Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/119

It was one of those gilded October days when the serene sunshine is as soft and tawny as candle-light; when the air is thin and sharp in the early mornings, but the noontime is as comfortably genial as the radiance of a hearth reddened with hickory embers. Dove Dulcet and I were strolling along Riverside Park, enjoying the blue elixir of the afternoon, in which there was just a faint prick, a gently tangible barb of the coming arrows of the North.

"Winter sharpens her spearheads," said Dulcet.

"Aye," was my reply. Below us I saw the coaling-station at the Seventy-ninth Street pier. "The merriest music the householder can hear nowadays is the roar of coal going down the chute into the cellar."

He sighed, and seemed touched by a sudden melancholy.

"Ben," he said, "that coal-dump reminds me of Gloria Larsen. Did I ever tell you about her?"