The Third Violet STEPHEN CRANE CHAPTER 19 potx

The Third Violet
STEPHEN CRANE

CHAPTER 19

Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a
cupboard. "There are only two eggs and half a loaf of bread left," he announced
brutally.
"Heavens!" said Warwickson from where he lay smoking on the bed. He spoke
in a dismal voice. This tone, it is said, had earned him his popular name of Great
Grief.
From different points of the compass Wrinkles looked at the little cupboard with
a tremendous scowl, as if he intended thus to frighten the eggs into becoming
more than two, and the bread into becoming a loaf. "Plague take it!" he
exclaimed.
"Oh, shut up, Wrinkles!" said Grief from the bed.
Wrinkles sat down with an air austere and virtuous. "Well, what are we going to
do?" he demanded of the others.
Grief, after swearing, said: "There, that's right! Now you're happy. The holy
office of the inquisition! Blast your buttons, Wrinkles, you always try to keep us
from starving peacefully! It is two hours before dinner, anyhow, and "
"Well, but what are you going to do?" persisted Wrinkles.
Pennoyer, with his head afar down, had been busily scratching at a pen-and-ink
drawing. He looked up from his board to utter a plaintive optimism. "The
Monthly Amazement will pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I've waited over
three months now. I'm going down there to-morrow, and perhaps I'll get it."
His friends listened with airs of tolerance. "Oh, no doubt, Penny, old man." But
at last Wrinkles giggled pityingly. Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in
his throat. Nothing was said for a long time thereafter.
The crash of the New York streets came faintly to this room.
Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of the

begrimed building which squatted, slumbering, and old, between two exalted
commercial structures which would have had to bend afar down to perceive it.
The northward march of the city's progress had happened not to overturn this
aged structure, and it huddled there, lost and forgotten, while the cloud-veering
towers strode on.
Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the blurred windows of the
room. Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the
wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. "It's too dark to work." He lit a pipe
and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was
valuable.
When the dusk came fully the youths grew apparently sad. The solemnity of the
gloom seemed to make them ponder. "Light the gas, Wrinkles," said Grief
fretfully.
The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with sketches, the
tousled bed in one corner, the masses of boxes and trunks in another, a little
dead stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover, there were wine-coloured
draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf, high up, there were plaster casts,
with dust in the creases. A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction
and then turned impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some
elaborate cobwebs on the ceiling.
"Well, let's eat," said Grief.
"Eat," said Wrinkles, with a jeer; "I told you there was only two eggs and a little
bread left. How are we going to eat?"
Again brought face to face with this problem, and at the hour for dinner,
Pennoyer and Grief thought profoundly. "Thunder and turf!" Grief finally
announced as the result of his deliberations.
"Well, if Billie Hawker was only home " began Pennoyer.
"But he isn't," objected Wrinkles, "and that settles that."
Grief and Pennoyer thought more. Ultimately Grief said, "Oh, well, let's eat
what we've got." The others at once agreed to this suggestion, as if it had been

in their minds.
Later there came a quick step in the passage and a confident little thunder upon
the door. Wrinkles arranging the tin pail on the gas stove, Pennoyer engaged in
slicing the bread, and Great Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove,
yelled, "Come in!"
The door opened, and Miss Florinda O'Connor, the model, dashed into the room
like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.
"Why, hello, Splutter!" they cried.
"Oh, boys, I've come to dine with you."
It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.
Grief spoke first. "Yes, you have?" he said incredulously.
"Why, certainly I have. What's the matter?"
They grinned. "Well, old lady," responded Grief, "you've hit us at the wrong
time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to mention, and, what's
more, we haven't got a sou."
"What? Again?" cried Florinda.
"Yes, again. You'd better dine home to-night."
"But I'll I'll stake you," said the girl eagerly. "Oh, you poor old idiots! It's a
shame! Say, I'll stake you."
"Certainly not," said Pennoyer sternly.
"What are you talking about, Splutter?" demanded Wrinkles in an angry voice.
"No, that won't go down," said Grief, in a resolute yet wistful tone.
Florinda divested herself of her hat, jacket, and gloves, and put them where she
pleased. "Got coffee, haven't you? Well, I'm not going to stir a step. You're a
fine lot of birds!" she added bitterly, "You've all pulled me out of a whole lot of
scrape oh, any number of times and now you're broke, you go acting like a set
of dudes."
Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to watch it
closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was balanced on a trunk, and
two bundles of kindling was balanced on the chair, and the gas stove was

balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was here accounted a feat.
Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. "There! I'll have to go shy one."
Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at the
table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of its litter.
Florinda assaulted Great Grief. "Here, that's not the way to make coffee!"
"What ain't?"
"Why, the way you're making it. You want to take " She explained some way
to him which he couldn't understand.
"For heaven's sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don't sit there like a music box,"
said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas stove.
Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction, "Well, the
coffee's good, anyhow."
"'Tis good," said Florinda, "but it isn't made right. I'll show you how, Penny.
You first "
"Oh, dry up, Splutter," said Grief. "Here, take an egg."
"I don't like eggs," said Florinda.
"Take an egg," said the three hosts menacingly.
"I tell you I don't like eggs."
"Take an egg!" they said again.
"Oh, well," said Florinda, "I'll take one, then; but you needn't act like such a set
of dudes and, oh, maybe you didn't have much lunch. I had such a daisy lunch!
Up at Pontiac's studio. He's got a lovely studio."
The three looked to be oppressed. Grief said sullenly, "I saw some of his things
over in Stencil's gallery, and they're rotten."
"Yes rotten," said Pennoyer.
"Rotten," said Grief.
"Oh, well," retorted Florinda, "if a man has a swell studio and dresses oh, sort
of like a Willie, you know, you fellows sit here like owls in a cave and say
rotten rotten rotten. You're away off. Pontiac's landscapes "
"Landscapes be blowed! Put any of his work alongside of Billie Hawker's and

see how it looks."
"Oh, well, Billie Hawker's," said Florinda. "Oh, well."
At the mention of Hawker's name they had all turned to scan her face.