Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/191

 To get Clemens' mind off the melancholy affair, I suggested "Swithin."

"Done," said Mark, "and we will take him out to supper, for I bet he hasn't got a sou marquis in his jeans."

"Swithin" was Mark's pet name for a Franco-American writer whose real name happened to recall the legend of a Saint, a groundhog, and several kinds of weather.

Meanwhile the heat had taken on a Sahara hue. "It seems to me we are not walking, we are dripping," remarked Clemens, as we climbed the four stairs to the studio. We had been told to walk right in, and we did, accidentally upsetting the screen that separated the anteroom from the office.

Tableau! Here was "Swithin" and his secretary, the one dictating, the other thumping the typewriter and both—stark naked.

"Don't mention it," broke in Mark. "Puris naturalibus is the only way to face this hellish temperature—a white man's solitary chance to get even with civilization! If there were a bathtub, a few banana trees and a fire-spitting mountain around, I would think myself in the Sandwich Islands.

"Talking of sandwiches," he added, "hustle into your tailor-mades and come out for a bite. You must be fearfully hungry—working on a day like this?"

"Swithin" didn't have to be told twice. He dashed into the adjoining room for his clothes, but returned after a little while, still en nature, 187