WORK WANTED
It to Archie, as he his position at the end of the month of his married life, that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In their America, visiting Englishmen almost to extremes, either all that is or else on the of the country, its climate, and its institutions. Archie to the second class. He liked America and got on with Americans from the start. He was a soul, a mixer; and in New York, that city of mixers, he himself at home. The of good-fellowship and the open-hearted of he met to him. There were moments when it to him as though New York had been waiting for him to arrive the word to let the commence.
Nothing, of course, in this world is perfect; and, as were the through which Archie looked on his new surroundings, he had to admit that there was one flaw, one in the ointment, one in the salad. Mr. Daniel Brewster, his father-in-law, unfriendly. Indeed, his manner his new relative daily more and more a manner which would have on the if Simon Legree had it in his relations with Uncle Tom. And this in of the that Archie, as early as the third of his stay, had gone to him and in the most and way, had his of the Hotel Cosmopolis, it as his opinion that the Hotel Cosmopolis on closer appeared to be a good egg, one of the best and brightest, and a of all right.
“A to you, old thing,” said Archie cordially.
“Don’t call me old thing!” Mr. Brewster.
“Right-o, old companion!” said Archie amiably.
Archie, a true philosopher, this with fortitude, but it Lucille.
“I do wish father you better,” was her when Archie had related the conversation.
“Well, you know,” said Archie, “I’m open for being any time he to take a at it.”
“You must try and make him of you.”
“But how? I at him and what not, but he doesn’t respond.”
“Well, we shall have to think of something. I want him to what an you are. You are an angel, you know.”
“No, really?”
“Of you are.”
“It’s a thing,” said Archie, a train of which was with him, “the more I see of you, the more I wonder how you can have a father like—I to say, what I to say is, I wish I had your mother; she must have been attractive.”
“What would him, I know,” said Lucille, “would be if you got some work to do. He loves people who work.”
“Yes?” said Archie doubtfully. “Well, you know, I him that the this morning, who like the from early to eve, on the of a mistake in his figures; and, if he loved him, he it all right. Of course, I admit that so I haven’t been one of the toilers, but the difficult thing is to know how to start. I’m round, but the openings for a man so scarce.”
“Well, keep on trying. I sure that, if you only something to do, it doesn’t what, father would be different.”
It was possibly the of making Mr. Brewster different that Archie. He was of the opinion that any in his father-in-law must be for the better. A meeting with James B. Wheeler, the artist, at the Pen-and-Ink Club to open the way.
To a visitor to New York who has the ability to make himself liked it almost as though the leading in that city was the of two-weeks’ invitation-cards to clubs. Archie since his had been with these of his popularity; and he was now an of so many of that he had not time to go to them all. There were the along Fifth Avenue to which his friend Reggie Tuyl, son of his Florida hostess, had him. There were the businessmen’s of which he was free by more solid citizens. And, best of all, there were the Lambs’, the Players’, the Friars’, the Coffee-House, the Pen-and-Ink,—and the other of the artist, the author, the actor, and the Bohemian. It was in these that Archie most of his time, and it was here that he the of J. B. Wheeler, the popular illustrator.
To Mr. Wheeler, over a lunch, Archie had been some of his to as the hero of one of the Get-on-or-get-out-young-man-step-lively-books.
“You want a job?” said Mr. Wheeler.
“I want a job,” said Archie.
Mr. Wheeler eight potatoes in quick succession. He was an able trencherman.
“I always looked on you as one of our leading of the field,” he said. “Why this to and spin?”
“Well, my wife, you know, to think it might put me one-up with the old if I did something.”
“And you’re not particular what you do, so long as it has the of work?”
“Anything in the world, laddie, anything in the world.”
“Then come and for a picture I’m doing,” said J. B. Wheeler. “It’s for a magazine cover. You’re just the model I want, and I’ll pay you at the rates. Is it a go?”
“Pose?”
“You’ve only got to still and look like a of wood. You can do that, surely?”
“I can do that,” said Archie.
“Then come along to my studio to-morrow.”
“Right-o!” said Archie.
