. He was ashamed of this young woman who could meet good-will with scorn, and he wanted to get away from her without any unnecessary delay. What were the folks like in this part of the country that you couldn't speak to them without getting insulted?
He struck across the Drive into a side street. An apartment house occupied the corner, but from the other side a row of handsome private dwellings faced him.
The janitor of the apartment house was watering the parking beyond the sidewalk. The edge of the stream from the nozzle of the hose sprayed the path in front of Clay. He hesitated for a moment to give the man time to turn aside the hose.
But the janitor on this particular morning had been fed up with trouble. One of the tenants had complained of him to the agent of the place. Another had moved away without tipping him for an hour's help in packing he had given her. He was sulkily of the opinion that the whole world was in a conspiracy to annoy him. Just now the approaching rube typified the world.
A little flirt of the hose deluged Clay's newly shined boots and the lower six inches of his trousers.
"Look out what you're doing!" protested the man from Arizona.
"I tank you better look where you're going," retorted the one from
Sweden. He was a heavy-set, muscular man with a sullen, obstinate face.
"My shoes and trousers are sopping wet."
"Yust you bate it oop street. I ant look for no trouble with no rubes."
"I believe you did it on purpose."
"Tank so? Val, yust one teng I lak to tell you. I got no time for damn fule talk."
The Westerner started on his way. There was no use having a row with a sulky janitor.
But the Swede misunderstood his purpose. At Clay's first step forward he jerked round the nozzle and let the range-rider have it with full force.
Clay was swept back to the wall by the heavy pressure of water that played over him. The stream moved swiftly up and down him from head to foot till it had drenched every inch of the perfect fifty-five-dollar suit. He drowned fathoms deep in a water spout. He was swept over Niagara Falls. He came to life again to find himself the choking center of a world flood. He sputtered furiously while his arms flailed like windmills to keep back the river of water that engulfed him.
The thought that