of newly dusted paper roses; the Morris chair, with Nelly's sewing on a tiny wicker table beside it; the large giltframed
oleograph of "Pike's Peak by Moonlight."
He clattered down the slate treads of the stairs. He fairly vaulted out of doors. He stopped, startled.
Across the ragged vacant lots to the west a vast sunset processional marched down the sky. It had not been visible
from their flat, which looked across East River to the tame grassy shore of a real-estate boomer's suburb. "Gee!" he
mourned, "it's the first time I've noticed a sunset for a month! I used to see knights' flags and Mandalay and all
sorts of stuff in sunsets!"
Wistfully the exile gazed at his lost kingdom, till the October chill aroused him.
But he learned a new way to cook eggs from the proprietor of the delicatessen store; and his plans for spending the
evening playing pinochle with Nelly, and reading the evening paper aloud, set him chuckling softly to himself as he
hurried home through the brisk autumn breeze with seven cents' worth of potato salad.
END
Our Mister Wren Page 28