He scarcely ever would sing the old favorites. When the girls sang them he would interrupt with a command to go on an errand, or he would himself go out, frowning. It was as if these songs were buried in the Mapleview Cemetery with Mama, all covered with myrtle and graveyard flowers. Marcia shut her eyes sometimes and saw Mama behind those final iron gates, wandering forlorn, eyes blind with death, the heavy pack on her back, the homeless Irish lad beside her, and poor little Joe shivering in rags. About these three the snow danced and swirled as it did in the glass snowstorm ball on Mrs. Jane’s mantelpiece, the storm finally engulfing them just as it did the little shepherdess in the glass ball. Maybe, thought Marcia, this was the way Papa, too, thought of the old songs, and wanted to forget.

“How about a new song?” asked Mr. Taylor, Papa’s new friend.

“That’s the trouble with giving up the road,” Papa complained. “You get behind the times. By the time a song hits this town, it’s a hundred years old.”

“I heard a pip in Columbus last week,” boasted Mr. Taylor. “Name of it was ‘If I Had a Thousand Lives.’ Fellow came out and sang it in a full dress suit, then in a kinda frame-like behind him some girl would light up like a picture. Made you all choked up. End up with her coming out of the frame and walking over to him, so they walked up and down together, her in front of him, ahanging on to his arm. They musta sung it five, six times.”

“How’d it go?” Papa asked, interested.

Mr. Taylor scratched his nose.

“If I—no, it was lower than that. If I—dum de dum. Well, hell, a song’s just a song. Those fellas are always singing something or other. I pay no attention.”

“I’ll take Detroit any day in preference to Columbus,” stated Papa, resuming his guitar. “I’ve seen some of the finest shows in the world in Detroit, Michigan. I’ll say that much.”

“I guess you’ve never been to Detroit, have you, Mr. Taylor?” asked Marcia brightly.

Mr. Taylor looked moodily at her.

“How about the kids going out to play?” he suggested, whereupon all three girls favored him with a reproachful frown.

Mr. Taylor was Papa’s new friend for Lesterville. He was a dried, sandy little man with a long, pointed nose like a rat’s, a feature that seemed to fascinate him as much as it did other people, for he was always tugging at it, then squinting down to see if any change had come over it. Between these diversions he wrinkled it into a perpetual sniff, accompanied by rapid blinking of his small, raisin eyes. He sniffed at words and people as if his nostrils did the work of all other senses, and he could sniff out a thought or even a person’s financial status quicker than a beagle could smell a fox. He lived in a men’s hotel down the street, and was proud of it because it was called the Hermits’ Club, just like the one in Cleveland, though the Lesterville Hermits were bound by no convivial ties, only by their common need for a hall bedroom cheap. Mr. Taylor had several calling cards printed up with his name and club on it, which he passed around to strangers unfamiliar with the “club.” Its privileges, apart from a bed and the use of the elevator, were so limited that he came over to the Willards’ rooms frequently, especially on Sunday, where he could have room to spread out the funnies. His favorite was “Hee Haw! And Her Name Was Maud,” and he often used that expression to clinch an argument.