He had breakfast served in his room, and he ate it in a red dressing gown with green tassels. He left the house at noon and returned at midnight. Those were mysterious hours, but there was nothing my- terious about Mrs. Dempsey's lodgers except the things that were not mysterious. One of Mr. Kip- ling's poems is addressed to 'Ye who hold the un- written clue to all save all unwritten thing.' The same 'readers' are invited to tackle the foregoing assertion.
Mr. Brunelli, being impressionable and a Latin, fell to conjugating the verb 'amare,' with Katy in the objective case, though not because of antipathy. She talked it over with her mother.
'Sure, I like him,' said Katy. 'He's more po- liteness than twinty candidates for Alderman, and lie makes me feel like a queen whin he walks at me side. But what is he, I dinno? I've me suspicions. The marnin'll coom whin he'll throt out the picture av his baronial halls and ax to have the week's rint hung up in the ice chist along wid all the rist of 'em.'
''Tis true,' admitted Mrs. Dempsey, 'that he seems to be a sort iv a Dago, and too coolchured in his spache for a rale gentleman. But ye may be mis- judgin' him. Ye should niver suspect any wan of bein' of noble descint that pays cash and pathronizes the laundry rig'lar.'
'He's the same tbricks of spakin' and blarneyin' wid his hands,' sighed Katy, 'as the Frinch noble- man at Mrs. Toole's that ran away wid Mr. Toole's Sunday pants and left the photograph of the Bastile, his grandfather's chat-taw, as security for tin weeks' rint.'
Mr. Brunelli continued his calorific wooing. Katy continued to hesitate. One day he asked her out to dine and she felt that a denouement was in the air. While they are on their way, with Katy in her best muslin, you must take as an entr'acte a brief peep at New York's Bohemia.
'Tonio's restaurant is in Bohemia. The very lo- cation of it is secret. If you wish to know where it is ask the first person you meet. He will tell you in a whisper. 'Tonio discountenances custom; he keeps his house-front black and forbidding; he gives you a pretty bad dinner; he locks his door at the dining hour; but he knows spaghetti as the boarding-house knows cold veal; and -- he has deposited many dol- lars in a certain Banco di -- something with many gold vowels in the name on its windows.
To this restaurant Mr. Brunelli conducted Katy. The house was dark and the shades were lowered; but Mr. Brunelli touched an electric button by the base- ment door, and they were admitted.
Along a long, dark, narrow hallway they went and then through a shining and spotless kitchen that opened directly upon a back yard.
The walls of houses hemmed three sides of the yard; a high, board fence, surrounded by cats, the other. A wash of clothes was suspended high upon a line stretched from diagonal corners. Those were property clothes, and were never taken in by 'Tonio. They were there that wits with defective pronuncia- tion might make puns in connection with the ragout.
A dozen and a half little tables set upon the bare ground were crowded with Bohemia-hunters, who flocked there because 'Tonio pretended not to want them and pretended to give them a good dinner. There was a sprinkling of real Bohemians present who came for a change because they were tired of the real Bohemia, and a smart shower of the men who originate the bright sayings of Congressmen and the little nephew of the well- known general passen- ger agent of the Evansville and Terre Haute Rail- road Company.
Here is a bon mot that was manufactured at 'Tonio's:
'A dinner at 'Tonio's,' said a Bohemian, 'always amounts to twice the price that is asked for it.'
Let us assume that an accommodating voice in- quires:
'How so?'
'The dinner costs you 40 cents; you give 10 cents to the waiter, and it makes you feel like 30 cents.'
Most of the diners were confirmed table d'hoters -- gastronomic adventuress, forever seeking the El Do- rado of a good claret, and consistently coming to grief in California.
Mr. Brunelli escorted Katy to a little table em- bowered with shrubbery in tubs, and asked her to excuse him for a while.
Katy sat, enchanted by a scene so brilliant to her. The grand ladies, in splendid dresses and plumes and sparkling rings; the fine gentlemen who laughed so loudly, the cries of 'Garsong! ' and 'We, mon- seer,' and 'Hello, Mame! ' that distinguish Bo- hemia; the lively chatter, the cigarette smoke, the interchange of bright smiles and eye-glances -- all this display and magnificence overpowered the daugh- ter of Mrs. Dempsey and held her motionless.
Mr. Brunelli stepped into the yard and seemed to spread his smile and bow over the entire company. And everywhere there was a great clapping of bands and a few cries of 'Bravo! ' and ''Tonio! 'Tonio!' whatever those words might mean. Ladies waved their napkins at him, gentlemen almost twisted their necks off, trying to catch his nod.
When the ovation was concluded Mr. Brunelli, with a final bow, stepped nimbly into the kitchen and flung off his coat and waistcoat.
'Flaherty, the nimblest 'garsong' among the waiters, had been assigned to the special service of Katy. She was a little faint from hunger, for the Irish stew on the Dempsey table had been particu- larly weak that day. Delicious odors from unknown dishes tantalized her. And Flaherty began to bring to her table course after course of ambrosial food that the gods might have pronounced excellent.
But even in the midst of her Lucullian repast Katy laid down her knife and fork. Her heart sank as lead, and a tear fell upon her filet mignon. Her haunting suspicions of the star lodger arose again, fourfold. Thus courted and admired and smiled upon by that fashionable and gracious assembly, what else could Mr. Brunelli be but one of those dazzling titled patricians, glorious of name but shy of rent money, concerning whom experience had made her wise? With a sense of his ineligibility growing within her there was mingled a torturing conviction that his personality was becoming more pleasing to her day by day. And why had he left her to dine alone?
But here he was coming again, now coatless, his snowy shirt-sleeves rolled high above his Jeffries- onian elbows, a white yachting cap perched upon his jetty curls.
''Tonio! 'Tonio!' shouted many, and 'The spaghetti! The spaghetti!' shouted the rest.
Never at 'Tonio's did a waiter dare to serve a dish of spaghetti until 'Tonio came to test it, to prove the sauce and add the needful dash of seasoning that gave it perfection.
