Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/34

 dignified admiration riveted upon his counterpart in the mirror. Seen thus, he was not without a similarity to pictures of the Matterhorn, his bare, rugged peak rising fearsomely above his snow-draped bulk. Harpin appeared to be putting the last snipping touches to the Colonel's too-long neglected side-whiskers. On the table lay his hat and gold-headed cane, and close at hand stood his bulging valise.

I walked hastily on. The thing was ominous. Yet, might it not merely denote that Potts wished to enter upon his new life well barbered? The bulging bag supported this possibility, and yet I was ill at ease.

Reaching my office, I sought to engage myself with the papers of an approaching suit, but it was impossible to ignore the darkling cloud of disaster which impended. I returned to the street anxiously.

On my way to the City Hotel, where I had resolved to await like a man what calamity there might be, I again passed the barber-shop.

Harpin Cust now leaned, gracefully attentive, on the back of the empty chair, absently swishing his little whisk broom. Before him was planted Potts, his left foot advanced, his head thrown back, reading to Harpin from a spread page of the Argus. I divined that he was reading Solon's comment upon himself, and I shuddered.

As I paused at the door of the hotel Potts emerged from the barber-shop. In one hand he carried his bag, in the other his cane and the Little Arcady