Mr. Wrenn was stubborn. "I couldn't help it."
"Couldn't help--! And you call that an explanation! I know just exactly what you're thinking, Wrenn; you're thinking that because I've let you have a lot of chances to really work into the business lately you're necessary to us, and not simply an expense--"
"Oh no, Mr. Guilfogle; honest, I didn't think--"
"Well, hang it, man, you want to think. What do you suppose we pay you a salary for? And just let me tell you, Wrenn, right here and now, that if you can't condescend to spare us some of your valuable time, now and then, we can good and plenty get along without you."
An old tale, oft told and never believed; but it interested Mr. Wrenn just now.
"I'm real glad you can get along without me. I've just inherited a big wad of money! I think I'll resign! Right now!"
Whether he or Mr. Mortimer R. Guilfogle was the more aghast at hearing him bawl this no one knows. The manager was so worried at the thought of breaking in a new man that his eye-glasses slipped off his poor perspiring nose. He begged, in sudden tones of old friendship: "Why, you can't be thinking of leaving us! Why, we expect to make a big man of you, Wrenn. I was joking about firing you. You ought to know that, after the talk we had at Mouquin's the other night. You can't be thinking of leaving us! There's no end of possibilities here."
"Sorry," said the dogged soldier of dreams.
"Why--" wailed that hurt and astonished victim of ingratitude, Mr. Guilfogle.
"I'll leave the middle of June. That's plenty of notice," chirruped Mr. Wrenn.
At five that evening Mr. Wrenn dashed up to the Brass-button Man at his station before the Nickelorion, crying: "Say! You come from Ireland, don't you?"
"Now what would you think? Me--oh no; I'm a Chinaman from Oshkosh!"
"No, honest, straight, tell me. I've got a chance to travel. What d'yuh think of that? Ain't it great! And I'm going right away. What I wanted to ask you was, what's the best place in Ireland to see?"
"Donegal, o' course. I was born there."
Hauling from his pocket a pencil and a worn envelope, Mr. Wrenn joyously added the new point of interest to a list ranging from Delagoa Bay to Denver.
He skipped up-town, looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the end of Fourteenth Street. He stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of a Greek bootblack's stand. Stars--steamer--temples, all these were his. He owned them now. He was free.