The Complete Works of O. Henry

'No headlines for you, Old Sport,' was his diagnosis. 'If it had been two inches to the left it would have undermined the carotid artery as far as the Red Front Drug Store in Flatbush and Back Again. As it is, you just get the property man to bind it up with a flounce torn from any one of the girls' Valenciennes and go home and get it dressed by the parlor-floor practitioner on your block, and you'll be all right. Excuse me; I've got a serious case outside to look after.'

After that, Bob Hart looked up and felt better. And then to where he lay came Vincente, the Tramp Juggler, great in his line. Vincente, a solemn man from Brattleboro, Vt., named Sam Griggs at home, sent toys and maple sugar home to two small daughters from every town he played. Vincente had moved on the same circuits with Hart & Cherry, and was their peripatetic friend.

'Bob,' said Vincente in his serious way, 'I'm glad it's no worse. The little lady is wild about you.'

'Who?' asked Hart.

'Cherry,' said the juggler. 'We didn't know how bad you were hurt; and we kept her away. It's taking the manager and three girls to hold her.'

'It was an accident, of course,' said Hart. 'Cherry's all right. She wasn't feeling in good trim or she couldn't have done it. There's no hard feelings. She's strictly business. The doctor says I'll be on the job again in three days. Don't let her worry.'

'Man,' said Sam Griggs severely, puckering his old, smooth, lined face, 'are you a chess automaton or a human pincushion? Cherry's crying her heart out for you--calling 'Bob, Bob,' every second, with them holding her hands and keeping her from coming to you.'

'What's the matter with her?' asked Hart, with wide-open eyes. 'The sketch'll go on again in three days. I'm not hurt bad, the doctor says. She won't lose out half a week's salary. I know it was an accident. What's the matter with her?'

'You seem to be blind, or a sort of a fool,' said Vincente. 'The girl loves you and is almost mad about your hurt. What's the matter with you? Is she nothing to you? I wish you could hear her call you.'

'Loves me?' asked Bob Hart, rising from the stack of scenery on which he lay. 'Cherry loves me? Why, it's impossible.'

'I wish you could see her and hear her,' said Griggs.

'But, man,' said Bob Hart, sitting up, 'it's impossible. It's impossible, I tell you. I never dreamed of such a thing.'

'No human being,' said the Tramp Juggler, 'could mistake it. She's wild for love of you. How have you been so blind?'

'But, my God,' said Bob Hart, rising to his feet, 'it's too late. It's too late, I tell you, Sam; it's too late. It can't be. You must be wrong. It's impossible. There's some mistake.

'She's crying for you,' said the Tramp Juggler. 'For love of you she's fighting three, and calling your name so loud they don't dare to raise the curtain. Wake up, man.'

'For love of me?' said Bob Hart with staring eyes. 'Don't I tell you it's too late? It's too late, man. Why, Cherry and I have been married two years!'

THE GOLD THAT GLITTERED

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience. Therefore let us have the moral first and be done with it. All is not gold that glitters, but it is a wise child that keeps the stopper in his bottle of testing acid.

Where Broadway skirts the corner of the square presided over by George the Veracious is the Little Rialto. Here stand the actors of that quarter, and this is their shibboleth: ''Nit,' says I to Frohman, 'you can't touch me for a kopeck less than two-fifty per,' and out I walks.'

Westward and southward from the Thespian glare are one or two streets where a Spanish-American colony has huddled for a little tropical warmth in the nipping North. The centre of life in this precinct is 'El Refugio,' a cafe and restaurant that caters to the volatile exiles from the South. Up from Chili, Bolivia, Colombia, the rolling republics of Central America and the ireful islands of the Western Indies flit the cloaked and sombreroed senores, who are scattered like burning lava by the political eruptions of their several countries.

Hither they come to lay counterplots, to bide their time, to solicit funds, to enlist filibusterers, to smuggle out arms and ammunitions, to play the game at long taw. In El Refugio, they find the atmosphere in which they thrive.

In the restaurant of El Refugio are served compounds delightful to the palate of the man from Capricorn or Cancer. Altruism must halt the story thus long. On, diner, weary of the culinary subterfuges of the Gallic chef, hie thee to El Refugio! There only will you find a fish--bluefish, shad or pompano from the Gulf-- baked after the Spanish method. Tomatoes give it color, individuality and soul; chili colorado bestows upon it zest, originality and fervor; unknown herbs furnish piquancy and mystery, and--but its crowning glory deserves a new sentence. Around it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity--but never in it-- hovers an ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and ddelicate that only the Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, 'by hopeless fancy feigned on lips that are for others.' And then, when Conchito, the waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and carafe of wine that has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio--ah, Dios!

One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General was between a claybank and bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of a shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate.

Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red- brick house that read, 'Hotel Espanol.' In the window was a card in Spanish, 'Aqui se habla Espanol.' The General entered, sure of a congenial port.

In the cozy office was Mrs. O'Brien, the proprietress. She had blond--oh, unimpeachably blond hair. For the rest she was amiability, and ran largely to inches around. Gen. Falcon brushed the floor with his broad-brimmed hat, and emitted a quantity of Spanish, the syllables sounding like firecrackers gently popping their way down the string of a bunch.