Beta Book

Tim fell asleep. Bill Wrenn lay quiet and let memory color the
sky above him. He recalled the gardens of water which had
flowered in foam for him, strange ships and nomadic gulls, and
the schools of sleekly black porpoises that, for him, had
whisked through violet waves. Most of all, he brought back the
yesterday's long excitement and delight of seeing the Irish
coast hills--his first foreign land--whose faint sky fresco had
seemed magical with the elfin lore of Ireland, a country that
had ever been to him the haunt not of potatoes and politicians,
but of fays. He had wanted fays. They were not common on the
asphalt of West Sixteenth Street. But now he had seen them
beckoning in Wanderland.
He was falling asleep under the dancing dome of the sky, a happy
Mr. Wrenn, when he was aroused as a furious Bill, the cattleman.
Pete was clogging near by, singing hoarsely, "Dey was a skoit
and 'er name was Goity."
"You shut up!" commanded Bill Wrenn.
"Say, be careful!" the awakened Tim implored of him.


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