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286 "I smoke marajuana," said Marge, with a grunt of satisfaction. Ken puffed, inhaled …

Rocked gently on a tree-top, cradled softly, oh, so softly, the crooning of a lullaby in his ears—very happy, very happy, very … happy.

"A drink?" Verne asked.

"I smoke marajuana," said Ken. "It's sorta, very sorta good."

The little room in the Yorkshire was all he had. Narrow room, in the hotel at Seventy-sixth Street and Broadway. Clean, walls green as in the fine hotels on Fifth Avenue. Excellent furniture and a tiny balcony facing the court. Small, very small.

Verne and Feathers could edge their way into it. They could sit on the bed. Ken liked the morris chair, green, near the French window. They would sit. Talk. Drink.

Occasionally Feathers, no longer permitted entree at Willie's, would bring his casual acquaintances of an evening to the room. Kewpie Lorraine, vendor of obscene postcards, fluffy haired, pre-Raphaelitish in appearance, familiar figure in the lobbies of burlesque theatres, would frequently drop in.

Kewpie lived down the hall. He worked as a photographer's model in his spare moments. He was ever cheerful. "I use gin to gargle with but not to put in the old stomach, dear," he told Ken. "What's the matter?"

It was noon, on a day early in the spring. Ken lay in bed. Feathers was asleep in the morris chair. Verne was curled under the balcony awning.

"I'm broke," Ken said.

"How broke?"