CHAPTER XVIII
Wherein Freckles refuses Love Without Knowledge of Honorable Birth,
and the Angel Goes in Quest of it
Freckles lay on a flat pillow, his body immovable in a plaster cast,
his maimed arm, as always, hidden. His greedy gaze fastened at once
on the Angel's face. She crossed to him with light step and bent
over him with infinite tenderness. Her heart ached at the change
in his appearance. He seemed so weak, heart hungry, so utterly hopeless,
so alone. She could see that the night had been one long terror.
For the first time she tried putting herself in Freckles' place.
What would it mean to have no parents, no home, no name? No name!
That was the worst of all. That was to be lost--indeed--utterly
and hopelessly lost. The Angel lifted her hands to her dazed head
and reeled, as she tried to face that proposition. She dropped on
her knees beside the bed, slipped her arm under the pillow, and
leaning over Freckles, set her lips on his forehead. He smiled faintly,
but his wistful face appeared worse for it. It hurt the Angel to
the heart.
"Dear Freckles," she said, "there is a story in your
eyes this morning, tell me?"
Freckles drew a long, wavering breath.
"Angel," he begged, "be generous! Be thinking of
me a little. I'm so homesick and worn out, dear Angel, be giving
me back me promise. Let me go?"
"Why Freckles!" faltered the Angel. "You don't know
what you are asking. `Let you go!' I cannot! I love you better than
anyone, Freckles. I think you are the very finest person I ever
knew. I have our lives all planned. I want you to be educated and
learn all there is to know about singing, just as soon as you are
well enough. By the time you have completed your education I will
have finished college, and then I want," she choked a second,
"I want you to be my real knight, Freckles, and come to me
and tell me that you--like me--a little. I have been counting on
you for my sweetheart from the very first, Freckles. I can't give
you up, unless you don't like me. But you do like me--just a little--don't
you, Freckles?"
Freckles lay whiter than the coverlet, his staring eyes on the ceiling
and his breath wheezing between dry lips. The Angel awaited his
answer a second, and when none came, she dropped her crimsoning
face beside him on the pillow and whispered in his ear:
"Freckles, I--I'm trying to make love to you. Oh, can't you
help me only a little bit? It's awful hard all alone! I don't know
how, when I really mean it, but Freckles, I love you. I must have
you, and now I guess--I guess maybe I'd better kiss you next."
She lifted her shamed face and bravely laid her feverish, quivering
lips on his. Her breath, like clover-bloom, was in his nostrils,
and her hair touched his face. Then she looked into his eyes with
reproach.
"Freckles," she panted, "Freckles! I didn't think
it was in you to be mean!"
"Mean, Angel! Mean to you?" gasped Freckles.
"Yes," said the Angel. "Downright mean. When I kiss
you, if you had any mercy at all you'd kiss back, just a little
bit."
Freckles' sinewy fist knotted into the coverlet. His chin pointed
ceilingward while his head rocked on the pillow.
"Oh, Jesus!" burst from him in agony. "You ain't
the only one that was crucified!"
The Angel caught Freckles' hand and carried it to her breast.
"Freckles!" she wailed in terror, "Freckles! It is
a mistake? Is it that you don't want me?"
Freckles' head rolled on in wordless suffering.
"Wait a bit, Angel?" he panted at last. "Be giving
me a little time!"
The Angel arose with controlled features. She bathed his face, straightened
his hair, and held water to his lips. It seemed a long time before
he reached toward her. Instantly she knelt again, carried his hand
to her breast, and leaned her cheek upon it.
"Tell me, Freckles," she whispered softly. "If I
can," said Freckles in agony. "It's just this. Angels
are from above. Outcasts are from below. You've a sound body and
you're beautifulest of all. You have everything that loving, careful
raising and money can give you. I have so much less than nothing
that I don't suppose I had any right to be born. It's a sure thing--nobody
wanted me afterward, so of course, they didn't before. Some of them
should have been telling you long ago."
"If that's all you have to say, Freckles, I've known that quite
a while," said the Angel stoutly. "Mr. McLean told my
father, and he told me. That only makes me love you more, to pay
for all you've missed."
"Then I'm wondering at you," said Freckles in a voice
of awe. "Can't you see that if you were willing and your father
would come and offer you to me, I couldn't be touching the soles
of your feet, in love--me, whose people brawled over me, cut off
me hand, and throwed me away to freeze and to die! Me, who has no
name just as much because I've no RIGHT to any, as because I don't
know it. When I was little, I planned to find me father and mother
when I grew up. Now I know me mother deserted me, and me father
was maybe a thief and surely a liar. The pity for me suffering and
the watching over me have gone to your head, dear Angel, and it's
me must be thinking for you. If you could be forgetting me lost
hand, where I was raised, and that I had no name to give you, and
if you would be taking me as I am, some day people such as mine
must be, might come upon you. I used to pray ivery night and morning
and many times the day to see me mother. Now I only pray to die
quickly and never risk the sight of her. 'Tain't no ways possible,
Angel! It's a wildness of your dear head. Oh, do for mercy sake,
kiss me once more and be letting me go!"
"Not for a minute!" cried the Angel. "Not for a minute,
if those are all the reasons you have. It's you who are wild in
your head, but I can understand just how it happened. Being shut
in that Home most of your life, and seeing children every day whose
parents did neglect and desert them, makes you sure yours did the
same; and yet there are so many other things that could have happened
so much more easily than that. There are thousands of young couples
who come to this country and start a family with none of their relatives
here. Chicago is a big, wicked city, and grown people could disappear
in many ways, and who would there ever be to find to whom their
little children belonged? The minute my father told me how you felt,
I began to study this thing over, and I've made up my mind you are
dead wrong. I meant to ask my father or the Bird Woman to talk to
you before you went away to school, but as matters are right now
I guess I'll just do it myself. It's all so plain to me. Oh, if
I could only make you see!"
She buried her face in the pillow and presently lifted it, transfigured.
"Now I have it!" she cried. "Oh, dear heart! I can
make it so plain! Freckles, can you imagine you see the old Limberlost
trail? Well when we followed it, you know there were places where
ugly, prickly thistles overgrew the path, and you went ahead with
your club and bent them back to keep them from stinging through
my clothing. Other places there were big shining pools where lovely,
snow-white lilies grew, and you waded in and gathered them for me.
Oh dear heart, don't you see? It's this! Everywhere the wind carried
that thistledown, other thistles sprang up and grew prickles; and
wherever those lily seeds sank to the mire, the pure white of other
lilies bloomed. But, Freckles, there was never a place anywhere
in the Limberlost, or in the whole world, where the thistledown
floated and sprang up and blossomed into white lilies! Thistles
grow from thistles, and lilies from other lilies. Dear Freckles,
think hard! You must see it! You are a lily, straight through. You
never, never could have drifted from the thistle-patch.
"Where did you find the courage to go into the Limberlost and
face its terrors? You inherited it from the blood of a brave father,
dear heart. Where did you get the pluck to hold for over a year
a job that few men would have taken at all? You got it from a plucky
mother, you bravest of boys. You attacked single-handed a man almost
twice your size, and fought as a demon, merely at the suggestion
that you be deceptive and dishonest. Could your mother or your father
have been untruthful? Here you are, so hungry and starved that you
are dying for love. Where did you get all that capacity for loving?
You didn't inherit it from hardened, heartless people, who would
disfigure you and purposely leave you to die, that's one sure thing.
You once told me of saving your big bullfrog from a rattlesnake.
You knew you risked a horrible death when you did it. Yet you will
spend miserable years torturing yourself with the idea that your
own mother might have cut off that hand. Shame on you, Freckles!
Your mother would have done this----"
The Angel deliberately turned back the cover, slipped up the sleeve,
and laid her lips on the scars.
"Freckles! Wake up!" she cried, almost shaking him. "Come
to your senses! Be a thinking, reasoning man! You have brooded too
much, and been all your life too much alone. It's all as plain as
plain can be to me. You must see it! Like breeds like in this world!
You must be some sort of a reproduction of your parents, and I am
not afraid to vouch for them, not for a minute!
"And then, too, if more proof is needed, here it is: Mr. McLean
says that you never once have failed in tact and courtesy. He says
that you are the most perfect gentleman he ever knew, and he has
traveled the world over. How does it happen, Freckles? No one at
that Home taught you. Hundreds of men couldn't be taught, even in
a school of etiquette; so it must be instinctive with you. If it
is, why, that means that it is born in you, and a direct inheritance
from a race of men that have been gentlemen for ages, and couldn't
be anything else.
"Then there's your singing. I don't believe there ever was
a mortal with a sweeter voice than yours, and while that doesn't
prove anything, there is a point that does. The little training
you had from that choirmaster won't account for the wonderful accent
and ease with which you sing. Somewhere in your close blood is a
marvelously trained vocalist; we every one of us believe that, Freckles.
"Why does my father refer to you constantly as being of fine
perceptions and honor? Because you are, Freckles. Why does the Bird
Woman leave her precious work and come here to help look after you?
I never heard of her losing any time over anyone else. It's because
she loves you. And why does Mr. McLean turn all of his valuable
business over to hired men and watch you personally? And why is
he hunting excuses every day to spend money on you? My father says
McLean is full Scotch-close with a dollar. He is a hard-headed business
man, Freckles, and he is doing it because he finds you worthy of
it. Worthy of all we all can do and more than we know how to do,
dear heart! Freckles, are you listening to me? Oh! won't you see
it? Won't you believe it?"
"Oh, Angel!" chattered the bewildered Freckles, "are
you truly maning it? Could it be?"
"Of course it could," flashed the Angel, "because
it just is!"
"But you can't prove it," wailed Freckles. "It ain't
giving me a name, or me honor!"
"Freckles," said the Angel sternly, "you are unreasonable!
Why, I did prove every word I said! Everything proves it! You look
here! If you knew for sure that I could give you a name and your
honor, and prove to you that your mother did love you, why, then,
would you just go to breathing like perpetual motion and hang on
for dear life and get well?"
A bright light shone in Freckles' eyes.
"If I knew that, Angel," he said solemnly, "you couldn't
be killing me if you felled the biggest tree in the Limberlost smash
on me!"
"Then you go right to work," said the Angel, "and
before night I'll prove one thing to you: I can show you easily
enough how much your mother loved you. That will be the first step,
and then the remainder will all come. If my father and Mr. McLean
are so anxious to spend some money, I'll give them a chance. I don't
see why we haven't comprehended how you felt and so have been at
work weeks ago. We've been awfully selfish. We've all been so comfortable,
we never stopped to think what other people were suffering before
our eyes. None of us has understood. I'll hire the finest detective
in Chicago, and we'll go to work together. This is nothing compared
with things people do find out. We'll go at it, beak and claw, and
we'll show you a thing or two."
Freckles caught her sleeve. "Me mother, Angel! Me mother!"
he marveled hoarsely. "Did you say you could be finding out
today if me mother loved me? How? Oh, Angel! Nothing matters, IF
ONLY ME MOTHER DIDN'T DO IT!"
"Then you rest easy," said the Angel, with large confidence.
"Your mother didn't do it! Mothers of sons such as you don't
do things like that. I'll go to work at once and prove it to you.
The first thing to do is to go to that Home where you were and get
the clothes you wore the night you were left there. I know that
they are required to save those things carefully. We can find out
almost all there is to know about your mother from them. Did you
ever see them?"
"Yis," he replied.
"Freckles! Were they white?" she cried.
"Maybe they were once. They're all yellow with laying, and
brown with blood-stains now" said Freckles, the old note of
bitterness creeping in. "You can't be telling anything at all
by them, Angel!"
"Well, but I just can!" said the Angel positively. "I
can see from the quality what kind of goods your mother could afford
to buy. I can see from the cut whether she had good taste. I can
see from the care she took in making them how much she loved and
wanted you."
"But how? Angel, tell me how!" implored Freckles with
trembling eagerness.
"Why, easily enough," said the Angel. "I thought
you'd understand. People that can afford anything at all, always
buy white for little new babies--linen and lace, and the very finest
things to be had. There's a young woman living near us who cut up
her wedding clothes to have fine things for her baby. Mothers who
love and want their babies don't buy little rough, ready-made things,
and they don't run up what they make on an old sewing machine. They
make fine seams, and tucks, and put on lace and trimming by hand.
They sit and stitch, and stitch--little, even stitches, every one
just as careful. Their eyes shine and their faces glow. When they
have to quit to do something else, they look sorry, and fold up
their work so particularly. There isn't much worth knowing about
your mother that those little clothes won't tell. I can see her
putting the little stitches into them and smiling with shining eyes
over your coming. Freckles, I'll wager you a dollar those little
clothes of yours are just alive with the dearest, tiny handmade
stitches."
A new light dawned in Freckles' eyes. A tinge of warm color swept
into his face. Renewed strength was noticeable in his grip of her
hands.
"Oh Angel! Will you go now? Will you be hurrying?" he
cried.
"Right away," said the Angel. "I won't stop for a
thing, and I'll hurry with all my might."
She smoothed his pillow, straightened the cover, gave him one steady
look in the eyes, and went quietly from the room.
Outside the door, McLean and the surgeon anxiously awaited her.
McLean caught her shoulders.
"Angel, what have you done?" he demanded.
The Angel smiled defiance into his eyes.
"`What have I done?'" she repeated. "I've tried to
save Freckles."
"What will your father say?" groaned McLean.
"It strikes me," said the Angel, "that what Freckles
said would be to the point."
"Freckles!" exclaimed McLean. "What could he say?"
"He seemed to be able to say several things," answered
the Angel sweetly. "I fancy the one that concerns you most
at present was, that if my father should offer me to him he would
not have me."
"And no one knows why better than I do," cried McLean.
"Every day he must astonish me with some new fineness."
He turned to the surgeon. "Save him!" he commanded. "Save
him!" he implored. "He is too fine to be sacrificed."
"His salvation lies here," said the surgeon, stroking
the Angel's sunshiny hair, "and I can read in the face of her
that she knows how she is going to work it out. Don't trouble for
the boy. She will save him!"
The Angel laughingly sped down the hall, and into the street, just
as she was.
"I have come," she said to the matron of the Home, "to
ask if you will allow me to examine, or, better yet, to take with
me, the little clothes that a boy you called Freckles, discharged
last fall, wore the night he was left here."
The woman looked at her in greater astonishment than the occasion
demanded.
"Well, I'd be glad to let you see them," she said at last,
"but the fact is we haven't them. I do hope we haven't made
some mistake. I was thoroughly convinced, and so was the superintendent.
We let his people take those things away yesterday. Who are you,
and what do you want with them?"
The Angel stood dazed and speechless, staring at the matron.
"There couldn't have been a mistake," continued the matron,
seeing the Angel's distress. "Freckles was here when I took
charge, ten years ago. These people had it all proved that he belonged
to them. They had him traced to where he ran away in Illinois last
fall, and there they completely lost track of him. I'm sorry you
seem so disappointed, but it is all right. The man is his uncle,
and as like the boy as he possibly could be. He is almost killed
to go back without him. If you know where Freckles is, they'd give
big money to find out."
The Angel laid a hand along each cheek to steady her chattering
teeth.
"Who are they?" she stammered. "Where are they going?"
"They are Irish folks, miss," said the matron. "They
have been in Chicago and over the country for the past three months,
hunting him everywhere. They have given up, and are starting home
today. They----"
"Did they leave an address? Where could I find them?"
interrupted the Angel.
"They left a card, and I notice the morning paper has the man's
picture and is full of them. They've advertised a great deal in
the city papers. It's a wonder you haven't seen something."
"Trains don't run right. We never get Chicago papers,"
said the Angel. "Please give me that card quickly. They may
escape me. I simply must catch them!"
The matron hurried to the secretary and came back with a card.
"Their addresses are there," she said. "Both in Chicago
and at their home. They made them full and plain, and I was to cable
at once if I got the least clue of him at any time. If they've left
the city, you can stop them in New York. You're sure to catch them
before they sail--if you hurry."
The matron caught up a paper and thrust it into the Angel's hand
as she ran to the street.
The Angel glanced at the card. The Chicago address was Suite Eleven,
Auditorium. She laid her hand on her driver's sleeve and looked
into his eyes.
"There is a fast-driving limit?" she asked.
"Yes, miss."
"Will you crowd it all you can without danger of arrest? I
will pay well. I must catch some people!"
Then she smiled at him. The hospital, an Orphans' Home, and the
Auditorium seemed a queer combination to that driver, but the Angel
was always and everywhere the Angel, and her methods were strictly
her own.
"I will take you there as quickly as any man could with a team,"
he said promptly.
The Angel clung to the card and paper, and as best she could in
the lurching, swaying cab, read the addresses over.
"O'More, Suite Eleven, Auditorium."
"`O'More,'" she repeated. "Seems to fit Freckles
to a dot. Wonder if that could be his name? `Suite Eleven' means
that you are pretty well fixed. Suites in the Auditorium come high."
Then she turned the card and read on its reverse, Lord Maxwell O'More,
M. P., Killvany Place, County Clare, Ireland.
The Angel sat on the edge of the seat, bracing her feet against
the one opposite, as the cab pitched and swung around corners and
past vehicles. She mechanically fingered the pasteboard and stared
straight ahead. Then she drew a deep breath and read the card again.
"A Lord-man!" she groaned despairingly. "A Lord-man!
Bet my hoecake's scorched! Here I've gone and pledged my word to
Freckles I'd find him some decent relatives, that he could be proud
of, and now there isn't a chance out of a dozen that he'll have
to be ashamed of them after all. It's too mean!"
The tears of vexation rolled down the tired, nerve-racked Angel's
cheeks.
"This isn't going to do," she said, resolutely wiping
her eyes with the palm of her hand and gulping down the nervous
spasm in her throat. "I must read this paper before I meet
Lord O'More."
She blinked back the tears and spreading the paper on her knee,
read: "After three months' fruitless search, Lord O'More gives
up the quest of his lost nephew, and leaves Chicago today for his
home in Ireland."
She read on, and realized every word. The likeness settled any doubt.
It was Freckles over again, only older and well dressed.
"Well, I must catch you if I can," muttered the Angel.
"But when I do, if you are a gentleman in name only, you shan't
have Freckles; that's flat. You're not his father and he is twenty.
Anyway, if the law will give him to you for one year, you can't
spoil him, because nobody could, and," she added, brightening,
"he'll probably do you a lot of good. Freckles and I both must
study years yet, and you should be something that will save him.
I guess it will come out all right. At least, I don't believe you
can take him away if I say no."
"Thank you; and wait, no matter how long," she said to
her driver.
Catching up the paper, she hurried to the desk and laid down Lord
O'More's card.
"Has my uncle started yet?" she asked sweetly.
The surprised clerk stepped back on a bellboy, and covertly kicked
him for being in the way.
"His lordship is in his room," he said, with a low bow.
"All right," said the Angel, picking up the card. "I
thought he might have started. I'll see him."
The clerk shoved the bellboy toward the Angel.
"Show her ladyship to the elevator and Lord O'More's suite,"
he said, bowing double.
"Aw, thanks," said the Angel with a slight nod, as she
turned away.
"I'm not sure," she muttered to herself as the elevator
sped upward, "whether it's the Irish or the English who say:
`Aw, thanks,' but it's probable he isn't either; and anyway, I just
had to do something to counteract that `All right.' How stupid of
me!"
At the bellboy's tap, the door swung open and the liveried servant
thrust a cardtray before the Angel. The opening of the door created
a current that swayed a curtain aside, and in an adjoining room,
lounging in a big chair, with a paper in his hand, sat a man who
was, beyond question, of Freckles' blood and race.
With perfect control the Angel dropped Lord O'More's card in the
tray, stepped past his servant, and stood before his lordship.
"Good morning," she said with tense politeness.
Lord O'More said nothing. He carelessly glanced her over with amused
curiosity, until her color began to deepen and her blood to run
hotly.
"Well, my dear," he said at last, "how can I serve
you?" Instantly the Angel became indignant. She had been so
shielded in the midst of almost entire freedom, owing to the circumstances
of her life, that the words and the look appeared to her as almost
insulting. She lifted her head with a proud gesture.
"I am not your `dear,'" she said with slow distinctness.
"There isn't a thing in the world you can do for me. I came
here to see if I could do something--a very great something--for
you; but if I don't like you, I won't do it!"
Then Lord O'More did stare. Suddenly he broke into a ringing laugh.
Without a change of attitude or expression, the Angel stood looking
steadily at him.
There was a silken rustle, then a beautiful woman with cheeks of
satiny pink, dark hair, and eyes of pure Irish blue, moved to Lord
O'More's side, and catching his arm, shook him impatiently.
"Terence! Have you lost your senses?" she cried. "Didn't
you understand what the child said? Look at her face! See what she
has!"
Lord O'More opened his eyes widely and sat up. He did look at the
Angel's face intently, and suddenly found it so good that it was
difficult to follow the next injunction. He arose instantly.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "The fact is, I am
leaving Chicago sorely disappointed. It makes me bitter and reckless.
I thought you one more of those queer, useless people who have thrust
themselves on me constantly, and I was careless. Forgive me, and
tell me why you came."
"I will if I like you," said the Angel stoutly, "and
if I don't, I won't!"
"But I began all wrong, and now I don't know how to make you
like me," said his lordship, with sincere penitence in his
tone.
The Angel found herself yielding to his voice. He spoke in a soft,
mellow, smoothly flowing Irish tone, and although his speech was
perfectly correct, it was so rounded, and accented, and the sentences
so turned, that it was Freckles over again. Still, it was a matter
of the very greatest importance, and she must be sure; so she looked
into the beautiful woman's face.
"Are you his wife?" she asked.
"Yes," said the woman, "I am his wife."
"Well," said the Angel judicially, "the Bird Woman
says no one in the whole world knows all a man's bignesses and all
his littlenesses as his wife does. What you think of him should
do for me. Do you like him?"
The question was so earnestly asked that it met with equal earnestness.
The dark head moved caressingly against Lord O'More's sleeve.
"Better than anyone in the whole world," said Lady O'More
promptly.
The Angel mused a second, and then her legal tinge came to the fore
again.
"Yes, but have you anyone you could like better, if he wasn't
all right?" she persisted.
"I have three of his sons, two little daughters, a father,
mother, and several brothers and sisters," came the quick reply.
"And you like him best?" persisted the Angel with finality.
"I love him so much that I would give up every one of them
with dry eyes if by so doing I could save him," cried Lord
O'More's wife.
"Oh!" cried the Angel. "Oh, my!"
She lifted her clear eyes to Lord O'More's and shook her head.
"She never, never could do that!" she said. "But
it's a mighty big thing to your credit that she THINKS she could.
I guess I'll tell you why I came."
She laid down the paper, and touched the portrait.
"When you were only a boy, did people call you Freckles?"
she asked.
"Dozens of good fellows all over Ireland and the Continent
are doing it today," answered Lord O'More.
The Angel's face wore her most beautiful smile.
"I was sure of it," she said winningly. "That's what
we call him, and he is so like you, I doubt if any one of those
three boys of yours are more so. But it's been twenty years. Seems
to me you've been a long time coming!"
Lord O'More caught the Angel's wrists and his wife slipped her arms
around her.
"Steady, my girl!" said the man's voice hoarsely. "Don't
make me think you've brought word of the boy at this last hour,
unless you know surely."
"It's all right," said the Angel. "We have him, and
there's no chance of a mistake. If I hadn't gone to that Home for
his little clothes, and heard of you and been hunting you, and had
met you on the street, or anywhere, I would have stopped you and
asked you who you were, just because you are so like him. It's all
right. I can tell you where Freckles is; but whether you deserve
to know--that's another matter!"
Lord O'More did not hear her. He dropped in his chair, and covering
his face, burst into those terrible sobs that shake and rend a strong
man. Lady O'More hovered over him, weeping.
"Umph! Looks pretty fair for Freckles," muttered the Angel.
"Lots of things can be explained; now perhaps they can explain
this."
They did explain so satisfactorily that in a few minutes the Angel
was on her feet, hurrying Lord and Lady O'More to reach the hospital.
"You said Freckles' old nurse knew his mother's picture instantly,"
said the Angel. "I want that picture and the bundle of little
clothes."
Lady O'More gave them into her hands.
The likeness was a large miniature, painted on ivory, with a frame
of beaten gold. Surrounded by masses of dark hair was a delicately
cut face. In the upper part of it there was no trace of Freckles,
but the lips curving in a smile were his very own. The Angel gazed
at it steadily. Then with a quivering breath she laid the portrait
aside and reached both hands to Lord O'More.
"That will save Freckles' life and insure his happiness,"
she said positively. "Thank you, oh thank you for coming!"
She opened the bundle of yellow and brown linen and gave only a
glance at the texture and work. Then she gathered the little clothes
and the picture to her heart and led the way to the cab.
Ushering Lord and Lady O'More into the reception room, she said
to McLean, "Please go call up my father and ask him to come
on the first train."
She closed the door after him.
"These are Freckles' people," she said to the Bird Woman.
"You can find out about each other; I'm going to him."