a man complain of hippopotamuses? When not specially in drink, I mean.”
“Nothing larger than sea turtles,” said Corrigan, reflecting, “and there was wood alcohol in that.”
Danny wandered. The double, heavy incumbency of enjoying simultaneously a Sunday and a festival day was his.
The sorrows of the hand-toiler fit him easily. They are worn so often that they hang with the picturesque lines of the best tailor-made garments. That is why well-fed artists of pencil and pen find in the griefs of the common people their most striking models. But when the Philistine would disport himself, the grimness of Melpomene, herself, attends upon his capers. Therefore, Danny set his jaw hard at Easter, and took his pleasure sadly.
The family entrance of Dugan’s café was feasible; so Danny yielded to the vernal season as far as a glass of bock. Seated in a dark, linoleumed, humid back room, his heart and mind still groped after the mysterious meaning of the springtime jubilee.
“Say, Tim,” he said to the waiter, “why do they have Easter?”
“Skiddoo!” said Tim, closing a sophisticated eye. “Is that a new one? All right. Tony Pastor’s for you last night, I guess. I give it up. What’s the answer—two apples or a yard and a half?”
From Dugan’s Danny turned back eastward. The
