The Man With Two Left Feet

feller did that Andy didn't do when he read that letter.
    'God!' he says. 'Is she… She isn't… Were you in time?' he says.
    And he looks at me, and I seen that he had got it in the neck, right enough.
    'If you mean is she dead,' I says, 'no, she ain't dead.'
    'Thank God!'
    'Not yet,' I says.
    And the next moment we was out of that room and in the cab and moving quick.
    He was never much of a talker, wasn't Andy, and he didn't chat in that cab. He didn't say a word till we was going up the stairs.
    'Where?' he says.
    'Here,' I says.
    And I opens the door.
    Katie was standing looking out of the window. She turned as the door opened, and then she saw Andy. Her lips parted, as if she was going to say something, but she didn't say nothing. And Andy, he didn't say nothing, neither. He just looked, and she just looked.
    And then he sort of stumbles across the room, and goes down on his knees, and gets his arms around her.
    'Oh, my kid' he says.
    * * * * *
    And I seen I wasn't wanted, so I shut the door, and I hopped it. I went and saw the last half of a music–hall. But, I don't know, it didn't kind of have no fascination for me. You've got to give your mind to it to appreciate good music–hall turns.

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE
    The feelings of Mr J. Wilmot Birdsey, as he stood wedged in the crowd that moved inch by inch towards the gates of the Chelsea Football Ground, rather resembled those of a starving man who has just been given a meal but realizes that he is not likely to get another for many days. He was full and happy. He bubbled over with the joy of living and a warm affection for his fellow–man. At the back of his mind there lurked the black shadow of future privations, but for the moment he did not allow it to disturb him. On this maddest, merriest day of all the glad New Year he was content to revel in the present and allow the future to take care of itself.
    Mr Birdsey had been doing something which he had not done since he left New York five years ago. He had been watching a game of baseball.
    New York lost a great baseball fan when Hugo Percy de Wynter Framlinghame, sixth Earl of Carricksteed, married Mae Elinor, only daughter of Mr and Mrs J. Wilmot Birdsey of East Seventy–Third Street; for scarcely had that internationally important event taken place when Mrs Birdsey, announcing that for the future the home would be in England as near as possible to dear Mae and dear Hugo, scooped J. Wilmot out of his comfortable morris chair as if he had been a clam, corked him up in a swift taxicab, and decanted him into a Deck B stateroom on the
Olympic
. And there he was, an exile.
    Mr Birdsey submitted to the worst bit of kidnapping since the days of the old press gang with that delightful amiability which made him so popular among his fellows and such a cypher in his home. At an early date in his married life his position had been clearly defined beyond possibility of mistake. It was his business to make money, and, when called upon, to jump through hoops and sham dead at the bidding of his wife and daughter Mae. These duties he had been performing conscientiously for a matter of twenty years.
    It was only occasionally that his humble role jarred upon him, for he loved his wife and idolized his daughter. The international alliance had been one of these occasions. He had no objection to Hugo Percy, sixth Earl of Carricksteed. The crushing blow had been the sentence of exile. He loved baseball with a love passing the love of women, and the prospect of never seeing a game again in his life appalled him.
    And then, one morning, like a voice from another world, had come the news that the White Sox and the Giants were to give an exhibition in London at the Chelsea Football Ground. He had counted the days like a child before Christmas.
    There had been obstacles to overcome before he could attend the game, but he had overcome them, and had been seated in the front row when the two teams lined up before King George.
    And now he was moving slowly from the ground with the rest of the spectators. Fate had been very good to him. It had given him a great game, even unto two home–runs. But its crowning benevolence had been to allot the seats on either side of him to two men of his own mettle, two god–like beings who knew every move on the board, and howled like wolves when they did not see eye to eye with the umpire. Long before the ninth innings he was feeling towards them the affection of a shipwrecked mariner who meets a