Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/277

 "I haven't. I got that out of Crawford's 'Ave Roma.

"What makes you so anxious to come back to Madison Square?"

"I'm not. I'd rather find a fountain that would send me round the world. But there isn't much chance of that, and I thought if you'd throw one in too—both at the same time, you know—it might fix things so that we'd come back together."

She gave him a steady, thoughtful look, took a penny out of her purse. "All ready, go!"

The two coins splashed into the pool. "I hope there will be as lovely a moon then as there is to-night," she said.

"I wonder," thought Neale, "just how much she meant by that."

When Neale got back to his room, the Gang was not there in full force, only Robertson, the knowing little Soph. and Gregg, drinking beer and smoking their pipes. Neale kept back a grimace of distaste at seeing Robertson, his broad boy's face set in its usual expression of solemn, self-conscious wiseness in the ways of the world. The rest of the Gang found Robertson comic and enjoyed having him around to laugh at, as many people enjoy a visit to the monkey-house in a zoo, and see nothing but the comic in the humanness of simian antics. But he disquieted Neale to his very soul, as another set of people are disquieted and troubled by a visit to the monkey-house and see nothing to laugh at in simian antics.

One evening of little Robertson and his loud-proclaimed disillusion with the world and the human race moved the rest of the Gang to delighted howls of laughter for days afterwards; but though Neale laughed with the rest (nobody could help laughing at Robertson, he was such an owl!), it rather took the shine off Schopenhauer and pessimism, and that was a real privation for a Senior.

As he came in, Gregg was quoting,