He was worried somewhat by Conroy, who borrowed money from him with the careless air of asking for what he knew was his own and spent it ostensibly on theatres and cigars. It was evident from Conroy's talk of "rushing the growler" and "hitting the can" that the men at the warehouse were jovial drinkers; and he himself, on more than one warm evening, came to his dinner with a sleepy lack of appetite that smelled sourly of beer. Don put the situation before Walter Pittsey, on one of their rounds of the theatrical agencies; and the older man made light of it. "A little beer won't hurt him, you know. It's harmless stuff. Besides, he's old enough to take care of himself."
"But I'm responsible for him, to his father," Don said. "He promised not to drink."
"Well, I shouldn't make trouble for him, if I were you. He'll probably go home at Christmas and stay there. Then he'll be off your hands. Come up to the house to-night, will you? There's somebody there I'd like you to meet."
He lived on one of the upper floors of a theatrical boarding-house off Sixth Avenue, but he had never before invited Don to his room, and Don had been left to gather, from what he heard of the house, that it was the rough Bohemian abode of vaudeville "ham-fatters"—as Pittsey called them. Pittsey professed to like the house because the boarders had reduced the mistress of it to a proper meekness of spirit. "The last time she tried to make trouble for them," he had explained, "they carried her saucepans and the covers of her kitchen range up to the roof and dropped them down
