Our Mister Wren

  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