If Ginger Kemp had been asked to enumerate his good qualities, it is notprobable that he would have drawn up a very lengthy list. He might havestarted by claiming for himself the virtue of meaning well, but afterthat he would have had to chew the pencil in prolonged meditation. And,even if he could eventually have added one or two further items to thecatalogue, tact and delicacy of feeling would not have been among them.

　　Yet, by staying away from Sally during the next few days he showedconsiderable delicacy. It was not easy to stay away from her, but heforced himself to do so. He argued from his own tastes, and was stronglyof opinion that in times of travail, solitude was what the sufferer mostdesired. In his time he, too, had had what he would have described asnasty jars, and on these occasions all he had asked was to be allowed tosit and think things over and fight his battle out by himself.

　　By Saturday, however, he had come to the conclusion that some form ofaction might now be taken. Saturday was rather a good day for picking upthe threads again. He had not to go to the office, and, what was stillmore to the point, he had just drawn his week's salary. Mrs. Meecher haddeftly taken a certain amount of this off him, but enough remained toenable him to attempt consolation on a fairly princely scale. Therepresented itself to him as a judicious move the idea of hiring a car andtaking Sally out to dinner at one of the road-houses he had heard aboutup the Boston Post Road. He examined the scheme. The more he looked atit, the better it seemed.

　　He was helped to this decision by the extraordinary perfection of theweather. The weather of late had been a revelation to Ginger. It was hisfirst experience of America's Indian Summer, and it had quite overcomehim. As he stood on the roof of Mrs. Meecher's establishment on theSaturday morning, thrilled by the velvet wonder of the sunshine, itseemed to him that the only possible way of passing such a day was totake Sally for a ride in an open car.

　　The Maison Meecher was a lofty building on one of the side-streets atthe lower end of the avenue. From its roof, after you had worked yourway through the groves of washing which hung limply from theclothes-line, you could see many things of interest. To the left layWashington Square, full of somnolent Italians and roller-skatingchildren; to the right was a spectacle which never failed to intrigueGinger, the high smoke-stacks of a Cunard liner moving slowly down theriver, sticking up over the house-tops as if the boat was travellingdown Ninth Avenue.

　　To-day there were four of these funnels, causing Ginger to deduce theMauritania. As the boat on which he had come over from England, theMauritania had a sentimental interest for him. He stood watching herstately progress till the higher buildings farther down the town shuther from his sight; then picked his way through the washing and wentdown to his room to get his hat. A quarter of an hour later he was inthe hall-way of Sally's apartment house, gazing with ill-concealeddisgust at the serge-clad back of his cousin Mr. Carmyle, who wasengaged in conversation with a gentleman in overalls.