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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Every Soul Hath Its Song, by Fannie Hurst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Every Soul Hath Its Song
+
+Author: Fannie Hurst
+
+Release Date: June 28, 2004 [EBook #12763]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Fannie Hurst]
+
+
+
+
+EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG
+
+BY
+
+FANNIE HURST
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+_Just Around the Corner_
+
+"_Oh, the melody in the simplest heart_"
+
+
+
+
+BOOKS BY FANNIE HURST
+
+EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG
+
+JUST AROUND THE CORNER
+
+
+
+
+Every Soul Hath Its Song
+
+1912, 1916
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+J.S.D.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+SEA GULLIBLES
+
+ROLLING STOCK
+
+HOCHENHEIMER OF CINCINNATI
+
+IN MEMORIAM
+
+THE NTH COMMANDMENT
+
+T.B.
+
+SUMMER RESOURCES
+
+SOB SISTER
+
+THE NAME AND THE GAME
+
+
+
+
+EVERY SOUL HATH ITS SONG
+
+
+
+
+SEA GULLIBLES
+
+
+In this age of prose, when men's hearts turn point-blank from blank
+verse to the business of chaining two worlds by cable and of daring to
+fly with birds; when scholars, ever busy with the dead, are suffering
+crick in the neck from looking backward to the good old days when
+Romance wore a tin helmet on his head or lace in his sleeves--in such
+an age Simon Binswanger first beheld the high-flung torch of Goddess
+Liberty from the fore of the steerage deck of a wooden ship, his small
+body huddled in the sag of calico skirt between his mother's knees, and
+the sky-line and clothes-lines of the lower East Side dawning upon his
+uncomprehending eyes.
+
+Some decades later, and with an endurance stroke that far outclassed
+classic Leander's, Simon Binswanger had swum the great Hellespont
+that surged between the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side, and,
+trolling his family after, landed them in one of those stucco-fronted,
+elevator-service apartment-houses where home life is lived on the layer,
+and the sins of the extension sole and the self-playing piano are
+visited upon the neighbor below. Landed them four stories high and dry
+in a strictly modern apartment of three dark, square bedrooms, a square
+dining-room ventilated by an airshaft, and a square pocket of a kitchen
+that looked out upon a zigzag of fire-escape. And last a square
+front-room-de-resistance, with a bay of four windows overlooking a
+distant segment of Hudson River, an imitation stucco mantelpiece, a
+crystal chandelier, and an air of complete detachment from its curtailed
+rear.
+
+But even among the false creations of exterior architects and interior
+decorators, home can find a way. Despite the square dining-room with
+the stag-and-tree wall-paper design above the plate-rack and a gilded
+radiator that hissed loudest at mealtime, when Simon Binswanger and his
+family relaxed round their after-dinner table, the invisible cricket on
+the visible hearth fell to whirring.
+
+With the oldest gesture of the shod age Mrs. Binswanger dived into her
+work-basket, withdrew with a sock, inserted her five fingers into the
+foot, and fell to scanning it this way and that with a furrow between
+her eyes.
+
+"Ray, go in and tell your sister she should come out of her room and
+stop that crying nonsense. I tell you it's easier we should all go to
+Europe, even if we have to swim across, than every evening we should
+have spoilt for us."
+
+Ray Binswanger rose out of her shoulders, her eyes dazed with print,
+then collapsed again to the pages of her book.
+
+"Let her cry, mamma."
+
+"It's not so nice, Ray, you should treat your sister like that."
+
+"Can I help it, mamma, that all of a sudden she gets Europe on the
+brain? You never heard me even holler for Arverne, much less Europe, as
+long as the boats were running for Brighton, did you, mom?"
+
+"She thinks, Ray, in Europe it's a finer education for you both. She
+ain't all wrong the way she hates you should run to Brighton with them
+little snips."
+
+"Just the same you never heard me nag for trips. The going's too good at
+home. Did you, pop, ever hear me nag?"
+
+"Ja, it's a lot your papa worries about what's what! Look at him there
+behind his paper, like it was a law he had to read every word! Ray, go
+get me my glasses under the clock and call in your sister. Them novels
+will keep. Mind me when I talk, Ray!"
+
+Miss Ray Binswanger rose reluctantly, placing the book face downward on
+the blue-and-white table coverlet. It was as if seventeen Indian summers
+had laid their golden blush upon her. Imperceptibly, too, the lanky,
+prankish years were folding back like petals, revealing the first bloom
+of her, a suddenly cleared complexion and eyes that had newly learned to
+drop upon occasion.
+
+"Honest, mamma, do you think it would hurt Izzy to make a move once in a
+while? He was the one made her cry, anyway, guying her about spaghetti
+on the brain."
+
+"Sure I did. Wasn't she running down my profesh? She's got to go to
+Europe for the summer, because the traveling salesmen she meets at home
+ain't good enough for her. Well, of all the nerve!"
+
+"Just look at him, mamma, stretched out on the sofa there like he was a
+king!"
+
+Full flung and from a tufted leather couch Isadore Binswanger turned on
+his pillow, flashing his dark eyes and white teeth full upon her.
+
+"Go chase yourself, Blackey!"
+
+"Blackey! Let me just tell you, Mr. Smarty, that alongside of you I'm so
+blond I'm dizzy."
+
+"Come and give your big brother a French kiss, Blackey."
+
+"Like fun I will!"
+
+"Do what I say or I'll--"
+
+Mrs. Binswanger rapped her darning-ball with a thimbled finger.
+
+"Izzy, stop teasing your sister."
+
+"You just ask me to press your white-flannel pants for you the next time
+you want to play Palm Beach with yourself, and see if I do it or not.
+You just ask me!"
+
+He made a great feint of lunging after her, and she dodged behind her
+mother's rocking-chair, tilting it sharply.
+
+"Children!"
+
+"Mamma, don't you let him touch me!"
+
+"You--you little imp, you!"
+
+"Children!"
+
+"I tell you, ma, that kid's getting too fresh."
+
+"You spoil her, Izzy, more as any one."
+
+"It's those yellow novels, and that gang of drugstore snips you let her
+run with will be her ruination. If she was my kid I bet I'd have kept
+her in school another year."
+
+"You shut up, Izzy Binswanger, and mind your own business. You never
+even went as long as me."
+
+"With a boy it's different."
+
+"You better lay pretty low, Izzy Binswanger, or I can tell a few tales.
+I guess I didn't see you the night after you got in from your last trip,
+in your white-flannel pants I pressed, dancing on the Brighton boat with
+that peroxide queen alrighty."
+
+This time his face darkened with the blood of anger.
+
+"You little imp, I'll--"
+
+"Children! Stop it, do you hear! Ray, go right this minute and call
+Miriam and bring me my glasses. Izzy, do you think it's so nice that a
+grown man should tease his little sister?"
+
+"I'll be glad when he goes out on his Western trip next week."
+
+"Skidoo, you little imp!"
+
+She tossed her head in high-spirited distemper and flounced through the
+doorway. He rose from his mound of pillows, jerking his daring waistcoat
+into place, flinging each knee outward to adjust the knifelike trouser
+creases, swept backward a black, pomaded forelock and straightened an
+accurate and vivid cravat.
+
+"She's getting too fresh, I tell you, ma. If I catch her up round the
+White Front drug-store with that fresh crowd of kids I'll slap her face
+right there before them."
+
+"Ach, at her age, Izzy, Miriam was just the same way, and now look how
+fine a boy has got to be before that girl will look at him. Too fine, I
+say!"
+
+"Where's my hat, ma? I laid it here on the sewing-machine. Gee! the only
+way for a fellow to keep his hat round this joint is to sit on it!"
+
+A quick frown sprang between Mrs. Binswanger's eyes and she glanced at
+her husband, hidden behind his barricade of newspaper. Her brow knotted
+and her wide, uncorseted figure half rose toward him.
+
+"Izzy, one night can't you stay at home and--"
+
+"I ain't gone yet, am I, ma? Don't holler before you're hurt. There's a
+fellow going to call for me at eight and we're going to a show--a good
+fellow for me to know, Irving Shapiro, city salesman for the Empire
+Waist Company. I ain't still in bibs, ma, that I got to be bossed where
+I go nights."
+
+"Ach, Izzy, for why can't you stay home this evening? Stay home and you
+and Miriam and your friend sing songs together, and later I fix for you
+some sandwiches--not, Izzy? A young man like Irving Shapiro I bet likes
+it if you stay home with him once. Nice it will be for your sister,
+too--eh, Izzy?"
+
+Mrs. Binswanger's face, slightly sagging at the mouth from the ravages
+of two recently extracted molars, broke into an invitational smile.
+
+"Eh, Izzy?"
+
+He found and withdrew his hat from behind a newspaper-rack and cast a
+quick glance toward the form of his father, whose nether half, ending
+in a pair of carpet slippers dangling free from his balbriggan heels,
+protruded from the barricade of newspaper.
+
+"That's right, just get the old man started on me, ma, too. When a
+fellow travels six months out of the year in every two-by-four burg in
+the Middle West, nagging like this is just what he needs when he gets
+home."
+
+"You know, Izzy, I'm the last one to start something."
+
+"Then don't always ask a fellow where he's going, ma, and get pa started
+too."
+
+"You know that not one thing that goes on does papa hear when he reads
+his paper, Izzy. Never one word do I say to him how I feel when you go,
+only I--I don't like you should run out nights so late, Izzy. Next week
+again already you go out on your trip and--"
+
+"Now, ma, just--just you begin if you want to make me sore."
+
+"I tell you, Izzy, I worry enough that you should be on the road so
+much. And ain't it natural, Izzy, when you ain't away I--I should like
+it that you stay by home a lot? Sit down, anyway, awhile yet till the
+Shapiro boy comes."
+
+"Sure I will, ma."
+
+"If I take a trip away from you this summer I worry, Izzy, and if I stay
+home I worry. Anyway I fix it I worry."
+
+"Now, ma."
+
+"Only sometimes I feel if your papa feels like he wants to spend the
+money--Well, anything is better as that girl should feel so bad that we
+don't take her to Europe."
+
+He jingled a handful of loose coins from his pocket to his palm.
+"Cheer up, ma; if the old man will raise my salary I'll blow you to a
+wheelbarrow trip through Europe myself."
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h, Izzy! Here comes Miriam. I don't want you should tease her
+one more word to make her mad. You hear?"
+
+In the frame of the doorway, quiescent as an odalisque and with the
+golden tinge of a sunflower lighting her darkness, Miriam Binswanger
+held the picture for a moment, her brother greeting her with bow and
+banter.
+
+"Well, little red-eyes!"
+
+"Izzy, what did I just tell you!"
+
+His sister flashed him a dark glance, reflexly her hand darting upward
+to her face. "You!"
+
+"Now, now, children! Why don't you and Miriam go in the parlor, Izzy,
+and sing songs?"
+
+"What you all so cooped up in here for, mamma? Open the window, Ray;
+it's as hot as summer outside."
+
+"Say, who was your maid this time last year, Miriam?"
+
+"Mamma, you going to let her talk that way to me?"
+
+"Ray, will it hurt you to put up the window like your sister asks?"
+
+"Well, I'm doing it, ain't I?"
+
+"Now, Miriam, you and Izzy go in the parlor and sing for mamma a
+little."
+
+Miriam's small teeth met in a small click, her voice lay under careful
+control and as if each nerve was twanging like a plucked violin string.
+
+"Please, mamma, please! I just can't sing to-night!"
+
+She was like a Jacque rose, dark and swaying, her little bosom beneath
+the sheer blouse rising higher than its wont.
+
+"Please, mamma!"
+
+"Ach, now, Miriam!"
+
+"Where's those steamship pamphlets, mamma, I left laying here on the
+table?"
+
+"Right here where you left them, Miriam."
+
+Mr. Isadore Binswanger executed a two-stride dash for the couch,
+plunging into a nest of pillows and piling them high about his head and
+ears.
+
+"Go-od night! The subject of Europe is again on the table for the
+seventh evening this week. Nix for mine! Good night! Good night!" And he
+fell to burrowing his head deeper among the pillows.
+
+"You don't need to listen, Izzy Binswanger. I wasn't talking to you,
+anyways."
+
+"No, to your mother you was talking--always to me. I got to hear it."
+
+A sudden vibration darted through Mrs. Binswanger's body, straightening
+it. "Always me! I tell you, Simon, with your family you 'ain't got no
+troubles. I got 'em all. How he sits there behind his newspaper just
+like a boarder and not in the family! I tell you more as once in my life
+I have wished there was never a newspaper printed. Right under his nose
+he sits with one glued every evening."
+
+"Na, na, old lady!"
+
+"That sweet talk don't make no neverminds with me. 'Na, na,' he says. I
+tell you even when my children was babies how they could cry every night
+right under his nose and never a hand would that man raise to help me.
+I tell you my husband's a grand help to me. 'Such a grand husband,' the
+ladies always say to me I got. I wish they should know what I know!"
+
+Mr. Binswanger tossed aside his newspaper and raised his spectacles to
+his horseshoe expanse of bald head. His face radiated into a smile
+that brought out the whole chirography of fine lines, and his eyes
+disappeared in laughter like two raisins poked into dough.
+
+"Na, na, old lady, na, na!" He made to pinch her cheek where it bagged
+toward a soft scallop of double chin, but she withdrew querulously.
+
+"I tell you what I been through this winter, with Izzy out in a Middle
+West territory where only once in four months I can see him, and my Ray
+and her going-ons with them little snips, and now Miriam with her Europe
+on the brain. I tell you that if anybody in this family needs Europe
+it's me for my health, better as Miriam for her singing and her style.
+Such nagging I have got ringing in my ears about it I think it's easier
+to go as to stay home with long faces."
+
+Erect on the edge of her chair Miriam inclined toward her parent.
+"That's just what I been saying, mamma; all four of us need it. Not only
+me and Ray, but--"
+
+"Leave me out, missy!"
+
+"Not only us two for our education, mamma, but a trip like that can make
+you and papa ten years younger. Read what the booklet says. It--"
+
+"I'm an old woman and I don't want I should try to look young like on
+the streets here up-town you can see the women. What comes natural to me
+like gray hairs I don't got to try to hide."
+
+"Hurrah for ma! 'Down with the peroxide and the straight fronts,' she
+says."
+
+"Izzy, that ain't so nice neither to talk such things before your
+sisters."
+
+"Don't listen to him, mamma. Just let me ask you, mamma, just let me ask
+you, papa--papa, listen: did you ever in your life have a real vacation?
+What were those two weeks in Arverne for you last summer compared to on
+board a ship? You--"
+
+"That's what I need yet--shipboard! I tell you I'm an old man and I'm
+glad that I got a home where I can take off my shoes and sit in comfort
+with my rheumatism."
+
+"Hannah Levin's father limped ten times worse than you, papa. Didn't he,
+mamma? And since he took Hannah over last summer not one stroke has he
+had since. And she--Well, you see what she did for herself."
+
+Mrs. Binswanger paused in her stitch. "That's so, Simon; Hannah Levin
+should grab for herself a man like Albert Hamburger. She should fall
+into the human-hair Hamburger family, a stick like her! At fish-market
+when he lived down-town each Friday morning I used to meet old man
+Levin, and I should say his knees were worse as yours, papa."
+
+"When my daughter marries a Albert Hamburger, then maybe too we can
+afford to take a trip to Europe."
+
+Miss Binswanger raised her eyes, great dark pools glozed over with
+tears. "All right then, I'll huck at home. But let me tell you, papa,
+since you come right out and mention it, that's where she met Albert
+Hamburger, if anybody should ask you, right on board the ship. Those
+kind don't lie round Arverne with that cheap crowd of week-end
+salesmen."
+
+"There she goes on my profesh again!"
+
+"That's where she met him, since you talk about such things, papa, right
+on the steamer."
+
+"So!" Mrs. Binswanger let fall idle hands into her lap. "So!"
+
+"Sure. Didn't you know that, mamma? She was going over for just ten
+weeks with her mother and father to take a few singing-lessons when they
+got to Paris, just like I want to, and right on the ship going over she
+met him and they got engaged."
+
+"So!"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+Mr. Binswanger fell into the attitude of reading again, knees crossed
+and one carpet slipper dangling. "I know plenty girls as get engaged on
+dry land, Carrie; just get such ideas that they don't out of your head."
+
+"I don't say, Simon, I don't give you right, but after a winter like I
+been through I feel like maybe it's better to go as to stay."
+
+"That's right, ma, loosen up and she'll get you yet."
+
+"It ain't nice, Izzy, you should use such talk to your mother. I tell
+you it ain't so nice a son should tell his mother she should loosen up."
+
+"I only meant, ma--"
+
+"That's just how I feel, Simon, with the summer coming on I can't stand
+no more long faces. Last year it was Arverne till a cottage we had to
+take. Always in April already my troubles for the summer begin. One year
+Miriam wants Arverne and Ray wants we should go to the mountains where
+the Schimm girls go. This year, since she got in with them Lillianthal
+girls, Miriam has to have Europe, and Ray wants to stay home so with
+snips like Louie Ruah she can run with. I tell you when you got
+daughters you don't know where--"
+
+"Give 'em both a brain test, ma."
+
+"Stop teasing your sister, Izzy. I always say with girls you got trouble
+from the start and with boys it ain't no better. Between Arverne and--"
+
+"Arverne! None of the swell crowd goes there any more, mamma."
+
+"Swell! Let me tell you, Miriam, your papa and me never had time to be
+swell when we was young. I remember the time when we couldn't afford
+a trip to Coney Island, much less four weeks a cottage at
+Arverne-next-to-the-sea. Ain't it, papa? I wish the word 'swell' I had
+never heard. My son Isadore kicks to-night at supper because at hotels
+on the road he gets fresh napkins with every meal. Now all of a sudden
+my daughter gets such big notions in her head that nothing won't do for
+her but Europe for a summer trip. I tell you, Simon, I don't wish a dog
+to go through what I got to."
+
+Mr. Binswanger let fall his newspaper to his knee.
+
+"Na, na, mamma, for what you get excited? Ain't talk cheap enough for
+you yet? Why shouldn't you let the children talk?"
+
+Miss Binswanger inclined to her father's knee, her throat arched and
+flexed. "Papa dear, it's a cheap trip. For what four weeks in a cottage
+at Arverne-by-the-sea would cost the four of us could take one of those
+tourists' trips through Europe. The Lillianthals, papa, for four hundred
+and fifty dollars apiece landed in Italy and went straight through to--"
+
+"The Lillianthals, Lillianthals," mimicked Mrs. Binswanger, sliding her
+darning-egg down the length of a silken stocking. "I wish that name we
+had never heard. All of a sudden now education like those girls you
+think you got to have, music and--"
+
+"Oh, mamma, honest, you just don't care how dumb us girls are. Look at
+Ray and me, we haven't even got a common education like--"
+
+"You can't say, Miriam Binswanger, that me or your papa ever held one
+of our children back out of school. If they didn't want to go we
+couldn't--"
+
+"Oh, mamma, I--I don't mean just school. How do you think I feel when
+all the girls begin to talk about Europe and all, and I got to sit back
+at sewing-club like a stick?"
+
+"Ain't it awful, Mabel!"
+
+"Izzy!"
+
+"Why do you think a fellow like Sol Blumenthal is all the time after
+Lilly Lillianthal and Sophie Litz and those girls? He has been over
+seventeen times, buying silks, and those girls don't have to sit back
+like sticks when he talks about the shows in Paris and all."
+
+"I know girls, Miriam, what got as fine husbands as Sol Blumenthal and
+didn't need to run to Europe for them."
+
+"I never said that, did I, mamma? Only it's a help to girls nowadays
+if--if they've been to places and know a thing or two."
+
+"If a girl can cook a little and--"
+
+"Look there at Ray, nothing in her head but that novel she's reading,
+and little snips that'll treat her to a soda-water if she hangs round
+the White Front long enough, and ride her down to Brighton on one of
+those dirty excursion boats if she--"
+
+"You shut up, Miriam Binswanger, and mind your own business!"
+
+"You let her talk to me that way, mamma?"
+
+"Go to it, sis."
+
+"You let her talk that way to me and Izzy eggs her on! No wonder she's
+fresh, the way everybody round here lets her do what she wants, papa
+worst of all!"
+
+Ray danced to her feet, tossing her hair backward in maenadic waves,
+her hands outflung, her voice a taunt and a singsong. "I know! I know!
+You're sore because you're four years older and you're afraid I'll get
+engaged first. Engaged first! I know! I know!"
+
+"Go to it, sis!"
+
+"Sure, I got a Brighton date every Saturday night this summer, missy,
+and with a slick little fellow that can take his father's car out every
+Tuesday night without asking. Eddie Sollinger! I guess you call him a
+snip, too, because he's a city salesman. I know! I know! Ha! I should
+worry that the Lillianthals are going to Europe! I know! I know!" She
+pirouetted to her father's side of the table. "Give me a dollar, pa?"
+
+Mrs. Binswanger held out a remonstrating hand. "Ach, Ray, you mustn't--"
+
+"It ain't even seven yet. Have a heart, ma! Gee! can't I walk up to the
+corner with Bella Mosher for a soda? Do I have to stick round this fuss
+nest? I'll be back in a half-hour, ma. Please?"
+
+"Don't let her go, ma."
+
+"You shut up, Izzy!"
+
+"Ach, Ray, I--"
+
+"Give me the dollar, pa, for voting against Europe. Don't let her
+hypnotize you like she always does. Down with Europe! I say. We should
+cross the ocean and get our feet wet, eh, pa?"
+
+He waggled a pinch of her flushed cheek between his thumb and forefinger
+and dived into his pocket.
+
+"Baby-la, you!" he said, crossing her palm; and she was out and past
+him, imprinting a kiss on the crest of the bald horseshoe and tossing a
+glance as quick as Pierrette's over one shoulder.
+
+On the echo of the slamming door, her eyes shining with conviction and
+her face suddenly old with prophecy, Miriam turned upon her mother.
+
+"You see, mamma, you see! Seventeen, and nothing in her head but
+Brighton Beach and soda-water fountains and joy-riding. Just you watch;
+some day she'll meet up with some dinky fakir or ribbon clerk at one of
+those places, and the first thing you know for a son-in-law you'll have
+a crook."
+
+"Miriam!"
+
+"Yes, you will! Those are the only chances a girl gets if she's not in
+the swim."
+
+"Listen to her, ma, and then you blame me for not bringing any of the
+fellows round here for her to meet. You don't catch me doing it, the way
+she thinks she's better than they are and gives them the high hand. Not
+muchy!"
+
+"I should worry for the kind you bring, Izzy."
+
+"As nice boys Izzy has brought home, Miriam, as ever in my life I would
+want to meet."
+
+"Yes, but you see for yourself the way the society fellows, like Sol
+Blumenthal and Laz Herzog, hang round the Lillianthal girls. I always
+got to take a back seat, and maybe you think I don't know it."
+
+"I never heard that on ships young men was so plentiful."
+
+"She wants to land an Italian count and she'll just about land a
+barber."
+
+Mr. Binswanger peered suddenly over the rim of his paper. "A no-count
+yet is what we need in the family. Get right away such ideas out your
+head. All my life I 'ain't worked so hard to spend my money on the old
+country. In America I made it and in America I spend it. Now just stop
+it, right away, too."
+
+"Go to it, pa!"
+
+Suddenly Miss Binswanger let fall her head into her cupped hands. Tears
+trickled through. "I--I just wish that I--I hadn't been born! Why--did
+you move up-town, then, where everybody does things, if--if--"
+
+Her father's reply came in a sudden avalanche. "For why? Because then,
+just like now, you nagged me. You can take it from me, just so happy as
+now was me and mamma down by Rivington Street. I'm a plain man and with
+no time for nonsense. I tell you the shirtwaist business 'ain't been so
+good that--"
+
+"You--you can't fool me with that poor talk, papa. Everybody knows you
+get a bigger business each year. You can't fool me that way."
+
+Tears burst and flowed over her words, and her head burrowed deeper.
+Across her prostrate form Simon Binswanger nodded to his wife in rising
+perplexity.
+
+"Fine come-off, eh, Carrie?"
+
+"Miriam, ach, Miriam, come here to mamma."
+
+"Aw, take her, pa, if she's so crazy to go. It'll be slack time between
+now and when I get back from my territory. Max has got pretty good run
+of the office these days. Take her across, pa, and get it out of her
+system. Quit your crying, kid."
+
+Mr. Binswanger waggled a crooked finger in close proximity to his son's
+face. "Du! Du mit a big mouth! Is it because you sell for the house such
+big bills I can afford to run me all over Europe! A few more accounts
+like Einstein from Cleveland you can sell for me, and then we can go
+bankrupt easier as to Europe. Du mit a big mouth!"
+
+"Pa, ain't you ever going to get that out of your system? My first bad
+account and--"
+
+"You'm a dude! That's all I know, you'm a dude! Right on my back now I
+got on your old shirts and dressed like a king I feel."
+
+"I'm done, pa! I'm done!"
+
+"Ach, Miriam, don't cry so. Here, look up at mamma. Maybe, Miriam, if
+you ask your papa once more he will--"
+
+"I tell you, no. What Mark Lillianthal does and what my son can say so
+easy makes nothing with me. I'm glad as I got a home to stay in."
+
+Above her daughter's bowed head Mrs. Binswanger regarded her husband
+through watery eyes. "She ain't so wrong, Simon. I tell you I got the
+first time to hear you come out and say to your family, 'Well, this year
+we do something big.' The bigger you get in business the littler on the
+outside you get, Simon. Always you been the last to do things."
+
+"And, papa, everybody--"
+
+"Everybody makes no difference with me. I don't work for the steamship
+company. For two thousand dollars what such a trip costs I can do better
+as Europe."
+
+"I--I just wish I hadn't ever been born."
+
+A sudden tear found its way down Mrs. Binswanger's billowy cheek. "You
+hear, Simon, your own daughter has to wish she had never got born."
+
+She drew her daughter upward to her wide bosom, and through the loose
+basque percolated the warm tears.
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h, Miriam, don't you cry."
+
+"Ach, now, Carrie--"
+
+"I tell you, Simon, I 'ain't been a wife that has made such demands on
+you, but I guess you think it's a comfort that a mother should hear that
+in society her daughter has to take a back seat."
+
+"When she 'ain't got a front seat she should take a second seat. I don't
+need no seat. I know worse young men as Sollie Spitz and Eddie Greenbaum
+what comes here to see her."
+
+"Just the same you--you said to me the other night, papa, that I never
+seem to meet young men like Adolph Gans, fellows who are in business for
+themselves."
+
+"Ja, but I--"
+
+"Well, where do you think Elsa Bergenthal met Adolph, but on the ship?"
+
+"You hear, Simon: Moe Bergenthal, who sells shirtwaists for you right
+this minute, can afford to send his daughter to Europe."
+
+"Ja, I guess that's why he sells shirtwaists for me instead of for
+himself."
+
+"See, papa, she--"
+
+"That's right, get him cornered, ma! Go to it, Miriam!"
+
+"Du, du good-for-nothings dude, du!"
+
+"Be a sport, pa!"
+
+"Ach, Simon--"
+
+"Ach, you women make me sick! In the old country, I tell you, I got no
+business. All the Eyetalians what I want to see I can see down on Cherry
+Street--for less as two thousand dollar too."
+
+"Why--why, that's no way to learn about 'em, papa. You just ought to see
+me take a back seat when Lilly Lillianthal gets out her post-cards and
+begins telling about the real ones."
+
+Mrs. Binswanger took on a private tone, peering close into her husband's
+face. "You hear that, Simon? Mark Lillianthal, what failed regular like
+clockwork before he moved up-town, his daughter can make our Miriam feel
+small. You hear that, Simon?"
+
+His daughter's arms were soft about his neck, tight, tighter. "Papa,
+please! For a couple of thousand we can take that beau-tiful trip I
+showed you in the booklet. Card-rooms on the steamer, papa. Hannah told
+me all summer her father played pinochle in Germany, father, right
+outdoors where they drink beer and eat rye-bread sandwiches all day. In
+Germany we can even stop at Dusseldorf where you were born, papa--just
+think, papa, where you were born! In Italy we can make Ray look at the
+pictures and statues, and all day you can sit outdoors and--and play
+cards, papa. Just think, papa, by the time you have to buy us swell
+clothes for Arverne I tell you it will cost you more. All Lilly
+Lillianthal needed for Europe, mamma, was a new blue suit."
+
+"Go way--go way with such nonsense, I tell you!" "And how you and papa
+can rest up, mamma." "She's right, Simon; such a trip won't hurt us. I
+tell you we don't get younger each day."
+
+He regarded his wife with eyes rolled backward. "That's what I need yet,
+Carrie, all of a sudden you take sides away from me. Always round your
+little finger your children could always wind themselves."
+
+"Na, Simon, when I see a thing I see it. With Izzy out on his trip these
+next two months it won't hurt us. So crazy for Europe you know I ain't,
+but when you got children you got to make sacrifice for them."
+
+"I--"
+
+"For ten weeks, Simon, you can stand it, and me too."
+
+"I--"
+
+"For ten weeks, Simon, if we go on that boat she wants that sails away
+on June twentieth--it's a fine boat, she says."
+
+"June twentieth I don't go. July twentieth I got to be back when my men
+go out on the road--"
+
+"Then shoot 'em over this month, pa. Max can--"
+
+"There's a boat two weeks from to-day, pa, see here in the booklet, the
+same boat, the _Roumania,_ only on this month's sailing. We can get
+ready easy, papa, we--oh, we can get ready easy."
+
+"Ach, Miriam, in two weeks how can we get together our things for a trip
+like that?"
+
+"Easy, mamma, I tell you I--I'll do all the shopping and packing and
+everything."
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h, I 'ain't promised yet. I tell you if anybody would tell me
+two days ago to Europe I got to go this month, right away I wouldn't
+have believed 'em!"
+
+"Ach, Simon, you think yet it's a pleasure for me? You think for me it's
+a pleasure to shut up my flat and leave it for two months? You think
+it's easy to leave Izzy, even when he's 'way out West on his trip? You
+think it's easy to leave that boy with the whole ocean between?"
+
+"Aw, ma, cut the comedy!"
+
+"Ten times, Simon, I rather stay right here in my flat, but--"
+
+"Then right away on the whole thing I put down my foot."
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"No, no, Simon, I want we should go. Girls nowadays, Simon, got to be
+smart--not in the kitchen, but in the head."
+
+"Be a sport, pa."
+
+"It's enough I got a son what's a sport."
+
+"Only a little over two months, papa. Two weeks from to-day we can get a
+booking. To-morrow I'll go down to the steamship offices and fix it all
+up; I know all about it, papa; there isn't a booklet I haven't read."
+
+"Na, na, I--"
+
+"Simon, in all your life not one thing have you refused me. In all my
+life, Simon, have I made on you one demand? Answer me, Simon, eh? Answer
+your wife." She placed her thimbled hand across his knee, peering
+through dim eyes up into his face. "Eh, Simon, in thirty years?"
+
+"Carrie-sha! Carrie-sha!" He smiled at her through eyes dimmer still,
+then rose, waggling the bent forefinger. "But not one day over ten
+weeks, so help me!"
+
+"Papa!"
+
+With a cry that broke on its highest note Miss Binswanger sprang to her
+feet, her arms clasping about her father's neck.
+
+"Oh, papa! Papa! Mamma!"
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h! the door-bell! Go to the door, Izzy; I guess maybe that's
+Ray back or your friend. Ach, such excitement! Already I feel like we're
+on the boat."
+
+"Oh, mamma, mamma!" Her words came too rapidly for coherence and her
+heart would dance against her breast. "I--I'm just as happy!" Kissing
+her mother once on each eye, she danced across to her brother, tagging
+him playfully. "Lazy! I'll go to the door. Lazy! Lazy! Tra-la-la,
+tra-la-la!" and danced to the door, flinging it wide.
+
+Enter Mr. Irving Shapiro, his soft campus hat pressed against his
+striped waistcoat in a slight bow, and a row of even teeth flashed
+beneath a neat hedge of mustache.
+
+"Mr. Izzy Binswanger live here?"
+
+"Hello, Irv! That you? Come in!"
+
+She dropped a courtesy. "That sounds like he lives here, don't it?
+That's him calling."
+
+And because her new exuberance sent the blood fizzing through her veins
+with the bite and sparkle of Vichy, a smile danced across her face, now
+in her eyes, now quick upon her lips.
+
+"Come right in the dining-room, Mr.--Mr.--"
+
+"Shapiro."
+
+"--Shapiro; he's expecting you." She drew back the portières, quirking
+her head as he passed through. Isadore Binswanger rose from his couch,
+pressing his friend's hand and passing him round the little circle.
+
+"Pa, meet Irving Shapiro, city man for the Empire Waist Company. Irv,
+meet my father and mother and my sister."
+
+A round of handshaking.
+
+"We're as excited as a barnyard round here, Irv; the governor and the
+family just decided to light out for Europe for two months."
+
+"Europe!"
+
+"Ja, my children they drag a old man like me where they want."
+
+Mrs. Binswanger leaned forward smiling in her chair. "You see, we want
+papa should have a good rest, Mr. Shapiro. You know yourself I guess
+shirtwaists ain't no easy business. We don't know yet if we can get
+berths on the twentieth this month, but--"
+
+"State-rooms, mamma."
+
+"State-rooms, then. What's that boat we sail on, Miriam?"
+
+"_Roumania_, mamma."
+
+Mr. Shapiro sat suddenly forward in his chair, his eager face thrust
+forward. "Say, I'm your man!"
+
+"You!"
+
+"Before you get your reservations let me steer you. I got a cousin works
+down at the White Flag offices--Harry Mansbach. He'll fix you up if
+there ain't a room left on the boat. He's the greatest little fixer you
+ever seen."
+
+"Ach, Mr. Shapiro, how grand! To-morrow, Miriam, maybe when you get the
+berths--"
+
+"State-rooms, mamma."
+
+"State-rooms, maybe Mr. Shapiro will--will go mit."
+
+"Aw, mamma, he--"
+
+"Will I! Well, I guess!"
+
+Across the table their eyes met and held.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even into the granite cañon of lower Broadway spring can find a way.
+In the fifty-first story of the latest triumph in skyscraping a
+six-dollar-a-week stenographer filled her drinking-tumbler with water
+and placed it, with two pansies floating atop, beside her typewriting
+machine. In Wall Street an apple-woman with the most ancient face in the
+world leaned out of her doorway with a new offering, forced but firm
+strawberries that caught a backward glance from the passing tide of
+finders and keepers, losers and weepers. Two sparrows hopped in and out
+among the stone gargoyles of a municipal building. A dray-driver cursed
+at the snarl of traffic and flecked the first sweat from his horse's
+flanks. A gaily striped awning drooped across the front of the White
+Flag steamship offices, and out from its entrance, spring in her face,
+emerged Miss Miriam Binswanger; at her shoulder Irving Shapiro attended.
+
+"Honest, Mr. Shapiro, I--I just don't know what I would have done except
+for you."
+
+"I told you Harry Mansbach would fix you up."
+
+She clasped her wrist-bag carefully over the bulk of a thick envelope
+and turned her shining face full upon him.
+
+"On deck A, too, right with the best!"
+
+He steered her by a light pressure of her arm into the up-town flux of
+the sidewalk. "If I was a right smart kind of a fellow I never would
+have helped you to get those cabins."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Shapiro!"
+
+"But that's me every time, always working against myself."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve!" And her voice would belie that she knew his
+delicate portent.
+
+"If not for me, maybe you couldn't have gotten those reservations and
+you would have to stay at home. That's where I would come in, see?"
+
+"Well, of all things!"
+
+"But that's me every time. Meet a girl one day, take a fancy to her, and
+off she sails for Europe the next."
+
+"Honest, Mr. Shapiro, you're just the limit!" She would have no more
+hold of his arm, but at the next Subway hood paused in the act of
+descending and held out her hand. "I'm just so much obliged, Mr.
+Shapiro."
+
+He removed his hat, standing there holding it in the crook of his arm,
+the bright sunlight on his wavy hair. "Aw, now, Miss Binswanger, is this
+the way to leave a fellow?"
+
+"Sure, it is! Anyways, don't you have to go to work?"
+
+"I should let my work interfere with my pleasure! Anyway, that's the
+beauty of my line--I work when I please, not when my boss pleases."
+
+"I got to go shopping and straight home, Mr. Shapiro. Just think, two
+weeks from yesterday we sail, and we got enough sewing and packing to be
+done at our house to keep a whole regiment busy."
+
+He withdrew her from the tangle of pedestrians and into the entrance
+of a corner candy-shop. "Aw, now, what's your hurry?" he insisted,
+regarding her with smiling, invitational eyes.
+
+"Well, of all the nerve!" She would not meet his gaze, and swung her
+little leather wrist-bag back and forward by its strap.
+
+"I dare you to get on the Elevated with me and ride out with me to Bronx
+Park for a sniff of the country."
+
+"I should say not! I got to go buy a steamer-trunk and a whole list of
+things mamma gave me and then hurry home and help. Maybe--maybe some
+other day."
+
+"Aw, have a heart, Miss Miriam! To-morrow I've got to go over to Newark
+to sell a bill of goods. Maybe some other day will never come. Feel how
+grand it is out. Just half a day. Come!"
+
+She was full of small emphasis and with no yielding note in her voice.
+"No, no, I can't go."
+
+"Just a little while, Miss Miriam. All those things will keep until
+to-morrow. I can get you a steamer-trunk wholesale, anyway. Look, it's
+nearly two o'clock already! Come on and be game! Think of it--out in the
+park a day like this! Grass growing, birds singing, and the zoo and all.
+Aw, be game, Miss Miriam!"
+
+"If I thought Ray would help mamma; but she's got a grouch on and--"
+
+"Sure she will! Gee! what's the fun meeting a girl you think you're
+going to like if she won't do one little thing for a fellow! You bet it
+ain't every girl I'd beg like this. Whoops, I could just rip things open
+to-day!" It was as if he felt his life in every limb. "Come on, Miss
+Miriam, be a sport! Come on!"
+
+"I--I oughtn't to."
+
+"That's what makes it all the more fun."
+
+Her eyes were so dark, so like pools! They met his with a smile clear
+through to their depths. "Well, maybe, but--but just for a little
+while."
+
+"Just a little while."
+
+"I--I oughtn't."
+
+"You ought."
+
+"Well, just this once."
+
+"Sure, just this once." He linked his arm in hers.
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"Gee!" he said, "you're a girl after my own heart!"
+
+On the Elevated train the windows were lowered to the first inrush of
+spring, and when they left the city behind them came the first green
+smells of open field and bursting bud.
+
+"Now are you sorry you came, little Miss Miriam?"
+
+She bared her head to the rush of breeze and he held her hat on his lap.
+"Well, I should say not!"
+
+"No crowds, just everything to ourselves."
+
+"M-m-m-m! Smells like lilacs."
+
+"We'll pick some."
+
+"I--I ought to be home."
+
+"Forget it!"
+
+"Now, Mr. Shap-iro!" But her eyes continued to laugh and the straight
+line of her mouth would quiver.
+
+"Some eyes you've got, girlie! Some great big eyes! They nearly bowled
+me over when you opened the door for me last night. Let me see your
+eyes--what color are they, anyway?"
+
+"Green."
+
+They laughed without rhyme and without reason, and as if their hearts
+were distilling joy. Then for a time they rode without speech and with
+only the wind in their ears, and he watched the tendrils of her hair
+blowing this way and that.
+
+"Just think," she said, finally, "we land in Naples just four weeks from
+to-day!"
+
+"Hope the boat don't sail."
+
+"You don't."
+
+"Do!"
+
+"If you aren't just the limit!"
+
+"What'll I be doing while you're gallivanting round the country with
+some Italian count?"
+
+"I should worry."
+
+"I better put a bee in Izzy's ear, and maybe he'll put another in your
+father's, and the old gentleman will change his mind and won't go."
+
+"Yes--he--will--not! When papa promises he sticks."
+
+"Well, you don't know the nervy things I can do if I want. Nerve is my
+middle name."
+
+"You sure are some nervy."
+
+"'Cheer up!' I always say to myself when a firm closes the front door on
+me: 'Cheer up; there's always the back door and the fire-escape left.'
+That's how I made my rep in shirtwaists--on nerve." He inclined to her
+slightly across the car-seat. "You wouldn't close the front door on me,
+would you, Miss Miriam?"
+
+"Look, we get off here!"
+
+"Would you?"
+
+"N-no, silly."
+
+Within the park new grass was soft as plush under their feet, and once
+away from the winding asphalt of the main driveway the bosky heart of
+a dell closed them in, and the green was suddenly dappled with shadow.
+Here and there in the cool, damp spots violets lifted their heads and
+pale wood-anemones, spring's firstlings. They sat on a rock spread first
+with newspaper. Over their heads birds twitted.
+
+"Somehow, here so far away and all I--I just can't get it in my head
+that I'm really going."
+
+"I can't, neither."
+
+"Naples--just think!"
+
+"Ain't it funny, Miss Miriam, but with some girls when you meet them
+it's just like you had known them for always, and then again with others
+somehow a fellow never gets anywheres."
+
+"That's the way with me. I take a fancy to a person or I don't."
+
+"That's me every time. Once let me get to liking a person, and good
+night!"
+
+"Me, too."
+
+"Now take you, Miss Miriam. From the very minute last night when you
+opened that door for me, with your cheeks so pink and your eyes so big
+and bright, something just went--well, something just went sort of
+lickety-clap inside of me. You seen for yourself how I wanted to back
+out of going to the show with Izz?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It--it ain't many girls I'd want to stay home from a show for."
+
+"Say, just listen to the birds. If I could trill like that I wouldn't
+have to take any lessons in Paris."
+
+"You sing, Miss Miriam?"
+
+"Oh, a little."
+
+"Gee! you are a girl after my own heart! There's nothing gets me like a
+little girl with a voice."
+
+"My teacher says I'm a dramatic soprano."
+
+"When you going to sing for me, eh?"
+
+"I'll sing for you some time alrighty."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"Maybe after--after I've had some lessons in Paris."
+
+He was suddenly grave. "Aw, there you go on that old trip again! Gee! I
+wish I could grab that bag out of your hand and throw it with tickets
+and all in the lake!"
+
+"You know with me it's right funny too. The minute I get something I
+want, then I don't want it any more. Before papa said yes I was so crazy
+to go, and now that I got the tickets bought I'm not so anxious at all."
+
+"Then don't go, Miss Miriam."
+
+She withdrew her hand and danced to her feet, her incertitude vanishing
+like a candle flame blown out. "Look over there, will you--a redbird!"
+
+"If it ain't!" and he followed her quickly, high-stepping between violet
+patches.
+
+"Honest, it's hard to walk, the violets are so thick."
+
+"Here, let me pick you a bunch of them to take home, Miss Miriam.
+Say, ain't they beauties! Look, great big purple ones, and black
+and soft-looking toward the middle just like your eyes. Look what
+beauties--they'll keep a long time when you get home, if you wrap them
+in wet tissue-paper."
+
+They fell to plucking, now here, now there.
+
+The sun had got low when they retraced their steps to the train, and the
+chill of evening long since had set in.
+
+"You--you ought to told me it was so late."
+
+"I didn't know it myself, Miss Miriam."
+
+"Let's hurry. Mamma won't know where--how--"
+
+"We'll make it back in thirty minutes."
+
+"Let's run for that train."
+
+"Give me your hand."
+
+They were off and against the wind, their faces thrust forward and
+upward. Homeward in the coach they were strangely silent, this time his
+hat in her lap. At the entrance to her apartment-house he left her with
+reiterated farewells.
+
+"Then I can come to-morrow night, Miss Miriam?"
+
+"Y-yes." And she stepped into the elevator. He waved through the
+trellis-work, as she moved upward, brandishing his hat. She answered
+with a flourish of her bunch of violets.
+
+"Good-by!"
+
+At the threshold her mother met her, querulous and in the midst of
+adjusting summer covers to furniture.
+
+"How late! I hope, Miriam, right away you had the steamer-trunk sent up.
+Good berths--good state-rooms you got? What you got in that paper, that
+aloes root I told you to get against seasickness? Gimme and right away I
+boil it."
+
+"No, no, don't touch them! They--they're violets. Let me put them in
+water with wet tissue-paper over them."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To the early clattering of that faithful chariot of daybreak, the
+milk-wagon, and with the April dawn quivering and flushing over the
+roofs of houses, Mrs. Binswanger rose from her restless couch and into a
+black flannelette wrapper.
+
+"Simon, wake up! How a man can sleep like that the day what he starts
+for Europe!"
+
+To her husband's continued and stentorian evidences of sleep she tiptoed
+to the adjoining bedroom, slippered feet sloughing as she walked.
+
+"Girls!"
+
+Only their light breathing answered her. Atop the bed-coverlet her
+younger daughter's hand lay upturned, the fingers curling toward the
+palm.
+
+"Ray! Miriam!"
+
+Miriam stirred and burrowed deeper into her pillow, her hair darkly
+spread against the white in a luxury of confusion.
+
+"Girls!"
+
+"What, mamma?"
+
+"Five o'clock, Miriam, and we ain't got the trunks strapped yet, or that
+seasick medicine from Mrs. Berkovitz."
+
+"For Heaven's sake, mamma, the boat don't sail till three o'clock this
+afternoon! There's plenty time. Go back to bed awhile, mamma."
+
+"When such a trip I got before me as twelve days on water, I don't lay
+me in bed until the last minute. Ray, get up and help mamma. In a minute
+the milkman comes, and I want you should tell him we don't take no more
+for ten weeks. Get up, Ray, and help mamma see that all the windows is
+locked tight."
+
+"M-m-m-m."
+
+"Miriam, get up! I want you should throw this quilt from your bed over
+the brass table in the parlor so it don't get rust. Miriam, didn't you
+say yourself last night you must get up early? Always only at night my
+children got mouths about how early they get up."
+
+From the soft mound of her couch Miriam rose to the dawn with the
+beautiful gesture of tossing backward her black hair. Sleep trembled on
+her lashes and she yawned frankly with her arms outflung.
+
+"Oh-h-h-h-h dear!"
+
+"I tell you I got more gumption as my daughters. I want, Miriam, you
+should go down by Berkovitz's for that prescription for your papa."
+
+"Aw, now, mamma, you've got six different kinds of--"
+
+"I tell you when I let your papa get seasick or any kind of sick on
+this trip, with his going-on about hisself, right away my whole trip is
+spoilt. Ray, if you don't get up and sew in them cuffs and collars on
+your coat don't expect as I will do it for you. For my part you can
+travel just like a rag-bag, Ray!"
+
+"M-m-m-m."
+
+Shivering and with her small ankles pressed together, Miriam peered out
+into the pale light.
+
+"A grand day, mamma."
+
+"Miriam, I think if I sew all the express checks up in a bag and wear
+them right here under my waist with the jewelry, they are better as in
+papa's pockets. With his tobacco-bag, easy as anything he can pull them
+out and lose them. That's what we need yet, to lose our express checks!"
+
+"Mamma, that's been on your mind for ten days. For goodness' sakes,
+nobody's going to lose the express checks!"
+
+"What time they call for the trunks, Miriam?"
+
+"For goodness' sakes, mamma, didn't I tell you exactly ten times that's
+all been attended to! Yesterday Irving went direct to the transfer
+office with me."
+
+"I ain't so sure of nothing what I don't attend to myself. Ray, get up!"
+
+The sun rose over the roofs of the city, gilding them. At seven o'clock
+the household was astir, strapping, nailing, folding, and unfolding. Mr.
+Binswanger stooped with difficulty over his wicker traveling-bag.
+
+"So! Na!"
+
+In the act of adjusting her perky new hat Miriam flung out an
+intercepting hand. "Oh, papa, you mustn't put in that old flannel
+house-coat. That's not fit to wear anywhere but at home. And, papa,
+papa, you just mustn't take along that old black skull-cap; you'll be
+laughing-stock! Papa, please!"
+
+He flung her off. "In my house and out of my house what I want to wear I
+wear. If in Naples them Eyetalians don't like what I wear, then--"
+
+"_Italians_, papa; how many times have I told you to say it _Italians_?"
+
+"When they don't like what I wear over there, right away they should
+lump it."
+
+"Papa, please!"
+
+From the room adjoining Mrs. Binswanger leaned a crumpled coiffure
+through the frame of the open door: "Simon, I got here that red woolen
+undershirt. I want you should put it on before we start."
+
+"Na, na, mamma, I--"
+
+"Right away Mrs. Berkovitz says it will keep the salt air away from your
+rheumatism. That's what I need yet, you should _grex_ from the start
+with your backache. Ray, take this in to your papa. Fooling with that
+new camera she stands all morning, when she should help a little. Look,
+Miriam, you think that in here I got the express checks safe?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+At ten o'clock, with the last bolt sprung and the last baggage departed,
+Mrs. Binswanger fell to the task of fitting gold links in her husband's
+adjustable cuffs, polishing his various pairs of spectacles, inserting
+various handkerchiefs in adjacent and expeditious pockets of his
+clothing.
+
+"Simon, I want you should go in and dress now. All your things is laid
+right out on the bed for you."
+
+"Mamma, you and papa don't need to begin to dress already. None of you
+need to leave the house until about two, and it's only ten now. Just
+think, from now until two o'clock you got to get ready in, mamma."
+
+"When I travel I don't take no chances."
+
+Miriam worked eager fingers into her new, dark-blue kid gloves. She was
+dark and trig in a little belted jacket, a gold quill shimmering at a
+cocky angle on the new blue-straw hat.
+
+"To be on the safe side, mamma, I'm going right now to meet Irving, so
+we can sure have lunch and be at the boat by two."
+
+"Not one minute later, Miriam!"
+
+"Not one minute, mamma. Don't forget, Ray, you promised to bring my
+field-glass for me. Be in the state-room all of you where Irving and
+I can find you easy. There's always a big crowd at sailing. Don't get
+excited, mamma. Ray, be sure and fix papa's cuffs so the red flannel
+don't show. Good-by. Don't get excited, mamma!"
+
+"Miriam, you got on the asafetidy-bag?"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"Miriam, you don't be one minute later as two--"
+
+"No, mamma."
+
+"Miriam, you--"
+
+"Good-by!"
+
+Over a luncheon that lay cold and unrelished between them Irving Shapiro
+leaned to Miriam Binswanger, his voice competing with the five-piece
+orchestra and noonday blather of the Oriental Café.
+
+"I just can't get it in my head, somehow, Miriam, that to-morrow this
+time you'll be out on the sea."
+
+"Me neither."
+
+"I just never had two weeks fly like these since we got acquainted."
+
+"Me--me neither."
+
+Music like great laughter rose over the slip-up in her voice.
+
+"You going to write to me, Miriam?"
+
+"Yes, Irving."
+
+"Often?"
+
+"Yes, Irving."
+
+"You're not going to forget me over there, are you, when you get to
+meeting all those counts and big fellows?"
+
+"Oh, Irving!"
+
+"You're not going to clean forget me then, are you, Miriam, and the
+great times we've had together, and the days in the woods, and the
+singing, and--"
+
+"Oh, Irving, don't. I--Please--"
+
+She laid her fork across her untouched plate and turned her face from
+him. Tears rose to choke her, and, tighten her throat against them as
+she would, one rose to the surface and ricocheted down her cheek.
+
+"Why, Miriam!"
+
+"It's nothing, Irving, only--only let's get out of here. I don't want
+any lunch, I just don't."
+
+"Miriam, that's the way I feel, too. I--I just can't bear to have you
+go!"
+
+"You--We can't talk like that, Irving."
+
+"I tell you, Miriam, I just can't bear it!"
+
+"I--I--oh--"
+
+He leaned across the table for her hand, whispering, with an entire
+flattening of tone, "Miriam, don't go!"
+
+"Irving, don't--talk so--so silly!"
+
+"Miriam, let's--let's you and me stay at home!"
+
+"Irving!"
+
+"Let's, Miriam!"
+
+"Irving, are you crazy?" But her voice yearned toward him.
+
+"Miriam, right at this table I've got an idea. We can do it, Miriam; we
+can do it if you're game."
+
+"Do what?"
+
+He flashed out his watch. "We've got two hours and twenty minutes before
+she sails."
+
+"Irving!"
+
+"We have, dear, to--to get a special license and the ring and do the
+trick."
+
+"Why, I--"
+
+"Two hours and twenty minutes to make it all right for you to stay back
+with me. Miriam, are you game, dear?"
+
+They regarded each other across the table as if each beheld in the other
+a vision.
+
+"Irving, you--you must be crazy!"
+
+"I'm not, dear. I was never less crazy. What's the use of us having to
+get apart after we just got each other? What's all those phony counts
+and picture-galleries and high-sounding stunts compared to us staying
+home and hitting it off together, Miriam? Just tell me that, Miriam."
+
+"Irving, I--we just couldn't! Look at mamma and papa and Ray, all down
+at the boat maybe by now waiting for me, and none of them wanting to go
+except me. For a whole year I had to beg them for this, Irving. They
+wouldn't be going now if it wasn't for me. I--Irving, you must be
+crazy!"
+
+He leaned closer and out of range of the waiter, his voice repressed to
+a tight whisper.
+
+"None of those things count when a girl and a fellow fall in love like
+you and me, Miriam."
+
+Even in her crisis her diffidence inclosed her like a sheath. "I never
+said I--I was in love, did I?"
+
+"But you are! They'll go over there, Miriam, without you and have the
+time of their lives. We'll stay home and keep the flat open for them so
+your mother won't have to worry any more about burglars. After the
+first surprise it won't be a trick at all. We got two hours and fifteen
+minutes, dearie, and we can do the act and be down at the boat with
+bells on to tell 'em good-by. Now ain't the time to think about the
+little things and waste time, Miriam. We got to do it now or off you
+go hiking, just like--like we had never met, a whole ocean between us,
+Miriam!"
+
+"Irving, you--you mustn't."
+
+She pushed back from the table. He paid his check with a hand that
+trembled, resuming, even as he crammed his bill-folder into a rear
+pocket:
+
+"Be a sport, Miriam! I tell you we got the right to do it because we're
+in love. We'll just tell them the truth, that at the last minute we--we
+just couldn't let go. I'll do the talking, Miriam; I'll tell the old
+folks."
+
+"Ray she--"
+
+"If you ain't afraid to start out on a hundred a month and commissions,
+dear, we don't need to be scared of nothing. I'll tell them just the
+plain truth, dear. Just think, if we do it now, when they come back in
+ten weeks we can be down at the pier to meet them, eh, Miriam, just like
+an--an old married couple--eh, Miriam--eh, Miriam, dear!"
+
+She rose. A red seepage of blood flooded her face; her bosom rose and
+fell.
+
+"Are you game, Miriam? Are you, darling--eh, Miriam, eh?"
+
+"Yes, Irving."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alongside her pier, white as a gull, new painted, new washed, cargoed
+and stoked, the _Roumania_ reared three red smoke-stacks, and sat
+proudly with the gang-plank flung out from her mighty hip and her nose
+tapering toward the blue harbor and the blue billows beyond.
+
+Within the narrow confines of a first-deck stateroom, piled round with
+luggage and its double-decker berths freshly made up, Mrs. Binswanger
+applied an anxious eye to the port-hole, straining tiptoe for a wider
+glimpse of deck.
+
+"I tell you this much, papa, in another five minutes when that child
+don't come, right away off the boat I get and go home where I belong."
+
+In the act of browsing among the lower contents of his wicker hand-bag
+Mr. Binswanger raised a perspiring face.
+
+"Na, na, mamma, thirty minutes' time yet she's got to get here.
+Everybody don't got to come on four hours too soon like us."
+
+"Ja, you should worry about anything, so long as you got right in front
+of you your newspapers and your tobacco. Right away for his tobacco he
+has to dig when he sees so worried I am I can't see. Why don't our Ray
+come back now if she can't find 'em and say she can't find 'em?"
+
+"I tell you, Carrie, if you let me go myself I can find 'em and--"
+
+"Right here you stay with me, Simon Binswanger! We don't get separated
+no more as we can help. I ain't--Ach, look such a crowd, and no Miriam.
+I--"
+
+"Na, na, Carrie!"
+
+"So easy-going he is! My daughter should keep me worried like this!
+To lunch the day what she sails to Europe she has to go! Always she
+complains that salesmen ain't good enough for her yet, and on the day
+she sails she has to go to lunch with one. Why, I ask you, Simon, why
+don't that Ray come back?"
+
+Mr. Binswanger packed his pipe tight and adjusted a small, close-fitting
+black cap. "To travel with women, I tell you, it ain't no pleasure."
+
+"Ach, du Himmel! Right away off that cap comes, Simon! With my own hands
+right away out of sight I hide it. Just once I want Miriam should see
+you in that skull-hat! Right away off you take it, Simon!"
+
+"Ach, Carrie, on my own head I--"
+
+"I tell you already ten times I wish I was back in my flat. I guess you
+think it's a good feeling I got to lock up my flat for Himmel knows
+who to break in, and my son Isadore 'way out in Ohio and not even here
+to--to say to his mother good-by. Already with such a smell on this boat
+and my feelings I got a homesickness I don't wish on my worst enemy. My
+boy should be left like this in America all alone!"
+
+"Ach, Carrie, for why--"
+
+Of a sudden Mrs. Binswanger's face fell into soft creases, her eyes
+closed, and cold tears oozed through, zigzagging downward. "My boy out
+West with--"
+
+"Na, na, Carrie! Don't you worry our Izzy don't take care of hisself
+better as you. For what his expense accounts are--always a parlor car
+he has to have--he can take care of hisself twice better as us, mamma.
+Mamma, you should feel fine now we got started. I wish, mamma, you could
+see such a card-room and such a dining-room they got up-stairs--gold
+chairs like you never seen. We should go up on deck, Carrie, and--"
+
+"Ach, Simon, Simon, why don't that child come! So nearly crazy I never
+was in my life. And now on top my Ray gone too. In a few minutes the
+boat sails, and I don't know yet if I got a child on board. I tell you,
+Simon, when Ray comes back I think it's better we carry off our trunks
+and--"
+
+"Na, na, mamma, hear out in the hall. I told you so! Didn't I tell you
+they come? You hear now Miriam's voice. Didn't I tell you, didn't I tell
+you?"
+
+"Mamma, papa, here we are!"
+
+And in the doorway the hesitant form of erstwhile Miriam Binswanger, her
+eyes dim as if obscured by a fog of tulle, over one shoulder the flushed
+face of Mr. Irving Shapiro, and in turn over his the dark, quick
+features of Ray, flashing their quick expressions.
+
+"I--I found 'em, mamma, just coming on board."
+
+A white flame of anger seemed suddenly to lick dry the two tears that
+staggered down Mrs. Binswanger's plump cheeks.
+
+"I tell you, Miriam, you got a lots of regards for your parents."
+
+"But, mamma, we--"
+
+"A child what can worry her mother like this! Ten minutes before we sail
+on board she comes just like nothing had happened. I should think, Mr.
+Shapiro, that a young man what can hold a responsible position like you,
+would see as a young girl what he invites out to lunch should have more
+regards for her parents as you both."
+
+"Mamma, you--But just wait, mamma."
+
+Miriam stepped half resolutely into the room, peeling the glove from off
+her left hand, and her glance here and there and everywhere with the
+hither and thither of a wind-blown leaf.
+
+"Mamma, guess what--what we--we got to tell you? Mamma, we--Irving,
+you--you tell," Her bared hand fell like a quivering wing and she shrank
+back against his gray tweed coat-sleeve. "Irving, you tell!"
+
+"Miriam, nothing ain't wrong! Izzy, my--"
+
+"No, no, Mrs. Binswanger, nothing is wrong; what Miriam was trying to
+say was that everything's right, wasn't it, Miriam?"
+
+"Yes, Irving."
+
+Mr. Binswanger threw two hands with the familiar upward gesture. "Come,
+right away in a few minutes you got to get off, Shapiro. First I take
+you up and show you the card-room and--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h, papa, let Irving--Go on, Irving."
+
+He cleared his throat, inserting two fingers within his tall collar.
+"You see, Mr. Binswanger, you and Mrs. Binswanger, just at the last
+minute we--we both seen we couldn't let go!"
+
+"Miriam!"
+
+"Now don't get excited, Mrs. Binswanger, only we--well, we just went and
+got married, Mrs. Binswanger, when we seen we couldn't let go. From Dr.
+Cann we just came. A half-hour on pins and needles, you can believe us
+or not, we had to wait for him, and that's what made us so late. See, on
+her hand she's got the ring and--"
+
+"See, mamma!"
+
+"And in my pocket I got the special license. We couldn't help it, Mr.
+Binswanger, we--we just couldn't let go."
+
+"We couldn't, mamma, papa. We thought we ought to stay at home in the
+flat--you're so worried, mamma, about burglars and nobody in America
+with Izzy--and--and--Mamma? Papa? Haven't you got nothing to say to your
+Miriam?"
+
+She extended empty and eloquent arms, a note of pleading rising above
+the tears in her words.
+
+"Nothing? Mamma? Papa?"
+
+From without came voices; the grinding of chains lifting cargo; a
+great basso from a smoke-stack; more voices. "All off! All off!" Feet
+scurrying over wooden decks! "All off! All off!" A second steam-blast
+that shot up like a rocket.
+
+"Mamma? Ray? Papa? Haven't any of you got anything to say?"
+
+"_Gott in Himmel_!" said Mrs. Binswanger. "_Gott in Himmel_!"
+
+"So!" said Mr. Binswanger, placing a hand with a loud pat on each knee.
+"So!"
+
+"Oh, papa!"
+
+"A fine come-off! A fine come-off! Eh, mamma? To Europe we go to take
+our daughter, and just so soon as we go no daughter we 'ain't got to
+take!"
+
+"_Gott in Himmel! Gott in Himmel_!"
+
+"Ray, haven't you got nothing to say to Irving and me--Ray!"
+
+With a quick, fluid movement the younger sister slid close and her arms
+wound tight. "Miriam, you--you little darling, you! Miriam! Irving! You
+darlings!"
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Binswanger inclined, inclosing the two in a wide, moist
+embrace. "Ach, my Miriam, what have you done! Not a stitch, not even a
+right wedding! Irving, you bad boy, you, like I--I should ever dream you
+had thoughts to be our son-in-law. Ach, my children, my children! Simon,
+I tell you we can be thankful it's a young man what we know is all
+right. Ach, I--I just don't know--I--just--don't know."
+
+"Papa, you ain't mad at us?"
+
+"What good it does me to be mad? I might just so well be glad as mad. My
+little Miriam-sha, my little Miriam-sha!" And he fell to blinking as if
+with gritty eyelids.
+
+"Simon--ach, Simon--you--ach, my husband, you--you ain't crying, you--"
+
+"Go 'way, Carrie, with such nonsense! You women don't know yet the
+difference between a laff and a cry. Well, Shapiro, you play me a fine
+trick, eh?"
+
+"It wasn't a trick, Mr. Binswanger--pa, it was--"
+
+"All off! All off!" And a third great blast sounded that set the
+tumblers rattling in their stands.
+
+"I guess me--me and Irving's got to get off now, mamma--"
+
+Mrs. Binswanger grasped her husband's arm in sudden panic. "Simon, I--I
+think as we should get off and go home with them. I--"
+
+"Now, now, mamma, don't get excited! No, no, you mustn't! We will keep
+house fine for you until you come back. See, mamma! I have the key, and
+everything's fixed. See, mamma! You got to go, mamma. Ray should see
+Europe before she finds out there--there's just one thing that's better
+than going to Europe. Please, mamma, don't get excited. I tell you we'll
+have things fine when you come back. Won't we, Irving, won't we?"
+
+"Ach, nothing in the house, Miriam."
+
+"We got to get off now, Miriam dear, we got to. You can write us about
+those things, Mrs. Binswanger--mamma. Come, Miriam!"
+
+"Yes, yes, Irving. Now don't cry, mamma, please! When everybody is so
+happy it's a sin to cry."
+
+"Not a stitch on her wedding-day! All her clothes locked up here on the
+boat! Let me open the top tray of the trunk, Miriam, and give you your
+toothbrush and a few waists--Ach, nearly crazy I am! How I built for
+that girl's wedding when it--"
+
+"Come, mamma, come--"
+
+They were jamming up the crowded stairway and out to the sun-washed
+deck. Women in gay corsages and bright-colored veils strolled with an
+air of immediate adjustment. Men already in steamer caps and tweeds
+leaned against the railings. Travelers were rapidly separating
+themselves from stay-at-homes. Already the near-side decks were lined
+with faces, some wet-eyed and some smiling, and all with kerchiefs or
+small flags ready for adieus.
+
+"All off! All off!"
+
+"Good-by, mamma darling. Don't worry!"
+
+"Irving, you be good to my Miriam. It's just like you got from me a
+piece of my heart. Be good to my baby, Irving. Be good!"
+
+Ray tugged at her mother's skirts. "'Sh-h-h-h, mamma, the whole boat
+don't need to know."
+
+"Be good to her, Irving!"
+
+"Like I--just like I could be anything else to her, mamma!"
+
+"Good-by, mamma darling. Don't cry so, I tell you! Let me go, please,
+mamma, please! Good-by, papa darling, take good care of yourself
+and--I--just love you, papa! Ray, have a grand time and don't miss none
+of it. That's right, kiss Irving; he's your brother-in-law now. Don't
+cry, mamma darling! Good-by! Good-by!"
+
+A tangle of adieus, more handkerchiefing, more tears and laughter, more
+ear-splitting shrieks of steam and a black plume of smoke that rose in
+a billow, and hand in hand Miriam and Irving Shapiro joggling down the
+gang-plank to the pier.
+
+From the bow of the top deck the ship's orchestra let out a blare of
+music designed to cover tears and heartaches. The gang-plank drew up and
+in like a tongue, separating land from sea. From every deck faces were
+peering down into the crowd below.
+
+Miriam grasped her husband's coat-sleeve, in her frenzy taking a fine
+pinch of flesh with it. Tears rained down her cheeks.
+
+"There they are, Irving, all three of 'em on the second deck, waving
+down at us! Good-by, mamma, papa, Ray! Oh, Irving, I just can't stand to
+see 'em go! Papa, Ray, mamma darling!"
+
+"Now, now, Miriam, think what a grand time they're going to have and how
+soon they're going to be home again."
+
+"Oh, my darlings!"
+
+Mrs. Binswanger sopped at her eyes, waving betimes the small black cap
+rescued in the up-deck rush.
+
+Laughter crept with a tinge of hysteria into Miriam's voice. "Oh,
+darlings, I--I just can't bear to have you go. They're--they're moving,
+Irving! I--Oh, mamma, papa, darlings! They're moving, Irving!"
+
+Out into the bay where the sunlight hung between blue water and bluer
+sky, a sea-gull swinging round her spar, the _Roumania_ steamed,
+unconscious of her freight.
+
+"Good-by, mamma, good-by. Let's follow them to the end of the pier,
+Irving. I--I want to watch them till they're out of sight."
+
+"Don't cry so, darling!"
+
+"Look! look, see that black speck; it's papa! Oh, I love him, Irving.
+Good-by, my darlings! Good-by! They didn't want to go except for me,
+and--Oh, my darlings!"
+
+"Come, dear, we can't see them any more. Come now, it's all over, dear."
+
+They picked their way through the dispersing crowd back toward the dock
+gates.
+
+"See, dear, how grand everything is! You and me happy here and--"
+
+"Oh, Irving, I know, but--"
+
+"But nothing."
+
+"Pin my veil for me, dear, to--to hide my eyes. I bet I'm a sight!"
+
+"You're not a sight, you're a beauty!"
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h, I don't feel like making fun, Irving!"
+
+"It's a hot day, dear, so we got to celebrate some cool way. Let's take
+a cab and--"
+
+"No, Irving dear, we can't afford another one."
+
+"To-day we can afford any old thing we want."
+
+"No, no, dear."
+
+"I got it, then! If we ride down to the Battery we can catch a boat for
+Brighton. Then we can have a little boat-ride all our own, eh? You and
+me, darling, on a boat-trip all our own."
+
+She turned her shining eyes full upon him. "That'll be just perfect,
+Irving!" she said.
+
+
+
+
+ROLLING STOCK
+
+
+In the great human democracy, revolution cannot uncrown the builder of
+bridges to place upon his throne the builder of pantry shelves. Gray
+matter and blue blood and white pigment are not dynasties of man's
+making. Accident of birth, and not primogeniture, makes master minds and
+mulattoes, seamstresses and rich men's sons. Wharf-rats are more often
+born than made.
+
+That is why, in this dynasty not of man's making, weavers gone blind
+from the intricacies of their queen's coronation robe, can kneel at her
+hem to kiss the cloth of gold that cursed them. A peasant can look on
+at a poet with no thought to barter his black bread and lentils for
+a single gossamer fancy. Backstair slaveys vie with each other whose
+master is more mighty. And this is the story of Millie Moores who, with
+no anarchy in her heart and no feud with the human democracy, could
+design for women to whom befell the wine and pearl dog-collars of life,
+frocks as sheer as web, and on her knees beside them, her mouth full of
+pins and her sole necklace a tape-measure, thrill to see them garbed in
+the glory of her labor.
+
+Indeed, when the iridescent bubble of reputation floated out from her
+modest dressmaking rooms in East Twenty-third Street, Millie Moores,
+whom youth had rushed past, because she had no leisure for it, felt her
+heart open like a grateful flower when life brought her more chores to
+do. And when one day a next-year's-model limousine drew up outside her
+small doorway with the colored fashion sheet stuck in the glass panel,
+and one day another, and then one spring day three of them in shining
+procession along her curb, something cheeped in Millie Moores's heart
+and she doubled her prices.
+
+And then because ladies long of purse and short of breath found the
+three dark flights difficult, and because the first small fruit of
+success burst in Millie Moores's mouth, releasing its taste of wine,
+she withdrew her three-figure savings account from the Manhattan Trust
+Company, rented an elevator-service, mauve-upholstered establishment on
+middle Broadway, secured the managerial services of a slender young man
+fresh from the Louis Quinze rooms of Madam Roth--Modes, Fifth Avenue,
+tripled her prices, and emerged from the brown cocoon of Twenty-third
+Street, Madam Moores, Modiste.
+
+Two years later, three perfect-thirty-six sibyls promenaded the mauve
+display rooms, tempting those who waddle with sleeveless frocks that
+might have been designed for the Venus of Milo warmed to life.
+
+The presiding young man, slim and full of the small ways that
+ingratiate, and with a pomaded glory of tow hair rippling back in a
+double wave that women's fingers itched to caress and men's hands itched
+to thresh, pushed forward the mauve velvet chairs with a waiter's
+servility, but none of his humility; officiated over the crowded pages
+of the crowded appointment-book, jotted down measurements with an
+imperturbability that grew for every inch the tape-line measured over
+and above.
+
+Last, Madam Moores, her small figure full of nerves; two spots of red
+high on her cheeks; her erstwhile graying hairs, a bit premature and
+but a sprinkling of them, turned to the inward of a new and elaborate
+coiffure; and meeting this high tide with a smile, newly enhanced by
+bridge-work and properly restrained to that dimension of insolence
+demanded by the rich of those who serve them well.
+
+In the springtime Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue turn lightly to thoughts
+of Narragansett Pier and Bronx Park. Fifth Avenue sheds its furs and
+Sixth Avenue its woolen underwear. At the dusk of one such day, when the
+taste of summer was like poppy leaves crushed between the teeth, and
+open streetcars and open shirtwaists blossomed forth even as the
+distant larkspur in the distant field, Madam Moores beheld the
+electric-protection door swing behind the last customer and relaxed
+frankly against a table piled high with fabrics of a dozen sheens.
+
+"Whew! Thank heavens, she's gone!"
+
+To a symphony of six-o'clock whistles the rumble of machines from the
+workrooms suddenly ceased.
+
+"Turn out the shower lights, Phonzie, and see that Van Nord's black lace
+goes out in time for opera to-night. When she telephoned at noon I told
+her it was on the way."
+
+Mr. Alphonse Michelson hurtled a mauve-colored footstool and hastened
+rearward toward the swinging-door that led to the emptying workrooms.
+The tallest of the perfect-thirty-sixes, stepping out of her beaded
+slippers into sturdier footwear of the street, threw him a smile as
+he passed that set her glittering earrings and metal-yellow ringlets
+bobbing like bells in a breeze.
+
+"Hand me the shoe-buttoner, Phonzie. The doctor says stooping is bad for
+my hair-pins."
+
+Their laughter, light as foam, met and mingled.
+
+"Oh, you nervy Gertie!"
+
+"What's your hurry, Phonzie dearie?"
+
+"I don't see you stopping me."
+
+"Fine chance, with her crouching over there, ready to spring."
+
+"Hang around, sweetness. Maybe I'm not on duty, and I'll take you
+to supper if you've not got a date with one of your million-dollar
+Charlies."
+
+"Soft pedal, Phonzie! You know I'd break a date with any one of 'em any
+day in the week for a sixty-cent table d'hote with you!"
+
+"Hang around then, sweetness."
+
+"Hang around! Gawd, if I hang around you any more than I have been doing
+in the last five years, following you from one establishment to the
+other, they'll have to kill me to put me out of my misery."
+
+"You're all right, Gert. And when you haven't any of the greenback boys
+around to fill in, you can always fall back on me."
+
+"You're a nice old boy, Phonzie, and I like the kink in your hair,
+but--but sometimes when I get blue, like to-night, I--I just wish I had
+never clapped eyes on you."
+
+"How she hates me."
+
+"I wish to God I did."
+
+"Cut the tragedy, Gert."
+
+"That's the trouble; I been cutting it for the mock comedy all my life."
+
+"You, the highest little flyer in the flock!"
+
+"Yeh, because I've never found anybody who even cares enough about me to
+clip my wings." Her laughter was short and with a blunt edge.
+
+"Whew! Such a spill for you, Gert!"
+
+"It's the spring gets on my nerves, I guess. Blow me to a table d'hôte
+to-night, Phonzie. I got a red-ink thirst on me and I'm as blue as
+indigo."
+
+"Hang around, Gert, and if I'm not on duty I--"
+
+"Honest, you're the greatest kid to squirm when you think a girl is
+going to pin you down. You let me get about as serious as a musical
+comedy with you and then you put up the barbed wire."
+
+"Yes, I do not!"
+
+"Fine chance I've got of ever pinning you down! You care about as much
+for me as--as anybody else does, and that ain't saying much."
+
+"Aw, Gert, you got the dumps--"
+
+"Look at her over there. I can see by her profile she's hanging around
+to buy you your dinner to-night. Whatta you bet she springs the
+appointment-book yarn on you and you fall for it?"
+
+A laugh flitted beneath Mr. Michelson's blond hedge of mustache. "Can I
+help it that I got such hypnotizing, mesmerizing ways?"
+
+She smiled beneath her rouge, and wanly. "No, darling," she said.
+
+Across the room Madam Moores regarded them from beside the pile of
+sheeny silks, her fingers plucking nervously at the fabrics.
+
+"Hurry up over there, Phonzie. I told her the black lace was on the
+way."
+
+Miss Dobriner daubed at her red lips with a lacy fribble of
+handkerchief, her voice sotto behind it.
+
+"Don't let her pin you, Phonzie. Have a heart and take me to supper when
+I'm blue as indigo."
+
+He leaned to impale a pin upon his lapel. "She's so white to me, Gert,
+how can I squirm if she asks me to go over the appointment-book with her
+to-night?"
+
+"Tell her your grandmother's dead."
+
+He leaned for another pin. "Stick around down in Seligman's. If I dust
+my hat with my handkerchief when I pass, I'm nailed for the evening. If
+I can wriggle I'll blow you to Churchey's for supper."
+
+"I--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h."
+
+He retreated behind the mauve-colored swinging-door. The two remaining
+sibyls, hatted and coated to crane the neck of the passer-by, hurried
+arm-in-arm out into the spring evening. An errand girl, who had dropped
+her skirt and put up her hair so that the eye of the law might wink at
+her stigma of youth, hung the shimmering gowns away for another day's
+display. Gertie Dobriner patted her ringed fingers against her mouth to
+press back a yawn and trailed across the room, adjusting her hat before
+a full-length mirror. In the light from a single electric bulb her hair
+showed three colors--yellow gold, green gold, and, toward the roots, the
+dark gold of old bronze.
+
+"You can go now, Gert."
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+Miss Dobriner adjusted a spray of curls. Through the mirror she could
+observe the mauve-colored swinging-door.
+
+"Did--did Du Gass order that fish-tail model, madam?"
+
+Madam Moores dallied with her appointment-book. Through the mirror she
+could observe the mauve-colored swinging-door.
+
+"Yes, in green."
+
+"If I had her complexion I'd wear sandpaper to match it."
+
+"We haven't all of us got the looks, Gert, that'll get us four-carat
+stones to wear down to a twenty-dollar-a-week job."
+
+Miss Dobriner's hand flew to her throat and the gem that gleamed there.
+"I--I guess I can buy a stone on time for myself without--without any
+insinuations."
+
+"You can wear the stone, all right, Gert, but you can't get past the
+insinuations."
+
+"I--I ain't so stuck on this place, madam, that I got to stand for your
+insinuations."
+
+"No, it ain't the _place_ you're stuck on that keeps you here, Gert."
+
+They regarded each other through eyes banked with the red fires of
+anger, and beside the full-length mirror Miss Dobriner trembled as she
+stood.
+
+"You can think what you please, madam. I--I'm hired by Phonzie and I'm
+here to wear models and not to steer your thinking."
+
+Madam Moores sat so tense in her chair that her weight did not relax to
+it. "You and me can't have no fusses, you know that, don't you? I give
+Phonzie the run of my floor, and he's the one has to deal with--with
+freshness."
+
+"You--you started it, madam. I--can get along with anybody. I don't have
+to stay in a place where I'm not wanted; it's just because Phonzie--"
+
+"We won't fuss about it, Gertie. I'm the last one to fall out with my
+help."
+
+Silence.
+
+"Did--did Laidlaw order that trotteur model in plaid, Gert?"
+
+"No; she's coming back to-morrow."
+
+"To-day's the day to land an order."
+
+"She says that pongee we made her last spring never fit her slick enough
+between the shoulders. I felt like telling her we don't guarantee to fit
+tubs."
+
+"You got to handle Laidlaw right, Gert. There'll be two trousseaux and
+a ball in that family before June. The best way to lose a customer like
+Laidlaw is to sell her what she ought to wear instead of what she wants
+to wear."
+
+"Handle her right! I wore rubber gloves. Did I quiver an eyelash when
+she ordered that pink organdie, and didn't Phonzie nearly double up when
+he took down the order? You want to see her measurements. I'll get the
+book and--"
+
+"No, no, Gert; you can go on. I got to stay and go over the appointments
+with Phonzie."
+
+A quick red flowed up and under the rouged surface of Miss Dobriner's
+cheeks. "Oh--excuse me!"
+
+"What!"
+
+"I--All right, I'm going."
+
+She readjusted her hat, a tiny winged chariot of pink straw and designed
+after fashion's most epileptic caprice, coaxed her ringed fingers into
+a pair of but slightly soiled white gloves, her eyes the while staring
+past her slim reflection in the mirror and on to the mauve-colored
+swinging-door.
+
+"Good night, Gert."
+
+Miss Dobriner bared her teeth to a smile and closed her lips again
+before she spoke. "Good night--madam."
+
+Then she went out, clicking the door behind her. Through the
+mauve-colored swinging-door and scarcely a clock-tick later entered Mr.
+Alphonse Michelson, spick, light-footed, slim.
+
+"Charley's left with the black lace, madam."
+
+It was as if Madam Moores suddenly threw off the husk of the day.
+"Tired, Phonzie?"
+
+He ran a hand across his silk hair and glanced about. "Everybody gone?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+He reached for his hat and cane and a pair of untried gray gloves atop
+them. "I sent the yellow taffeta out on a C.O.D. That gold buckle she
+wanted on the shoulder cost her just twenty bucks more."
+
+"Good!"
+
+He fitted on his hat carefully and snapped his gloves across his palm.
+"Well, I'm off, madam."
+
+She adjusted her hat in a simulation of indifference. "Like to come up
+to the flat for supper and--and go over the books, Phonzie?"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"There's plenty for two and--and we could kind of go over things."
+
+He twirled his cane. "Oh, I--I'm running up there too often, sponging
+off you."
+
+"Sponging! Like I'd ask you if I didn't want you!"
+
+"I been up there sponging off you three times this week. Anyways, I'm--"
+
+"Don't I always just give you pot luck?"
+
+"Yes, but you'll think afterwhile that I got you mixed up with my
+meal-ticket."
+
+A sensitive seepage of blood rushed over Madam Moores's nervous face,
+stinging it. "Of course, if you won't want to come!"
+
+"Don't want to come! A fellow that's never had a snap like your cozy
+corner in his life--"
+
+"Of course if--if you got a date with one of--of the models or
+something."
+
+"I never said that, did I?"
+
+"Well, get that sponging idea out of your head, Phonzie. There's always
+plenty for two in my cupboard. Like I says the other night, what's the
+use being able to afford my little flat if I can't get some pleasure out
+of it?"
+
+"It sure looks good to this hall-room Johnnie."
+
+She gathered her gloves and her black silk handbag. "Then come,
+Phonzie," she said, "I'm going to take you home." And her throat might
+have been lined with fur.
+
+They went out together, locking the doors behind them, and into an
+evening as soft as silk and full of stars.
+
+Along the wide up-town street the human tide flowed fast and as if thaw
+had set in, releasing it from the bondage of winter. Girls in light
+wraps and without hats loitered in the white flare of drugstore lights.
+Here and there a brown stoop bloomed with a boarder or two. In front
+of Seligman's florist shop, which occupied the ground floor of Madam
+Moores's dressmaking establishment, Alphonse Michelson paused for a
+moment in the flare of its decorative show-window and flecked at his
+hatband with sheer untried handkerchief.
+
+"Come on, Phonzie."
+
+"Coming, madam."
+
+In the up-town Subway, bound for the up-town flat, he leaned to her with
+his small blond mustache raised in a smile.
+
+"Where's the book, madam?"
+
+"Forgot it," she replied, without shame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out of three hundred and eighty dollars cash, a bit of black and gold
+brocade flung adroitly over the imitation hearth, a cot masquerading
+under a Mexican afghan of many colors, a canary in a cage, a potted
+geranium, a shallow chair with a threadbare head-rest, a lamp, a rug, a
+two-burner gas-stove, Madam Moores had evolved Home.
+
+And why not? The Petit Trianon was built that a queen might there find
+rest from marble halls. The Borghese women in their palaces live behind
+drawn shades, but Italian peasants sit in their low doorways and sing as
+they rock and suckle.
+
+In Madam Moores's two-flights-up flat the windows were flung open to the
+moist air of spring, which flowed in cool as water between crisp muslin
+curtains, stirring them. In the sudden flare of electric light the
+canary unfolded its head from a sheaf of wing, cheeped, and fell to
+picking up seed from the bottom of its cage.
+
+Mr. Alphonse Michelson collapsed into the shallow chair beside the table
+and relaxed his head against the threadbare dent in the upholstery.
+
+"Whoops! home never was like this!"
+
+"Is him tired?"
+
+"Dead."
+
+"Smoke?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"There."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"Now him all comfy and I go fix poor tired bad boy him din-din."
+
+More native than mother-tongue is Mother's tongue. Whom women love
+they would first destroy with gibberish. To Mr. Michelson's linguistic
+credit, however, he shifted in his chair in unease.
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"What him want for din-din?"
+
+He slung one slim leg atop the other, slumping deeper to the luxury of
+his chair. "Dinner?"
+
+"Yes, din-din."
+
+"Say, those were swell chicken livers smothered in onions you served the
+other night, madam. Believe me, those were some livers!"
+
+No, reader, Romance is not dead. On the contrary, he has survived the
+frock-coat and learned to chew a clove.
+
+A radiance as soft as the glow from a pink-shaded lamp flowed over Madam
+Moores's face.
+
+"Livers him going to have and biscuits made in my own ittsie bittsie
+oven. Eh?"
+
+"Swell."
+
+She divested herself of her wraps, fluffing her mahogany-colored hair
+where the hat had restricted it, lighted a tiny stove off in the tiny
+kitchenette and enveloped herself in a blue-bib-top apron. Her movements
+were short and full of caprice, and when she set the table, brushing his
+chair as she passed and repassed, lights came out in her eyes when she
+dared raise her lids to show them.
+
+They dined by the concealed fireplace and from off a table that could
+fold its legs under like Aladdin's. Fumes of well-made coffee rose as
+ingratiating as the perfume of a love story. Mr. Michelson dropped a
+lump of butter into the fluffy heart of a biscuit and clapped the halves
+together.
+
+"Some biscuits!"
+
+"Bad boy, stop jollying."
+
+"Say, if I'd tell you the truth about what I think of these biscuits,
+you'd say I was writing a streetcar advertisement for baking-powder.
+Say, this is some cup custard!"
+
+"More?"
+
+"Full to my eyebrows."
+
+"Just a little bittsie?"
+
+"Nope."
+
+He lighted a cigarette and they settled back in after-dinner
+completeness, their dessert-plates pushed well toward the center of the
+table and their senses quiet. She pleated the edge of her napkin and
+watched him blow leisurely spirals of smoke to the ceiling.
+
+"What you thinking about, Phonzie?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"If I was thinking at all I was just sizing it up as pretty soft for a
+fellow like me to get this sort of stand-in with--with my boss. Gawd! me
+and Roth used to love each other like snakes."
+
+"I--I ain't your boss, Phonzie. Don't I give you the run of
+everything--hiring the models and all?"
+
+"Sure you're my boss, and it's pretty soft for me."
+
+"And I was just thinking, Phonzie, that it's pretty soft for me to have
+found a fellow like you to manage things for me."
+
+"Shucks!"
+
+"Without you, so used to the ways of the Avenue and all that kind of
+thing, where would I be now, trying to run in the right kind of bluff
+with the trade?"
+
+"That's easy! After all, Fifth Avenue and Third Avenue is pretty much
+alike in the end, madam. A spade may be a spade, but if you're a good
+salesman, you can put it on black velvet and sell it for a dessert-spoon
+any day in the week."
+
+"That's just what I'm saying, Phonzie, about you're knowing how. I
+needed just a fellow like you to show me how the swell trade has got
+to be blindfolded, and that the difference between a dressmaker and a
+modiste is about a hundred and fifty dollars a gown."
+
+"You ought to see the way we handled them when I was on the floor for
+Roth. Say, we wouldn't touch a peignoir in that establishment for under
+two hundred and fifty, and--we had 'em coming in there like sheep. The
+Riverside Drive trade is nothing, madam, compared to what we could do
+down there with the Avenue business."
+
+"You sure know how to handle the lorgnette bunch, Phonzie."
+
+"Is it any wonder, being in the business twenty years?"
+
+"Twenty years! Why, Phonzie, you--you don't look much more than twenty
+yourself."
+
+He laughed, shifting one knee to the other. "That's because you can't
+see that my eye teeth are gold, madam."
+
+"You're so light on your feet, Phonzie, and slick."
+
+"To look twenty and feel your forty years ain't what it's cracked up to
+be. If I had a home of my own, you know what I'd buy first--a pair of
+carpet slippers and a patent rocker."
+
+"I bet you mean it, too, Phonzie."
+
+"Sure I mean it! How'd you like to go through life like me, trying to
+keep the kink ironed in my hair and out of my back, or lose my job at
+the only kind of work I'm good for? It's like having to live with a grin
+frozen on your face so you can't close your mouth."
+
+"I--I just can't get over it, Phonzie, you _forty_! You five years older
+than me and me afraid--thinking all along it was just the other way."
+
+"I had already shed my milk teeth before you were born, madam."
+
+"Whatta you know about that!"
+
+"Ask Gert. She's been following me around from place to place for years,
+sticking to me because I say there ain't a model in the business can
+show the clothes like she can."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Ask her; she's my age and we been on the job together for twenty years.
+Long before live models was even known in the business, she and me were
+showing goods in the old Cunningham place on Madison Avenue."
+
+"Even--even back there you was dead set on having good figures around
+the place, wasn't you, Phonzie?"
+
+"I tell you it's economy in the end, madam, to have figures that can
+show off the goods to advantage."
+
+"Oh, I'm not kicking, Phonzie, but I was just saying."
+
+"I have been in the business long enough, madam, to learn that the
+greatest way in the world to show gowns is on live stock. A dame will
+fall for any sort of a rag stuck on a figure like Gert's, and think the
+waist-line and all is thrown in with the dress. You seen for yourself
+Van Ness order five gowns right off Gert's back to-day. Would she have
+fallen for them if we had shown them in the hand? Not much! She forgot
+all about her own thirty-eight waist-line when she ordered that pink
+organdie. She was seeing Gert's twenty-two inches."
+
+"But honest, Phonzie, take a girl like Gert, even with her figure,
+she--Oh, I don't know, there's something about her!"
+
+"She may rub your fur the wrong way, madam, but under all her flip ways
+they don't come no finer than Gert."
+
+"No, it ain't that, only she don't always get across. Take Lipton;
+she won't even let her show her a gown; she's always calling for Dodo
+instead. Sometimes I think the trade takes exceptions to a girl like
+Gert, her all decked out in diamonds that--show how--how fly she must
+be."
+
+"Gertie Dobriner's the best in the business, just the same, madam. She
+ain't stuck on her way of living no more than I am, but she's a model
+and she 'ain't got enough of anything else in her to make the world
+treat her any different than a model."
+
+"I'm not saying she ain't a good thirty-six, Phonzie."
+
+"I got to hand it to her, madam, when it comes to a lot of things. She
+may be a little skylarker, but take it from me, it ain't from choice,
+and when she likes you--God! honest, I think that girl would pawn her
+soul for you. When I was down with pneumonia--"
+
+"I ain't saying a thing against her."
+
+"She's no saint, maybe, but then God knows I'm not, either, and what I
+don't know about her private life don't bother me."
+
+"Oh, I--I know you like her all right."
+
+"Say, I'll bet you any amount if that girl had memory enough to learn
+the words of a song or the steps of a dance, she could have landed a
+first-row job in any musical show on Broadway. She could do it now, for
+that matter. Gad! did you see her to-day showing off that Queen Louise
+cloth-of-gold model? Honest, she took my breath away, and I been on the
+floor with her twenty years."
+
+"Y-yes."
+
+"Keep down your hips and waist-line, Gert, I always say to her, and you
+are good in the business for ten years yet."
+
+"She should worry while the crop of four carats is good."
+
+"Yes, but just the same a girl like her don't know when her luck may
+turn. A girl can lose her luck sometimes before she loses her figure."
+
+"Any old time she can lose her luck with you."
+
+"Me!"
+
+"Yes, you!"
+
+Madam Moores bent over the pleats in her napkin. Opposite her, his
+cigarette held fastidiously aloft, he regarded her through its haze.
+
+"Well, of all things! So that--that's what you think?"
+
+"I--I know."
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"That she's dead strong for you."
+
+"Sure she is, but what's that got to do with it? That girl's like--well,
+she's like a sister or--or a pal to me, but she's got about as much time
+for a fellow of my pace, except when she gets blue, as--as the Queen of
+Sheba has."
+
+"That's what you think, maybe, but everybody else knows she--she's been
+after you for years, trying--"
+
+"Aw, cut the comedy, madam. Honest, you make me sore. She's nothing
+to me off the floor but a darn good pal. Say, I can treat her to a
+sixty-cent table d'hôte twice a week; but don't you think in the back
+of my head, when it comes to a showdown, that I couldn't even buy silk
+shoelaces for a girl of her kind. I ain't her pace and we both know it.
+Bosh!"
+
+"You'd like to be, all right, if--if she didn't have so many rich ones
+hanging around."
+
+"Just the same, many's the time she's told me if she could land a
+regular fellow and do the regular thing and settle down on seventy-five
+a month in a Harlem flat, why she'd drop all this skylarking of hers for
+a family of youngsters, so quick it would make your head swim."
+
+"Sure, that's just what I say, she--"
+
+"Many's the time she--she's cried to me--just cried, because the kind of
+life she has to live don't lead to anything, and she knows it."
+
+"I ain't blaming you for liking her, Phonzie; a girl with her figure can
+make an old dub like me look like--well, I just guess after her I--I
+must look like thirty cents to you."
+
+"You! Say, you got more real sense in your little finger than three of
+Gert's kind put together."
+
+She colored like a wild rose.
+
+"Sense ain't what counts with the men nowadays; it's looks and--and
+speed like Gert's."
+
+"Girls like Gert are all right, I tell you; but say, when it comes to
+real brains like yours--nobody home."
+
+"Maybe not, but just the same it's the girls with sense get tired having
+the men rave about their smartness and pass on, to go rushing after a
+empty head completely smothered under yellow curls. That's how much
+_real_ brains counts for with--with you men."
+
+He flung her a gesture, his cigarette trailing a design in smoke.
+"Honest, madam, you got me wrong there. A fellow like me 'ain't got the
+nerve to--to go after a woman like you. A girl like Dodo or Gert is my
+size, but I'd be a swell dub trying to line up alongside of you, now
+wouldn't I?"
+
+Tears that were distilled in her heart rose to her eyes, dimming them.
+Her hand fluttered in among the plates and cups and saucers toward him.
+
+"Phonzie, I--I--"
+
+"You what?"
+
+"I--I--Aw, nothing."
+
+Her head fell suddenly forward in her arms, pushing the elaborate
+coiffure awry, and beneath the blue-checked apron her shoulders heaved.
+
+He rose. "Madam! Why, madam, what--"
+
+"Don't--don't pay any attention to me, Phonzie. I--I just got a silly
+fit on me. I'll be all right in a minute."
+
+"Aw, madam, I--I didn't mean to make you sore by anything I said."
+
+"You go now, Phonzie; the whole evening don't need to be spoiled for you
+just because I went and got a silly fit of blues on. You--you go get
+some live one like Gert and--and take her out skylarking."
+
+"You're sore about Gert, is that it, madam?"
+
+"No, no. Honest, Phonzie."
+
+"Madam, I--I just don't know what's got you. Is it something I said has
+hurt your feelings?"
+
+"No, no."
+
+He advanced with an incertitude that muddled his movements, made to
+cross to her side where she lay with her arms outstretched in the fuddle
+of dishes, made to touch her black silk sleeve where it emerged from the
+blue-checked apron, hesitated, sucking his lips in between his teeth,
+swung on his heel, then around once more, and placed his hand lightly on
+her shoulder.
+
+"Madam?"
+
+"You--you just go on, Phonzie. I--I guess I'm an old fool, anyways. It's
+like trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip for me to try and squeeze
+anything but work out of my life. I--I guess I'm just nothing but an old
+fool."
+
+"But, madam, how can a fellow like me squeeze anything out of life for
+you? Look at me! Why, I ain't worth your house room. I'm nothing but
+a fellow who draws his salary off a woman, and has all his life. Why,
+you--you earn as much in a week as I do in a month."
+
+"What's that got to do with it?"
+
+"Look, you with a home you made for yourself and a business you built up
+out of your own brains, and what am I? A hall-room guy that can put a
+bluff across with a lot of idiot women. Look at me, forty and doing a
+chorus-man's work. You got me wrong, madam. I don't measure nowheres
+near up to you. If I did, do you think I wouldn't be settled down long
+ago like a regular--Aw, well, what's the use talking." He plucked at his
+short mustache, pulling the hairs sharply.
+
+She raised her face and let him gaze at the ravages of her tears.
+"Why--why don't you come right out and say it, that I 'ain't got the
+looks and--the pep?"
+
+"Madam, can't you see I'm only--"
+
+"You--you can't run yourself down to me. You, and nobody else, has made
+the establishment what it is. I never had a head for the _little_ things
+that count. That's why I spent my best years down in Twenty-third
+Street. What did I know about the _big_ little things!--the
+carriage-call stunt and the sachet-bags in the lining and the blue and
+gold labels, all _little_ things that get _big_ results. I never had a
+head for the things that hold the rich trade, like the walking models,
+or the French accent."
+
+"You got the head for the big things, and that's what counts."
+
+"That's why, when you say you can't line up alongside of me, it's no
+excuse."
+
+"I--I mean it."
+
+"Just because I got a head for designing doesn't make me a nine days'
+wonder. Why don't you--you come right out and say what you mean,
+Phonzie?"
+
+"Why, I--I don't even know how to talk to a woman like you, madam. La-La
+girls have always been my pace."
+
+"I know, Phonzie, and I--I ain't blaming you. A slick-looking fellow
+like you can skylark around as he pleases and don't need to have time
+for--the overworked, tired-out ones like me."
+
+"Madam, I never dreamed--"
+
+"Dreamed! Phonzie, I--I've got no shame if I tell you, but, God! how
+many nights I--I've lain right here on this couch dreaming of--of--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Of you and me, Phonzie, hitting it off together."
+
+"Madam!"
+
+Her head burrowed deeper in her arms, her voice muffed in their depth.
+
+"Madam!"
+
+"How many times I've dreamed, Phonzie. You and me, real partners in the
+business and--and in everything. Us in a little home together, one of
+the five-room flats down on the next floor, with a life-size kitchen and
+a life-size dining-room and--and a life-size--Aw, Phonzie, you--you'll
+think I'm crazy."
+
+"Madam, why, madam, I just don't know."
+
+"Them's the dreams a silly old thing like me, that never had nothing
+but work and--and nothing else in her life, can lay right here on this
+couch, night after night, and--Gawd! I--I bet you think I--I'm just
+crazy, Phonzie."
+
+For answer he leaned over and took her small figure in his arms, wiping
+away with his sheer untried handkerchief the tears; but fresh ones
+sashayed down her face and flowed over her words.
+
+"Phonzie, tell me, do you--do you--think--"
+
+He held her closer. "Sure, madam, I do."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the wings of a twelvemonth, spring had come around again and the
+taste of summer was like poppy-leaves between the teeth, and the
+perennial open shirtwaists and open street-cars bloomed, even as the
+distant larkspur in the distant field. At six o'clock with darkness
+came a spattering of rain, heavy single drops that fell each with its
+splotch, exuding from the asphalt the warming smell of thaw. Then came
+wind, right high-tempered, too, slanting the rain and scudding it and
+blowing pedestrians' skirts forward and their umbrellas inside outward.
+Mr. Alphonse Michelson fitted his hand like a vizor over his eyes and
+peered out into the wet dusk. Lights gleamed and were reflected in the
+dark pool of rain-swept asphalt. Passers-by hurried for shelter and bent
+into the wind.
+
+In Madam Moores's establishment, enlarged during the twelvemonth to
+twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms
+the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the
+showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out.
+Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the
+collar and buttoning across the flap, then fell to pacing the thick-nap
+carpet.
+
+From a mauve-colored telephone-booth emerged Miss Gertie Dobriner,
+flushed from bad service and from bad air.
+
+"Whew!"
+
+"Get her?"
+
+"Sure I got her. Is it such a stunt to get an address from a customer?"
+
+"Good!"
+
+"I says to her, I says, 'I seen it standing on the sidewalk next to your
+French maid and I wanted to buy one like it for my little niece.'"
+
+"Can we get it to-night?"
+
+"Yes, proud papa! But listen; I wrote it down, 'Hinshaw, 2227 Casset
+Street, Brooklyn.'"
+
+"Brooklyn!"
+
+"Yes, two blocks from the Bridge, and for a henpecked husband you got
+a large fat job on your hands if you want to make another getaway
+to-night. This man Hinshaw shows 'em right in his house."
+
+"Brooklyn, of all places!"
+
+"Right-oh!"
+
+He snapped his fingers in a series of rapid clicks. "Ain't that the
+limit? If I'd only mentioned it to you this afternoon earlier, we could
+have been over and back by now."
+
+"Wait until Monday then, Phonzie."
+
+"Yes, but you ought to have heard her this morning, Gert; it's not often
+she gets her heart so set. To-morrow being Sunday, all of a sudden she
+gets a-wishing for one of the glass-top ones like she's seen around in
+the parks, to take him out in for the first time."
+
+"Oh, I'm game! I'll go, but can you beat it! A trip to Brooklyn when I
+got a friend from Carson City waiting at his hotel to buy out Rector's
+for me to-night."
+
+"You go on with him, Gert. What's the use you dragging over there, too,
+now that you got the address for me. I would never have mentioned it to
+you at all if I'd have known you couldn't just go buy the kind she wants
+in any department store. I'll go over there alone, Gert."
+
+"Yes, and get stung on the shape and the hood and all. I bought just an
+ordinary one for my little niece once, and you got to get them shallow.
+Anyways, I'm going to chip in half on this. I want to get the little
+devil something, anyways."
+
+"Aw no, Gert, this is my surprise."
+
+"I guess I can chip in on a present for the kid's month-old birthday."
+
+"Well, then, say I meet you in the Eighty-sixth Street Subway at seven,
+so we can catch a Brooklyn express and make it over in thirty minutes."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But it's raining, Gert. Look out. Honest, I don't like to ask you to
+break your date to hike over there in the rain with me."
+
+"Raining! Aw, then let's cut it, Phonzie. I got a new marcel and a
+cold on my chest that weighs a ton. She can't roll it on a wet Sunday,
+nohow."
+
+"Paper says clear and warm to-morrow, Gert; but, honest, you don't need
+to go."
+
+"You're a nice boy, Phonzie, and a proud father, but you can't spend my
+money for me. What you bet I get ten per cent. off for cash? Subway at
+seven. I'll be there."
+
+"I may be a bit late, Gert. She ain't so strong yet, and after last
+night I don't want to get her nervous."
+
+"I told you she'd be sore at me for taking you to the Ritz ball
+last night, and God knows it wasn't no pleasure in my life to go
+model-hunting with you, when I might have been joy-riding with my friend
+from Carson City."
+
+"It's just because she ain't herself yet. I'm off, Gert. Till seven in
+the Subway!"
+
+"Yes, till seven!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mr. Alphonse Michelson unlocked the door of his second-floor
+five-room apartment, a lamp softly burning through a yellow silk
+lamp-shade met him with the soft radiance of home. Beside the door he
+divested himself of his rain-spotted mackintosh, inserted his dripping
+umbrella in a tall china stand, shook a little rivulet from his hat and
+hung it on a pair of wall antlers.
+
+"That you, Phonzie?"
+
+"Yes, hon, it's me."
+
+'"Sh-h-h-h!"
+
+He tiptoed down the aisle of hallway and into the soft-lighted front
+room. From a mound of pillows and sleepy from their luxury Millie Moores
+rose to his approach, her forefinger placed across her lips and a pale
+mist of chiffon falling backward from her arms.
+
+What a masseuse is Love! The lines had faded from Millie's face and in
+their place the grace of tenderness and a roundness where the chin had
+softened. Years had folded back like petals, revealing the heart and the
+unwithered bosom of her.
+
+He kissed her, pressing the finger of warning closer against her lips,
+and she patted a place for him on the Mexican afghan beside her.
+
+"Phonzie!"
+
+"How you feelin', hon?"
+
+"Strong! If it ain't raining to-morrow, I'm going to take him out if
+I have to carry him in my arms. Say, wouldn't I like to feel myself
+rolling him in one of them white-enamel, glass-top things like Van Ness
+has for her last one. Ida May tried three places to get one for us."
+
+"They're made special."
+
+"All my life I've wanted to feel myself wheeling him, Phonzie. I used to
+dream myself doing it in the old place down on Twenty-third Street,
+when I used to sit at the sewing-table from eight until eight. Gee!
+I--honest, I just can't wait to see if the sun is shining to-morrow."
+
+He kissed her again on the back of each finger, and she let her hand,
+pale and rather inert, rest on his hair.
+
+"Is my boy hungry for his din-din?"
+
+"Gee! yes! The noon appointments came so thick I had to send Eddie out
+to bring me a bite."
+
+"What kind of a day?"
+
+"Everything smooth but the designing-room. Gert done her best, but they
+don't take hold without you, hon. They can't even get in their heads
+that gold charmeuse idea Gert and I swiped at the Ritz last night."
+
+"Did you tell them I'll be back on the job next week, Phonzie?"
+
+"Nothing doing. You're going to stay right here, snug in your rug,
+another two weeks."
+
+"Rave on, hon, but I got the nurse engaged for Monday. How's the Van
+Norder wedding-dress coming?"
+
+"Great! That box train you drew up will float down the aisle after her
+like a white cobweb. It's a knock-out."
+
+"Say, won't I be glad to get back in harness!"
+
+"You got to take it slow, Mil."
+
+"And ain't you glad it's all over, Phonzie?"
+
+"Am I!"
+
+"Four weeks old to-morrow, and Ida May was over to-day and says she
+never seen a kid so big for his age."
+
+"He takes after my grandfather--he was six feet two without shoes."
+
+"You ought to seen him to-day laying next to me, Phonzie. He looked up
+and squinted, dear, for all the world like you."
+
+A bell tinkled. In the frame of a double doorway a seventeen-year-old
+maid drew back the portières on brass rings that grated. In the room
+adjoining and beneath a lighted dome of colored glass a table lay
+spread, uncovered dishes exuding fragrant spirals of steam.
+
+"Supper! Say, ain't it great to have you back at the table again, Mil?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, the way--the way you went hiking off last night
+to--to a ball."
+
+"Aw, now, hon, 'ain't you got that out of your system yet? For a girlie
+with all your good sense, if you ain't the greatest little one to get a
+silly gix and work it to death."
+
+"I just made a civil remark."
+
+"What was the use wasting that ten-dollar pair of tickets the guy from
+Carson City gave her, when we could use them and get some tips on some
+of the imports the women wore?"
+
+"I never said to waste them."
+
+"You know it don't hurt to get around and see what's being worn, hon.
+That's our business."
+
+Tears of weakness welled to her eyes and she stooped over her plate to
+conceal them.
+
+"I'm not saying anything, am I? Only--only it's right lucky she can fill
+my place so--so well while I--I got to be away awhile."
+
+Her barbed comment only pricked him to happy thought. He made a quick
+foray into his side pocket. "I brought up one of these pink velvet roses
+for you to look at, Mil. It's Gert's idea to festoon these underneath
+the net tunic on McGrath's blue taffeta. See, like that. It's a neat
+little idea, hon, and Gert had these roses made up in shaded effects
+like this one. How you like it?"
+
+The tiny bud lay on the table between them, nor did she take it up.
+
+"All right."
+
+He leaned to pat her cheek. "These are swell potatoes, hon."
+
+Her lips warmed and opened. "I--I told her how to make 'em."
+
+"Give me some more."
+
+She in turn leaned to press his hand. "Such a hungry boy."
+
+"Can I take a peek at the kid before--"
+
+"Aw, Phonzie, and wake him up like you did last night. He'll sleep
+straight through now till half past twelve; that's why I didn't even
+tiptoe back in the bedroom myself. The doctor says the first half of the
+night is his best sleep; let him sleep till half past twelve, dear."
+
+"Aw, just one peek before I go."
+
+"Before you what?"
+
+"I got to go out for a little while to-night, hon. On business."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Slews. I got to meet him in the Subway at seven and go to Brooklyn
+shops with him to look over those ventilators I'm having put in the
+fitting-rooms."
+
+She laid down her fork. "I thought you said he was in St. Louis?"
+
+"He got back."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"You lay down in the front room and read till I get back, hon, and
+maybe--maybe I'll bring you a surprise."
+
+The meal continued in silence, but after a few seconds her throat seemed
+to close and she discarded the pretense of eating.
+
+"Now don't you get sore, Mil; you never used to be like this. It's just
+because you're not right strong yet."
+
+"I ain't--ain't sore."
+
+"You are. You got a foolish idea in your head, Mil."
+
+"Why should I have an idea? I guess I'm getting all that's coming to me
+for--for forcing things."
+
+"Now, Mil, I bet anything you're still feeling sore about last night.
+Aren't you?"
+
+"Sore? It ain't my business, Phonzie, if you can stay out till one
+o'clock one night and the next want to begin the same thing over again."
+
+"We had to stick around last night, Mil. Gert was drawing off the models
+under her handkerchief and on the dance program. That's how we got the
+yellow charmeuse, just by keeping after it and drawing it line for
+line."
+
+"I know, I know."
+
+"Then give me a kiss and when I come back maybe--maybe I'll bring you a
+surprise up my sleeve, hon."
+
+She sat beside her cold meal, tears scratching her eyes like blown grit.
+"It's like I told you this morning, Phonzie; when you get tired, all
+you got to do is remember I got the new trunk standing right behind the
+cretonne curtains, and I can pack my duds any day in the week and find a
+welcome over at--at Ida May's."
+
+"Mil, ain't you ashamed!"
+
+"Why, I could pack up and--and find a welcome there right to-night, if
+the kid wasn't too little for the night air."
+
+"Mil, honest, I--I just don't know what to make of you. I--I've just
+lost my nerve about going now."
+
+"I'm not going to be the one to say stay."
+
+With his coat unhooked from the antlers and flung across his arm, he
+stood contemplating, a furrow of perplexity between his eyes.
+
+"If I--I hadn't promised--"
+
+"You go. I guess it won't be the last evening I spend alone."
+
+"Yes it will, hon."
+
+"I know, I know."
+
+He buttoned his coat and stooped over her, the smell of damp exuding
+from his clothes.
+
+"Just you lay down in the front room till I get back, Mil. Here, look at
+some of these new fashion books I brought home. I'll be back early, hon,
+and maybe wake you and the kid up with--with a surprise."
+
+"Quit!"
+
+"Just a French kiss, hon."
+
+She raised a cold face. He tilted her head backward and pressed his lips
+to hers, then went out, closing the door lightly behind him.
+
+For a breathing space she remained where he had left her, with her lips
+held in between her teeth and the sobbing breath fluttering in her
+throat. The pink rose lay on the table, its beautiful silk-velvet leaves
+concealing its cotton heart. She regarded it through a hot blur of tears
+that stung her eyeballs. Her throat grew tighter. Suddenly she sprang to
+her feet and to the hallway. A full-length coat hung from the antlers
+and a filmy scarf, carelessly flung. She slid into the coat, cramming
+the sleeves of her negligée in at the shoulders, wrapping the scarf
+about her head and knotting it at the throat in a hysteria of sudden
+decision. Then down the flight of stairs, her knees trembling as she
+ran. When she reached the bubbly sidewalk, cool rain slanted in her
+face. She gathered her strength and plunged against it.
+
+At the corner, in the white flare of an arc-light, chin sunk on his
+chest against the onslaught of rain, and head leading, Alphonse
+Michelson stepped across the shining sea of asphalt. She broke into
+a run, the uneven careen of the weak, keeping to the shadow of the
+buildings; doubling her pace.
+
+When he reached the hooded descent to the Subway, she was almost in his
+shadow; then cautiously after him down the iron stairs, and when he
+paused to buy his ticket, he might have touched her as she held herself
+taut against the wall and out of his vision. A passer-by glanced back at
+her twice. From the last landing of the stairway and leaning across the
+balustrade, she could follow him now with her eyes, through the iron
+gateway and on to the station platform.
+
+From behind a pillar, a hen pheasant's tail in her hat raising her above
+the crowd, her shoulders rain-spotted and a dripping umbrella held well
+away from her, emerged Gertie Dobriner, a reproach in her expression,
+but meeting him with a pantomime of laughs and sallies. A tangle of
+passengers closed them in. A train wild with speed tore into the
+station, grinding to a stop on shrieking wheels. A second later it tore
+out again, leaving the platform empty.
+
+Then Madam Moores turned her face to the rainswept street and retraced
+her steps, except that a vertigo fuddled her progress and twice she
+swayed. When she climbed the staircase to her apartment she was obliged
+to rest midway, sitting huddled against the banister, her soaked scarf
+fallen backward across her shoulders. She unlatched her door carefully,
+to save the squeak and to avoid the small maid who sang over and above
+the clatter of her dishes. The yellow lamp diffused its quiet light the
+length of the hallway, and she tottered down and into the bedroom at the
+far end.
+
+A night lamp burned beside a basinette that might have been lined with
+the breast feathers of a dove, so downy was it. An imitation-ivory clock
+ticked among a litter of imitation-ivory dresser fittings. On the edge
+of the bed, and with no thought for its lacy coverlet, she sat down
+heavily, her wet coat dragging it awry. An hour ticked past. The maid
+completed her tasks, announced her departure, and tiptoed out to meet an
+appointment with a gas-fitter's assistant in the lower rear hall.
+
+After a while Madam Moores fell to crying, but in long wheezes that came
+from her throat dry. The child in the crib uncurled a small, pink fist
+and opened his eyes, but with the gloss of sleep still across them and
+not forfeiting his dream. Still another hour and she rose, groping
+her way behind a chintz curtain at the far end of the room; fell to
+scattering and reassembling the contents of a trunk, stacking together
+her own garments and the tiny garments of a tiny white layette.
+
+Toward midnight she fell to crying again beside the crib, and in audible
+jerks and moans that racked her. The child stirred. Cramming her
+handkerchief against her lips, she faltered down the hallway. In the
+front room and on the pillowed couch she collapsed weakly, eyes closed
+and her grief-crumpled face turned toward the door.
+
+On the ground floor of a dim house in a dim street, which by the
+contrivance of its occupants had been converted from its original
+role of dark and sinister dining-room to wareroom for a dozen or more
+perambulators on high, rubber-tired wheels, Alphonse Michelson and
+Gertie Dobriner stood in conference with a dark-wrappered figure, her
+blue-checked apron wound muff fashion about her hands.
+
+Miss Dobriner tapped a finger against her too red lips. "Seventy dollars
+net for a baby-carriage!"
+
+"Yes'm, and a bargain at that. If he was home he'd show you the books
+hisself and the prices we get."
+
+"Seventy dollars for a baby-carriage! For that, Phonzie, you can buy the
+kid a taxi."
+
+In a sotto voice and with a flow of red suffusing his face, Alphonse
+Michelson turned to Gertie Dobriner, his hand curved blinker fashion to
+inclose his words.
+
+"For Gawd's sake, cut the haggling, Gert. If this here white enamel is
+the carriage we want, let's take it and hike. I got to get home."
+
+Miss Dobriner drew up her back to a feline arch. "The gentleman says
+we'll take it for sixty-five, spot cash."
+
+"My husband's great for one price, madam. We don't cater to none but
+private trade and--"
+
+"Sure you don't. If we could have got one of these glass-top carriages
+in a department store, we wouldn't be swimming over here to Brooklyn
+just to try out our stroke."
+
+"Mrs. Nan Ness, who sent you here, knows the kind of goods we turn out.
+She says she's going to give us an order for a twin buggy yet, some
+of these days. If the Four Hundred believed in babies like the Four
+Million, we'd have a plant all over Brooklyn. Only my husband won't
+spread, he--he--"
+
+Mr. Michelson waved aside the impending recitation with a sweep of his
+hand. "Is this the one you like, Gert?"
+
+"Yes, with the folding top. Say, don't I want to see madam's face when
+she sees it. And say, won't the kid be a scream, Phonzie, all nestled up
+in there like a honey bunch?"
+
+He slid his hand into his pocket, withdrawing a leather folder. "Here,
+we'll take this one with the folding top, but get us a fresh one out of
+stock."
+
+"We'll make you this carriage up, sir, just as you see it now."
+
+"Make it up! We've got to have it now. To-night!"
+
+"But, sir, we only got these samples made up to show."
+
+"Then we got to buy the sample."
+
+"No, no. My husband ain't home and I--I can't sell the sample. We--"
+
+"But I tell you we got to have it to-night. To-morrow's Sunday and the
+lady who--"
+
+"No, no. With my husband not here, I can't let go no sample. As a
+special favor, sir, we'll make you one up in a week."
+
+Miss Dobriner stooped forward, her eyes narrow as slits. "Seventy-five,
+spot down."
+
+Indecision vanished as rags before Abracadabra.
+
+"We make it a rule not to sell our samples, but--"
+
+"That carriage has got to be delivered at my house to-night before ten."
+
+"Sir, that can't go out to-night. It's got to be packed special and sent
+over on a flat-top dray. These carriages got to be packed like they was
+babies themselves."
+
+"Can you beat that for luck?" He inserted two fingers in his tall collar
+as if it choked him. "Can you beat that?"
+
+"The first thing Monday morning, sir, as a special favor, but that
+carriage can't go out to-night. We got one man does nothing but pack
+them for delivery."
+
+He plunged his hands into his pockets and paced the narrow aisle down
+the center of the room. "We got to get that carriage over there to-night
+if--if we have to wheel it over!"
+
+Miss Dobriner clapped her hands in an ecstasy of inspiration. "Good!
+We'll wheel it home. We can make it by midnight. What you bet?"
+
+He turned upon her, but with a ray in his eyes. "Say, Gert, that ain't
+such a worse idea, but--"
+
+"No buts. The night is young, and I know a fellow used to walk from the
+Bronx to Brooklyn with his girl every Sunday."
+
+"Sure! What's an eight-mile walk on a spring night like this? It's all
+cleared up and stopped raining. Only, gee! I--I hate to be getting home
+all hours again."
+
+She flipped him a gesture. "Say, it's not my surprise party you're
+giving."
+
+"It's not that, Gert, only I don't want to keep her waiting until she
+gets sore enough to have the edge taken off the surprise when it does
+come."
+
+"Say, suit yourself. It's not my kid I'm going to wheel out to-morrow. I
+should worry."
+
+"I'll do it."
+
+"You're not doing me a favor. With my cold and my marcel, a three-hour
+walk ain't the one thing in life I'm craving."
+
+"I'll roll it over the bridge and be home by twelve, easy. You take the
+Subway, Gert; it's too big a trot for you."
+
+"Nix! I don't start anything I can't finish."
+
+She cocked her hat to a forward angle, so that the hen pheasant's tail
+swung rakishly over her face, took an Hellenic stride through the aisle
+of perambulators, flung her arms across her bosom in an attitude of
+extravaganza, then tossed off a military salute.
+
+"Ready, march!"
+
+"You're a peach, Gert."
+
+"I've tried pretty near everything in my life. Why not wheel another
+fellow's baby-carriage for another fellow's wife's baby across Brooklyn
+Bridge at midnight? Whoops! why not!"
+
+"We're off, then, Gert."
+
+"Forward, march!"
+
+"Keep your eye on the steering-wheel, Phonzie, and remember, ten miles
+is speed limit on the Bridge. One, two, three! Gawd! if my friend from
+Carson City could only see me now!"
+
+Out on the drying sidewalk they leaned to each other, and the duet of
+their merriment ran ahead of them down the meager street and found out
+its dark corners.
+
+"Honest, Phonzie, won't the girls just bust when they hear this!"
+
+"And Mil, poor old girl, she's right weak and full of nerves now, but
+she'll laugh loudest of all when she knows why I went with Slews."
+
+"Yes. She-can-laugh-loudest-of-all."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Come on, or we won't get home until morning."
+
+And on the crest of her insouciance she thrust out her arm, giving the
+shining white perambulator a running push from the rear, so that it went
+rolling lightly from her and with a perfect gear action down the slight
+incline of sidewalk. They were after it at a bound, light-heeled and
+full of laughter.
+
+"Whoops, my dear!"
+
+"Whoa!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a turn in the dark street the lights of the Bridge flashed suddenly
+upon them, swung in high festoons across an infinitude of night. Above,
+a few majestic stars, new coined, gleamed in a clear sky.
+
+"What do you bet that with me at the wheel we can clear the Bridge in
+thirty minutes, Phonzie?"
+
+"Sure we can; but here, let me shove."
+
+She elbowed him aside, the banter gone suddenly from her voice.
+
+"No, let me."
+
+She fell to pushing it silently along. Stars came out in her eyes. He
+advanced to her pace, matching his stride to hers, fancies like colored
+beads slipping along the slender thread of his thoughts.
+
+"Swell sight, ain't it, Gert, the harbor lights so bright and the sky so
+deep?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Seeing so much sky all at once reminds me, Gert. You know about that
+midnight--blue satin Hertz had the brass to dump back on us because the
+skirt was too tight. Huh?"
+
+Her eyes were far and away.
+
+"Huh, whatta you know about that, Gert?"
+
+Her hands, gripped around the handle-bars, were full of nerves; she
+could feel them jumping in her palm.
+
+"Huh, Gert?"
+
+"What you say, Phonzie?"
+
+"All right, don't answer. Moon all you like, for my part." And he fell
+to whistling as he strode beside her, his eyes on the light-spangled
+outline of the city.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At twelve o'clock the lights in the lower hall of the up-town
+apartment-house had been extinguished. All but one, which burned like
+a tired eye beneath the ornate staircase. The misty quiet of midnight,
+which is as heavy as a veil, hung in the corridors. Miss Gertie Dobriner
+entered first and, holding wide the door between them, Alphonse
+Michelson at the front wheels, they tilted the white carriage up the
+narrow staircase, their whispers floating through the gloom.
+
+"Easy there, Phonzie!"
+
+"There!"
+
+"Watch out!"
+
+"Whew! that was a close shave!"
+
+"Here, let me unlock the door. 'Sh-h-h!"
+
+"Don't go, Gert. Come on in, and after the big show I'll send you home
+in a cab."
+
+"Nix! After a three-hour walk, a street-car will look good enough to
+me."
+
+"Well, then, come on in, just a minute, Gert. I want you to see the fun.
+What you bet she's asleep in the front room, sore as thunder, too? We'll
+sneak back and dump the kid in and wheel him in on her."
+
+"Aw no! I--I got to go now, Phonzie."
+
+"Come on, Gert, don't be a quitter. Don't you want to see her face when
+she knows that Slews has been all a fluke? Come on, Gert, I'll wake up
+the kid if I try to dump him in alone."
+
+"Well, for just a minute. I--I don't want to butt in on your and--and
+her fun."
+
+They entered with the stealthy espionage of thieves, and in the narrow
+hallway she waited while he tiptoed to the bedroom and back again, his
+lips pursed outward in a "'Sh-h-h."
+
+"She must be in the front room. The kid's in his crib. Come on, Gert.
+'Sh-h-h!"
+
+He was pink-faced and full of caution, raising each foot in exaggerated
+stealth. Between them they manoeuvered the carriage down the hallway.
+
+"'Sh-h-h. If she's awake, she can hear every word in the front room."
+
+From her wakeful couch Madam Moores raised herself on her elbow, cupping
+her ear in her palm, and straining her glance down the long hallway. The
+tears had dried on her cheeks.
+
+"Here, Gert, you dump in these things and let me lift the kid."
+
+"No, no; let me! Go 'way, Phonzie. You'll wake him! I just want her to
+be too surprised to open her mouth when she sees him sleeping in it like
+a top."
+
+She threw back the net drapery and leaned to the heart of the crib, and
+the blood ran in a flash across her face.
+
+"Little darling--little Phonzie darling!"
+
+"Don't wake him, Gert."
+
+She was reluctant to withdraw herself. "His little darling fists, so
+pink and curled up! Little Phonzie darling!"
+
+He hung over each process, proud and awkward.
+
+"Little darling--little darling--here, Phonzie help."
+
+They transferred the burden, the child not moving on his pillow. In the
+shallow heart of the perambulator, the high froth of pillows about him,
+he lay like a bud, his soft profile against the lace, and his skin like
+the innermost petal of a rose.
+
+"Phonzie, ain't he--ain't he the softest little darling! Gawd! how--how
+she'll love to--to be wheeling him!"
+
+His fingers fumbled with excitement and fell to strapping and buckling
+with a great show and a great ineffectually.
+
+"Here, help me let down the glass top."
+
+"'Sh-h-h-h! Every word carries in this flat."
+
+"Now!"
+
+"Now!"
+
+"You wheel him down and in on her, Gert."
+
+She stiffened with a new diffidence. "No, no. It's your surprise."
+
+"You done all the work on the job as much as me, and it's half your
+present, anyways. You roll him down the hall and stand next to her till
+she wakes up. She's a tight little sleeper, but if she don't wake soon
+I'll drop a book or something. Go on, Gert, roll it in."
+
+"No, no, Phonzie. You and her have your fun out alone. It's your fun,
+anyways, not mine. This piece of rolling-stock will roll herself along
+home now."
+
+"Aw, now--"
+
+"Anyways, I'm dead. Look what a rag I am! Look at the hem of this skirt!
+The next time I do a crazy thing like walk from Brooklyn, I want to be
+burned in oil."
+
+"Now, Gert, stick around and I'll send you home in a cab."
+
+But she was out and past him craning her neck backward through the
+aperture of the open door. "Go to it, Phonzie! It's your fun, anyways.
+Yours and hers. S'long!"
+
+He had already begun his triumphant passage down the hallway, and on her
+couch among her pillows Madam Moores closed her eyes in a simulation of
+sleep and against the tears that scalded her lids.
+
+In a south-bound car Gertie Dobriner found a seat well toward the front.
+Across the aisle a day laborer on a night debauch threw her a watery
+stare and a thick-tongued, thick-brogued remark. A char-woman with a
+newspaper bundle hugged under one arm dozed in the seat alongside, her
+head lolling from shoulder to shoulder. Raindrops had long since dried
+on the window-pane. Gertie Dobriner cupped her chin in her palm and
+gazed out at the quiet street and the shuttered shops hurtling past.
+
+Twice the conductor touched her shoulder, his hand outstretched for
+fare. She sprang about, fumbling in her purse for a coin, but with
+difficulty, because through the hot blur of her tears she could only
+grope ineffectually. When she finally found a five-cent piece, a tear
+had wiggle-waggled down her cheek and fell, splotching the back of her
+glove.
+
+Across the aisle the day laborer leaned to her batting at the hen
+pheasant's tail in her hat, and a cold, alcoholic tear dripping from the
+corner of his own eye.
+
+"Cheer up, my gir-rl," he said, through a beard like old moss--"cheer up
+and be a spor-r-rt!"
+
+
+
+
+HOCHENHEIMER OF CINCINNATI
+
+
+When Mound City began to experience the growing-pains of a Million Club,
+a Louisiana Exposition, and a block-long Public Library, she spread
+Westward Ho!--like a giant stretching and flinging out his great legs.
+
+When rooming-houses and shoe-factories began to shove and push into
+richly curtained brown-stone-front Pine Street, reluctant papas, with
+urgent wives and still more urgent daughters, sold at a loss and bought
+white-stone fronts in restricted West End districts.
+
+Subdivisions sprang up overnight. Two-story, two-doored flat-buildings,
+whole ranks and files of them, with square patches of front porch cut in
+two by dividing railings, marched westward and skirted the restricted
+districts with the formality of an army flanking. Grand Avenue, once the
+city's limit, now girded its middle like a loin-cloth. The middle-aged
+inhabitant who could remember it when it was a corn-field now
+beheld full-blasted breweries, cinematograph theaters, ten-story
+office-buildings, old mansions converted into piano-salesrooms and
+millinery emporiums, business colleges, and more full-blasted breweries
+up and down its length.
+
+At Cook Street, which runs into Grand Avenue like a small tributary, a
+pall of smoke descended thick as a veil; and every morning, from off
+her second-story window-sills, Mrs. Shongut swept tiny dancing balls
+of soot; and one day Miss Rena Shongut's neat rim of tenderly tended
+geraniums died of suffocation.
+
+Shortly after, the Adolph Shongut Produce Company signed a heavy note
+and bought out the Mound City Fancy Sausage and Poultry Company at a
+low figure. The spring following, large "To Let" signs appeared in the
+second-story windows of the modest house on Cook Street. And, hard
+pressed by the approaching first payment of the note and the great iron
+voice of the Middle West Shoe Company, which backed up against the
+woodshed; goaded by the no-less-insistent voice of Mrs. Shongut, whose
+soot balls increased, and by Rena, who developed large pores; shamed by
+the scorn of a son who had the finger-nails and trousers creases of a
+bank clerk--Adolph Shongut joined the great pantechnicon procession
+Westward Ho! and moved to a flat out on Wasserman Avenue--a
+six-room-and-bath, sleeping-porch, hot-and-cold-water,
+built-in-plate-rack, steam-heat, hardwood-floor,
+decorated-to-suit-tenant flat neatly mounted behind a conservative
+incline of a front terrace, with a square patch of rear lawn that backed
+imminently into the white-stone garages of Kingston Place.
+
+Friedrichstrasse, Rue de la Paix, Fifth Avenue, Piccadilly, Princess
+Street and Via Nazionale are the highways of the world. Trod in
+literature, asterisked in guide-books, and pictured on postal cards,
+their habits are celebrated. Who does not know that Fifth Avenue is the
+most rococo boulevard in the world, and that it drinks its afternoon tea
+from etched, thin-stemmed glasses? Who does not know that Rue de la Paix
+runs through more novels than any other paved thoroughfare, and that
+Piccadilly bobbies have wider chest expansion than the Swiss Guards?
+
+Wasserman Avenue has no such renown; but it has its routine, like the
+history-hoary Via Nazionale, which daily closes its souvenir-shops to
+seek siesta from two until four, the hours when American tourists are
+rattling in sight-seeing automobiles along the Appian Way.
+
+At half past seven, six mornings in the week, a well-breakfasted
+procession, morning papers protruding from sack-coat pockets and
+toothpicks assiduous, hastens down the well-scrubbed front steps
+of Wasserman Avenue and turns its face toward the sun and the
+two-blocks-distant street-car. At half past seven, six days in the week,
+the wives of Wasserman Avenue hold their wrappers close up about
+their throats and poke uncoifed heads out of doors to Godspeed their
+well-breakfasted spouses.
+
+Wasserman Avenue flutters farewell handkerchiefs to its husbands until
+they turn the corner at Rindley's West End Meat and Vegetable Market.
+At eventide Wasserman Avenue greets its husbands with kisses, frankly
+delivered on its rows of front porches.
+
+Do not smile. Gautier wrote about the consolation of the arts; but,
+after all, he has little enough to say of that cold moment when art
+leaves off and heart turns to heart.
+
+Most of Wasserman Avenue had never read much of Gautier, but it knew the
+greater truth of the consolation of the hearth. When Mrs. Shongut waved
+farewell to her husband that greater truth lay mirrored in her eyes,
+which followed him until Rindley's West End Meat and Vegetable Market
+shunted him from view.
+
+"Mamma, come in and close the screen door--you look a sight in that
+wrapper."
+
+Mrs. Shongut withdrew herself from the aperture and turned to the
+sunshine-flooded, mahogany-and-green-velours sitting-room.
+
+"You think that papa seems so well, Renie? At breakfast this morning he
+looked so bad underneath his eyes."
+
+Rena yawned in her rocking-chair and rustled the morning paper. The
+horrific caprice of her pores had long since succumbed to the West End
+balm of Wasserman Avenue. No rajah's seventh daughter of a seventh
+daughter had cheeks more delicately golden--that fine tinge which is
+like the glory of sunlight.
+
+"Now begin, mamma, to find something to worry about! For two months he
+hasn't had a heart spell."
+
+Mrs. Shongut drew a thin-veined hand across her brow. Her narrow
+shoulders, which were never held straight, dropped even lower, as though
+from pressure.
+
+"He don't say much, but I know he worries enough about that second
+payment coming due in July and only a month and a half off. I tell you
+I knew what I was talking about when I never wanted him to buy out
+the Mound City. I was the one who said we was doing better in little
+business."
+
+"Now begin, mamma!"
+
+"I told him he couldn't count on Izzy to stay down in the business with
+him. I told him Izzy wouldn't spoil his white hands by helping his papa
+in business."
+
+"I suppose, mamma, you think Izzy should have stayed down with papa when
+he could get that job with Uncle Isadore."
+
+"You know why your Uncle Isadore took Izzy? Because to a strange
+bookkeeper he has to pay more. Your Uncle Isadore is my own brother,
+Renie, but I tell you he 'ain't never acted like it."
+
+"That's what I say. What have we got rich relatives with a banking-house
+for, if Izzy can't start there instead of in papa's little business?"
+
+"Ya, ya! What your Uncle Isadore does for Izzy wait and see. For his own
+sister he never done nothing, and for his own sister's son he don't do
+nothing, neither. You seen for yourself, if it was not for Aunt Becky
+begging him nearly on her knees, how he would have treated us that time
+with the mortgage. Better, I say, Izzy should stay with his papa in
+business or get out West like he wants, and where he can't keep such
+fine white hands to gamble with."
+
+Miss Shongut slanted deeper until her slim body was a direct hypotenuse
+to the chair. "Honest, mamma, it's a shame the way you look for trouble,
+and the way you and papa pick on that boy."
+
+"Pick! When a boy gambles the roulette and the cards and the horses
+until--"
+
+"When a boy likes cards and horses and roulette it isn't so nice, I
+know, mamma; but it don't need to mean he's a born gambler, does it?
+Boys have got to sow their wild oats."
+
+"Ya, ya! Wild oats! A boy that gambles away his last cent when he knows
+just the least bit of excitement his father can't stand! Izzy knows how
+it goes against his father when he plays. Ya, ya! I don't need to look
+for trouble; I got it. Your papa, with his heart trouble, is enough by
+itself."
+
+"Well, we're all careful, ain't we, mamma? Did I even holler the other
+night when I thought I heard a burglar in the dining-room?"
+
+"Ya! How I worry about the things you should know." Mrs. Shongut flung
+wide the windows and pinned back the lace curtains, so that the spring
+air, cool as water, flowed in.
+
+Her daughter sprang to her feet and drew her filmy wrapper closer about
+her. "Mamma, the Solingers don't need to look right in on us from their
+dining-room."
+
+"Say, I 'ain't got no time to be stylish for the neighbors. On wash-day
+I got my housework to do. Honest, Renie, do you think, instead of laying
+round, it would hurt you to go back and make the beds awhile? Do you
+think a girl like you ought to got to be told, on wash-day and with
+Lizzie in the laundry, to help a little with the housework? Do you
+think, Renie, it's nice? I ask you."
+
+"It's early yet, mamma; the housework will keep."
+
+"Early yet, she says! On Monday, with my girl in the laundry and you
+with five shirtwaists in the wash, it's early, she says! Your mother
+ain't too lazy to start now, lemme tell you. Get them Kingston Place
+ideas out of your head, Renie. Remember we don't do nothing but look out
+on their fine white garages; remember business ain't so grand with your
+papa, neither."
+
+"Now begin that, mamma! I know it all by heart."
+
+"I ain't beginning nothing, Renie; but, believe me, it ain't so nice for
+a girl to have to be told everything. How that little Jeannie Lissman,
+next door, helps her mother already, it's a pleasure to see. I--"
+
+"You've told me about her before, mamma."
+
+Mrs. Shongut flung a sheet across the upright piano.
+
+"Gimme the broom, mamma. I'll sweep."
+
+"Sweep I never said you need to do. It's bad enough I got to spoil my
+hands. Go back and wake Izzy up and make the beds."
+
+"Aw, mamma, let him sleep. He don't have to be down until nine."
+
+"Nine o'clock nowadays young men have got to work! Up to five years ago
+every morning at dark your papa was down-town to see the poultry come
+in, and now at eight o'clock my son can't be woke up to go to work.
+Honest, I tell you times is changed!"
+
+"Mamma, the way you pick on that boy!"
+
+Mrs. Shongut folded both hands atop her broom in a solemn and hieratic
+gesture; her face was full of lines, as though time had autographed it
+many times over in a fine hand.
+
+"Can you blame me? Can you blame me that I worry about that boy, with
+his wild ways? That a boy like him should gamble away every cent of
+his salary, except when he wins a little and buys us such nonsenses as
+bracelets! That a boy who learnt bookkeeping in an expensive business
+school, and knows that with his papa business ain't so good, shouldn't
+offer to pay out of his salary a little board! I tell you, Renie, as he
+goes now, it can't lead to no good; sometimes I would do almost anything
+to get him out West. Not a cent does he offer to--"
+
+"He only makes--"
+
+"You know, Renie, how little I want his money; but that he shouldn't
+offer to help out at home a little--that every cent on cards and clothes
+he should spend! I ask you, is it any reason him and his papa got scenes
+together until for the neighbors I'm ashamed, and for papa's heart so
+afraid? That a fine boy like our Izzy should run so wild!"
+
+Tears lay close to the surface of her voice, and she created a sudden
+flurry of dust, sweeping with short, swift strokes.
+
+"Izzy's not so worse! Give me a boy like Izzy any time, to a
+mollycoddle. He's just throwing off steam now."
+
+"Just take up with your wild brother against your old parents! Your
+papa's a young man, with no heart trouble and lots of money; he can
+afford to have a card-playing son what has to have second breakfast
+alone every morning! Just you side with your brother!"
+
+Miss Shongut side-stepped the furniture, which in the panicky confusion
+of sweeping was huddled toward the center of the room, and through a
+cloud of dust to the door.
+
+"Every time I open my mouth in this family I put my foot in it. I should
+worry about what isn't my business!"
+
+"Well, one thing I can say, me and papa never need to reproach ourselves
+that we 'ain't done the right thing by our children."
+
+"Clean sheets, mamma?"
+
+"Yes; and don't muss up the linen-shelfs."
+
+Her daughter flitted down a narrow aisle of hallway; from the shoulders
+her thin, flowing sleeves floated backward, filmy, white.
+
+Mrs. Shongut flung open the screen door and swept a pile of webby dust
+to the porch and then off on the patch of grass.
+
+Thin spring sunshine lay warm along the neat terraces of Wasserman
+Avenue. Windows were flung wide to the fresh kiss of spring; pillows,
+comforters, and rugs draped across their sills. Across the street a
+negro, with an old gunny-sack tied apron-fashion about his loins, turned
+a garden hose on a stretch of asphalt and swept away the flood with his
+broom. A woman, whose hair caught the sunlight like copper, avoided the
+flood and tilted a perambulator on its two rear wheels down the wooden
+steps of her veranda.
+
+Across the dividing rail of the Shonguts' porch a child with a strap of
+school-books flung over one shoulder ran down the soft terrace, and a
+woman emerged after her to the topmost step of the veranda, holding her
+checked apron up about her waist and shielding her eyes with one hand.
+
+"Jeannie! Jean-nie!"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Watch out for the street-car crossing, Jeannie."
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+"Jean-nie!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Be sure!"
+
+"Yeh."
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Shongut."
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Lissman. Looks like spring!"
+
+"Ain't it so? I say to Mr. Lissman this morning, before he went
+down-town, that he should bring home some grass seed to-night."
+
+"Ya, ya! Before you know it now, we got hot summer after such a late
+spring."
+
+"I say to my Roscoe that after school to-day he should bring up the
+rubber-plant out of the cellar."
+
+"That's right; use 'em while they're young, Mrs. Lissman. When they grow
+up it's different."
+
+"Mrs. Shongut, you should talk! Only last night I says to my husband, I
+says, when I seen Miss Renie pass by, 'Such a pretty girl!' I tell you,
+Mrs. Shongut, such a pretty girl and such a fine-looking boy you can be
+proud of."
+
+"Ach, Mrs. Lissman, you think so?"
+
+"There ain't one on the street any prettier than Miss Renie. 'I tell
+you, if my Roscoe was ten years older she could have him,' I says to my
+husband."
+
+Mrs. Shongut leaned forward on her broom-handle. "If I say so myself,
+Mrs. Lissman, I got good reasons to have pleasure out of my children.
+I guess you heard, Mrs. Lissman, what a grand position my Izzy has got
+with his uncle, of the Isadore Flexner Banking-house. Bookkeeping in a
+banking-house, Mrs. Lissman, for a boy like Izzy!"
+
+"I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, if you got rich relations it's a help."
+
+"How grand my brother has done for himself, Mrs. Lissman! Such a house
+he has built on Kingston Place! Such a home! You can see for yourself,
+Mrs. Lissman, how his wife and daughters drive up sometimes in their
+automobile."
+
+"I'm surprised they don't come more often, Mrs. Shongut; your Renie and
+them girls, I guess, are grand friends."
+
+"Ya; and to be in that banking-house is a grand start for my boy. I
+always say it can lead to almost anything. Only I tell him he shouldn't
+let fine company make him wild."
+
+"Ach, boys will be boys, Mrs. Shongut. Even now it ain't so easy for
+me to get make my Roscoe to come in off his roller-skates at night. My
+Jeannie I can make mind; but I tell her when she is old enough to have
+beaus, then our troubles begin with her."
+
+Mrs. Shongut's voice dropped into her throat in the guise of a whisper.
+"Some time, Mrs. Lissman, when my Renie ain't home, I want you should
+come over and I read you some of the letters that girl gets from young
+men. So mad she always gets at me if she knows I talk about them."
+
+"Mrs. Shongut, you'll laugh when I tell you; but already in the school
+my Jeannie gets little notes what the little boys write to her. Mad it
+makes me like anything; but what can you do when you got a pretty girl?"
+
+"A young man in Peoria, Mrs. Lissman, such beautiful letters he writes
+Renie, never in my life did I read. Such language, Mrs. Lissman; just
+like out of a song-book! Not a time my Renie goes out that I don't go
+right to her desk to read 'em--that's how beautiful he writes. In Green
+Springs she met him."
+
+"Ain't it a pleasure, Mrs. Shongut, to have grand letters like that?
+Even with my little Jeannie, though it makes me so mad, still I--"
+
+"But do you think my Renie will have any of them? 'Not,' she says, 'if
+they was lined in gold.'"
+
+"I guess she got plenty beaus. Say, I ain't so blind that I don't see
+Sollie Spitz on your porch every--"
+
+"Sollie Spitz! Ach, Mrs. Lissman, believe me, there's nothing to that!
+My Renie since a little child likes reading and writing like he does.
+I tell her papa we made a mistake not to keep her in school like she
+wanted."
+
+"My Jeannie--"
+
+"She loves learning, that girl. Under her pillow yesterday I found a
+book of verses about flowers. Where she gets such a mind, Mrs. Lissman,
+I don't know. But Sollie Spitz! Say, we don't want no poets in the
+family."
+
+"I should say not! But I guess she gets all the good chances she wants."
+
+"And more. A young man from Cincinnati--if I tell you his name, right
+away you know him--twice her papa brought him out to supper after they
+had business down-town together--only twice; and now every week he sends
+her five pounds--"
+
+"Just think!"
+
+"And such roses, Mrs. Lissman! You seen for yourself when I sent you one
+the other day. Right in his own hothouse he grows 'em, Mrs. Lissman."
+
+"Just think!"
+
+"If I tell you his name, Mrs. Lissman, right away you know his firm. In
+Cincinnati they say he's got the finest house up on the hill--musical
+chairs, that play when you sit on 'em. Twice every week he sends her--"
+
+"Grand!"
+
+"'I tell you,' I says to her papa, 'her cousins over in Kingston Place
+got tickets to take the young men to theaters with and automobiles to
+ride them round in; but, if I say so myself, not one of them has better
+chances than my Renie, right here in our little flat.'"
+
+Mrs. Lissman folded her arms in a shelf across her bosom and leaned her
+ample uncorseted figure against the railing. "I give you right, Mrs.
+Shongut. Look at Jeannette Bamberger, over on Kingston; every night when
+me and Mr. Lissman used to walk past last summer, right on her grand
+front porch that girl sat alone, like she was glued."
+
+"I know."
+
+"Then look at Birdie Schimm, across the street. Her mother a poor widow
+who keeps a roomer, and look how her girl did for herself! Down at
+Rindley's this morning nothing was fine enough for that Birdie to buy
+for her table. I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, money ain't everything in this
+world."
+
+"I always tell Renie she can take her place with the best of them."
+
+"Washing?"
+
+"An hour already my Lizzie has been down in the laundry."
+
+"Half a day I take Addie to help with the ironing."
+
+"You should watch her, Mrs. Lissman; she steals soap."
+
+"They're all alike."
+
+"Ah, the mailman. Always in my family no one gets letters but my Renie.
+Look, Mrs. Lissman! What did I tell you? Another one from Cincinnati.
+Renie! Renie!" Mrs. Shongut bustled indoors, leaving her broom indolent
+against the porch pillar. "Renie!"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"Letter!" Feet hurrying down the hall. "Letter from Cincinnati, Renie."
+
+"Mamma, do you have to read the postmarks off my letters? I can read my
+own mail without any help."
+
+"How she sasses her mother! Say, for my part, I should worry if you
+get letters or not. A girl that is afraid to give her mother a little
+pleasure!"
+
+Mrs. Shongut made a great show of dragging the room's furniture back
+into place; unpinning the lace curtains and draping them carefully
+in their folds; drawing chairs across the carpet until the casters
+squealed; uncovering the piano. At the business of dusting the
+mantelpiece she lingered, stealing furtive glances through its mirror.
+
+Miss Shongut ripped open the letter with a hairpin and curled her supple
+figure in a roomy curve of the divan. Her hair, unloosened, fell in a
+thick, black cascade down her back.
+
+Mrs. Shongut redusted the mantel, raising each piece of bric-a-brac
+carefully; ran her cloth across the piano keys, giving out a discord;
+straightened the piano cover; repolished the mantelpiece mirror.
+
+Her daughter read, blew the envelope open at its ripped end and inserted
+the letter. Her eyes, gray as dawn, met her mother's.
+
+"Well, Renie, is--is he well?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"You're afraid, I guess, it gives me a little pleasure if I know what he
+has to say. A girl gets a letter from a man like Max Hochenheimer, of
+Cincinnati, and sits like a funeral!"
+
+Rena unfolded herself from the divan and slid to her feet, slim as a
+sibyl.
+
+"I knew it!"
+
+"Knew what?"
+
+"He's coming!"
+
+"Coming? What?"
+
+"He left Cincinnati last night and gets here this morning."
+
+"This morning!"
+
+"He comes on business, he says. And at five o'clock he stops in at the
+store and comes home to supper with papa."
+
+"Supper--and a regular wash-day meal I got! Tongue sweet-sour, and red
+cabbage! Renie, get on your things and--"
+
+"Honest, if it wasn't too late I would telegraph him I ain't home."
+
+"Get on your things, Renie, and go right down to Rindley's for a roast.
+If you telephone they don't give you weight. This afternoon I go myself
+for the vegetables." Excitement purred in Mrs. Shongut's voice. "Hurry,
+Renie!"
+
+"I'll get Izzy to take me out to supper and to a show."
+
+"Get on your things, I say, Renie. I'll call Lizzie up-stairs too; we
+don't need no wash-day, with company for supper. Honest, excited like a
+chicken I get. Hurry, Renie!"
+
+Miss Shongut stood quiescent, however, gazing through the lace curtains
+at the sun-lashed terrace, still soft from the ravages of winter and
+only faintly green. A flush spread to the tips of her delicate ears.
+
+"Izzy's got to take me out to supper and a show. I won't stay home."
+
+"Renie, you lost your mind? You! A young man like Max Hochenheimer
+begins to pay you attentions in earnest--a man that could have any girl
+in this town he snaps his finger for--a young man what your stuck-up
+cousins over on Kingston would grab at! You--you--Ach, to a man like Max
+Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, she wants to say she ain't home yet!"
+
+"Him! An old fatty like him! Izzy calls him Old Squash! Izzy says he's
+the only live Cartoon in captivity."
+
+"Izzy--always Izzy! Believe me, your brother could do better than layin'
+in bed at eight o'clock in the morning, to copy after Max Hochenheimer."
+
+"Always running down Izzy! Money ain't everything. I--I like other
+things in a man besides money--always money."
+
+"Believe me, he has plenty besides money, has Max Hochenheimer. He
+'ain't got no time maybe for silk socks and pressed pants, but for a
+fine good man your papa says he 'ain't got no equal. Your brother Izzy,
+I tell you, could do well to mock after Max Hochenheimer--a man what
+made hisself; a man what built up for hisself in Cincinnati a business
+in country sausages that is known all over the world."
+
+"Country sausages!"
+
+"No; he 'ain't got no time for rhymes like that long-haired Sollie
+Spitz, that ain't worth his house-room and sits until by the nightshirt
+I got to hold papa back from going out and telling him we 'ain't got no
+hotel! Max Hochenheimer is a man what's in a legitimate business."
+
+"Please, mamma, keep quiet about him. I don't care if he--"
+
+"I tell you the poultry and the sausage business maybe ain't up to your
+fine ideas; but believe me, the poultry business will keep you in shoes
+and stockings when in the poetry business you can go barefoot."
+
+"All right, mamma; I won't argue."
+
+"Your papa has had enough business with Max Hochenheimer to know what
+kind of a man he is and what kind of a firm. Such a grand man to deal
+with, papa says. Plain as a old shoe--just like he was a salesman
+instead of the president of his firm. A poor boy he started, and now
+such a house they say he built for his mother in Avondale on the hill!
+Squashy! I only wish for a month our Izzy had his income."
+
+"I wouldn't marry him if--"
+
+"Don't be so quick with yourself, missy. Just because he comes here on
+a day's business and then comes out to supper with papa don't mean so
+much."
+
+"Don't it? Well, then, if you know more about what's in this letter than
+I do, I've got no more to say."
+
+Mrs. Shongut sat down as though the power to stand had suddenly deserted
+her limbs. "What--what do you mean, Renie?"
+
+"I'm not so dumb that I--I don't know what a fellow means by a letter
+like this."
+
+"Renie!" The lines seemed to fade out of Mrs. Shongut's face, softening
+it. "Renie! My little Renie!"
+
+"You don't need to my-little-Renie me, mamma; I--"
+
+"Renie, I can't believe it--that such luck should come to us. A man
+like Max Hochenheimer, of Cincinnati, who can give her the greatest
+happiness, comes for our little girl--"
+
+"I--"
+
+"Always like me and papa had to struggle, Renie, in money matters you
+won't have to. I tell you, Renie, nothing makes a woman old so soon.
+Like a queen you can sit back in your automobile. Always a man what's
+good to his mother, like Max Hochenheimer, makes, too, a grand husband.
+I want, Renie, to see your Aunt Becky's and your cousins' faces at the
+reception. Renie--I--"
+
+"Mamma, you talk like--Oh, you make me so mad."
+
+"Musical chairs they got in the house, Renie, what, as soon as you sit
+on, begin to play. Mrs. Schwartz herself sat on one; and the harder you
+sit, she says, the louder it plays. Automobiles; a elevator for his
+mother! I--Ach, Renie, I--I feel like all our troubles are over. I--
+Ach, Renie, you should know how it feels to be a mother."
+
+Tears rained frankly down Mrs. Shongut's face and she smiled through
+their mist, and her outstretched arms would tremble.
+
+"Renie, come to mamma!"
+
+Miss Shongut, quivering, drew herself beyond their reach. "Such talk!
+Honest, mamma, you--you make me ashamed, and mad like anything, too. I
+wouldn't marry a little old squashy fellow like him if he was worth the
+mint."
+
+"Renie! Re-nie!"
+
+"An old fellow, just because he's got money and--"
+
+"Old! Max Hochenheimer ain't more than in his first thirties, and old
+she calls him! When a man makes hisself by hard work he 'ain't got time
+to keep young, with silk socks and creased pants, and hair-tonic what
+smells up my house a hour after Izzy's been gone. It ain't the color of
+a man's vest, Renie--it's the color of his heart, underneath it. When
+papa was a young man, do you think, if I had looked at the cigar ashes
+on his vest instead of at what was underneath, that I--"
+
+"That talk's no use with me, mamma."
+
+"Renie; you--you wouldn't do it--you wouldn't refuse him?"
+
+Her reply leaped out suddenly, full of fire: "It's not me or my feelings
+you care anything about. Every one but me you think about first. What
+about me? What about me? I'm the one that's got to do the marrying and
+live with him. I'm the one you're trying to sell off like I was cattle.
+I'm the one! I'm the one!"
+
+"Renie!"
+
+"Yes; sell me off--sell me off--like cattle!"
+
+Tears, blinding, scalding, searing, rushed down her cheeks, and her
+smooth bosom, where the wrapper fell away to reveal it, heaved with the
+storm beneath.
+
+"But you can't sell me--you can't! You can't keep nagging to get me
+married off. I can get out, but I won't be married out! If I wasn't
+afraid of papa, with his heart, I'd tell him so, too. I'd tell him so
+now. I won't be married out--I won't be married out! I won't! I won't!"
+
+Mrs. Shongut clasped her cheeks in the vise of her two hands. "Married
+out! She reproaches me yet--a mother that would go through fire for her
+children's happiness!"
+
+"Always you're making me uncomfortable that I'm not married yet--not
+papa or Izzy, but you--you! Never does one of the girls get engaged that
+you don't look at me like I was wearing the welcome off the door-mat."
+
+"Listen to my own child talk to me! No wonder you cry so hard, Renie
+Shongut, to talk to your mother like that--a girl that I've indulged
+like you. To sass her mother like that! A man like Max Hochenheimer
+comes along, a man where the goodness looks out of his face, a man what
+can give her every comfort; and, because he ain't a fine talker like
+that long-haired Sollie Spitz, she--"
+
+"You leave him out! Anyways, he's got fine feeling for something
+besides--sausages."
+
+"Is it a crime, Renie, that I should want so much your happiness? Your
+papa's getting a old man now, Renie; I won't always be here, neither."
+
+"For the love of Mike, what's the row? Can't a fellow get any beauty
+sleep round this here shebang? What are you two cutting up about?"
+
+The portières parted to reveal Mr. Isadore Shongut, pressed, manicured,
+groomed, shaved--something young about him; something conceited; his
+magenta bow tied to a nicety, his plushlike hair brushed up and backward
+after the manner of fashion's latest caprice, and smoothing a smooth
+hand along his smooth jowl.
+
+"Morning, ma. What's the row, Renie? Gee! it's a swell joint round here
+for a fellow with nerves! What's the row, kid?"
+
+Mr. Isadore Shongut made a cigarette and puffed it, curled himself in a
+deep-seated chair, with his head low and his legs flung high. His sister
+lay on the divan, with her tearful profile buried, _basso-rilievo_,
+against a green velours cushion, her arms limp and dangling in
+exhaustion.
+
+"What's the row, Renie?"
+
+"N-nothing."
+
+"Aw, come out with it--what's the row? What you sitting there for, ma,
+like your luck had turned on you?"
+
+"Ask--ask your sister, Izzy; she can tell you."
+
+"'Smater, sis?"
+
+"N-nothing--only--only--old--old Hochenheimer's coming to--to supper
+to-night, Izzy; and--"
+
+"Old Squash! Oh, Whillikens!"
+
+"Take me out, Izzy! Take me out anywhere--to a show or supper, or--or
+anywhere; but take me out, Izzy. Take me out before he comes."
+
+"Sure I will! Old Squash! Whillikens!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At five o'clock Wasserman Avenue emerged in dainty dimity and silk
+sewing-bags. Rocking-chairs, tiptilted against veranda railings, were
+swung round front-face. Greetings, light as rubber balls, bounded from
+porch to porch. Fine needles flashed through dainty fabrics stretched
+like drum parchment across embroidery hoops; young children, shrilling
+and shouting in the heat of play, darted beneath maternal eyes;
+long-legged girls in knee-high skirts strolled up and down the
+sidewalks, arms intertwined.
+
+At five-thirty the sun had got so low that it found out Mrs. Schimm in
+a shady corner of her porch, dazzled her eyes, and flashed teasingly on
+her needle, so that she crammed her dainty fabric in her sewing-bag and
+crossed the paved street.
+
+"You don't mind, Mrs. Lissman, if I come over on your porch for a while,
+where it's shady?"
+
+"It's a pleasure, Mrs. Schimm. Come right up and have a rocker."
+
+"Just a few minutes I can stay."
+
+"That's a beautiful stitch, Mrs. Schimm. When I finish this centerpiece
+I start me a dozen doilies too."
+
+"I can learn it to you in five minutes, Mrs. Lissman. All my Birdie's
+trousseau napkins I did with this Battenberg stitch."
+
+"Grand!"
+
+"For a poor widow's daughter, Mrs. Lissman, that girl had a trousseau
+she don't need to be ashamed of."
+
+"Look, will you? Mrs. Shapiro's coming down her front steps all diked
+out in a summer silk. I guess she goes down to have supper with her
+husband, since he keeps open evenings."
+
+"I don't want to say nothing; but I don't think it's so nice--do you,
+Mrs. Lissman?--the first month what her mourning for her mother is up a
+yellow bird of paradise as big as a fan she has to have on her hat."
+
+"Ain't it so!"
+
+"I wish you could see the bird of paradise my Birdie bought when her and
+Simon was in Kansas City on their wedding-trip--you can believe me or
+not, a yard long! How that man spends money on that girl, Mrs. Lissman!"
+
+"Say, when you got it to spend I always say it's right. He's in a good
+business and makes good money."
+
+"You should know how good."
+
+"The rainy days come to them that save up for them, like us
+old-fashioned ones, Mrs. Schimm."
+
+"I--Look, will you? Ain't that Izzy Shongut crossing the street? He
+comes home from work this early! I tell you, Mrs. Lissman, I don't want
+to say nothing; but I hear things ain't so good with the Shonguts."
+
+"So!"
+
+"Yes; I hear, since the old man bought out that sausage concern, they
+got their troubles."
+
+"And such a nice woman! That's what she needs yet on top of his heart
+trouble and her girl running round with Sollie Spitz; and, from what
+she don't say, I can see that boy causes her enough worry with his wild
+ways. That's what that poor woman needs yet!"
+
+"Look at Izzy, Mrs. Lissman. I bet that boy drinks or something. Look at
+his face--like a sheet! I tell you that boy ain't walking up this street
+straight. Look for yourself, Mrs. Lissman. Ach, his poor mother!" A
+current like electricity that sets a wire humming ran in waves along
+Mrs. Schimm's voice. "Look!"
+
+"Oh-oh! I say, ain't that a trouble for that poor woman? When you see
+other people's trouble your own ain't so bad."
+
+"Ain't that awful? Just look at his face! Ain't that a trouble for you?"
+
+"She herself as much as told me not a thing does her swell brother over
+on Kingston do for them. I guess such a job as that boy has got in his
+banking-house he could get from a stranger too."
+
+"'Sh-h-h, Mrs. Lissman! Here he comes. Don't let on like we been talking
+about him. Speak to him like always."
+
+"Good evening, Izzy."
+
+Isadora Shongut paused in the act of mounting the front steps and turned
+a blood-driven face toward his neighbor. His under jaw sagged and
+trembled, and his well-knit body seemed to have lost its power to stand
+erect, so that his clothes bagged.
+
+"Good evening, Mrs.--Lissman."
+
+"You're home early to-night, Izzy?"
+
+"Y-yes."
+
+He fitted his key into the front-door lock, but his hand trembled so
+that it would not turn; and for a racking moment he stood there vainly
+pushing a weak knee against the panel, and his breath came out of his
+throat in a wheeze.
+
+The maid-of-all-work, straggly and down at the heels, answered his
+fumbling at the lock and opened the door to him.
+
+"You, Mr. Izzy!"
+
+He sprang in like a catamount, clicking the door quick as a flash behind
+him. "'Sh-h-h! Where's ma?"
+
+"Your mamma ain't home; she went up to Rindley's. You ain't sick, are
+you, Mr. Izzy?"
+
+A spasm of relief flashed over his face, and he snapped his dry fingers
+in an agony of nervousness. "Where's Renie? Quick!"
+
+"She's in her room, layin' down. She ain't goin' to be home to the
+supper-party to-night, Mr. Izzy; she--What's the matter, Mr. Izzy?"
+
+He was down the hallway in three running bounds and, without the
+preliminary of knocking, into his sister's tiny, semi-darkened
+bedroom, his breathing suddenly filling it. She sprang from her little
+chintz-covered bed, where she had flung herself across its top, her face
+and wrapper rumpled with sleep.
+
+"Izzy!"
+
+"'Sh-h-h!"
+
+"Izzy, what--where--Izzy, what is it?"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, for God's sake! 'Sh-h! Don't let 'em hear, Renie. Don't let
+'em hear!"
+
+Her swimming senses suddenly seemed to clear. "What's happened, Izzy?
+Quick! What's wrong?"
+
+He clicked the key in the lock, and in the agony of the same
+dry-fingered nervousness rubbed his hand back and forth across his dry
+lips. "Don't let 'em hear--the old man or ma--don't!"
+
+"Quick! What is it, Izzy?" She sat down on the edge of the bed, weak.
+"Tell me, Izzy; something terrible is wrong. It--it isn't papa, Izzy?
+Tell me it isn't papa. For God's sake, Izzy, he--he ain't--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h! N-no! No, it ain't. It--it ain't pa. It's me, Renie--it's
+me!" He crumbled at her feet, his palms plastered over his eyes and his
+fingers clutched deep in the high nap of his hair. "It's me! It's me!"
+
+"What? What?"
+
+"'Sh-h-h! For God's sake, Renie, you got to stand by me; you got to
+stand by me this time if you ever did! Promise me, Renie! It's me,
+Renie. I--Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
+
+She stooped to his side, her voice and hands trembling beyond control.
+"Izzy! Izzy, tell me--tell me! What is it?"
+
+"Oh, my God, why didn't I die? Why didn't I die?"
+
+"Izzy, what--what is it? Money? Haven't I always stood by you before?
+Won't I now? Tell me, Izzy. Tell me, I say!"
+
+She tugged at his hands, prying them away from his eyes; but the terror
+she saw there set her trembling again and thrice she opened her lips
+before she found voice.
+
+"Izzy, if you don't tell me, mamma will be back soon, and then pa;
+and--you better tell me quick. Your own sister will stand by you. Get
+up, dearie." Tears trickled through his fingers and she could see the
+curve of his back rise and fall to the retching of suppressed sobs.
+"Izzy, you got to tell me quick--do you hear?"
+
+He raised his ravaged face at the sharp-edged incisiveness in her
+voice. "I'm in trouble, Renie--such trouble. Oh, my God, such horrible
+trouble!"
+
+"Tell me quick--do you hear? Quick, or mamma and papa--"
+
+"Renie--'sh-h-h! They mustn't know--the old man mustn't; she mustn't,
+if--if I got to kill myself first. His heart--he--he mustn't, Renie--he
+mustn't know."
+
+"Know what?"
+
+"It's all up, Renie. I've done something--the worst thing I ever done
+in my life; but I didn't know while I was doing it, Renie, how--what it
+was. I swear I didn't! It was like borrowing, I thought. I was sure
+I could pay it back. I thought the system was a great one and--and I
+couldn't lose."
+
+"Izzy--roulette again! You--you been losing at--at roulette again?"
+
+"No, no; but they found out at--at the bank, Renie. I--oh, my God!
+Nothing won't save me!"
+
+"The bank, Izzy?"
+
+"They found out, Renie. Yesterday, when the bank was closed, he--Uncle
+Isadore--put 'em on the books. Nothing won't save me now, Renie. He
+won't; you--you know him--hard as nails! Nothing won't save me. It's
+going to be stripes for me, Renie. Ma--the old man--stripes! I--I can't
+let 'em do it. I--I'll kill myself first. I can't let 'em--I--can't--I
+can't let 'em!"
+
+He burrowed his head in her lap to stifle his voice, which slipped up
+and away from his control; and her icy hands and knees could feel his
+entire body trembling.
+
+"'Sh-h-h, dearie! Try to tell me slow, dearie, for pa's and ma's sake,
+so--so we can fix it up somehow."
+
+"We can't fix it up. The old man 'ain't got the money and--and he can't
+stand it."
+
+"For God's sake, Izzy, tell me or I'll go mad! Slow, dearie, so Renie
+can think and listen and help you. She's with you, darling, and nothing
+can hurt you. Now begin, Izzy, and go slow. What did you start to tell
+me about Uncle Isadore and the books? Slow, darling."
+
+Her voice was smooth and flowing, and the hand that stroked his hair was
+slow and soothing; the great stream of his passion abated and he huddled
+quietly at her feet.
+
+"Now begin, dearie. Uncle Isadore--what?"
+
+"This morning, when I got down to--to the office, two men had--my
+books."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"O God! When I seen 'em, right away my heart just stopped."
+
+'"Sh-h-h! Yes--two men had the books."
+
+"And Uncle Isadore--Uncle Isadore--he was--he--"
+
+"Go on!"
+
+"He--he was in the cage, too; and--and you know how he looks when his
+eyes get little."
+
+"Yes, yes, Izzy."
+
+"They were--expert accountants with him. All day yesterday, Sunday, they
+were on my books; and--and they had me, Renie--they had me like a rat in
+a trap."
+
+"Had you, Izzy?"
+
+He drew himself upward, clutching at her arms; and the sobs began to
+tear him afresh. "They had me, Renie."
+
+"Oh, Izzy, why--"
+
+"I could have paid it back. I could have put it back if the old
+skinflint hadn't got to sniffing round and sicked 'em on my books. I
+could have won it all back in time, Renie. With my own uncle, my own
+mother's brother, it--it wasn't like I was stealing it, was it, Renie?
+Was it?"
+
+"Oh, my God, Izzy!"
+
+"It wasn't, Renie--my own uncle! I could have won it back if--if--"
+
+"Won back what, Izzy--won back what?"
+
+"I--I started with a hundred, Renie. I had to have it; I had to, I tell
+you. You remember that night I--I wanted you to go over and ask Aunt
+Beck for it? I had to have it. Pa--. I--I couldn't excite him any more
+about it; and--and I had to have it, I tell you, Renie."
+
+"Yes; then what?"
+
+"And I--I borrowed it without asking. I--I fixed it on my books so--so
+Uncle Isadore wouldn't--couldn't--. I--I fixed it on my books."
+
+"Oh-oh, Izzy! Oh--oh--oh!"
+
+"I was trying out a system--a new one--and it worked, Renie. I tried it
+out on the new wheel down at Sharkey's and the seventeen system worked
+like a trick. I won big the first and second nights, Renie--you remember
+the night I brought you and ma the bracelets? I paid back the hundred
+the first week, Renie; and no one knew--no one knew."
+
+"Oh-h-h-h!"
+
+"The next Friday my luck turned on me--I never ought to have played
+on Friday--turned like a toad one unlucky Friday night. I got in deep
+before I knew it, and deeper and deeper; and then--and then it just
+seemed there wasn't no holding me, Renie. I got wild--got wild, I tell
+you; and I--I wrote 'em checks I didn't have no right to write. I--I
+went crazy, I tell you. Next day--you remember that morning I left the
+house so early?--I had to fix it with the books and borrow what--what I
+needed before the banks opened. I--I had to make good on them checks,
+Renie. I fixed it with the books, and from that time on it worked."
+
+"Oh, Izzy--Izzy--Izzy!"
+
+"I kept losing, Renie; but I knew, if my luck just changed from that
+unlucky Friday night, I could pay it back like the first time. All I
+needed was a little time and a little luck and I could pay it back like
+the first hundred; so I kept fixing my books, Renie, and--and borrowing
+more--and more."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"O God, Renie! I could have paid it back with time; I--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h! How much, Izzy--how much?"
+
+"Somebody must have snitched on me, how I was losing every night. The
+old skinflint, he--Oh, my God! They got me, Renie--they got me; and
+it'll kill the old man!"
+
+"How much, Izzy--how much?"
+
+"Oh, my God! I could have paid it back if--if--"
+
+"How much? Tell me, I say!"
+
+"Four--thousand!"
+
+"Oh-h-h, Izzy--Izzy--Izzy!" She sprang back from him, blind with
+scalding tears. "Izzy! Four thousand! Oh, my God! Four thousand!"
+
+"I could have paid it back, Renie; the system was all right, but--"
+
+"Four thousand! Four thousand!"
+
+"He--he was all for detaining me right away, Renie; sending for pa,
+and--and sicking the law right on his--his own sister's son. On my knees
+for three hours I had to beg, Renie--on my knees, for ma's sake and your
+sake and pa's--just for a little time I begged. A little time was all
+I begged. He don't care nothing for blood. I--I had to beg him, Renie,
+till--till I fainted."
+
+"What shall we do, Izzy? What shall we do?"
+
+"I squeezed two weeks' time out of him, Renie. Two weeks to pay it back
+or he puts the law on me--two weeks; and I got it from him like blood
+from a turnip. Oh, my God, Renie, four thousand in two weeks--four
+thousand in two weeks!"
+
+He fell in a half-swoon against her skirts. Out of her arms she made a
+pillow of mercy and drew his head down to her bosom; and tears, bitter
+with salt, mingled with his, and her heart's blood buzzed in her brain.
+
+"Izzy, Izzy! What have you done?"
+
+"I can't pay it back, Renie. Where could I get half that much? I can't
+pay back four dollars, much less four thousand. I can't! I can't!"
+
+"Four thousand!"
+
+"We gotta keep it from the old man and ma, Renie. Let 'em kill me if
+they want to; but we gotta keep it from him and ma."
+
+"Four thousand! Four thousand!"
+
+In the half-light of the room, with the late sunshine pressing warm
+against the drawn green shades, the remote shouts of children coming to
+them through the quiet, and the whir of a lawn-mower off somewhere,
+they crouched, these two, as though they would shut their ears to the
+flapping of vultures' wings.
+
+"They can't do anything to you, Izzy."
+
+"What'll we do, Renie? What'll we do?"
+
+"We got to find a way, Izzy."
+
+"They can't send me up for it, Renie--say they can't!"
+
+"No--no, dearie."
+
+"I ain't crooked like that! It was my own uncle. They can't send me up,
+Renie. I'll kill myself first! I'll kill myself first!"
+
+"Izzy, ain't you ashamed?" But it was as though the odor of death found
+its way to her nostrils, nauseating her. "Let me think. Let me think
+just a minute. Let me think." She rammed the ends of her fists tight
+against her eyes until Catherine wheels spun and spun against her lids.
+"Let me think just a minute."
+
+"There's nobody, Renie--nobody--nobody--no way."
+
+"Four--thousand!"
+
+"No-body, I tell you, Renie. But I'll kill myself before I--"
+
+Renie stood up. "Izzy! I will!"
+
+He was whimpering frankly against her skirt. After a while she raised
+her face. Jeanne d'Arc might have looked like that when she beheld the
+vision.
+
+"Squash!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Squash! It's like he was sent out of heaven!"
+
+"He--he ain't--"
+
+"He's coming to-night--to ask me, Izzy. You know what I mean? Don't you
+see? Don't you see?"
+
+"I--"
+
+"Don't you see, Izzy? He's going to ask me, and--and I'm going to do
+it!"
+
+"Oh, my God! Renie, you can't do that for me if--You can't do that for
+me."
+
+"He's got it, Izzy. I can get ten thousand out of him if I got to."
+
+"But, Renie--"
+
+"I--I can rush it through and--do it before two weeks, Izzy; and we got
+a way out, Izzy--we got a way. We got a way!"
+
+She threw herself in a passion of hysteria face downward on the bed and
+a tornado of weeping swept over her. Rooted, he stood as though face to
+face with an immense dawn, but with eyes that dared not see the light.
+
+"Renie, I--can't! I--Renie, I can't let you do that for me if--if--I
+can't let you marry him for me if you don't--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h!"
+
+Mrs. Shongut's voice outside the door, querulous: "Renie!"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Re-nie!"
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"Why you got your door locked?"
+
+Silence.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"Come right away out in the dining-room. If you 'ain't got no more
+regards for your parents than not to stay home for supper, anyways you
+got to fix for the table the flowers what I brought home from market."
+
+"Yes, mamma." She darted to her feet, drying the tears on her cheeks
+with the palm of her hand. "Coming, mamma." And she slipped through the
+door of her room, scarcely opening it.
+
+In the dining-room, beside the white-spread table, Mrs. Shongut unwound
+a paper toot of pink carnations; but the flavor of her spirit was bitter
+and her thin, pressed-looking lips hung at the corners.
+
+"Maybe you can stop pouting long enough to help with things a little,
+even if you won't be here. I tell you it's a pleasure when papa comes
+home for supper with company, to have children like mine."
+
+"Listen, mamma. I--"
+
+"Sounds like somebody's going out of the house, Renie. Who--"
+
+"No, no. No one has been here, mamma. It's just the breeze."
+
+"I tell you it's a pleasure to have a daughter like mine! What excuses
+to make to Max Hochenheimer, a young man what comes all the way from
+Cincinnati to see her--"
+
+"Listen, mamma; I--I've only been fooling--honest, I have."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I--aw, mamma."
+
+Miss Shongut's face was suddenly buried in the neat lace yoke of her
+mother's dimity blouse, and her arms crept up about her neck.
+
+"I've been only fooling about to-night, mamma. Don't you think I know it
+is just like he was sent from heaven? I've only been fooling, mamma, so
+that--so that you shouldn't know how happy I am."
+
+The soul peeped out suddenly in Mrs. Shongut's face, hallowing it.
+"Renie! My little Renie!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Wasserman Avenue the hand that rocks the cradle oftener than not
+carves the roast. Behind her platter, sovereign of all she surveyed, and
+skilfully, so that beneath her steel the red, oozing slices curled and
+fell into their pool of gravy, reigned Mrs. Shongut. And her suzerainty
+rested on her as lightly as a tiara of seven stars.
+
+"Mr. Hochenheimer, you ain't eating a thing!" Mrs. Shongut craned her
+neck round the centerpiece of pink carnations. "Not a thing on your
+plate! Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer some more salad."
+
+"No, no, Mrs. Shongut; just don't you worry about me."
+
+"I hope you ain't bashful, Mr. Hochenheimer. We feel toward you just
+like home folks."
+
+"Indeed, what I don't see I ask for, Mrs. Shongut."
+
+"Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer some more of that red cabbage."
+
+"No, no--please, Mrs. Shongut; I got plenty."
+
+"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, you eat so little you must be in love."
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer knows that I only fool. Renie, pass the
+dumplings."
+
+"No, no--please! I--"
+
+"Mamma, don't force. You're not bashful, are you, Mr. Hochenheimer?"
+
+Miss Shongut inclined her head with a saucy, birdlike motion, and showed
+him the full gleaming line of her teeth. He took a large mouthful of
+ice-water to wash down the red of confusion that suddenly swam high in
+his face, tingeing even his ears.
+
+"For more dumplings I ain't bashful, Miss Renie; but there--there's
+other things--I am bashful to ask for."
+
+From his place at the far end of the table Mr. Shongut laughed deep, as
+though a spiral spring was vibrating in the recesses of his throat.
+
+"Bashful with the girls--eh, Hochenheimer?"
+
+"I ain't much of a lady's man, Shongut."
+
+"Well, I wish you was just so bashful in business--believe me! I wish
+you was."
+
+"Shongut, I never got the best of you yet in a deal."
+
+"With my girl he's bashful yet, mamma; but down to the last
+sausage-casing I have to pay his fancy prices. Nun, look mamma, how red
+she gets! What you get so red for, Renie--eh?"
+
+"Aw, papa!"
+
+"A little teasing from her old father she can't take. Look at her,
+mamma! Look at both of them--red like beets. Neither of them can stand a
+little teasing from an old man."
+
+"Adolph, you mustn't! All people don't like it when you make fun. Mr.
+Hochenheimer, you must excuse my husband; a great one he is to tease and
+make his little fun."
+
+Mr. Shongut's ancient-looking face, covered with a short, grizzled
+growth of beard and pale as a prophet's beneath, broke into a smile, and
+a minute network of lines sprang out from the corners of his eyes.
+
+"I was bashful in my life once, too--eh, mamma?"
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"Please, you must excuse my husband, Mr. Hochenheimer; he likes to have
+his little jokes."
+
+Mr. Hochenheimer pushed away his plate in high embarrassment; nor would
+his eyes meet Miss Shongut's, except to flash away under cover of
+exaggerated imperturbability.
+
+"My husband's a great one to tease, Mr. Hochenheimer. My Izzy too, takes
+after him. I'm sorry that boy ain't home, so you could meet him again.
+We call him the dude of the family. Renie, pass Mr. Hochenheimer the
+toothpicks."
+
+A pair of deep-lined brackets sprang out round Mr. Shongut's mouth. "Why
+ain't that boy home for supper, where he belongs?"
+
+"Ach, now, Adolph, don't get excited right away. Always, Mr.
+Hochenheimer, my husband gets excited over nothing, when he knows how it
+hurts his heart. Like that boy ain't old enough to stay out to supper
+when he wants, Adolph! 'Sh-h-h!"
+
+Mrs. Shongut smiled to conceal that her heart was faint, and the saga of
+a mother might have been written round that smile.
+
+"Now, now, Adolph, don't you begin to worry."
+
+"I tell you, Shongut, it's a mistake to worry. I save all my excitement
+for the good things in life."
+
+"See, Adolph; from a young man like Mr. Hochenheimer you can get
+pointers."
+
+"I tell you, Shongut, over such a nice little home and such a nice
+little family as you got I might get excited; but over the little things
+that don't count for much I 'ain't got time."
+
+Mrs. Shongut waved a deprecatory hand. "It's a nice enough little home
+for us, Mr. Hochenheimer, but with a grand house like I hear you built
+for your mother up on the stylish hilltop in Cincinnati, I guess to you
+it seems right plain."
+
+"That's where you're wrong, Mrs. Shongut. Like I says to Shongut coming
+out on the street-car with him to-night, if it hadn't been that I
+thought maybe my mother would like a little fanciness after a hard life
+like hers, for my own part a little house and a big garden is all I ask
+for."
+
+"Ach, Mr. Hochenheimer, with such a grand house like that is--sunk-in
+baths Mrs. Schwartz says you got! To see a house like that, I tell you
+it must be a treat."
+
+"It's a fine place, Mrs. Shongut, but too big for me and my mother. When
+I got into the hands of architects, let me tell you, I feel I was lucky
+to get off with only twenty-five rooms. Right now, Mrs. Shongut, we got
+rooms we don't know how to pronounce."
+
+"Twenty-five rooms! Did you hear that, Adolph? Twenty-five rooms! I bet,
+Mr. Hochenheimer, your mother is proud of such a son as can give her
+twenty-five rooms."
+
+"We don't say much about it to each other, my mother and me; but--you
+can believe me or not--in our big, stylish house up there on the hill,
+with her servants to take away from her all the pleasure of work and her
+market and old friends down on Richmond Street yet, and nothing but
+gold furniture round her, she gets lonesome enough. If it wasn't for my
+garden and the beautiful scenery from my terraces, I would wish myself
+back in our little down-town house more than once, too. I tell you, Mrs.
+Shongut, fineness ain't everything."
+
+"You should bring your mother some time to Mound City with you when you
+come over on business, Mr. Hochenheimer. We would do our best to make it
+pleasant for her."
+
+"She's an old woman, Mrs. Shongut, and in a train or an automobile I
+can't get her. I guess it would be better, Mrs. Shongut, if I carry off
+some of your family with me to Cincinnati."
+
+And, to belie that his words had any glittering import, he lay back in
+his chair in a state of silent laughter, which set his soft-fleshed
+cheeks aquiver; and his blue eyes, so ready yet so reluctant,
+disappeared behind a tight squint.
+
+"Adolph, I guess Mr. Hochenheimer will excuse us--eh? Renie, you can
+entertain Mr. Hochenheimer while me and papa go and spend the evening
+over at Aunt Meena's. Mr. Shongut's sister, Mr. Hochenheimer, 'ain't
+been so well. Anyways, I always say young folks 'ain't got no time for
+old ones."
+
+"You go right ahead along, Mrs. Shongut. Don't treat me like company. I
+hope Miss Renie don't mind if I spend the evening?"
+
+"I should say not."
+
+"Hochenheimer, a cigar?"
+
+"Thanks; I don't smoke."
+
+"My husband, with his heart trouble, shouldn't smoke, neither, Mr.
+Hochenheimer; it worries me enough. What me and the doctors tell him
+goes in one ear and out of the other."
+
+"See, Hochenheimer, when you get a wife how henpecked you get!"
+
+"A henpeck never drew much blood, Shongut."
+
+"Come, Adolph; it is a long car-ride to Meena's."
+
+They pushed back from the table, the four of them, smiling-lipped. With
+his short-fingered, hairy-backed hands Mr. Hochenheimer dusted at his
+coat lapels, then shook his bulging trousers knees into place.
+
+The lamp of inner sanctity burns in strange temples. A carpenter in
+haircloth shirt first turned men's hearts outward. Who can know, who
+does not first cross the plain of the guide with gold, that behind the
+moldy panels at Ara Coeli reigns the jeweled bambino, robed in the
+glittering gems of sacrifice?
+
+Who could know, as Mr. Hochenheimer stood there in the curtailed dignity
+of his five feet five, that behind his speckled and slightly rotund
+waistcoat a choir sang of love, and that the white flame of his spirit
+burned high?
+
+"I tell you, Mrs. Shongut, it is a pleasure to be invited out to your
+house. You should know how this old bachelor hates hotels."
+
+"And you should know how welcome you always are, Mr. Hochenheimer.
+To-morrow night you take supper with us too. We don't take 'no'--eh,
+Adolph? Renie?"
+
+"I appreciate that, Mrs. Shongut; but I--I don't know yet--if--if I stay
+over."
+
+Mr. Shongut batted a playful hand and shuffled toward the door. "You
+stay, Hochenheimer! I bet you a good cigar you stay. Ain't I right,
+Renie, that he stays? Ain't I right?"
+
+Against the sideboard, fingering her white dress, Miss Shongut regarded
+her parents, and her smile was as wan as moonlight.
+
+"Ain't I right, Renie?"
+
+"Yes, papa."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the bit of porch, the hall light carefully lowered and cushions from
+within spread at their feet, the dreamy quiet of evening and air as
+soft as milk flowed round and closed in about Miss Shongut and Mr.
+Hochenheimer.
+
+They drew their rocking-chairs arm to arm, so that, behind a bit of
+climbing moonflower vine, they were as snug as in a bower. Stars shone
+over the roofs of the houses opposite; the shouts of children had died
+down; crickets whirred.
+
+"Is the light from that street lamp in your eyes, Renie?"
+
+"No, no."
+
+The wooden floor reverberated as they rocked. A little thrill of breeze
+fluttered her filmy shoulder scarf against his hand. To his fermenting
+fancy it was as though her spirit had flitted out of the flesh.
+
+"Ah, Miss Renie, I--I--"
+
+"What, Mr. Hochenheimer?"
+
+"Nothing. Your--your little shawl, it tickled my hand so."
+
+She leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair and cupped her chin in her
+palm. Her eyes had a peculiar value--like a mill-pond, when the wheel is
+still, reflects the stars in calm and unchurned quiet.
+
+"You look just like a little princess to-night, Miss Renie--that pretty
+shawl and your eyes so bright."
+
+"A princess!"
+
+"Yes; if I had a tin suit and a sword to match I'd ride up on a horse
+and carry you off to my castle in Cincinnati."
+
+"Say, wouldn't it be a treat for Wasserman Avenue to see me go loping
+off like that!"
+
+"This is the first little visit we've ever had together all by
+ourselves, ain't it, Miss Renie? Seems like, to a bashful fellow like
+me, you was always slipping away from me."
+
+"The flowers and the candies you kept sending me were grand, Mr.
+Hochenheimer--and the letter--to-day."
+
+"You read the letter, Miss Renie?"
+
+"Yes, I--I--You shouldn't keep spoiling me with such grand flowers and
+candy, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"If tell you that never in my life I sent flowers or candy, or wrote a
+letter like I wrote you yesterday, to another young lady, I guess you
+laugh at me--not, Miss Renie?"
+
+"You shouldn't begin, Mr. Hochenheimer, by spoiling me."
+
+"Ah, Miss Renie, if you knew how I like to spoil you, if you would let
+me--Ach, what's the use? I--I can't say it like I want." She could hear
+him breathing. "It--it's a grand night, Miss Renie."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Grand!"
+
+"And look over those roofs! It seems like there's a million stars
+shining, don't it?"
+
+"You're like me, Miss Renie; so many times I've noticed it. Nothing is
+so grand to me as nature, neither."
+
+"Up at Green Springs, in the Ozarks, where we went for ten days last
+summer, honest, Mr. Hochenheimer, I used to lie looking out the window
+all night. The stars up there shone so close it seemed like you could
+nearly touch them."
+
+"Ain't that wonderful, Miss Renie, you should be just like me again!"
+She smiled in the dark. "When I was a boy always next to the attic
+window I liked to sleep. When I built my house, Miss Renie, the
+first thing after I designed my rose-garden I drew up for myself a
+sleeping-garden on my roof. The architects fussed enough about spoiling
+the roof-line, but that's one of the things I wanted which I stood pat
+for and got--my sleeping-garden."
+
+"Sleeping-garden!"
+
+"Miss Renie, I just wish you could see it--all laid out in roses in
+summer, and a screened-in pergola, where I sleep, right underneath the
+stars and roses. I sleep so close to heaven I always say I can smell
+it."
+
+She turned her little face, white as a spray of jasmine against a dark
+background of night, toward him. "Underneath a pergola of roses! I guess
+it's the roses you must smell. How grand!"
+
+"Sometimes when--if you come to Cincinnati I want to show you my place,
+Miss Renie. If I say so myself, I got a wonderful garden; flowers I can
+show you grown from clippings from every part of the world. If I do say
+so, for a sausage-maker who never went to school two years in his life
+it ain't so bad. I got a lily-pond, Miss Renie, they come from all over
+to see. By myself I designed it."
+
+"It must be grand, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"On Sunday, Miss Renie, I like for my boys and girls from the factory to
+come up to my place and make themselves at home. You should see my old
+mother how she fixes for them! I wish you could see them boys and girls,
+and old men and women. In a sausage-factory they don't get much time to
+listen to birds and water when it falls into a fountain. I wish, Miss
+Renie, you could see them with the flowers. I--well, I don't know how to
+say it; but I wish you could see them for yourself."
+
+"They like it?"
+
+"Like it! I tell you it's the greatest pleasure I get out of my place. I
+wish, instead of my fine house, the city would let me build my factory
+for them right in the garden."
+
+"On such a stylish street they wouldn't ever let you, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"Me and my mother ain't much for style, Miss Renie. Honest, you'd be
+surprised, but with my fine house I don't even keep an automobile. My
+mother, she's old, Miss Renie, and won't go in one. Alone it ain't no
+pleasure; and when I don't walk down to my factory the street-cars is
+good enough."
+
+"You should take it easier, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"All our lives, Miss Renie, we've been so busy, my mother and me, I tell
+her we got to be learnt--like children got to be learnt to walk--how to
+enjoy ourselves. We--we need somebody young--somebody like you in the
+house, Miss Renie--young and so pretty, and full of life, and--and so
+sweet."
+
+She gave a gauzy laugh. "Honest, it must seem like a dream to have a
+rose-garden right on the place you live."
+
+"I wish you could see, Miss Renie, a new Killarney my gardener showed me
+in the hothouse yesterday before I left--white-and-pink blend; he got
+the clipping from Jamaica. It's a pale pink in the heart like the first
+minute when the sun rises; and then it gets pinker and pinker toward
+the outside petals, till it just bursts out as red as the sun when it's
+ready to set."
+
+"And those beautiful little tan roses you sent me, Mr. Hochenheimer;
+I--"
+
+"Ah, Miss Renie, the clipping from those sunset roses comes from Italy;
+but now I call them Renie Roses, if--if you'll excuse me. I tell you,
+Miss Renie, you look just enough like 'em to be related. Little satiny
+gold-looking roses, with a pink blush on the inside of the petals and
+a--a few little soft thorns on the stem."
+
+"Aw, Mr. Hochenheimer, I ain't got thorns."
+
+Out from the velvet shadows his face came closer. "It's thorns to me,
+Miss Renie, because you're so pretty and sweet, and--and seem so far
+away from a--plain fellow like me."
+
+"I--"
+
+"I'm a plain man, Miss Renie, and I don't know how to talk much about
+the things I feel inside of me; but--but I _feel_, all-righty."
+
+"Looks ain't everything."
+
+"I tell you, Miss Renie, now since I can afford it, I just don't seem to
+know how to do the things I got the feeling inside of me for. Even in my
+grand house sometimes I feel like it--it's too late for me to live like
+I feel."
+
+"Nothing's ever too late, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"Just since I met you I can feel that way, Miss Renie, if you'll excuse
+me for saying it--just since I met you."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"For the first time in my life, Miss Renie, I got the feeling from a
+girl that, for me, life--maybe my life--is just beginning. Like a vine,
+Miss Renie, you got yourself tangled round my feelings."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hochenheimer!"
+
+"Like I told your papa to-night on the car, I 'ain't got much to offer a
+beautiful young girl like you; money, I can see, don't count for so much
+with a fine girl like you, and I--I don't need to be told that my face
+and my ways ain't my fortune."
+
+"It's the heart that counts, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"If--if you mean that, Miss Renie--if love, just love, can bring
+happiness, I can make for you a life as beautiful as my rose-garden. For
+the first time in my life, Miss Renie, I got the feeling I can do that
+for a woman--and that woman is you. I--Will you--will you be my wife,
+Miss Renie?" She could feel his breath now, scorching her cheek. "Will
+you, Miss Renie?"
+
+And even as she leaned over to open her lips a figure, swift as a Greek,
+dashed to the veranda--up the steps three at a bound.
+
+"Renie!"
+
+"Izzy!" She rose, pushing back her chair, and her hand flew to her
+breast.
+
+"Just a minute. Inside I gotta see you quick, Renie. Howdy,
+Hochenheimer? You excuse her a minute. I got to see her."
+
+His voice was like wine that sings in the pouring.
+
+"Yes, yes, Izzy; I'm coming." Hers was trembling and pizzicato. "Excuse
+me a minute, Mr. Hochenheimer--a minute."
+
+Mr. Hochenheimer rose, mopping his brow. "It's all right, Miss Renie. I
+wait out here on the porch till it pleases you."
+
+In her tiny bedroom, with the light turned up, she faced her brother;
+and he grasped her shoulders so that, through the sheer texture of her
+dress, his hands left red prints on the flesh.
+
+"Renie, you 'ain't done it, have you?"
+
+"No, no, Izzy; I've done nothing. Where you been?"
+
+He gave a great laugh and sank into a chair, limp. "You don't have to,
+Renie. It's all right! I've fixed it. Everything is all right!"
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+Then, as though the current of his returning vigor could know no bounds,
+he scooped her in a one-armed embrace that fairly raised her from the
+floor.
+
+"All of a sudden, when you went out, Renie, I remembered Aunt Becky. You
+remember she was the one who made Uncle Isadore fork over to papa that
+time about the mortgage?"
+
+"Yes, yes."
+
+"All of a sudden it came over me that she was the only one who could do
+anything with him. I ran over to the house--all the way I ran, Renie.
+She was up in her room, and--and it's all right, Renie. I told her, and
+she's fixed it--fixed it!"
+
+"Oh, Izzy!"
+
+"She's fixed it. When he came home to supper we got him right away up
+in her room before he had his hat off. Like a mother she begged for me,
+Renie--like a mother. God! I--I tell you I couldn't go through it again;
+but she got him, Renie--she got him!"
+
+"Go on, Izzy--go on!"
+
+"She told him I wouldn't face the shame; she told him I--I'd kill my own
+father, and that the blood would be on his hands; she told him if he'd
+let me go to the devil without another chance--me that had been named
+after him--that a curse would roost on his chest. He didn't want to give
+in to her--he didn't want to; but she scared him, and she's a woman and
+she knew how to get inside of him--she knew how. They're going to send
+me out to his mines, where I can start over, Renie. Out West, where
+it'll make a new man of me; where I can begin over--start right, Renie.
+Start right!"
+
+"Oh, Izzy darling!"
+
+"I can pay up when I earn the money like a man, Renie. It would have
+killed me if you had sold yourself to him for me. I'd have gone to the
+stripes first. But I got a man's chance now, Renie, and I don't have to
+do that rotten thing to you and Squash. A man's chance, Renie, and--and
+I'm going to take it."
+
+She sat down on the bed suddenly, as though the blood had flowed out of
+her heart, weakening her.
+
+"A sister like you that would have stuck; and--and I'm going to make
+good to a sister like you, Renie. I am, this time. Please believe me,
+Renie. I am! I am!"
+
+Her hand lay pressed to his cheek and she could feel the warm course of
+his tears. "Izzy, I knew you wasn't yellow; I--I knew you wasn't."
+
+Sobs shook him suddenly and he buried his face in the pillow beside her.
+
+"Why, Izzy! Why, Izzy darling, what--what is it, Izzy darling?"
+
+"It's nothing. You--you get out, Renie. I'm all right; only--only
+it's--it's--Now that it's all over, I--I--Just let me alone a minute,
+Renie. Go--you--please--please!"
+
+She closed the door behind her and fumbled through the gloom of the
+hallway, her hand faltering as she groped ahead.
+
+From the recesses of the moonflower vine Mr. Hochenheimer rose to meet
+her; and, because her limbs would tremble, she slid quickly into her
+chair.
+
+"You--you must excuse me, Mr. Hochenheimer."
+
+"It's all right, Miss Renie. I take up where we left off. It ain't so
+easy, Miss Renie, to begin all over again to say it, but--but will you
+be my--will you be my--"
+
+She was suddenly in his arms, burrowing against the speckled waistcoat a
+little resting-place for her head.
+
+
+
+
+IN MEMORIAM
+
+
+Toward the city Mother Earth turns a plate-glass eye and an asphalt
+bosom. The rhythm of her heart-beats does not penetrate through paved
+streets. That cadence is for those few of her billion children who have
+stayed by to sleep with an ear to the mossy floor of her woodlands. The
+prodigals, the future Tammany leaders, merchant princes, cotton kings,
+and society queens march on, each to an urban destiny.
+
+Nor is the return of the prodigal to Mother Earth along a piked highway.
+The road back to Nature is full of her own secrets, and few who have
+trod the streets of the city remember the brambled return, or care.
+
+Men who know to the centime each fluctuation of the wheat-market have
+no eye for the tawny beauty of a whole field of the precious product
+fluctuating to a breeze. Women stayed by steel and convention into the
+mold of form love the soft faces of flowers looking up at them from
+expensive corsages, but care not for their nativity. Greeks, first of
+men, perched their gods up on Olympus and wandered down to build cities.
+
+Because the city is as insidious as the sleeping-draught of an Indian
+soothsayer, under its spell men go mad for gain and forget that to stand
+on the brow of a mountain at night, arms outstretched in kinship to Vega
+and Capella, is a golden moment of purer alloy than certified bonds.
+What magnate remembers where the best tackle squirms, or the taste of
+grass sucked in from the tender end of the blade? All progress is like
+that. How immediately are the yesterdays metamorphosed into memories;
+and memories, even the stanchest of them, mold and disintegrate.
+
+There were times when Mrs. Simon Meyerburg, who was threescore and ten
+years removed from the days when her bare feet had run fleet across a
+plushy meadow, would pause, hand on brow, when a memory, perhaps moving
+as it crumpled, would pass before her in faded daguerreotype. A gallery
+of events--so many pictures faded from her mental walls that the gaps
+seemed, as it were, to separate her from herself, making of her and
+that swift-footed girl back there vague strangers. And yet the vivid
+canvases! A peasant child at a churn, switching her black braids this
+way and that when they dangled too far over her shoulders; a linnet dead
+in its cage outside a thatched doorway, and the taste of her first heart
+tears; a hand-made crib in a dark corner and hardly ever empty of a
+little new-comer.
+
+Then gaps, except here and there a faded bit. Then again large memories
+close and full of color: Simon Meyerburg, with the years folded back
+and youth on him, wooing her beside a stile that led off a South German
+country road, his peasant cap fallen back off his strong black curls,
+and even then a seer's light in his strong black eyes. Her own black
+eyes more diffident now and the black braids looped up and bound in
+a tight coronet round her head. The voice of the mother calling her
+homeward through cupped hands and in the Low Dutch of the Lowlands. A
+moonrise and the sweet, vivid smell of evening, and once more the youth
+Simon Meyerburg wooing her there beside the roadside stile.
+
+The crowded steerage of a wooden ship, her first son suckling at her
+breast. At the prow Simon Meyerburg again, his peasant cap pushed
+backward and his black eyes, with the seer's light in them, gleaming
+ahead for the first glimpse of the land of fulfilment. An unbelievable
+city sucking them immediately into its slums. Filth. A quick descent
+into squalor. A second son. A third. A fourth. A fifth. A girl child.
+Mouths too eager for black bread. Always the struggle and the sour smell
+of slums. Finally light. White light. The seer sees!
+
+Then, ever green in her mind, a sun-mottled kitchen with a black iron
+range, and along the walls festoons of looped-up green peppers. White
+bread now in abundance for small mouths not so hungry. At evening, Simon
+Meyerburg, with rims of dirt under his nails, entering that kitchen
+door, the girl child turning from her breast to leap forward....
+
+Sometimes in her stately halls, caught, as it were, in passing from room
+to room, Mrs. Simon Meyerburg would pause, assaulted by these memories
+of days so remote that her mind could not always run back to meet them.
+Then again the glittering present studded with the jewels of fulfilment
+lay on her brow like the thin line of a headache, pressing out the past.
+
+In Mrs. Meyerburg's bedroom a great arched ceiling, after the narrative
+manner of Paolo Veronese, lent such vastness to the apartment that
+moving across it, or sitting in her great overstuffed armchair beside a
+window, she hardly struck a note. Great wealth lay in canopied silence
+over that room. A rug out of Persia, so large that countless extra years
+and countless pairs of tired eyes and tired fingers had gone to make
+it, let noises sink noiseless into its nap. Brocade and tufting ate up
+sound. At every window more brocade shut out the incessant song of the
+Avenue.
+
+In the overstuffed chair beside one of these windows sat Mrs. Meyerburg
+with her hands idle and laid out along the chair sides. They were
+ringless hands and full of years, with a great network of veins across
+their backs and the aging fingers large at the knuckles. But where
+the hands betrayed the eyes belied. Deep in Mrs. Meyerburg's soft and
+scarcely flabby face her gaze was straight and very black.
+
+An hour by an inlaid ormolu clock she sat there, her feet in soft,
+elastic-sided shoes, just lifted from the floor. Incongruous enough, on
+a plain deal table beside her, a sheaf of blue-prints lay unrolled. She
+fingered them occasionally and with a tenderness, as if they might
+be sensitive to touch; even smiled and held the sheets one by one up
+against the shrouded window so that the light pressing through them
+might emphasize the labyrinth of lines. Dozed, with a smile printed on
+her lips, and awoke when her head lopped too heavily sidewise.
+
+After an interval she slid out of her chair and crossed to the door;
+even in action her broad, squat figure infinitesimal to the room's
+proportions. When she opened the door the dignity of great halls lay in
+waiting. She crossed the wide vista to a closed door, a replica of her
+own, and knocked, waited, turned the crystal knob, knocked, waited.
+Rapped again, this time in three staccatos. Silence. Then softly and
+with her cheek laid against the imperturbable panel of the closed door:
+
+"Becky! Becky! Open! Open!"
+
+A muffled sound from within as if a sob had been let slip.
+
+Then again, rattling the knob this time: "Becky, it's mamma. Becky, you
+should get up now; it's time for our drive. Let me in, Becky. Open!"
+shaking the handle.
+
+When the door opened finally, Mrs. Meyerburg stepped quickly through the
+slit, as if to ward off its too heavy closing. A French maid, in the
+immemorial paraphernalia of French maids, stood by like a slim sentinel
+on stilts, her tall, small heels clicked together. Perfume lay on the
+artificial dusk of that room.
+
+"Therese, you can go down awhile. When Miss Becky wants she can ring."
+
+"Oui, madame."
+
+"I wish, Therese, when you go down you would tell Anna I don't want she
+should put the real lace table-cloth from Miss Becky's party last night
+in the linen-room. Twice I've told her after its use she should always
+bring it right back to me."
+
+"Oui, madame." And Therese flashed out on the slim heels.
+
+In the crowded apartment, furnished after the most exuberant of the
+various exuberant French periods, Miss Rebecca Meyerburg lay on a Louis
+Seize bed, certified to have been lifted, down to the casters, from the
+Grand Trianon of Marie Antoinette. In a great confusion of laces and
+linens, disarrayed as if tossed by a fever patient, she lay there, her
+round young arm flung up over her head and her face turned downward to
+the curve of one elbow.
+
+"Ach, now, Becky, ain't it a shame you should take on so? Ain't it a
+shame before the servants? Come, baby, in a half-hour it's time for our
+drive. Come, baby!"
+
+Beneath the fine linen Miss Meyerburg dug with her toes into the
+mattress, her head burrowing deeper and the black mane of her hair
+rippling backward in maenadic waves. "If you don't let me alone, ma, if
+you don't just let me lay here in peace, I'll scream. I'll faint. Faint,
+I tell you," and smothered her words in the curve of her elbow.
+
+Mrs. Meyerburg breathed outward in a sigh and sat down hesitant on the
+bed edge, her hand reaching out to the bare white shoulder and smoothing
+its high luster.
+
+"Come, Becky, and get up like a good girl. Don't you want, baby, to come
+over by mamma's room and see the plans for the Memorial?"
+
+"No! No! No!"
+
+"They got to be sent back to-day, Becky, before Goldfinger leaves for
+Boston with them. I got to get right away busy if I want the boys should
+have their surprise this time next year. To no one but my baby girl have
+I said yet one word. Don't you want, Becky, to see them before they go
+down by Goldfinger's office, so he can right away go ahead?"
+
+"No! No!"
+
+"Becky, ain't you ashamed, your own papa's Memorial?"
+
+"Please, mamma, please. If you only won't Becky me."
+
+"Betty."
+
+"If you only will go and--and leave me alone."
+
+"I ask you, Betty, should a girl what's got everything that should make
+her happy just like an angel, a girl what has got for herself heaven on
+earth, make herself right away sick the first time what things don't go
+smooth with her?"
+
+"If I could only die! If I could die! Why don't I die to-day?"
+
+The throb of a sob lay on her voice, and she sat up suddenly, pushing
+backward with both hands the thick rush of hair to her face. Grief had
+blotched her cheeks, but she was as warm and as curving as Flora. It was
+as if her deep-white flesh was deep-white plush and would sink to the
+touch. The line and the sheen of her radiated through her fine garment.
+
+"Why don't I die?" repeating her vain question, and her eyes, darker
+because she was so white, looking out and past her parent and streaming
+their bitter tears.
+
+"You'm a bad girl, Becky, and it's a sin you should talk so. _Gott sei
+dank_ your poor papa ain't alive to hear such bad words from his own
+daughter's lips."
+
+"If pa was living things would be different--let me tell you that."
+
+In a flare of immediate anger Mrs. Meyerburg's head shot forward. "Du--"
+she cried; "du--you--you bad girl--du--"
+
+"If he had lived they would!"
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg's face, with the lines in it held tight, relaxed
+to tears and she fell to rocking herself softly to and fro, her stiff
+silk shushing as she swayed.
+
+"Ach, that I should live to hear from my own child that I 'ain't done by
+her like her father would want that I should do. Every hour since I been
+left alone, to do by my six children like he would want has been always
+my only thought, and now--"
+
+"I mean it! I mean it! If he had lived he would have settled it on me
+easy enough when he saw what I was doing for the family. Two million
+if need be! He was the one in this family that made it big, because he
+wasn't afraid of big things."
+
+Further rage trembled along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, and the fingers she
+waggled trembled, too, of that same wrath. "You'm a bad girl, Becky!
+You'm a bad girl with thought only for yourself. Always your papa said
+by each child we should do the same. Five hundred thousand dollars to
+each son when he marries a fine, good girl. More as one night I can
+tell you I laid awake when Felix picked out for himself Trixie, just
+wondering what papa would want I should do it or not."
+
+"Can't you keep from picking on that girl, mamma? It's through her, if
+you want to know it, that I first got in with--with the marquis and that
+crowd."
+
+"Always by each child we should do the same, he said. Five hundred
+thousand dollars to our girl when she marries a fine, good man. Even
+back in days when he had not a cent to leave after him, always he said
+alike you should all be treated. Always, you hear? Always."
+
+Fire had dried the tears in Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and her face had
+resumed its fixity of lines. Only her finger continued to tremble and
+two near-the-surface nerves in her left temple.
+
+"But, mamma, you know yourself he never dreamt we could climb up to
+this. That for a miserable five hundred thousand more we--"
+
+"A miserable five hundred thousand she calls it like it was five hundred
+thousand cents!"
+
+"That for a miserable five hundred thousand dollars we could raise our
+family up to the nobility. The Marquis Rosencrantz, ma, who--"
+
+"Becky, it ain't that I got a word to say against this young man
+Rosencrantz--but--"
+
+"Marquis Rosencrantz, mamma."
+
+"All right then, Marquis Rosencrantz; but it's like your brother Ben
+says--a marquis in a country where there ain't no more any of them made
+could just as well be called a mister. Not a word I got to say against
+this young Rosencrantz, but--"
+
+"Marquis, ma, please remember! M-a-r-q-u-i-s. Whether there are any more
+of them or not in France, he still goes by the title over here, and
+that's what he is, ma. Please remember!"
+
+"Marquis Rosencrantz. But when a young man, Becky, don't talk my own
+language, it ain't so easy for me to know if I like him--"
+
+"Like him. Huh!" Sitting there upright in bed, her large, white arms
+wrapped about her knees, Miss Meyerburg regarded her mother with dry
+eyes, but through a blur of scorn. "She don't know if she likes him! Let
+me tell you, ma, we can worry if he likes us, not if we like him."
+
+"I always say, Becky, about these fine people what you meet traveling in
+Europe with your brother Felix and his wife with her gay ways, you--"
+
+"A marquis comes her way and she don't know whether she likes him or
+not. That's rich!"
+
+"For the price what you say he hinted to you last night he's got to have
+before he can get married, I guess _oser_ I can say if I like him or
+not."
+
+"I should think, ma, if you had any pride for the family after the way
+we've been spit on by a certain bunch in this town, you'd be glad to
+grab a marquis to wave in their stuck-up faces."
+
+"For such things what make in life men like wild beasts fighting each
+other I got no time. I ain't all for style. All what I want is to see my
+little girl married to a fine, good--"
+
+"Yes, yes, ma. I know all that fine, good man stuff."
+
+"Ja, I say it again. To a fine, good man just like nearly all your
+brothers married fine, good women."
+
+"The marquis, just let me tell you, ma, is a man of force--he is. Maybe
+those foreigners don't always show up, but I've seen him on his own
+ground. I've seen him in Paris and Monte Carlo and I--"
+
+"I 'ain't got a word to say against this young man what followed you all
+the way home from Paris. What I don't know I can't talk about. Only I
+ask you, Becky, ain't it always in the papers how from Europe they run
+here thick after the girls what have got money?"
+
+"What are you always running down Europe for, ma? Where did you come
+from, yourself, I'd like to know!"
+
+"I don't run it down, baby. I don't. You know how your papa loved the
+old country and sent always money back home. But he always said, baby,
+it's in America we had all our good luck and to America what gave us so
+much we should give back too. Just because your brother Felix and his
+wife what was on the stage like such doings over there is no reason--"
+
+"It's just those notions of yours, ma, that are keeping this family
+down, let me tell you that--you and Ben and Roody and Izzy and all the
+rest of them with their old-fogyness."
+
+"Your brothers, let me tell you, you bad girl, you, are as fine, steady
+men as your papa before them."
+
+"We could have one of the biggest names in this town and get in on the
+right kind of charities, if you and they didn't--"
+
+"Your papa, Becky, had his own ideas how to do charity and how we should
+not give just where our name shows big in the papers. Your brothers are
+like him, fine, good men, and that's why I want the Memorial should come
+like a surprise, so they can have before them always that their father
+was the finest--"
+
+Suddenly Miss Meyerburg flung herself back on her pillows, tears gushing
+hot and full of salt. "Oh, what's the use? What's the use? She won't
+understand."
+
+"Becky, baby, 'ain't you got everything what money can buy? A house on
+Fifth Avenue what even the sight-seeing automobile hollers out about.
+Automobiles of your own more as you can use. Brothers nearly all with
+grand wives and families, and such a beautiful girl like you with a
+grand fortune to--"
+
+"Mamma, mamma, can't you understand there's things that money can't
+buy?"
+
+"Ja, I should say so; but them is the things, Becky, that money makes
+you forget all about."
+
+"Try to understand, can't you, ma, that the Rosencrantzes are a great
+old French family. You know for yourself how few of--of our people
+got titles to their names. Jacob Rosencrantz, ma, the marquis's
+great-grandfather back in the days when the family had big money, got
+his title from the king, ma, for lending money when the--"
+
+"If all of his sons got, like this great-grandson of his asks, one
+million dollars with their wives, I should say he could afford to lend
+to the king. To two kings!"
+
+"Please, mamma, can't you understand? It don't hurt how things are
+now--it's the way they used to be with those kinds of families that
+count, ma. I was on their estate in France, ma, with Trixie and Felix.
+She used to know him in Paris when she was singing there. You ought to
+see, ma, an old, old place that you can ride on for a day and not come
+to the end, and the house so moldy and ramshackly that any American girl
+would be proud to marry into it. Those are the things, ma, that our
+family needs and money can't buy."
+
+"You mean, Becky, that five hundred thousand dollars can't buy it! It
+has got to be a million dollars yet! A million dollars my child asks for
+just like it was five dollars!"
+
+"I'm not asking that, ma, I'm not. Five hundred thousand of it is mine
+by rights. I'm only asking for half a million."
+
+"Gott in Himmel, child, much more as a million dollars I 'ain't got left
+altogether. With my five sons married and their shares drawn, I tell
+you, Becky, a million dollars to you now would leave me so low that--"
+
+"There you go. That's what you said that time Felix had to have the
+hundred thousand in a hurry, but I notice you got it overnight without
+even turning a finger. For him you can do, but--"
+
+"For a black sheep I got to--"
+
+"It's not all tease with the boys, let me tell you, ma, when they sing
+that song at you about a whole stocking full you've got that none of us
+know anything about."
+
+"Ja, you and your brothers can talk, but I know what's what. Don't
+think, Becky, your brother Felix and his wife with their Monte Carlo all
+the time and a yacht they got to have yet, and their debts, 'ain't eat a
+piece out of the fortune your papa built up for you children out of his
+own sweat."
+
+"Don't go back to ancient history, ma."
+
+"Those cut-uppings is for billionaires, Becky; not for one old lady as
+'ain't got much more as a million left after her six dowries is paid."
+
+"Yes, I wish I had what you've got over and above that."
+
+"That young Rosencrantz is playing you high, Becky, because he sees how
+high your brother and his wife can fly. Always when people get big like
+us, right away the world takes us for even bigger as we are. He 'ain't
+got no right to make such demands. Five hundred thousand dollars is more
+as he ever saw in his life. I tell you, Becky, if I could speak to that
+young man like you can in his own language, I would tell him what--"
+
+"He don't make demands in so many words, ma. There--there's a way those
+things are done without just coming right out. I guess you think, when
+Selma Bernheimer married her baron, he came right out in words and said
+it had to be two millions. Like fun he did! But just the same, you don't
+think she could have said yes to him, when he asked her, unless she knew
+that she--she could fork over, do you?"
+
+"I tell you in such marriages the last thing what you hear talked about
+is being in love."
+
+"Oh, that had nothing to do with this, ma. The love part is there all
+right. You--you don't understand, ma!"
+
+"_Gott sei dank_ that I don't understand such!"
+
+Then Miss Meyerburg leaned forward, her large, white hand on her
+parent's knee, her face close and full of fervor. "Ma dear, you got it
+in your power sitting there to make me the happiest girl in the world.
+I'll do more for the family in this marriage, ma dear, than all five of
+the boys put together. I tell you, ma, it's the biggest minute in the
+life of this family if you give--if you do this for me, ma. It is,
+dear."
+
+"Ja, let me just tell you that your brothers and their wives will be the
+first to put their foot down on that the youngest should get twice as
+much as they."
+
+"What do you care? And, anyways, ma, they don't need to know. What they
+don't know don't hurt them. Don't tell them, ma; just don't tell them.
+Ain't I the only girl, and the baby too? Haven't I got the chance to,
+raise them all up in society? Oh, ma dear, you've got so much! So much
+more than you can ever use, and--and you--you're old now, ma, and I--I'm
+so young, dear, so young!"
+
+"Ja, like you say, maybe I'm old, but I tell you, Becky, I 'ain't got
+the money to throw away like--"
+
+"Let me let the marquis ask me when he comes to-night, ma. He's ready to
+pop if--if I just dare to let him, ma."
+
+"_Gott in Himmel_, I tell you how things is done now'days between young
+people. I should let him ask her yet, she says, like I had put on his
+mouth a muzzle."
+
+"It's no use letting him ask me, ma dear, if I can't come across like I
+know the girl he can marry has got to. Let me let him ask me to-night,
+ma. And to-morrow at New-Year's dinner with all the family here, we'll
+break it to 'em, ma. Mamma dearie! Let me ask the marquis here to
+New-Year's dinner to-morrow to meet his new brothers. Ma dearie!"
+
+She was frankly pleading, her eyes twilit, with stars shining through,
+her mouth so like red fruit and her beautiful brows raised.
+
+"So help me, Becky, if I give you the million like you ask and with the
+Memorial yet to build, I am wiped out, Becky. Wiped out!"
+
+"Wiped out! With five sons with their finger in every good pie in town
+and a daughter married into nobility?"
+
+"I 'ain't got one word to say against my children, Becky; luckier I been
+as most mothers; but the day what I am dependent on one of them for my
+living, that day I want I should be done with living."
+
+"You could live with us, ma dearie. Paris in season and the estate in
+winter. You--you could run the big estate for us, ma, order and--"
+
+"You heard what I said, Becky."
+
+"Well, then, ma, why--why don't you get the Memorial out of your head,
+dear? Pa built his own Memorial, ma. His memory lasts with everybody,
+anyway."
+
+Aspen trembling laid hold of Mrs. Meyerburg, muddling her words.
+"You--ach--from her dead father yet she would take away the marble to
+his memory."
+
+"Ma!"
+
+"Ja, the marble to his memory! Bad girl, you! A man what lifted up with
+his hands those that came after so that hardly on the ground they got to
+put a foot. And now du--du what gives him no thanks! A Memorial to her
+papa, a Home for the Old and Poor what he always dreamed of building,
+she begrudges, she begrudges!"
+
+"No, no, mamma, you don't understand!"
+
+"A man what loved so the poor while he lived, shouldn't be able to do
+for the poor after he is dead too. You go, you bad girl you, to your
+grand nobleman what won't take you if you ain't worth every inch your
+weight in gold, you--"
+
+"Mamma--mamma, if you don't stop your terrible talk I--I'll faint, I
+tell you!"
+
+"You go and your brother Felix and his fine wife with you, for the
+things what money can buy. You got such madness for money, sometimes
+like wolfs you all feel to me breathing on my back, you go and--"
+
+"I tell you if--if you don't stop that terrible talk I--I'll faint, I
+will! Oh, why don't I die--why--why--why?"
+
+"Since the day what he died every hour I've lived for the time when,
+with my children provided for, I could spend the rest of my days
+building to a man what deserved it such a monument as he should have. A
+Home for the Old and Poor with a park all around, where they can sit all
+day in the sun. All ready I got the plans in my room to send them down
+by Goldfinger this afternoon he should go right ahead and--"
+
+"Mamma, mamma, please listen--"
+
+But the voice of Mrs. Meyerburg rose like a gale and her face was
+slashed with tears. "If my last cent it takes and on the streets I go to
+beg, up such a Memorial goes. All you children with your feet up on his
+shoulders can turn away from his memory now he's gone, but up it goes if
+on the day what I die I got to dig dirt with my finger-nails to pay yet
+for my coffin."
+
+"Listen, ma; just be calm a minute--just a minute. I don't mean that.
+Didn't I just say he was the grandest father in the world and--"
+
+"You said--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, mamma! Quiet, quiet! There isn't one of the boys wouldn't
+agree with me if they knew. We aren't big enough, I tell you, to sink a
+million in an out-of-town charity like that. In any charity, for that
+matter, no matter how big it shows up. You say yourself a million and a
+half will cripple you. Well, your first duty is to us living and not to
+him dead--To us living! It means my whole life, my whole life!" And she
+beat the pillow with hard fists.
+
+"Ja, but--"
+
+"With that money you can buy my happiness living, and he don't want it
+or need it dead."
+
+Within the quick vise of her two hands Mrs. Meyerburg clasped her face,
+all quivering and racked with sobs. "I can't hear it. It's like she was
+sticking knifes into me."
+
+"The marquis has the kind of blood we need to give this family a boost.
+We can be big, ma. Big, I tell you. I can have a crest embroidered in
+two colors in my linens. That inside clique that looks down on us now
+can do some looking up then. The boys don't need to know about that
+million, ma. Just let me have the marquis here to-morrow to meet his new
+brothers, ma, like there was nothing unusual. I'll pay it back to you in
+a million ways. The Memorial will come in time. Everything will come in
+time. Make me the happiest girl in the world, ma. He'll ask me to-night
+if I let him. Get the Memorial plans out of your head for a while,
+anyway! Just for a while!"
+
+"Not so long as I got in me the strength to send down them plans to
+Goldfinger's office this afternoon with my message to go ahead. I don't
+invite no marquis here to-morrow for family dinner if I got to get him
+here with a million dollars' worth of bait. I--"
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+"Go and tell him your stingy old mamma would rather build a Home for the
+Old and Poor in memory of the grandest man what ever lived than give a
+snip like him, what never did a lick of work in his life, a fortune so
+he should have with it a good time at Monte Carlo. Just go tell him!
+Tell him!"
+
+She was trembling now so that she could scarcely withdraw from the
+bedside, but her voice had lost none of its gale-like quality.
+
+"Go tell him! Maybe it does him good he should hear." And in spite of
+her ague she crossed the vast room, slamming the door so that a great
+shudder ran over the room.
+
+On the bed that had been lifted bodily from the Grand Trianon of Marie
+Antoinette, its laces upheaved about her like billows in anger, Rebecca
+Meyerburg lay with her face to the ceiling, raw sobs distorting it.
+
+Steadying herself without that door, her hand laid between her breasts
+and slightly to the left, as if there a sharp pain had cut her, Mrs.
+Meyerburg leaned to the wall a moment, and, gaining quick composure,
+proceeded steadily enough across the wide aisle of hall, her hand
+following a balustrade.
+
+A servant intercepted her half-way. "Madam--"
+
+"Kemp, from here when I look down in the lower hall, all them ferns look
+yellow on top. I want you should please cut them!"
+
+"Yes, madam. Mrs. Fischlowitz, madam, has been waiting down in the side
+hall for you."
+
+"Mrs. Fischlowitz! For why you keep her waiting in the side hall?"
+
+"Therese said madam was occupied."
+
+"Bring her right up, Kemp, in the elevator. Her foot ain't so good.
+Right away, Kemp."
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+Into Mrs. Meyerburg's room of many periods, its vastness so emphasized
+by the ceiling after Paolo Veronese, its fluted yellow-silk bed canopy
+reaching up to that ceiling stately and theatric enough to shade
+the sleep of a shah, limped Mrs. Fischlowitz timidly and with the
+uncertainty with which the callous feet of the unsocialistic poor tread
+velvet.
+
+"How-do, Mrs. Fischlowitz?"
+
+"Mrs. Meyerburg, I didn't want you to be disturbed except I want to
+explain to you why I'm late again this month."
+
+"Sit down! I don't want you should even explain, Mrs.
+Fischlowitz--that's how little I thought about it."
+
+Mrs. Meyerburg was full of small, pleased ways, drawing off her guest's
+decent black cape, pulling at her five-fingered mittens, lifting the
+nest-like bonnet.
+
+"So! And how's the foot?"
+
+"Not so good and not so bad. And how is the sciatica with you, Mrs.
+Meyerburg?"
+
+"Like with you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. It could be better and it could be
+worse. Sometimes I got a little touch yet up between my ribs."
+
+"If it ain't one thing, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's another. What you think why
+I'm late again with the rent, Mrs. Meyerburg? If last week my Sollie
+didn't fall off the delivery-wagon and sprain his back!"
+
+"You don't say so!"
+
+"That same job as you got him two years ago so good he's kept, and now
+such a thing has to happen. _Gott sei dank_, he's up and out again, but
+I tell you it was a scare!"
+
+"I should say so. And how is Tillie?"
+
+"Mrs. Meyerburg, you should just see for yourself how that girl has got
+new color since that certified milk you send her every day. Like a
+new girl so pretty all of a sudden she has grown. For to-morrow, Mrs.
+Meyerburg, a girl what never before had a beau in her life, if Morris
+Rinabauer, the young foreman where she works, 'ain't invited her out for
+New-Year's Day."
+
+"You got great times down by Rivington Street this time of year. Not? I
+remember how my children used to like it with their horns _oser_ like it
+was their own holiday."
+
+"Ja, it's a great _gedinks_ like always. Sometimes I say it gets so
+tough down there I hate my Tillie should come home from the factory
+after dark, but now with Morris Rinabauer--"
+
+"Mrs. Fischlowitz, I guess you think it's a sin I should say so, but I
+tell you, when I think of that dirty little street down there and your
+flat what I lived in the seventeen happiest years of my life with my
+husband and babies--when I think back on my years in that little flat
+I--I can just feel myself tremble like all over. That's how happy we
+were down there, Mrs. Fischlowitz."
+
+"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, when I got a place like this, at
+Rivington Street I wouldn't want I should ever have to look again."
+
+"It's a feeling, Mrs. Fischlowitz, what you--you can't understand
+until--until you live through so much like me. I--I just want some day
+you should let me come down, Mrs. Fischlowitz, and visit by you in the
+old place, eh?"
+
+"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, I can tell you the day what you visit on me down
+there I am a proud woman. How little we got to offer you know, but if I
+could fix for you Kaffeeklatsch some day and Kuchen and--"
+
+"In the kitchen you still got the noodle-board yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz,
+where you can mix Kuchen too?"
+
+"I should say so. Always on it I mix my doughs."
+
+"He built it in for me himself, Mrs. Fischlowitz. On hinges so when I
+was done, up against the wall out of the way I could fold it."
+
+"'Just think,' I say to my children, 'we eat noodles off a board what
+Simon Meyerburg built with his own hands.' On the whole East Side it's a
+curiosity."
+
+"Sometimes when I come down by your flat, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I show you
+how I used to make them for him. Wide ones he liked."
+
+"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, like you could put your hands in dough now!"
+
+"'Mamma,' he used to say--standing in the kitchen door when he came home
+nights and looking at me maybe rocking Becky there by the stove and
+waiting supper for him--'Mamma,' he'd say, clapping his hands at me,
+'open your eyes wide so I can see what's in 'em.'"
+
+"That such a big man should play like that!"
+
+"'Come in, darling,' I'd say; 'you can't guess from there what we got.'"
+
+"Just think, like just married you were together."
+
+"'Noodles!' he'd holler, and all the time right in back of me, spread
+out on the board, he could see 'em. I can see him yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz,
+standing there in the kitchen doorway, under the horseshoe what he found
+when we first landed."
+
+"I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, in that flat we 'ain't had nothing but
+luck, neither, with you so good to us."
+
+"Ach, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, for an old friend like you, what I lived
+next door to so many years and more as once gave my babies to keep for
+me when I must go out awhile, I shouldn't do a little yet."
+
+"'Little,' she calls it. With such low rent you give us I'm ashamed to
+bring the money. Five weeks in the country and milk for my Tillie, until
+it's back from the grave you snatched her. Even on my back now every
+stitch what I got on I got to thank you for. Such comfort I got from
+that black cape!"
+
+"I was just thinking, Mrs. Fischlowitz, with your rheumatism and on such
+a cold day a cape ain't so good for you, neither. Right up under it the
+wind can get."
+
+"Warm like toast it is, Mrs. Meyerburg."
+
+"I got a idea, Mrs. Fischlowitz! In that chest over there by the wall I
+got yet a jacket from Rivington Street. Right away it got too tight for
+me. Like new it is, with a warm beaver collar. At auction one day he got
+it for me. Like a top it will fit you, Mrs. Fischlowitz."
+
+"No, no, please, Mrs. Meyerburg. It just looks like every time what
+I come you got to give me something. Ashamed it makes me. Please you
+shouldn't."
+
+But in the pleasant frenzy of sudden decision Mrs. Meyerburg was on her
+knees beside a carved chest, burrowing her arm beneath folded garments,
+the high smell of camphor exuding.
+
+"Only yesterday in my hand I had it. There! See! Just your size!" She
+held the creased garment out from her by each shoulder, blowing the nap
+of the beaver collar.
+
+"Please, no, Mrs. Meyerburg. Such a fine coat maybe you can wear it
+yourself. No, I don't mean that, when you got such grander ones; but for
+me, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's too fine to take. Please!"
+
+Standing there holding it thrust enthusiastically forward, a glaze
+suddenly formed over Mrs. Meyerburg's eyes and she laid her cheek to the
+brown fur collar, a tear dropping to it.
+
+"You'm right, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I--I can't give this up. I--he--a coat
+he bought once for me at auction when--he _oser_ could afford it. I--you
+must excuse me, Mrs. Fischlowitz."
+
+"That's right, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a remembrance you should keep it."
+
+Then brightening: "But I got in the next room, Mrs. Fischlowitz, a coat
+better as this for you. Lined all in squirrel-skin they call it. One day
+by myself I bought it, and how my Becky laughs and won't even let me
+wear it in automobile. I ain't stylish enough, she says."
+
+With an inarticulate medley of sounds Mrs. Fischlowitz held up a hand of
+remonstrance. "But--"
+
+"Na, na, just a minute." And on the very wings of her words Mrs.
+Meyerburg was across the room, through the ornate door of an ornate
+boudoir, and out presently with the garment flung across her arm. "Na,
+here put it on."
+
+"Ach, such a beau-tiful coat!"
+
+"So! Let me help!"
+
+They leaned together, their faces, which the years had passed over
+none too lightly, close and eager. Against the beaver collar Mrs.
+Fischlowitz's hand lay fluttering.
+
+"Put your hands in the pockets, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Deep, eh?"
+
+"Finer you can believe me as I ever had in my life before. I can tell
+you, Mrs. Meyerburg, a woman like you should get first place in heaven
+and you should know how many on the East Side there is says the same.
+I--I brought you your rent, Mrs. Meyerburg. You must excuse how late,
+but my Sollie--"
+
+"Ja, ja."
+
+Eleven! Twelve! Twelve-fifty! Mrs. Fischlowitz counted it out carefully
+from a small purse tucked in her palm, snapping it carefully shut over
+the remaining coins.
+
+"Thank you, Mrs. Fischlowitz. You should never feel hurried. Mr.
+Oppenheimer will mail you a receipt."
+
+"I guess now I must be going, Mrs. Meyerburg--to-night I promised my
+Sollie we have cheese-Kuchen for supper."
+
+"Always I used to make it with a short crust for my Isadore. How he
+loved it!"
+
+"Just again, Mrs. Meyerburg, I want you should let me say how--how this
+is the finest present what I ever had in my life. I can tell you from
+just how soft it is on me, I can tell how it must feel to ride in
+automobile."
+
+A light flashed in brilliance up into Mrs. Meyerburg's face. "Mrs.
+Fischlowitz!"
+
+"Ja, Mrs. Meyerburg?"
+
+"I tell you what! I--this afternoon my Becky, Mrs. Fischlowitz, she--she
+ain't so well and like always can't take with me a ride in the Park.
+Such--such a cold that girl has got. How I should like it, Mrs.
+Fischlowitz, if you would be so kind to--to take with me my drive in--in
+your new coat."
+
+"I--"
+
+"Ja, ja, I know, Mrs. Fischlowitz, cheese Kuchen should first get cold
+before supper, but if you could just an hour ride by me a little? If you
+would be so kind, Mrs. Fischlowitz!"
+
+Diffidence ran trembling along Mrs. Meyerburg's voice, as if she dared
+not venture too far upon a day blessed with tasks. "I got always so--so
+much time to myself now'days, Mrs. Fischlowitz, sometimes I--I get maybe
+a--a little lonesome."
+
+"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, you don't want to be bothered with such--such a
+person like me when you ride so grand through the Park."
+
+"Fit like a fiddle it will make you feel, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Button up
+tight that collar and right away we start. Please, right next to you,
+will you press that third button? That means we go right down and find
+outside the car waiting for us."
+
+"But, Mrs. Meyerburg--"
+
+"See, just like you, I put on a coat on the inside fur. This way, Mrs.
+Fischlowitz. Careful, your foot!"
+
+In the great lower hall full of Tudor gloom the carved stone arches
+dropping in rococo stalactites from the ceiling, and a marble staircase
+blue-veined as a delicate woman's hand winding up to an oriole window,
+a man-servant swung back two sets of trellised doors; bowed them
+noiselessly shut again.
+
+The quick cold of December bit them at the threshold. Opposite lay the
+Park, its trees, in their smooth bark whipped bare, and gray as nuns,
+the sunlight hard against their boles. More sunlight lay cold and
+glittering down the length of the most façaded avenue in the world and
+on the great up-and-down stream of motor-cars and their nickel-plated
+snouts and plate-glass sides.
+
+Women, with heads too haughty to turn them right or left, moved past in
+closed cars that were perfumed and upholstered like jewel-boxes; the
+joggly smartness of hansom cabs, their fair fares seeing and being seen
+behind the wooden aprons and their frozen laughter coming from their
+lips in vapor! On the broad sidewalks women in low shoes that defied
+the wind, and men in high hats that the wind defied; nursemaids trim as
+deaconesses, and their charges the beautiful exotic children of pure
+milk and pure sunshine!
+
+One of these deaconess-like nursemaids, walking out with a child whose
+black curls lay in wide sprays on each shoulder, detached herself from
+the up-town flow and crossed to the trellised threshold.
+
+"Good afternoon, Madam Meyerburg. Mademoiselle, _dites bonjour à madame
+votre grand'maman_."
+
+"_Bonjour, grand'maman_."
+
+In the act of descending her steps, Mrs. Meyerburg's hands flew outward.
+"Ach, du little Aileen. Come, Aileen, to grandma. Mrs. Fischlowitz, this
+is Felix's little girl. You remember Felix--such a beautiful bad little
+boy he was what always used to fight your Sollie underneath the sink."
+
+"_Gott in Himmel_, so this is Felix's little girl!"
+
+"Ja, this is already his second. Come, Aileen, to grandma and say good
+afternoon to the lady."
+
+The maid guided the small figure forward by one shoulder. "_Dites
+bonjour à madame, Mademoiselle Aileen_."
+
+"_Bonjour, madame_."
+
+"Not a word of English she can speak yet, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I tell you
+already my grandchildren are so smart not even their language I can
+understand. _Aber_ for why such a child should only talk so in her own
+country she can't be understood, I don't know."
+
+"I guess, Mrs. Meyerburg, it's style now'days that you shouldn't know
+your own language."
+
+"Come by grandma to-morrow, Aileen, and upstairs I got in the little box
+sweet cakes like grandma always keeps for you. Eh, baby?"
+
+"Say thank you, grandmother."
+
+"_Merci bien, grand'maman_."
+
+And they were off into the stream again, the small white leggings at a
+smart trot.
+
+At the curb a low-bodied, high-power car, with the top flung back and
+the wind-shield up, lay sidled against the coping.
+
+"Get right in, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Burk, put under Mrs. Fischlowitz's both
+feet a heater."
+
+A second man, in too-accentuated livery of mauve and astrakhan, flung
+open the wide door. A glassed-in chauffeur, in more mauve and astrakhan,
+threw in his clutch. The door slammed. Mrs. Fischlowitz breathed deep
+and grasped the nickel-plated door handle. Mrs. Meyerburg leaned out,
+her small plumes wagging.
+
+"Burk, since Miss Becky ain't along to-day, I don't want in front no
+second man."
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"I want instead you should take the roadster and call after Mrs.
+Weinstein. You know, down by Twenty-third Street, the fourth floor
+back."
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+"I want you should say, Burk, that Mrs. Meyerburg says her and her
+daughter should take off from their work an hour for a drive wherever
+they say you should take them. And tell her, Burk, she should make for
+me five dozens more them paper carnations. Right away I want you should
+go."
+
+"Yes, madam."
+
+They nosed slowly into the stream of the Avenue.
+
+"Always Becky likes there should be two men stuck up in front there.
+I always say to look only at the backs of my servants I don't go out
+riding for."
+
+Erect and as if to the fantastic requirements of the situation sat
+Mrs. Fischlowitz, her face of a thousand lines screwed to maintain the
+transiency of a great moment.
+
+"That I should live, Mrs. Meyerburg, to see such a sight like this! In
+the thirty years I been in this country not but once have I walked up
+Fifth Avenue--that time when my Tillie paraded in the shirtwaist strike.
+I--I can tell you I'm proud to live to see it this way from automobile."
+
+"Lean back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, so you be more comfortable. That's all
+right; you can't hurt them bottles. My Becky likes to have fancy touches
+all over everything. Gold-tops bottles she has to have yet by her. I can
+tell you, though, Mrs. Fischlowitz, if I do say it myself, when that
+girl sits up in here like a picture she looks. How they stare you should
+see."
+
+"Such a beau-ti-ful girl! I can tell you for her a prince ain't good
+enough. Ach, what a pleasure it must be, Mrs. Meyerburg, for a mother to
+know if her child wants heaven she can nearly get it for her. I can tell
+you that must be the greatest pleasure of all for you, Mrs. Meyerburg,
+to give to your daughter everything just like she wants it."
+
+"Ja, ja," said with little to indicate mental ferment.
+
+They were in the Park, with the wind scampering through the skeins of
+bare tree branches. The lake lay locked in ice, skaters in the ecstasy
+of motion lunging across it. Beneath the mink lap-robe Mrs. Fischlowitz
+snuggled deeper and more lax.
+
+"_Gott in Himmel_, I tell you this is better as standing over my cheese
+Kuchen."
+
+"Always I used to let my cheese drip first the night before. Right
+through a cheese-cloth sack hung from a nail what my husband drove in
+for me under the window-sill."
+
+"Right that same nail is there yet, Mrs. Meyerburg. _Oser_ we should
+touch one thing!"
+
+"I can tell you it's a great comfort, Mrs. Fischlowitz, I got such a
+tenant as you in there."
+
+"When you come to visit me, Mrs. Meyerburg, right to the last nail like
+you left it you find it. Not even from the kitchen would I let my Sollie
+take down the old clothes-line what you had stretched across one end."
+
+"Ach, how many times in rainy days I used that line. It's a good little
+line I bet yet. Not?"
+
+"Ja." But with no corresponding kit of emotions in Mrs. Fischlowitz's
+voice. She was still breathing deep the buoyant ether of the moment, and
+beneath the ingratiating warmth of fur utterly soothed. "_Gott_," she
+said, "I wish my sister-in-law, Hanna, with all her fine airs up where
+she lives on One Hundred and Twenty-ninth Street, could see me now.
+_Oser_ she could stare and stare, and bow and bow, and past her I would
+roll like--like a rolling-pin."
+
+From the gold-topped bottle nearest her came a long insidious whiff of
+frangipani. She dared to lean toward it, sniffing.
+
+"Such a beautiful smell." And let her eyes half close.
+
+"You market your meat yet on Fridays down by old Lavinsky's, Mrs.
+Fischlowitz?"
+
+"Ja, just like always, only his liver ain't so good like it used to be.
+I can tell you that's a beau-ti-ful smell."
+
+An hour they rode purringly over smooth highways and for a moment
+alongside the river, but there the wind was edged with ice and they were
+very presently back into the leisurely flow of the Avenue. From her
+curves Mrs. Fischlowitz unbent herself slowly.
+
+"No, no, Mrs. Fischlowitz--you stay in."
+
+"Ach, I get out here at your house, too, and take the street-cars. I--"
+
+"No, no. James takes you all the way home, Mrs. Fischlowitz. I get out
+because my Becky likes I should get home early and get dressed up for
+dinner."
+
+"But Mrs. Meyerburg--"
+
+"No, no. Right in you stay. 'Sh-h-h, just don't mention it. Enough
+pleasure you give me to ride by me. Take good care your foot. Good-by,
+Mrs. Fischlowitz. All the way home you should take her, James."
+
+Once more within the gloom of her Tudor hall, Mrs. Meyerburg hurried
+rearward and toward the elevator. But down the curving stairway the
+small maid on stilts came, intercepting her.
+
+"Madame!"
+
+"Ja."
+
+"Madame will please come. Mademoiselle Betty this afternoon ees not so
+well. Three spells of fainting, madame."
+
+"Therese!"
+
+"Oui, not serious, madame, but what I would call hysteeria and
+mademoiselle will not have doctor. Eef madame will come--"
+
+With a great mustering of her strength Mrs. Meyerburg ran up the first
+three of the marble steps, then quite as suddenly stopped, reaching out
+for the balustrade. The seconds stalked past as she stood there, a fine
+frown sketched on her brow, and the small maid anxious and attendant.
+
+"Madame?"
+
+When Mrs. Meyerburg spoke finally it was as if those seconds had been
+years, sapping more than their share of life from her. "I--now I don't
+go up, Therese. After a while I come, but--but not now. I want, though,
+you should go right away up to Miss Becky with a message."
+
+"Oui, madame."
+
+"I want you should tell her for me, Therese, that--that to-morrow
+New-Year's dinner with the family all here, I--I want she should invite
+the Marquis Rosencrantz. That everything is all right. Right away I want
+you should go and tell her, Therese!"
+
+"Oui, madame."
+
+Up in her bedroom and without pause Mrs. Meyerburg walked directly
+to the small deal table there beside her bed and still littered with
+half-curled blue-prints. These she gathered into a tight roll, snapping
+a rubber band about it. She rang incisively the fourth of the row of
+bells. A man-servant responded almost immediately with a light rap-a-tap
+at the door. She was there and waiting.
+
+"Kemp, I want you should away take down this roll to Goldfinger's office
+in the Syndicate Building. Just say Mrs. Meyerburg says everything is
+all right--to go ahead."
+
+"Yes, madam." And he closed the door after him, holding the knob a
+moment to save the click.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a Tudor dining-hall, long as the banquet-room of a thane, faced in
+thrice-weathered oak and designed by an architect too eminent to endure
+interference--except when Miss Meyerburg had later and at her own
+stealthy volition installed a Pompeian colored window above the high
+Victorian fireplace--the wide light of a brilliant New-Year's day lay
+against leaded window-panes, but shut out by thick hangings.
+
+Instead, the yellow light from a ceiling sown with starlike bulbs lay
+over that room. At each end of the table, so that the gracious glow fell
+full upon the small figure of Mrs. Meyerburg at one end and upon the
+grizzled head of Mr. Ben Meyerburg at the other, two braces of candles
+burned softly, crocheting a flickering design upon the damask.
+
+From the foot of that great table, his place by precedence of years, Mr.
+Ben Meyerburg rose from his Voltairian chair, holding aloft a wineglass
+like a torch.
+
+"_Masseltov_, ma," he said, "and just like we drank to the happy couple
+who have told us the good news to-day, so now I drink to the grandest
+little mother in the world. _Masseltov_, ma." And he drained his glass,
+holding it with fine disregard back over one shoulder for refilling.
+
+Round that table Mrs. Meyerburg's four remaining sons, towering almost
+twice her height, rose in a solemn chorus that was heavier than their
+libations of wine.
+
+"_Masseltov_, ma."
+
+"Ach, boys, my sons, _ich--ich--danke_." She was quivering now in the
+edge of tears and grasped tightly at the arms of her chair.
+
+"_Masseltov_, ma," said Rebecca Meyerburg, raising her glass and
+her moist eyes shining above it. The five daughters-in-law followed
+immediate suit. At Miss Meyerburg's left the Marquis Rosencrantz, with
+pointed features and a silhouette sharp as a knife edge, raised his
+glass and his waxed mustache and drank, but silently and over a deep
+bow.
+
+"Mamma--mother dear, the marquis drinks to you."
+
+Mrs. Meyerburg turned upon him with a great mustering of amiability and
+safely withdrawn now from her brink of tears. "I got now six sons what
+can drink to my health--not, Marquis?"
+
+"She says, Marquis," translated Miss Meyerburg, ardently, to the sharp
+profile, "that now she has six sons to drink to her health."
+
+_"Madame me fait trop d'honneur."_
+
+"He says, mamma, that it is too great an honor to be your son."
+
+From her yesterday's couch of mental travail Miss Meyerburg had risen
+with a great radiance turping out its ravages. She was Sheban in
+elegance, the velvet of her gown taken from the color of the ruby on her
+brow, and the deep-white flesh of her the quality of that same velvet
+with the nap raised.
+
+"He wants to kiss your hand, ma. Give it to him. No, the right one,
+dearie."
+
+"I--I'm much obliged, Marquis. I--well, for one little old woman like
+me, I got now six sons and six daughters, each one big enough to carry
+me off under his arm. Not?"
+
+She was met with immediate acclaim from a large blond daughter-in-law,
+her soft, expansive bosom swathed in old lace caught up with a great
+jeweled lizard.
+
+"Little old nothing, ma. I always say to Isadore you've got more energy
+yet than the rest of the family put together."
+
+"Ach, Dora, always you children like to make me think I been young yet."
+
+But she was smilingly tremulous and pushed herself backward in her heavy
+throne-like chair. A butler sprang, lifting it gently from her.
+
+Immediately the great, disheveled table, brilliantly littered with
+crystal, frumpled napkins, and a great centerpiece of fruits and
+flowers, was in the confusion of disorganization.
+
+Daughters-in-law and husbands moved up toward a pair of doors swung
+heavily backward by two servants.
+
+Mrs. Isadore Meyerburg pushed her real-lace bodice into place and
+adjusted the glittering lizard. "Believe me," she said, exuding a sigh
+and patting her bosom on the swell of that deep breath, "I ate too much,
+but if I can't break my diet for the last engagement in the family, and
+to nobility at that, when will I do it?"
+
+"I should say so," replied Mrs. Rudolph Meyerburg, herself squirming to
+rights in an elaborate bodice and wielding an unostentatious toothpick
+behind the cup of her hand; "like I told Roody just now, if I take on a
+pound to-day he can blame his sister."
+
+"Say, I wish you'd look at the marquis kissing ma's hand again, will
+you?"
+
+"Look at ma get away with it too. You've got to hand it to them French,
+they've got the manners all right. No wonder our swell Trixie tags after
+them."
+
+"Say, Becky shouldn't get manners yet with her looks and five hundred
+thousand thrown in. I bet, if the truth is known, and since ma is going
+to live over there with them, that there's a few extra thousand tacked
+on too."
+
+"Not if the court knows it! Like I told Roody this morning, she's
+bringing a title into the family, but she's taking a big wad of the
+Meyerburg money out of the country too."
+
+"It is so, ain't it?"
+
+Around her crowded Mrs. Meyerburg's five sons.
+
+"Come with us, ma. We got a children's party up in the ballroom for
+Aileen this afternoon, and then Trixie and I are going to motor down to
+Sheepshead for the indoor polo-match. Come, ma."
+
+"No, no, Felix. I want for myself rest this afternoon. All you children
+go and have your good times. I got home more as I can do, and maybe
+company, too."
+
+"Tell you what, ma, come with Dora and me and the kids. She wants to go
+out to Hastings this afternoon to see her mother. Come with us, ma. The
+drive will do you good."
+
+"No, no, Izzy. When I ride too much in the cold right away up in my ribs
+comes the sciatica again."
+
+Miss Meyerburg bent radiant over her parent. "Mother," she whispered,
+her throat lined with the fur of tenderness, "it's reception-day out at
+that club, and all the cliques will be there, and I want--"
+
+"Sure, Becky, you and the marquis should drive out. Take the big car,
+but tell James he shouldn't be so careless driving by them curves out
+there by the golf-links."
+
+"But, ma dear, you come, too, and--"
+
+"No, no, Becky; to-day I got not time."
+
+"But, ma--ma, you ain't mad at me, dear? You can see now for yourself,
+can't you, dear, what a big thing it is for the family and how you--"
+
+"Yes, yes, Becky. Look, go over by your young man. See how he stands
+there and not one word what Ben is hollering so at him can he
+understand."
+
+Across the room, alongside a buffet wrought out of the powerful Jacobean
+period, Mr. Ben Meyerburg threw a violent contortion.
+
+"Want to go up in the Turkish room and smoke?" he shouted, the
+apoplectic purple of exertion rushing into his face and round to the
+roll of flesh overhanging the rear of his collar.
+
+_"Pardon?"_
+
+"Smoke? Do you smoke? Smokez-vous? Cigarez-vous? See, like this. Fume.
+Blow. Do you smoke? Smokez-vous?"
+
+_"Pardon?"_ said the marquis, bowing low.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the heavy solitude of Mrs. Meyerburg's bedchamber, the buzz of
+departures over, silence lay resumed, but with a singing quality to it
+as if an echo or so still lingered.
+
+Before the plain deal table, and at her side two files bulging their
+contents, Mrs. Meyerburg sat with her spatulate finger conning in among
+a page of figures. After a while the finger ceased to move across the
+page, but lay passive midway down a column. After another while she
+slapped shut the book and took to roaming up and down the large room
+as if she there found respite from the spirit of her which nagged and
+carped. Peering out between the heavy curtains, she could see the tide
+of the Avenue mincing, prancing, chugging past. Resuming her beat up and
+down the vistas of the room, she could still hear its voice muffled and
+not unlike the tune of quinine singing in the head.
+
+The ormolu clock struck, and from various parts of the house musical
+repetitions. A French tinkle from her daughter's suite across the hall;
+from somewhere more remote the deep, leisurely tones of a Nuremberg
+floor clock. Finally Mrs. Meyerburg dropped into the overstuffed chair
+beside her window, relaxing into the attitude her late years had brought
+her, head back, hands stretched out along the chair sides, and full of
+rest. An hour she sat half dozing, and half emerging every so often with
+a start, then lay quietly looking into space, her eyes quiet and the
+erstwhile brilliancy in them gone out like a light.
+
+Presently she sat forward suddenly, and with the quick light of
+perception flooding up into her face; slid from her chair and padded
+across the carpet. From the carved chest alongside the wall she withdrew
+the short jacket with the beaver collar, worked her shoulders into it.
+From the adjoining boudoir she emerged after a time in a small bonnet
+grayish with age and the bow not perky. Her movements were brief and
+full of decision. When she opened her door it was slyly and with a
+quick, vulpine glance up and down the grave quiet of the halls. After a
+cocked attitude of listening and with an incredible springiness almost
+of youth, Mrs. Meyerburg was down a rear staircase, through a rear
+hallway, and, unseen and unheard, out into the sudden splendor of a
+winter's day, the side street quiet before her.
+
+"Gott!" said Mrs. Meyerburg, audibly, breathing deep and swinging into
+a smart lope eastward. Two blocks along, with her head lifted and no
+effort at concealment, she passed her pantry-boy walking out with a
+Swedish girl whose cheeks were bursting with red. He eyed his mistress
+casually and without recognition.
+
+At Third Avenue she boarded a down-town street-car, a bit winded from
+the dive across cobbles, but smiling. Within, and after a preliminary
+method of paying fare new and confusing to her, she sat back against the
+rattly sides, her feet just lifted off the floor. She could hardly keep
+back the ejaculations as old streets and old memories swam into view.
+
+"Look at the old lay-dee talking to her-sel-uph," sang an urchin across
+the aisle.
+
+"Shut up," said the mother, slapping him sidewise.
+
+At one of the most terrific of these down-town streets Mrs. Meyerburg
+descended. Beneath the clang and bang of the Elevated she stood confused
+for the moment and then, with her sure stride regained, swung farther
+eastward.
+
+Slitlike streets flowed with holiday copiousness, whole families abroad
+on foot--mothers swayback with babies, and older children who ran ahead
+shouting and jostling. Houses lean and evil-looking marched shoulder to
+shoulder for blocks, no gaps except intersecting streets. Fire-escapes
+ran zigzag down the meanest of them. Women shouted their neighborhood
+jargon from windows flung momentarily open. Poverty scuttled along close
+to the scant shelter of these houses. An old man, with a beard to his
+chest, paused in a doorway to cough, and it was like the gripe-gripe of
+a saw with its teeth in hard wood. A woman sold apples from a stoop, the
+form of a child showing through her shawl. Yet Mrs. Meyerburg smiled as
+she hurried.
+
+Midway in one of these blocks and without a pretense of hesitancy she
+turned into a black mouth of an entrance and up two flights. On each
+landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door
+leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence.
+It opened to a slight crack, then immediately swung back full span.
+
+"_Gott in Himmel_, Mrs. Meyerburg! Mrs. Meyerburg! _Kommen Sie herein_.
+Mrs. Meyerburg, for why you didn't let me know? To think not one of my
+children home and to-day a holiday, my place not in order--"
+
+"Now, now, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you go to one little bit of
+trouble, right away I got no more pleasure. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz.
+Ach, if you 'ain't got on your pantry shelfs just the same paper edge
+like my Roody used to cut out for me."
+
+"Come, come, Mrs. Meyerburg, in parlor where--"
+
+"Go way mit you. Ain't the kitchen where I spent seventeen years, the
+best years in my life, good enough yet? Parlor yet she wants to take
+me."
+
+An immediate negligée of manner enveloped her like an old wrapper.
+A certain tulle of bewilderment had fallen. She was bold, even
+dictatorial.
+
+"Don't fuss round me so much, Mrs. Fischlowitz. Just like old times
+I want it should seem. Like maybe I just dropped in on you a lump of
+butter to borrow. No, no, don't I know where to hang mine own bonnet in
+mine own house? Ach, the same coat nails what he drove in himself!"
+
+"To think, Mrs. Meyerburg, all my children gone out for a good time this
+afternoon, my Tillie with Morris Rinabauer, who can't keep his eyes off
+her--"
+
+"How polished she keeps her stove, just like I used to."
+
+"Right when you knocked I was thinking, well, I clean up a bit. Please,
+Mrs. Meyerburg, let me fix you right away a cup coffee--"
+
+"Right away, Mrs. Fischlowitz, just so soon you begin to make fuss over
+me, I don't enjoy it no more. Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, right here in
+this old rocker-chair by the range let me, please, sit quiet a minute."
+
+In the wooden rocker beside the warm stove she sat down quietly, lapping
+her hands over her waist-line.
+
+_"Gott in Himmel,"_ sitting well away from the chair-back and letting
+her eyes travel slowly about the room, "just like it was yesterday; just
+like yesterday." And fell to reciting the phrase softly.
+
+"Ja, ja," said Mrs. Fischlowitz, concealing an unwashed litter of dishes
+beneath a hastily flung cloth. "I can tell you, Mrs. Meyerburg, my house
+ain't always this dirty; only to-day not--"
+
+"Just like it was yesterday," said Mrs. Meyerburg, musing through a
+tangle of memories. She fell to rocking. A narrow band of sunshine lay
+across the bare floor, even glinted off a pan or two hung along the wall
+over the sink. Along that same wall hung a festoon of red and green
+peppers and a necklace of garlic. Toward the back of the range a pan
+of hot water let off a lazy vapor. Beside the scuttle a cat purred and
+fought off sleep.
+
+"Already I got the hot water, Mrs. Meyerburg, to make you a cup coffee
+if--"
+
+"Please, Mrs. Fischlowitz, let me rest like this. In a minute I want you
+should take me all through in the children's room and--"
+
+"If I had only known it how I could have cleaned for you."
+
+"Ach, my noodle-board over there! How grand and white you keep it."
+
+"Ja, I--"
+
+"Mrs. Fischlowitz!"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Meyerburg?"
+
+"Mrs. Fischlowitz, if you want to--to give me a real treat I tell you
+what. I tell you what!"
+
+"Ja, ja, Mrs. Meyerburg; anything what I can do I--"
+
+"I want you should let me mix you on that old board a mess noodles!"
+
+"Ach, Mrs. Meyerburg, your hands and that grand black-silk dress!"
+
+"For why not, Mrs. Fischlowitz? Wide ones, like he used to like. Just
+for fun, please, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-morrow I send you two barrels
+flour for what I use up."
+
+"But, Mrs. Meyerburg, I should make for you noodles, not you for me--"
+
+"It's good I should learn, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to get back my hand in
+such things. Maybe you don't believe me, but I ain't so rich like I was
+yesterday when you seen me, Mrs. Fischlowitz. To-day I'm a poor woman,
+Mrs. Fischlowitz, with--"
+
+Mrs. Fischlowitz threw out two hands in a liberal gesture. "Such a good
+woman she is! In my house where I'm poor she wants, too, to play like
+she's a poor woman. That any one should want to play such a game with
+themselves! Noodles she wants to make for me, instead I should wait on
+her like she was a queen."
+
+"It takes me back, Mrs. Fischlowitz, to old times. Please, Mrs.
+Fischlowitz, to-morrow I send you two barrels."
+
+"Like you ain't welcome to everything what I got in the house. All
+right, noodles you should make and always I keep 'em for remembrance.
+Just let me run down to cellar and bring you up flour. No, no, you
+set there and let me fold down the board for you. Rock there, Mrs.
+Meyerburg, till I come up with the flour. Eggs plenty I got."
+
+"And a little butter, Mrs. Fischlowitz, the size of an egg, and always a
+pinch of salt."
+
+"The neighbors should see this! Mrs. Simon Meyerburg making for me
+noodles in my kitchen!" She was off and down a small rear stairway, a
+ribbon of ejaculations trailing back over one shoulder.
+
+In her chair beside the warm range Mrs. Meyerburg sat quiescent, her
+head back against the rest, eyes half closed, and slanting toward the
+kitchen door. Against the creaking floor her chair swayed rhythmically.
+Tears ran down to meet the corners of her mouth, but her lips were
+looped up in a smile.
+
+The cat regarded her through green eyes slit down their middle. Toward
+the rear of the stove the pan of water seethed.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Meyerburg leaned forward with a great flash across her
+face. "Simon," she cried, leaning to the door and stretching forward
+quavering arms. "Simon, my darling!" She leaned further, the rims of her
+eyes stretched wide. "Simon--come, my darling. Simon!"
+
+Into the opposite doorway, smirched with flour and a white pail of it
+dangling, flashed Mrs. Fischlowitz, breathing hard from her climb.
+
+"What, Mrs. Meyerburg, you want something?"
+
+"Simon," cried Mrs. Meyerburg, her voice lifted in a paean of welcome;
+"come, my darling, come in. Come!" And she tried to rise, but sat back,
+quivering, her brow drenched in sudden sweat.
+
+Raucous terror tore through Mrs. Fischlowitz's voice, and she let fall
+her pail, a white cloud rising from off the spill. "Mrs. Meyerburg,
+there ain't nobody there. Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Mrs.
+Meyerburg!"
+
+"Simon!"
+
+"Mrs. Meyerburg, he ain't there. Nobody's there!
+Ach--help--doctor--Tillie!"
+
+Back against Mrs. Fischlowitz's frenzied arms lay Mrs. Meyerburg, very
+gray, her hand against her left breast and down toward the ribs.
+
+"Gott! Gott! Please, Mrs. Meyerburg--Mrs. Meyerburg!" dragging back
+one of the weary eyelids and crying out at what she saw there. "Help
+doctor--Tillie--quick--quick--"
+
+She could not see, poor dear, that into those locked features was
+crystallized the great ecstasy of reunion.
+
+
+
+
+THE NTH COMMANDMENT
+
+
+The Christmas ballad of the stoker, even though writ from the fiery
+bowels of amidships and with a pen reeking with his own sweat, could
+find no holiday sale; nor the story of the waiter who serves the wine he
+dares only smell, and weary stands attendant into the joyous dawn.
+Such social sores--the drayman, back bent to the Christmas box whose
+mysteries he must never know; the salesgirl standing on her swollen feet
+on into the midnight hour--such sores may run and fester, but not to
+sicken public eyes.
+
+For the Christmas spirit is the white flame of love burning in men's
+hearts and may not be defiled. Shop-windows, magazine covers, and
+post-cards proclaim good-will to all men; bedtime stories crooned when
+little heads are drowsy are of Peace on Earth; corporations whose
+draymen's backs are bent and whose salesgirls' feet are swollen plaster
+each outgoing parcel with a Good-Will-Toward-Men stamp, and remove the
+stools from behind the counters to give space to more of the glittering
+merchandise.
+
+In the Mammoth Store the stools have long since been removed and the
+holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as
+a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds
+through black-hearted forests, bending them double in wild salaam.
+
+Shoppers pushed through aisles so packed that the tide flowed back upon
+itself. A narrow-chested woman, caught in the whorl of one such vortex,
+fainted back against the bundle-laden arms that pressed her on. Above
+the thin orchestra of musical toys, the tramp of feet like an army
+marching, voices raucous from straining to be heard, a clock over the
+grand central stairway boomed nine, and the crowd pulled at its strength
+for a last hour of bartering, tearing, pushing, haggling, sweating.
+
+Behind the counters workers sobbed in their throats and shifted from one
+swollen foot to the other. A cash-girl, her eyeballs glazed like
+those of a wounded hare in the torture of the chase, found a pile of
+pasteboard boxes behind a door, and with the indifference of exhaustion
+dropped on to it asleep. The tide flowed on, and ever and again back
+upon itself. A Santa Claus in a red canton-flannel coat lost his white
+canton-flannel beard, nor troubled to recover it. A woman trembling with
+the ague of terror drew an imitation bisque doll off a counter and into
+the shallow recesses of her cape, and the cool hand of the law darted
+after her and closed over her wrist and imitation bisque evidence. A
+prayer, a moan, the crowd parting and closing again.
+
+The mammoth Christmas tree beneath the grand central stairway loped
+ever so slightly of its own gorgeousness, and the gold star at its
+apex titillated to the tramp-tramp of the army. Across the novelty
+leather-goods counter Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons leaned the blue-shaven,
+predacious face that head waiters and underfed salesgirls know best over
+a hot bird and a cold bottle. Men's hands involuntarily close into tight
+fists when his well-pressed sleeve accidentally brushes their wives or
+sisters. Six-dollar-a-week salesgirls scrape their luscious rare birds
+to the bone, drink thin gold wine from thin, gold-edged glasses, and
+curse their God when the reckoning comes.
+
+Behind the novelty leather-goods counter Mrs. Violet Smith, whose eyes
+were the woodland blue her name boasted, smiled back and leaned against
+the stock-shelves, her face upturned and like a tired flower.
+
+"If the rush hadn't quit right this minute I--I couldn't have lasted it
+out till closing, honest I couldn't."
+
+"Poor tired little filly!"
+
+"Even them ten minutes I got leave to go up to old Ingram's office
+they made up for when I came back, and put another batch of them
+fifty-nine-cent leatherette purses out in the bin."
+
+"Poor little filly! What you need is a little speed. I wanna blow you
+to-night, Doll. You went once and you can make it twice. Come on, Doll,
+it ain't every little girl I'd coax like this."
+
+"I--Jimmie--I--"
+
+"I wanna blow you to-night, Doll. A poor little blue-eyed queenie like
+you, all froze up with nothing but a sick husband for a Christmas
+tree--a poor little baby doll like you!"
+
+"The kid, too, Jimmie, I--oughtn't!"
+
+"Didn't you tell me yourself it sleeps through the night like a
+whippersnapper? Don't be a quitter Doll, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"A poor little baby doll like you! Why, there just ain't nothing too
+good for you. Some little time I showed you last Tuesday night--eh,
+Doll?"
+
+"Yes--Jimmie!"
+
+"Well, if you think that was some evening, you watch me to-night!"
+
+"I--can't--go, Jimmie, him layin' there, and the kid and all!"
+
+"Didn't I have to coax you last time just like to-night? And wasn't you
+glad when you looked out and seen how blasted cold and icy it was that
+you lemme blow you--wasn't you?"
+
+"Yes, Jimmie, but--"
+
+"Didn't I blow you to a bottle of bubble water to take home with you
+even after the big show was over, and wouldn't I have blown you to
+yellow instead of the red if you hadn't been a little cheap skate and
+wanted the red? Didn't I pin a two-dollar bunch of hothouse grapes on
+your hat right out of the fruit-bowl? Didn't I blow you for proper?"
+
+"It was swell, Jimmie!"
+
+"Well, I'm going to blow in my winnings on you to-night, Doll. It's
+Christmas Eve and--"
+
+"Yes, it's Christmas Eve, Jimmie, and he--he had one of his bad
+hemorrhages last night, and the kid, she--she's too little to know she's
+getting cheated out of her Christmas, but, gee--a--a kid oughtta have
+something--a tree or something."
+
+He leaned closer, hemmed in by the crowd. "It's _you_ oughtta have
+something, Doll."
+
+"I--I never oughtta gone with you last Tuesday night, Jimmie. When I got
+home, he--he was laying there like a rag."
+
+"I like you, Doll. I'm going to blow in the stack of my winnings on
+you--that's how much I like you. There ain't nothing I wouldn't do for a
+little filly like you."
+
+"Jimmie!"
+
+"There ain't!"
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"You wouldn't be in the hole you are now, Doll, if you hadn't sneaked
+off two years ago and done it while I wasn't looking. Nearly two whole
+years you lemme lose track of you! That ain't a nice way to treat a
+fellow that likes you."
+
+"We went boarding right away, Jimmie, and I only came back to the
+department two months ago, after he got so bad. 'Ain't I told you how
+things just kinda happened?"
+
+"I liked you myself, Doll, but you fell for a pair of shoulders over in
+the gents' furnishing that wasn't wide from nothing but padding. I could
+have told you there was all cotton batting and no lungs there. I could
+have told you."
+
+"Jimmie, ain't you ashamed! Jimmie!"
+
+"Aw, I was just kidding. But you ain't real on that true-blue stuff,
+Doll. I can look into your eyes and see you're bustin' to lemme blow
+you. That's what you get, sweetness, when you don't ask your Uncle
+Fuller first. If you'd have asked me I could have told you he was weak
+in the chest when you married him. I could have told you that you'd
+be back here two years later selling leatherette vanity-cases and
+supportin' a--"
+
+"You! Jimmie Fitzgibbons, you--"
+
+"Gad, Doll, go to it! When you color up like that you look like a
+rose--a whole bouquet of them."
+
+"You--you don't know nothing about him. He--he never knew he had a lung
+till a month after the kid came, and they moved the gents' furnishing
+over by the Broadway door where the draught caught him."
+
+"Sure, he didn't, Doll; no harm meant. That's right, stand by him. I
+like to see it. Why, a little queen across the counter from you tole me
+you'd have married him if he'd had three bum lungs, that crazy you was!"
+
+"Like fun! If me or him had dreamt he wasn't sound we--I wouldn't be in
+this mess, I--we--I wouldn't!"
+
+Her little face was pale as a spray of jessamine against a dark
+background, and, try as she would to check them, tears sprang hot to her
+eyes, dew trembled on her lashes.
+
+"Poor little filly!"
+
+More tears rushed to her eyes, as if he had touched the wellsprings of
+her self-compassion. "You gotta excuse me, Jimmie. I ain't cryin', only
+I'm dog tired from nursin' and drudgin', drudgin' and nursin'."
+
+"Hard luck, little un!"
+
+"Him layin' there and me tryin' to--to make things meet. You gotta
+excuse me, Jimmie, I'm done up."
+
+"That's why I wanna blow you, sweetness. I can't bear to see a little
+filly like you runnin' with the odds dead agin her."
+
+"You been swell to me, Jimmie."
+
+"The sky's my limit, Doll."
+
+"Maybe it wasn't right for me to go with you last Tuesday night, him
+layin' there, and the kid and all, but a girl's gotta have something,
+don't she, Jimmie? A girl that's got on her shoulders what I got has
+gotta have something--a laugh now and then!"
+
+"That's the goods, Doll. A little filly like you has got to."
+
+"Honest, the way I laughed when you stuck them hothouse grapes on my
+hat for trimming the other night, just like they didn't cost
+nothing--honest, the way I laughed gimme enough strength for a whole
+night's nursin'. Honest, I felt like in the old days before--before I
+was married."
+
+"Gad! if you had treated me white in them days, Doll--if you hadn't
+pulled that saint stuff on me and treated me cold storage--there ain't
+nothing I wouldn't have done for you."
+
+"I--I didn't mean nothing, Jimmie."
+
+"I ain't sore, Doll. I like you and I like your style. I always did,
+even in the days when you turned me down, you great big beautiful doll,
+you!"
+
+"Aw--you!"
+
+"If you're the real little sport I think you are, you're going to lemme
+blow you to the liveliest Christmas a little queen like you ever seen.
+I didn't make that winnin' down in Atlanta for nothing. When I got the
+telegram I says to myself: 'Here goes! I'm goin' to make last Tuesday
+night look like a prayer-meeting, I am.' Eh, Doll?"
+
+"I--I can't, Jimmie. I--'S-s-s-s-h!"
+
+A tide flowed in about the counter, separating them, and she was
+suddenly the center of a human whorl, a battle of shoulders and elbows
+and voices pitched high with gluttony. Mr. Fitzgibbons skirted its edge,
+patient.
+
+Outside a flake floated down out of the dark pocket of packed clouds,
+then another and yet another, like timid kisses blown down upon the
+clownish brow of Broadway. A motorman shielded his eyes from the right
+merry whirl and swore in his throat. A fruit-cheeked girl paused in the
+flare of a Mammoth Store show-window, looked up at her lover and the
+flaky star that lit and died on his mustache, and laughed with the
+musical glee of a bird. A beggar slid farther out from his doorway and
+pushed his hat into the flux of the sidewalk. More flakes, dancing
+upward like suds blown in merriment from the palm of a hand--light,
+lighter, mad, madder, weaving a blanket from God's own loom, from God's
+own fleece, whitening men's shoulders with the heavenly fabric.
+
+Mrs. Violet Smith cast startled eyes upon the powdered shoulders and
+snow-clumped shoes passing down the aisleway, and her hand flew to her
+throat as if to choke its gasp.
+
+"My! It ain't snowin', is it? It ain't snowin'?"
+
+Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons wormed back to the counter. His voice was sunk to
+the golden mezzo of an amorous whisper.
+
+"Snowin' is right, Doll! A real dyed-in-the-wool white Christmas for you
+and me!"
+
+"Snowin'!"
+
+"Don't you like snow, baby doll? Cheer up, I'm going to hire a taxicab
+by the hour. I'm--"
+
+"Snowin'!"
+
+She breathed inward, shivering, stricken, and her mouth, no older than a
+child's, trembled at the corners and would not be composed.
+
+"He--he can't stand no snow-storm. That's why the doctor said if--if
+we could get him South before the first one, if we could get him South
+before the first one--South, where the sun shines and he could feel it
+clear through him, he--Oh, ain't I--ain't I in a mess!"
+
+"Poor little filly!" He focused his small eyes upon her plump and
+throbbing throat. "Poor little filly, all winded!"
+
+"I--oh, I--"
+
+"There's the bell, Doll. Poor, tired little girlie, hurry and I'll buy
+you a taxicab. Hear it--there's the closing bell! Merry Christmas, Doll!
+Merry Christmas!"
+
+A convulsion tore through the store, like the violent asthma of a
+thirty-thousand-ton ocean liner breathing the last breath of her voyage
+and slipping alongside her pier. On that first stroke of ten a girl
+behind the candy-counter collapsed frankly, rocking her left foot in her
+lap, pressing its blains, and blubbering through her lips salty with her
+own bitter tears. A child, qualified by legislation and his fourteen
+years to brace his soft-boned shoulder against the flank of life, bent
+his young spine double to the weight of two iron exit doors that swung
+outward and open. A gale of snow and whistling air danced in. The crowd
+turned about, faced, thinned, died.
+
+Mrs. Violet Smith turned a rose-white face to the flurry. "Snowin'!"
+
+"A real, made-to-order white Christmas for you and me, Doll. The kind
+you read about."
+
+"It--it don't mean nothing to me, but--"
+
+"Sure, it does; I'm goin' to blow you right, Doll. Half the money is
+yourn, anyways. You made that winning down in Atlanta yesterday as much
+as me, girlie. If I hadn't named that filly after you she'd 'a' been
+left at the post."
+
+"You--you never had the right to name one of your race-horses after me.
+There ain't a girl ever went out with you that you 'ain't named one
+after. You--you never had the right to!"
+
+"I took it, kiddo, 'cause I like you! Gad! I like you! Nix, it ain't
+every little girl I'd name one of my stable after. 'Violet!'--some
+little pony that, odds ag'in her and walks off with the money."
+
+"I--honest, I sometimes--I--just wish I was dead!"
+
+"No, you don't, Doll. You know you just wanna go to-night, but you
+'ain't got the nerve. I wanna show you a Christmas Eve that'll leave any
+Christmas Eve you ever spent at the post. Gad! look out there, will you?
+I'm going to taxicab you right through the fuzz of that there snow-storm
+if it costs every cent the filly won for us!"
+
+Mrs. Smith leaned back against the shelves limp, as if the blood had run
+from her heart, weakening her, but her eyes the color of lake-water
+when summer's moment is bluest. Her lips, that were meant to curve,
+straightened in a line of decision.
+
+"I'll go, Jimmie."
+
+"That's the goods!"
+
+"A girl's just gotta have something to hold herself together, don't
+she? It--it ain't like the kid and Harry was layin' awake for me--last
+Tuesday they was both asleep when I got home. They don't let each other
+get lonesome, and Harry--he--There ain't nothing much for me to do round
+home."
+
+"Now you're talkin' the English language, Doll."
+
+"I'll go, Jimmie."
+
+He extended his cane at a sharper angle until it bent in upon itself,
+threatening to snap, and flung one gray-spatted ankle across the other.
+
+"Sure, you're going! A poor little filly like you, sound-kneed,
+sound-winded, and full of speed, and no thin' but trouble for your
+Christmas stockin'. A poor little blue-eyed doll like you!"
+
+"A girl's gotta have something! You knew me before I was married,
+Jimmie, and there never was a girl more full of life."
+
+"Sure I knew you. But you was a little cold-storage queen and turned me
+down."
+
+"He--Harry, he never asks me nothing when I come in, and the kid's
+asleep, anyways."
+
+"Color up there a little, Doll. Where I'm going to take you there ain't
+nothing but live ones. I'm going to take you to a place where the color
+scheme of your greenbacks has got to be yellow. Color up there, Doll.
+You ain't going dead, are you?"
+
+She stretched open her eyes to wide, laughing pools, plowed through the
+rear-counter debris of pasteboard boxes and tissue-paper, reached for
+her jacket and tan, boyish hat. A blowy, corn-colored curl caught like a
+tendril and curled round the brim.
+
+"Going dead! Say, my middle name is Speed! It's like Harry used to
+tell me when we wasn't no farther along in the marriage game than his
+sneaking over here from the gents' furnishing three times a day to price
+bill-folders--he used to say that I was a live wire before Franklin flew
+his kite."
+
+"Doll!"
+
+"I ain't tired, Jimmie. Not countin' the year and a half I was home
+before Harry took sick, I been through the Christmas hell just six
+times. The seventh don't mean nothing in my life. I've seen 'em behind
+these very counters cursing Christmas with tears in their eyes and
+spending their merry holiday in bed trying to get some of the soreness
+out. It takes more than one Christmas to put me out of business."
+
+"Here, lemme tuck that curl in for you, Doll."
+
+"Quit!"
+
+"Doll!"
+
+"Quit, I say!"
+
+"Color up there, girlie. Look live!"
+
+She rubbed her palms briskly across her cheeks to generate a glow, and
+they warmed to color as peaches blush to the kiss of the sun.
+
+"See!"
+
+"Pink as cherries!"
+
+"That's right, kid me along."
+
+"Tried to dodge me to-night, didn't you, kitten?"
+
+"I--I didn't think I ought to go to-night."
+
+"It's a good thing my feelings ain't hurt easy."
+
+"Honest, Jimmie, I didn't try to dodge you. I--I only thought, with
+the girls here gabbling so much about last Tuesday night and all, it
+wouldn't look right. And he had a spell last night again, and the doctor
+said we--we ought to get him South before the first snow--South, where
+the sun shines. But he's got as much chance of gettin' South as I have
+of climbing the South Pole!"
+
+"A pretty little thing like you climbing the South Pole! I'd be there
+with field-glasses all-righty!"
+
+"I--I went up and talked and begged and begged and talked to old Ingram
+up at the Aid Society to-day, but the old skinflint says they can't do
+nothing for an employee after he's been out of his department more'n
+eight weeks, and--and Harry's been out twelve. He says the Society can't
+do nothing no more, much less send him South. Just like a machine he
+talked. I could have killed him!"
+
+"Poor little filly! I was that surprised when I seen you was back in the
+store again! There ain't been a classy queen behind the counter since
+you left."
+
+"Aw, Jimmie, no wonder the girls say you got your race-horses beat for
+speed."
+
+"That's me!"
+
+Aisles thinned and the store relaxed into a bacchanalian chaos of
+trampled débris, merchandise strewn as if a flock of vultures had left
+their pickings--a battlefield strewn with gewgaws and the tinsel of
+Christmastide, and reeking with foolish sweat.
+
+"Button up there, Doll, and come on; it's a swell night for Eskimos."
+
+Mr. Fitzgibbons folded over his own double-breasted coat, fitted his
+flat-brimmed derby hat on his well-oiled hair, drew a pair of gray suede
+gloves over his fingers, and hooked his slender cane to his arm.
+
+"Ready, Doll?"
+
+"The girls, Jimmie--look at 'em rubbering and gabbling like ducks!
+It--it ain't like I could do any good at home, it ain't."
+
+"I'd be the first to ship you there if you could. You know me, Doll!"
+
+His words deadened her doubts like a soporific. She glanced about for
+the moment at the Dionysian spectacle of the Mammoth Store ravished
+to chaos by the holiday delirium; at the weary stream of shoppers and
+workers bending into the storm as they reached the doors; at the swift
+cancan of snowflakes dancing whitely and swiftly without; at Mr. Jimmie
+Fitzgibbons standing attendant. Then she smiled.
+
+"Come on, Jimmie!"
+
+"Come on yourself, Doll!"
+
+Snow beat in their faces like shot as they emerged into the merry night.
+
+She shivered in her thin coat. "Gee! ain't it cold!"
+
+"Not so you can notice it. Watch me, Doll!" He hailed a passing cab with
+a double flourish of cane and half lifted her in, his fingers closing
+tight over her arm. "Little Doll, now I got you! And we understand one
+another, don't we, Doll?"
+
+"Yes, Jimmie."
+
+She leaned back, quiescent, nor did his hold of her relax. A fairy
+etching of snow whitened the windows and wind-shield, and behind their
+security he leaned closer until she could feel the breath of his smile.
+
+"Doll, we sure understand each other, don't we, sweetness? Eh? Answer
+me, sweetness, don't we? Eh? Eh?"
+
+"Yes, Jimmie."
+
+Over the city bells tolled of Christmas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gentle Hestia of Christmas Eve snug beside her hearth, with little
+stockings dangling like a badly matched row of executed soldiers,
+the fire sinking into embers to facilitate the epic descent from
+the chimney, the breathing of dreaming children trembling for their
+to-morrow--this gentle Hestia of a thousand, thousand Christmas Eves was
+not on the pay-roll of Maxwell's thousand-dollar-a-week cabaret.
+
+A pandering management, with its finger ever on the thick wrist of its
+public, substituted for the little gray lady of tradition the glittering
+novelty of full-lipped bacchantes whose wreaths were grape, and
+mistletoe commingling with the grape.
+
+An electric fountain shot upward its iridescent spray, now green, now
+orange, now violet, and rained down again upon its own bosom and into a
+gilt basin shaped like a grotto with the sea weeping round it. And out
+of its foam, wraithlike, rose a marble Aphrodite, white limbed, bathed
+in light.
+
+On the topmost of a flight of marble steps a woman sang of love who had
+defiled it. At candle-shaded tables thick tongues wagged through thick
+aromas and over thick foods, and as the drama was born rhythmic out of
+the noisy dithyramb, so through these heavy discords rose the tink of
+Venetian goblets, thin and pure--the reedy music of grinning Pan blowing
+his pipes.
+
+Rose-colored light lay like a blush of pleasure over a shining table
+spread beside the coping of the fount. A captain bowed with easy
+recognition and drew out two chairs. A statue-like waiter, born but to
+obey and, obeying, sweat, bowed less easy recognition and bent his spine
+to the backaching, heartbreaking angle of servitude. And through the
+gleaming maze of tables, light-footed as if her blood were foaming, Mrs.
+Violet Smith, tossing the curling ribbon of a jest over one shoulder.
+Following her Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons, smiling.
+
+"Here, sit on this side of the table, Doll, so you can see the big
+show."
+
+"Gee!"
+
+"It's the best table in the room to see the staircase dancing."
+
+"Gee!"
+
+"Told you I was going to show you a classy time to-night, didn't I,
+Doll?"
+
+"Yeh, but--but I ain't dressed for a splash like this, Jimmie, I--I
+ain't."
+
+"Say, they know me round here, Doll. They know I'd fall for a pair of
+eyes like yourn, if you was doing time on a rock-pile and I had to bring
+you in stripes."
+
+"I'm--a--sight!"
+
+"If you wasn't such a little pepper-box I'd blow you to a feather or
+two."
+
+"Ain't no pepper-box!"
+
+"You used to be, Doll. Two years back there wasn't a girl behind the
+counter ever gimme the cold storage like you did. I liked your nerve,
+too, durned if I didn't!"
+
+"I--I only thought you was guyin'."
+
+"I 'ain't forgot, Doll, the time I asked you out to dinner one night
+when you was lookin' pretty blue round the gills, and you turned me down
+so hard the whole department gimme the laugh. It's a good thing I 'ain't
+got no hard feelings."
+
+"Honest, Jimmie, I--"
+
+"That was just before you stole the march on me with the Charley from
+the gents' furnishing. I ain't holding it against you, Doll, but you
+gotta be awful nice to me to make up for it, eh?"
+
+A shower of rose-colored rain from the fountain threw its soft blush
+across her face.
+
+"Aw, Jimmie, don't rub it in! Ain't I tryin' hard enough to--to square
+myself? I--I was crazy with the heat two years ago. I--aw, I--Now
+it's different. I--It's like you say, Jimmie, you 'ain't got no hard
+feelings." She swallowed a rising in her throat and took a sip of clear,
+cold water. A light film of tears swam in her eyes. "You 'ain't, have
+you, Jimmie?"
+
+He leaned across the table and out of the hearing of the attendant
+waiter. "Not if we understand each other, Doll. You stick to me and
+you'll wear diamonds. Gad! I bet if I had two more fillies like Violet
+I'd run Diamond Pat Cassidy's string of favorites back to pasture, you
+little queenie, you!"
+
+Her timid glance darted like the hither and thither of a wind-blown
+leaf. "I ain't much of a looker for a Broadway palace like you've
+brought me to, Jimmie. Look at 'em, all dolled up over there. Honest,
+Jimmie, I--I feel ashamed."
+
+"Just you stick to me, peaches, and there ain't one at that table that's
+got on anything you can't have twice over. I know that gang--the pink
+queen and all. 'Longside of you they look like stacks o' bones tied up
+in a rag o' satin."
+
+"Aw, Jimmie, look at 'em, so blond and all!"
+
+"They're a broken-winded bunch. Look at them bottles on their table!
+We're going to have twice as many and only one color in our glasses,
+kiddo. Yellow, the same yellow as your hair, the kinda yellow that's
+mostly gold. That's the kind of bubble water we're going to buy, kiddo!"
+
+"Jimmie, such a spender!"
+
+"That's me!"
+
+"It's sure like the girls say--the sky's your limit."
+
+"Look, Doll, there's the swellest little dancer in this town--one
+swell little pal and a good sport. Watch her, kiddo--watch her do that
+staircase dance. Ain't she a lalapaloo!"
+
+A buxom nymph of the grove, whose draperies floated from her like
+flesh-colored mist, spun to the wild passion of violins up the eight
+marble steps of the marble flight. A spotlight turned the entire range
+of the spectrum upon her. She was like a spinning tulip, her draperies
+folding her in a cup of sheerest petals, her limbs shining through.
+
+"Classy, ain't she, Doll?"
+
+"Well, I guess!"
+
+"Wanna meet her? There ain't none of 'em that 'ain't sat at my table
+many a time."
+
+"I like it better with just you, Jimmie."
+
+"Sweetness, don't you look at me like that or you'll get me so mixed up
+I'll go out and buy the Metropolitan Tower for your Christmas present.
+Whatta you want for Christmas--eh, Doll?"
+
+"Aw, Jimmie, I don't want nothing. I 'ain't got no right to take nothing
+from you!" She played with the rich, unpronounceable foods on her plate
+and took a swallow of golden liquid to wash down her fiery confusion.
+"I--'ain't got no right."
+
+"When I get to likin' a little girl there ain't nothing she 'ain't got a
+right to."
+
+"Aw, Jimmie, when you talk like that I feel so--so--"
+
+"So what, Doll?"
+
+"So--so--"
+
+"Gowann, Doll."
+
+"Aw, I can't say it. You'll think I'm fresh."
+
+But she regarded him with the nervous eyes of a gazelle and the red swam
+high up into her hair, and he drained his glass down to the bottom of
+its hollow stem and leaned his warming face closer.
+
+"You treat me white, sweetness, and understand me right, and you won't
+be sorry for nothing you say. Drink, Doll, drink to you 'n' me--you 'n'
+me."
+
+Their bubble-thin glasses met in a tink and a pledge and her ready
+laughter rose in duet with his. She caught the lilt of a popular song
+from, the tenpiece orchestra and sang upward with the tirralirra of
+a lark, and the group at the adjoining table threw her a shout. Mr.
+Fitzgibbons beat a knife-and-fork tattoo on his plate and pinched her
+cheek lightly, gritting his teeth in a fine frenzy of delight.
+
+"That's the way to make 'em sit up and take notice, Doll, that's the way
+I like 'em. Live! As live and frisky as colts!"
+
+An attendant placed a souvenir of the occasion beside her plate--a white
+wool bear, upright and with bold bead eyes and a flare of pink bow
+beneath its chin.
+
+"Oh-h-h!"
+
+"See, Doll, a Teddy bear! By Gad! a Teddy bear with his arms stretched
+out to hug her! Gad! if I was that Teddy I'd hug the daylight out of
+her, too! Gad! wouldn't I!"
+
+Mrs. Violet Smith wafted the bead-eyed toy a kiss, then slapped him
+sharply sidewise, toppling him in a heap, and her easy laughter mingled
+with her petulance.
+
+"I wanna big grizzly, Jimmie; a great big brown grizzly bear with a
+grin. I wanna big brown grizzly."
+
+"'Ain't you got one, Doll? A little white one with a pink bow. Here,
+let's give him a drink!"
+
+But the petulance grew upon her, nor would she be gainsaid. "I wanna big
+brown grizzly--a great big brown one with a grin."
+
+"Aw, Doll, look at this little white one--a classy little white one.
+Look at his nose, cutie, made out of a button. Look, ain't that some
+nose! Look, ain't--"
+
+"A big brown one that I can dance with, Jimmie. I wanna dance. Gee! who
+could dance with a little dinky devil like that! I wanna dance, Jimmie,
+honest I could dance with a great big brown one if he was big enough.
+I--Gee, I wanna dance. Jimmie, honest, I could dance with a great big
+brown one if he was big enough. I--Gee! I wanna dance, Jimmie! Gee, I
+wanna--"
+
+He whacked the table and flashed the twinkle of a wink to the waiter.
+"Gad! Doll, if you look at me with them frisky eyes I--"
+
+"I wanna bear, Jimmie, a great big brown--"
+
+"Waiter!"
+
+"A great big brown one, Jimmie, with a grin. Tell him a great big brown
+one!"
+
+"Waiter, that ain't no kind of a souvenir to bring a lady--a cheap bunch
+o' wool like that. Bring her a great big brown one--"
+
+"A great big brown one with a grin, tell him, Jimmie."
+
+"We have no brown ones, sir; only the small white ones for the ladies."
+
+"Get one, then! Get out and buy the biggest one they got on Broadway.
+Get out and get one then!"
+
+"But, sir, the--"
+
+"If the stores ain't open, bust 'em open! I ain't the best customer this
+joint has got not to get service when my lady friend wants to dance with
+a great big brown bear. If my lady friend can't get a great big brown
+bear--"
+
+"With a grin, Jimmie."
+
+"--with a grin, there are other places where she can get two great big
+brown bears if she wants 'em."
+
+"I'll see, sir. I'll see what I can do."
+
+Mr. Fitzgibbons brought a fist down upon the table so that the dishes
+rattled and the wine lopped out of the glasses. "Sure you'll see, and
+quick, too! A great big brown bear, d'you hear? My lady friend wants to
+dance, don't you, Doll? You wanna dance, and nothing but a great big
+brown bear won't do--eh, Doll?"
+
+"With a grin, Jimmie!"
+
+"With a grin, d'ye hear?" He whacked at her hand in delight and they
+laughed in right merry duet.
+
+"Oh, Jimmie, you're killing!"
+
+"The sky's my limit!"
+
+She nibbled at a peach whose cheeks were pink as her own, and together
+from the great overflowing bowl of fruits they must trim her hat with
+its boyish brim. First, a heavy bunch of black hothouse grapes that she
+pinned deftly to the crown, a cluster of cherries, a purple plum, a
+tangerine stuck at a gay angle. They surveyed their foolish labor of
+caprice with little rills of laughter that rose and fell, and when
+she replaced her hat the cherries bobbed and kissed her cheek and the
+adjoining group leaned to her in the kinship of merriment.
+
+"It's a sweller trimming than I gave it last Tuesday, Jimmie. Look how
+tight it's all pinned on. Look at the cherries! I'm going to blow 'em
+right off and then eat 'em--eat 'em! Pf-f-f-f!"
+
+She made as if to catch them with pursed lips, but they bobbed sidewise,
+and he regarded her with a swelling pride, then glanced about the room,
+pleased at the furor that followed her little antics.
+
+"Gad, Doll, you're a winner! I can pick 'em every time! You ain't dolled
+up like the rest of 'em, but you're a winner!"
+
+"Oh-oh-oh!"
+
+"That's the ticket, waiter! I knew there wasn't nothing round here that
+tin wouldn't buy. I guess that ain't some great big brown grizzly with a
+grin for you, Doll!"
+
+"Oh-oh-oh!"
+
+"I guess they didn't rustle round when your Uncle Fuller began to get
+sore, and get a great big brown one for you! Gad! the biggest I ever
+seen--almost as big as you, Doll! That's the ticket! There ain't
+anything in this town tin can't buy!"
+
+"Oh-oh-oh!" She lifted the huge toy off the silver tray held out to her
+and buried her shining face in the soft, silky wool. "Ain't he a beauty?
+Ain't he the softest, brownest beauty?"
+
+"Now, peaches, now cherries, now you little fancy-fruit stand, there
+goes the music. Let's see that dance!"
+
+"Aw, Jimmie, I--I was only kiddin'!"
+
+"Kiddin' nothing! Come now, Doll, I blew me ten bucks if I blew me a
+cent for that bunch of wool. Come now, let's see that dance you been
+blowing about! Go as far as you like, Doll!"
+
+"I--honest, I was only guyin', Jimmie."
+
+"Don't be a quitter and make me sore, Doll! I wanna show 'em I pick the
+live ones every time. There's the music!"
+
+"Aw, I--"
+
+"Go as far as you like, Doll. Here, gimme your hat! Go to it, sister. If
+you land in the fountain by mistake I'll blow you to the swellest new
+duds on the Avenue."
+
+"I don't know no dances no more, Jimmie. I--I can't dance with this big
+old thing anyways. Look, he's almost as big as me!"
+
+"Go it alone, then, Doll; but get up and show 'em. Get up and show 'em
+that I don't pick nothing but the livest! Get up and show 'em, Doll; get
+up and show 'em!"
+
+She set down her glass suddenly and pirouetted to her feet.
+"Here--I--go--Jimmie!"
+
+"Go to it, Doll!"
+
+She leaped forward in her narrow little skirt, laughing. Chairs scraped
+back and a round of applause went with her. Knives and forks beat tattoo
+on frail glasses; a tinsel ball flung from across the room fell at her
+feet. She stooped to it, waved it, and pinned it to her bosom. Her hair,
+rich as Australian gold, half escaped its chignon and lay across her
+shoulders. She danced light as the breeze up the marble stairway, and at
+its climax the spotlight focused on her, covering her with the sheen of
+mica; then just as lightly down the steps again, so rapidly that her
+hair was tossed outward in a fairy-like effect of spun gold.
+
+"Go to it, Doll. I'm here to back you!"
+
+"Dare me, Jimmie?"
+
+"Dare what?"
+
+"Dare me?"
+
+"Yeh, I dare you to do anything your little heart desires. Gad!
+you--Gad! if she 'ain't!"
+
+Like a bird in flight she danced to the gold coping, paused like an
+audacious Undine in a moment of thrilled silence, and then into the
+purple and gold, violet and red rain of the electric fountain, her arms
+outstretched in a radiant _tableau vivant_, water crowding in about her
+knees, spray dancing on her upturned face.
+
+"Gad! the little daredevil! I didn't think she had it in her. Gad! the
+little devil!"
+
+Clang! Clang! Tink! Tink! "Bravo, kiddo! Who-o-o-p!"
+
+Shaking the spray out of her eyes, her hair, she emerged to a grand
+orchestral flare. The same obsequious hands that applauded her helped
+her from the gold coping. Waiters dared to smile behind their trays. Up
+to her knees her dark-cloth skirt clung dankly. Water glistened on her
+shoulders, spotted her blouse. Mr. Jimmie Fitzgibbons lay back in his
+chair, weak from merriment.
+
+"Gad! I didn't think she had it in her! Gad! I didn't!"
+
+"Bo-o-o-o!" She shook herself like a dainty spaniel, and he grasped the
+table to steady himself against his laughter.
+
+"Gad! I didn't!"
+
+"Fine weather for ducks!"
+
+"Gad!"
+
+"I'm a nice girl and they treat me like a sponge."
+
+"Gad!"
+
+"April weather we're havin', ain't it?"
+
+"You ain't much wet, are you, Doll?"
+
+"Bo-o-o-o!"
+
+"Here, waiter, get the lady a coat or something. Gad! you're the hit
+of the place, Doll! Aw, you ain't cold, hon? Look, you ain't even wet
+through--what you shaking about?"
+
+She drew inward little breaths of shivery glee. "I ain't wet! Say,
+whatta you think that fountain's spouting--gasoline? I--ain't--wet!
+Looka my hair curling up like it does in a rain-storm! Feel my skirt
+down here at the hem! Can you beat it? I ain't wet, he says!"
+
+"Here, drink this, Doll, and warm up."
+
+"No."
+
+She threw a dozen brilliant glances into the crowd, tossed an
+invitational nod to the group adjoining, and clapped her hands for the
+iridescent Christmas ball that dangled over their table.
+
+"Here, send 'er over--here, give you leave. I'm some little catcher
+myself."
+
+It bounded to her light as air, and she caught it deftly, tossed it
+ceilingward until it bounced against an incandescent bulb, tossed it
+again, caught it lightly, nor troubled to heed the merry shouts for its
+return.
+
+From across the room some one threw her a great trailing ribbon of gilt
+paper. She bound it about her neck like a ruff. A Christmas star with
+a fluted tissue-paper edge floated into her lap. She wore it like an
+earring, waggling it slyly so that her curls were set a-bobbing.
+
+"Gimme my bear."
+
+She hugged the woolly image to her as if she would beg its warmth, her
+teeth clicking the while with chill.
+
+"Take a little swallow or two to warm you up, Doll!"
+
+"Gee! I took your dare, Jimmie--and--and--br-r-r-r!"
+
+"A little swallow, Doll!"
+
+"I took your dare, Jimmie, and I--I can feel my skirt shrinking up
+like it was rigging. I--I guess I'll have to go to work next week in a
+sheet."
+
+"Didn't I tell you I was backing this toot, sister?"
+
+"I didn't have no right to dive in there and spoil my duds, Jimmie. I--"
+
+"Who had a better right?"
+
+"Ain't it just like a nut like me? But I 'ain't had a live time for so
+long I--I lost my head. But I 'ain't got no right to spoil the only
+duds I got to my back. Looka this waist; the color's running. I
+ought to--I--Oh, like I wasn't in enough of a mess already
+without--without--acting the crazy nut!"
+
+"Aw, Doll, cut the tragedy! Didn't I tell you I was going to blow you to
+anything your little heart desires?"
+
+"But the only duds I got to my back, Jimmie! Oh, ain't I a nut when I
+get started, Jimmie! Ain't I a nut!"
+
+She regarded him with tears in her eyes and the wraith of a smile on her
+lips. A little drop escaped and she dashed it away and her smile broke
+out into sunshine.
+
+"Ain't I a nut, though!"
+
+"You're a real, full-blooded little winner, that's what you are, and you
+can't say I ain't one, neither, Doll. Here's your damages. Now go doll
+yourself up like a Christmas tree!"
+
+He tossed a yellowback bill lightly into her lap, and she made a great
+show of rejecting it, even pushing it toward him across the table and to
+the floor.
+
+"I--Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am? There, take your money.
+I--honest, I--What kind of a girl do you think I am?"
+
+"Now, now, sister, don't we understand each other? Them's damages,
+kiddo. Wasn't it me dared you? Ain't it my fault you doused your duds?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Aw, come now, Doll, don't pull any of that stuff on me! You and me
+understand each other--not?"
+
+"Yes, but--"
+
+"Take and forget it. You won it. That ain't even interest on the filly's
+winnings. Take it. I never started nothing in my life I couldn't see
+the finish to. Take it and forget it!" He crammed the bill into her
+reluctant fingers, closed them over it, and sealed her little fist with
+a grandiose pat. "Forget it, Doll!"
+
+But her lids fluttered and her confusion rose as if to choke her.
+"I--honest, I--Aw, what kind of a girl do you think I am?"
+
+"I told you I think you're the sweetest, livest little queen I know."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Come on, little live wire. Put on your swell, hothouse-trimmed hat. I'm
+going to take you to a place farther up the street where there are two
+staircases and a fountain twice as big for you to puddle your little
+footsies in. Waiter--here--check--get a cab! Here, little Doll, quit
+your shivering and shaking and lemme help you on--lemme help you."
+
+She was suddenly pale, but tense-lipped like a woman who struggles
+on the edge of a swoon. "Jimmie, honest, I--I'm shaking with chills!
+Jimmie--I--I can't go in these duds, neither. I--I gotta go home now.
+He'll be wakin' and I--I gotta go home now. I'm all shaking." In spite
+of herself her lips quivered and an ague shot through her body. "I--I
+gotta go home now, Jimmie. Look at me shivering, all shivering!"
+
+"Home now!" His eyes retreated behind a network of calculating wrinkles
+and she paled as she sat. "Home now? Say, Doll, I thought--"
+
+"Honest, I wanna go to the other place, but I'm cold, Jimmie, and--wet
+through. I gotta keep well, Jimmie, and I--I oughtta go home."
+
+"Pah!" he said, spluttering out the end of a bitten cigar. "If I'd 'a'
+known you was a puny Doll like that!"
+
+"I ain't, Jimmie; I--"
+
+"If I'd 'a' known you was that puny! It's like I been sayin', Doll, it
+ain't like you and me don't understand each other. I--"
+
+"Sure we do, Jimmie. Honest, I--To-morrow night I--I can fix it so
+that--that the sky's my limit. I'll meet you at Hinkley's at eight,
+cross my heart on a wishbone, Jimmie."
+
+"Cross it!"
+
+"There!"
+
+"To-night, Jimmie, I'm chilled--all in. Look at me in these duds,
+Jimmie. I'm cold. Oh, Jimmie, get me a cab quick, please; I'm co-old!"
+
+She relaxed frankly into a chill that rumbled through her and jarred her
+knees together. A little rivulet of water oozed from her hair, zigzagged
+down her cheek and seeped into her blouse, but her blue-lipped smile
+persisted.
+
+"Ain't I a nut, though! But wait till you see me dolled up to-morrow
+night, Jimmie! Eight at Hinkley's. I didn't have a hunch how cold--how
+cold that water was. Next time they gotta--heat it."
+
+"Got to heat it is good, Doll! All I got to do is ask once, and my
+word's law round here. Here, take a swallow and warm up, hon. You don't
+need to go home if you warm up right."
+
+But the glass tinked against her teeth.
+
+"I--I can't'"
+
+"Gowann, kiddo!"
+
+"I'll take some home with me to warm me up when I get in bed, Jimmie.
+I--Not that kind, give it to me red like you did last Tuesday night,
+without the sparkles. That's the kind to warm me up. Order a bottle of
+red without the sparkles, Jimmie--without the sparkles. I--I can't stand
+no more bubbles to-night."
+
+He helped her into her coat, and she leaned to him with a little
+movement of exhaustion that tightened his hold of her.
+
+"Hurry a cab, waiter; the lady's sick!"
+
+"Ain't I a nut, though!"
+
+"Poor wet little Doll, I didn't think you was much more'n damp! You
+gotta make up for this to-morrow night, Doll. Eight sharp, Doll, and no
+funny business to-morrow night."
+
+"Eight sharp!"
+
+"Swell little sport you are, gettin' the chills! But we understand each
+other, don't we, Doll?"
+
+"Sure, Jimmie!"
+
+"Come on, hon. Shakin' like a leaf, ain't you? Wait till I get you out
+in the cab, I'll warm you up. You look just like a Christmas doll, all
+rigged up in that hat and that star and all--just like a Christmas
+doll."
+
+"My grizzly, my brown grizzly! Gee, I nearly forgot my grizzly!"
+
+And she packed the huge toy under her arm, along with the iridescent
+ball and the gewgaws of her plunder, and out into the cab, where an
+attendant tucked a bottle of the red warming wine between them.
+
+"Ready, Doll?"
+
+"Ready."
+
+The silent storm had continued its silent work, weaving its blanket
+softer, deeper. The straggling pedestrians of early morning bent their
+heads into it and drove first paths through the immaculate mantle.
+The fronts of owl cars and cabs were coated with a sugary white rime.
+Broadway lay in a white lethargy that is her nearest approach to sleep.
+
+Snow-plows were already abroad clearing tracks, dry snow-dust spinning
+from under them. At Longacre Square the flakes blew upward in spiral
+flurries, erratic, full of antics. The cab snorted, plunged, leaped
+forward. Mr. Fitzgibbons inclined toward the little huddle beside him.
+
+"Sweetness, now I got you! You little sweetness you, now I got you,
+sweetness!"
+
+"Jimmie! Quit! Quit! You--you old--you--you--"
+
+The breath of a forgotten perfume and associations webby with age stir
+through the lethargy of years. Memories faded as flowers lift their
+heads. The frail scent of mignonette roused with the dust of letters
+half a century old, and eyes too dim and watery to show the glaze of
+tears turn backward fifty years upon the mignonette-bowered scene of
+love's young dream. A steel drawing-room car rolling through the clean
+and heavy stench of cow pasture, and a steady-eyed, white-haired
+capitalist, rolling on his rolling-stock, leans back against the
+upholstery and gazes with eyes tight closed upon a steady-eyed,
+brown-haired youngster herding in at eventide. The whiff of violets from
+a vender's tray, and a young man dreams above his ledger. The reek of a
+passing brewer's wagon, and white faces look after, suddenly famished.
+
+When the familiar pungency of her boarding-house flowed in and round
+Mrs. Violet Smith, she paused for a moment and could not push through
+the oppression. Then, with the associations of odor crowding in about
+her, she stripped herself of her gewgaws, as if here even the tarnished
+tinsel of pleasure could have no place, and tiptoed up the weary wind
+of three unlighted flights and through the thick staleness of unaired
+halls.
+
+At the third landing a broom and a dirty tangled debris of scrub-cloths
+lay on the topmost stair, as if an aching slavey had not found the
+strength to remove them. They caught the heel of her shoe, pitching her
+forward so that she fell sharply against her own door. In the gloom
+she paused for a palpitating moment, her hands pressing her breast,
+listening; then deposited her laden hat, the little pile of tinsel and
+the woolen bear on the floor outside the door.
+
+"Vi! Vi! That you, dear?"
+
+She pulled at her strength and opened the door suddenly, blowing in like
+a gale. "It's me, darlin'."
+
+She was suddenly radiant as morning, and a figure on the bed in the far
+corner of the dim-lit room raised to greet her with vague, white-sleeved
+arms outstretched. She flew to their haven.
+
+"Darlin', darlin', how you feeling?"
+
+"Vi, poor tired little girl!"
+
+"Harry, how you feeling, darlin'? They worked the force all night--first
+time ever. How you feeling, darlin'--how?" And she burrowed kisses on
+the poor, white face, and then deep into the tiny crib and back again
+into the vague white arms. "Oh, my babies, both of you! How you feeling,
+darlin'? So worried I've been. And the kid! Oh, God, darlin', I--I been
+so busy rightin' stock and all--all night they kept the force. I got
+such news, darlin'. We should worry that it's snowing! Such news,
+darlin'! The kid, Harry--did Mrs. Quigley bring her milk on time? How
+you feeling, darlin'! You 'ain't coughed, have you?"
+
+He kissed her damp hair and turned her face up like a flower, so that
+his deep-sunk eyes read into hers. "I 'ain't coughed once since noon,
+darlin'. We should worry if it snows is right! A doctor's line of talk
+can't knock me out. I can buck up without going South. I 'ain't coughed
+once since noon, Vi; I--"
+
+A strangling paroxysm shook him in mockery of his words, and she
+crouched low beside the bed, her face etched in the agony of bearing
+each rack and pain with him.
+
+"Oh, my darlin'! Oh--oh--"
+
+"It's--all right now, Vi! It's all right! It's all right!"
+
+"Oh, my darlin', yes, yes, it's all right now! All right now!"
+
+She ran her hands over his face, as if to reassure herself of his very
+features, nor would she let him read into her streaming eyes.
+
+"Lay quiet, Harry darlin'; it's all right! Oh, my darlin'!"
+
+"'S-s-s-s-h, Vi dear! Sure it's all right. 'S-s-s-s-h! Don't cry, Vi!"
+
+"I--I-oh--oh--"
+
+"'S-s-s-s-h, darlin'! Don't!"
+
+"I--oh, I can't help it; but I ain't cryin', Harry, I ain't!"
+
+"All worn out and cold and wet, that's what's a-hurtin' you. All worn
+out and hysterical and all! Poor little Vi-dee!"
+
+"I--I ain't."
+
+"It's all over now, Vi. See, I'm all right! Everything's all right! Just
+my luck to have the first one since noon right when you get home. It's
+all over now, Vi. Everything's over, Christmas rush and all. Don't you
+worry about the snow, neither, darlin'. I knew it would scare you up,
+but it takes more than a doctor's line of talk to down-and-out me."
+
+"I--I ain't worryin', darlin'."
+
+"You're the one I been worryin' about, Vi. It's just like the kid was
+worried too--cried when Mrs. Quigley sung her to sleep."
+
+"Oh, my baby! Oh, my baby!"
+
+"Don't worry, dear. She don't even know it's Christmas--a little thing
+like her. And, anyways, look, Vi-dee, Mrs. Quigley brought her up that
+little stuffed lamb there. But she don't even know it's Christmas, dear;
+she don't even know. You poor, tired little kiddo!"
+
+"I ain't tired."
+
+"I been lying here all night, sweet, thinking and thinking--a little
+doll like you hustling and a big hulk like me lying here."
+
+"'S-s-s-s-h! Honest, Harry, it's fun being back in the store again till
+you get well--honest!"
+
+"I never ought to let you done it in the beginning, darlin'. Remember
+that night, even when I was strong enough to move a ox team, I told you
+there was bum lungs 'way back somewhere in my family? I never ought to
+let you take a chance, Vi-dee--I never ought!"
+
+"'S-s-s-s-h! Didn't I say I'd marry you if you was playin' hookey from
+the graveyard? Wasn't that the answer I give you even when you was
+strong as a whole team?"
+
+"I didn't have no right to you, baby--the swellest little peach in the
+store! I--I didn't have no right to you! Vi-dee, what's the matter? You
+look like you got the horrors--the horrors, hon! Vi-dee!"
+
+"Oh, don't, Harry, don't. I--I can't stand it, hon. I--I'm tired,
+darlin', darlin', but don't look like that, darlin'. I--got news--I got
+news."
+
+'"S-s-s-s-h, baby, you're all hysterical from overwork and all tired out
+from worry. There ain't no need to worry, baby. Quigley'll say it can go
+over another week. She ain't dunning for board, she ain't, baby."
+
+"I--oh--I--"
+
+"Shaking all over, baby, just like you got the horrors! I bet you got
+scared when you see the snow coming and tackled Ingram to-day, and
+you're blue. What you got the horrors about, baby--Ingram?"
+
+"No! No!"
+
+"I told you not to ask the old skinflint. I told you they won't do
+nothing after twelve weeks. I ain't bluffed off by snow-storm, Vi. I
+don't need South no more'n you do, I don't, baby. I ain't a dead one by
+a long shot yet! Vi, for God's sake, why you got the horrors?"
+
+She tried to find words and to smile at him through the hot rain of
+her tears, and the deep-rooted sobs that racked her subsided and she
+snuggled closer and burrowed into his pillow.
+
+"I--I can't keep it no longer, darlin'. I ain't cryin', I--I 'ain't got
+the horrors. I'm laffin'. I--I seen him, Harry--Ingram--I seen him
+just before closin', and--and--oh, Harry, you won't believe it, he
+said--he--I--I'm laffin' for joy, Harry!"
+
+"What? What, Vi? What?"
+
+She fumbled into the bosom of her blouse and slid a small folded square
+of yellowback bill into his hand.
+
+"What? What, Vi? What?"
+
+"A cool hundred, darlin'. Ingram--the Aid Society, because it's
+Christmas, darlin'. They opened up--a cool hundred! We--we can light out
+To-morrow, darlin'. A cool hundred! Old Ingram, the old skinflint, he
+opened up like--like a oyster. South, all of us, to-morrow, darlin'; it
+ain't nothing for me to get a job South. When I seen it was snowin'
+I'd 'a' killed somebody to get it. I--I had to have it and we got it,
+darlin', we--we got it--a cool hundred!"
+
+He lay back on the pillow, suddenly limp, the bill fluttering to the
+coverlet, and she slid her arm beneath his head.
+
+"You could have knocked me down, too, darlin'. Easy, just like that he
+forked over. 'What's a Aid Society for?' he kept sayin'. 'What's a Aid
+Society for?'"
+
+"Vi, I--"
+
+"Don't cry, darlin', don't cry. I just can't stand it!"
+
+"I--"
+
+"'S-s-s-s-h! Easy, just like that he gimme it, darlin'."
+
+"And me lying here hatin' him for a skinflint and his store for a
+bloodsucker and the Aid Society for a fake!"
+
+"Yes, yes, darlin'."
+
+"I feel new already, Vi. I can feel the sun already shining through me.
+If he was here, I--I could just kiss his hand; that's how it feels for
+a fellow to get his nerve back. I got my chance now, Vi; there ain't
+nothing can keep me down. Just like he says--I'll be a new man out
+there. Look, hon, just talking about it! Feel how I got some strength
+back already. An hour ago I couldn't hold you like this."
+
+"Oh, my darlin'!"
+
+He sat up suddenly in bed and drew her into his arms and she laid her
+cheek against his, and in the silence, from the trundle crib beside
+them, the breathing of a child rose softly, fell softly.
+
+"I--I blew us to a real Christmas, darlin', us and the kid. I--I
+couldn't help it. I couldn't bear to have her wake up without it, Harry,
+her and you--and me."
+
+"A real Christmas, baby!"
+
+"Red wine for you, darlin', like I brought you last Tuesday night and
+warmed you up so nice. The kind the doctor says is so grand for you,
+darlin'--red wine without bubbles like he says you gotta have."
+
+"Red wine!"
+
+"Yeh, and black grapes like I brought you last Tuesday, and like he says
+you oughtta have--black grapes and swell fruit that's good for you,
+darlin'."
+
+"A real blow-out, Vi-dee."
+
+"A bear for the kid, Harry!"
+
+"Vi!"
+
+"Yeh, a real brown grizz, with the grin and all, like she cried for in
+the window that Sunday--a real big brown one with the grin and all."
+
+"That cost a real bunch of money, sweet!"
+
+"Yeh, I blew me like sixty for it, hon, but she cried for it that Sunday
+and she had to have a Christmas, didn't she, darlin', even if she is too
+little. It--it would 'a' broke my heart to have her wake up to-morrow
+without one."
+
+He regarded her through the glaze of tears. "My little kiddo!"
+
+'"S-s-s-s-h!"
+
+"It just don't seem fair for you to have to--"
+
+"'S-s-s-s-h! Everything's fair, darlin', in love and war. All the rules
+for the game of living ain't written down--the Eleventh Commandment and
+the Twelfth Commandment and the Ninth Commandment."
+
+"My little kiddo!"
+
+"To-morrow, Harry, to-morrow, Harry, we're going! South, darlin', where
+he says the sun is going to warm you through and through. To-morrow,
+darlin'!"
+
+"The next day, sweetness. You're all worn out and to-morrow's Christmas,
+and--"
+
+But the shivering took hold of her again, and when she pressed her hand
+over his mouth he could feel it trembling.
+
+"To-morrow, darlin', to-morrow before eight. Every day counts. Promise
+me, darlin'. I--I just can't live if you don't. To-morrow before eight.
+Promise me, darlin'! Oh, promise me, darlin'!"
+
+"Poor, tired little kiddo, to-morrow before eight, then, to-morrow
+before eight we go."
+
+Her head relaxed.
+
+"You're tired out, darlin'. Get to bed, baby. We got a big day
+to-morrow. We got a big day to-morrow, darlin'! Get to bed, Vi-dee."
+
+"I wanna spread out her Christmas first, Harry. I want her to see it
+when she wakes up. I couldn't stand her not seem' it."
+
+She scurried to the hall and back again, and at the foot of the bed
+she spread her gaudy wares: An iridescent rubber ball glowing with
+six colors; a ribbon of gilt paper festooned to the crib; a gleaming
+Christmas star that dangled and gave out radiance; a huge brown bear
+standing upright, and with bead eyes and a grin.
+
+
+
+
+T.B.
+
+
+The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing or
+lighting problems. Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of crime
+are not denied the light of day, even though they loathe it. Cadets,
+social skunks, whose carnivorous eyes love darkness, walk in God's
+sunshine and breathe God's air. Scarlet women turn over in wide beds and
+draw closer velvet curtains to shut out the morning. Gamblers curse the
+dawn.
+
+But what of the literal underworld of the great city? What of the babes
+who cry in fetid cellars for the light and are denied it? What of the
+Subway track-walker, purblind from gloom; the coal-stoker, whose fiery
+tomb is the boiler-room of a skyscraper; sweatshop workers, a flight
+below the sidewalk level, whose faces are the color of dead Chinese;
+six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars of
+six-million-dollar corporations?
+
+This is the literal underworld of the great city, and its sunless
+streets run literal blood--the blood of the babes who cried in vain; the
+blood from the lungs of the sweatshop workers whose faces are the color
+of dead Chinese; the blood from the cheeks of the six-dollar-a-week
+salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars. But these are your problems
+and my problems and the problems of the men who have found the strength
+or the fear not to die rich. The babe's mother, who had never known
+else, could not know that her cellar was fetid; she only cried out in
+her anguish and hated vaguely in her heart.
+
+Sara Juke, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Department Store, did
+not know that lint from white goods clogs the lungs, and that the air
+she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp. Sometimes a pain,
+sharp as a hat-pin, entered between her shoulder-blades. But what of
+that? When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh
+upward with the musical glee of a bird.
+
+There were no seasons, except the spring and fall openings and
+semiannual clearing-sales, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store.
+On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing long-sleeve,
+high-necked nightgowns in its bargain bins, and knit underwear was
+supplanting the reduced muslins, Sara Juke drew her little pink-knitted
+jacket closer about her narrow shoulders and shivered--shivered, but
+smiled. "Br-r-r! October never used to get under my skin like this."
+
+Hattie Krakow, room-mate and co-worker, shrugged her bony shoulders and
+laughed; but not with the upward glee of a bird--downward, rather, until
+it died in a croak in her throat. But then Hattie Krakow was ten years
+older than Sara Juke; and ten years in the arc-lighted subcellar of the
+Titanic Department Store can do much to muffle the ring in a laugh.
+
+"Gee! you're as funny as your own funeral, you are! You keep up the
+express pace you're going and there won't be another October left on
+your calendar."
+
+"That's right; cheer me up a bit, dearie. What's the latest style in
+undertaking?"
+
+"You'll know sooner 'n me if--"
+
+"Aw, Hat, cut it! Wasn't I home in bed last night by eleven?"
+
+"I ain't much on higher mathematics."
+
+"Sure I was. I had to shove you over on your side of the bed; that's how
+hard you was sleeping."
+
+"A girl can't gad round dancing and rough-housing every night and work
+eight hours on her feet, and put her lunch money on her back, and not
+pay up for it. I've seen too many blue-eyed dolls like you get broken.
+I--"
+
+"Amen!"
+
+Sara Juke rolled her blue eyes upward, and they were full of points
+of light, as though stars were shining in them; and always her lips
+trembled to laugh.
+
+"There ain't nothing funny, Sara."
+
+"Oh, Hat, with you like a owl!"
+
+"If I was a girl and had a cough like I've seen enough in this basement
+get; if I was a girl and my skirtband was getting two inches too big,
+and I had to lie on my left side to breathe right, and my nightie was
+all soaked round the neck when I got up in the morning--I wouldn't just
+laugh and laugh. I'd cry a little--I would."
+
+"That's right, Hat; step on the joy bug like it was a spider. Squash
+it!"
+
+"I wouldn't just laugh and laugh, and put my lunch money on my back
+instead of eggs and milk inside of me, and run round all hours to
+dance-halls with every sporty Charley-boy that comes along."
+
+"You leave him alone! You just cut that! Don't you begin on him!"
+
+"I wouldn't get overheated, and not sleep enough; and--"
+
+"For Pete's sake, Hat! Hire a hall!"
+
+"I should worry! It ain't my grave you're digging."
+
+"Aw, Hat!"
+
+"I 'ain't got your dolly face and your dolly ways with the boys; but I
+got enough sense to live along decent."
+
+"You're right pretty, I think, Hat."
+
+"Oh, I could daub up, too, and gad with some of that fast gang if I
+didn't know it don't lead nowheres. It ain't no cinch for a girl to keep
+her health down here, even when she does live along decent like me,
+eating regular and sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings in the
+room, washing out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't no cinch
+even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked a gay bird
+like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen you begin to
+fade like a piece of calico, just like my sister Lizzie did?"
+
+"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my teeth,
+ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."
+
+"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your
+shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your
+senses."
+
+"T.B.?"
+
+"Yes, T.B."
+
+"Who's he?"
+
+"Gee! you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet
+dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. T.B.
+was what I said--T.B."
+
+"Honest, Hat, I dun'no'--"
+
+"For Heaven's sake! _Too Berculosis_ is the way the exhibits and the
+newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."
+
+"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too
+Berculosis! Hat, you--you don't--"
+
+"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that--only I wanna scare you up a
+little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on
+like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can make
+friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."
+
+Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and
+curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow
+spit--curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee! you oughtta be
+writing scare heads for the _Evening Gazette!"_
+
+Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold
+a marked-down flannelette petticoat.
+
+"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind.
+Oh, lud! There he starts now--that quickstep dance again!"
+
+A quick red ran up into Miss Juke's hair, and she inclined forward in
+the attitude of listening.
+
+"The silly! Honest, ain't he the silly? He said he was going to play
+that for me the first thing this morning. We dance it so swell together
+and all. Aw, I thought he'd forget. Ain't he the silly--remembering me?"
+
+The red flowed persistently higher.
+
+"Silly ain't no name for him, with his square, Charley-boy face and
+polished hair; and--"
+
+"You let him alone, Hattie Krakow! What's it to you if--"
+
+"Nothing--except I always say October is my unlucky month, because it
+was just a year ago that they moved him and the sheet music down to the
+basement. Honest, I'm going to buy me a pair of earmuffs! I'd hate to
+tell you how unpopular popular music is with me."
+
+"Huh! You couldn't play on a side-comb, much less play on the piano like
+Charley does. If I didn't have no more brains than some people--honest,
+I'd go out and kill a calf for some!"
+
+"You oughtta talk! A girl that 'ain't got no more brains than to gad
+round every night and every Sunday in foul-smelling, low-ceilinged
+dance-halls, and wear paper-soled slippers when she oughtta be wearing
+galoshes, and cheese-cloth waists that ain't even decent, instead of
+wool undershirts! You oughtta talk about brains--you and Charley Chubb!"
+
+"Yes, I oughtta talk! If you don't like my doings, Hattie Krakow, there
+ain't no law says we gotta room together. I been shifting for myself
+ever since I was cash-girl down at Tracy's, and I ain't going to begin
+being bossed now. If you don't like my keeping steady with Charley
+Chubb--if you don't like his sheet-music playing--you gotta lump it! I'm
+a good girl, I am; and if you got anything to in-sinuate; if--"
+
+"Sara Juke, ain't you ashamed!"
+
+"I'm a good girl, I am; and there ain't nobody can cast a reflection
+on--on--"
+
+Tears trembled in her voice, and she coughed from the deep recesses of
+her chest, and turned her head away, so that her profile was quivering
+and her throat swelling with sobs.
+
+"I--I'm a good girl, I am."
+
+"Aw, Sara, don't I know it? Ain't that just where the rub comes? Don't I
+know it? If you wasn't a good girl would I be caring?"
+
+"I'm a good girl, I am!"
+
+"It's your health, Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and
+skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and
+never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a
+mustard plaster on your chest."
+
+"Didn't I take the iron tonic and spoil my teeth?"
+
+"My sister Lizzie--that's the way she started, Sara; right down here in
+this basement. There never was a prettier little queen down here. Ask
+any of the old girls. Like you in looks and all; full of vim, too.
+That's the way she started, Sara. She wouldn't get out in the country on
+Sundays or get any air in her lungs walking with me evenings. She was
+all for dance-halls, too, Sara. She--she--'Ain't I told you about her
+over and over again? 'Ain't I?"
+
+"'Sh-h-h! Don't cry, Hat. Yes, yes; I know. She was a swell little kid;
+all the old girls say so. 'Sh-h-h!"
+
+"The--the night she died I--I died, too; I--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, dearie!"
+
+"I ain't crying, only--only I can't help remembering."
+
+"Listen! That's the new hit Charley's playing--'Up to Snuff!' Say,
+'ain't that got some little swing to it? Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m! Some
+little quickstep, ain't it? How that boy reads off by sight! Looka, will
+you? They got them left-over ribbed undervests we sold last season for
+forty-nine cents out on the grab table for seventy-four. Looka the mob
+fighting for 'em! Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m!"
+
+The day's tide came in. Slowly at first, but toward noon surging through
+aisles and around bins, up-stairs and down-stairs--in, around, and out.
+Voices straining to be heard; feet shuffling in an agglomeration of
+discords--the indescribable roar of humanity, which is like an army
+that approaches but never arrives. And above it all, insistent as a
+bugle-note, reaching the basement's breadth, from hardware to candy,
+from human hair to white goods, the tinny voice of the piano--gay,
+rollicking.
+
+At five o'clock the patch of daylight above the red-lighted exit door
+turned taupe, as though a gray curtain had been flung across it; and the
+girls, with shooting pains in their limbs, braced themselves for the
+last hour. Shoppers, their bags bulging and their shawls awry, fumbled
+in bins for a last remnant; hatless, sway-backed women, carrying
+children, fought for mill ends. Sara Juke stood first on one foot and
+then on the other to alternate the strain; her hands were hot and dry as
+flannel, but her cheeks were pink--very pink.
+
+At six o'clock Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat
+as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle, and slid into a
+warm, gray jacket.
+
+"Ready, Sara?"
+
+"Yes, Hat." But her voice came vaguely, as through fog.
+
+"I'm going to fix us some stew to-night with them onions Lettie brought
+up to the room when she moved--mutton stew, with a broth for you, Sara."
+
+"Yes, Hat."
+
+Sara's eyes darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned
+on her velveteen poke-bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a
+few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and with
+obvious subterfuge slid into her little unlined silk coat with a
+deliberation not her own.
+
+"Coming, Sara?"
+
+"Wait, can't you? My--my hat ain't on right."
+
+"Come on; you're dolled up enough."
+
+"My--my gloves--I--I forgot 'em. You--you can go on, Hat." And she
+burrowed back beneath the counter.
+
+Miss Krakow let out a snort, as fiery with scorn as though flames were
+curling on her lips. "Hanging round to see whether he's coming, ain't
+you? To think they shot Lincoln and let him live! Before I'd run after
+any man living, much less the excuse of a man like him! A shiny-haired,
+square-faced little rat like him!"
+
+"I ain't, neither, waiting. I guess I have a right to find my gloves.
+I--I guess I gotta right. He's as good as you are, and better. I--I
+guess I gotta right." But the raspberry red of confusion dyed her face.
+
+"No, you ain't waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss
+Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot.
+"Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come
+on home with me now, like you ought to."
+
+"I--You go on! I gotta tell him something. I guess I'm my own boss. I
+have to tell him something."
+
+Miss Krakow folded her well-worn hand-bag under one arm and fastened her
+black cotton gloves.
+
+"Pf-f-f! What's the use of wasting breath?"
+
+She slipped into the flux of the aisle, and the tide swallowed her and
+carried her out into the bigger tide of the street and the swifter tide
+of the city--a flower on the current, her blush withered under the
+arc-light substitution for sunlight, the petals of her youth thrown to
+the muddy corners of the city streets.
+
+Sara Juke breathed inward, and under her cheaply pretentious lace blouse
+a heart, as rebellious as the pink in her cheeks and the stars in her
+eyes, beat a rapid fantasia; and, try as she would, her lips would
+quiver into a smile.
+
+"Hello, Charley!"
+
+"Hello yourself, Sweetness!" And, draping himself across the white-goods
+counter in an attitude as intricate as the letter S, behold Mr. Charley
+Chubb! Sleek, soap-scented, slim--a satire on the satyr and the
+haberdasher's latest dash. "Hello, Sweetness!"
+
+"How are you, Charley?"
+
+"Here, gimme your little hand. Shake."
+
+She placed her palm in his, quivering.
+
+You of the classes, peering through lorgnettes into the strange world
+of the masses, spare that shrug. True, when Charley Chubb's hand closed
+over Sara Juke's she experienced a flash of goose flesh; but, you of the
+classes, what of the Van Ness ball last night? Your gown was low, so
+that your neck rose out from it like white ivory. The conservatory,
+where trained clematis vines met over your heads, was like a bower of
+stars; music, his hand, the white glove off, over yours; the suffocating
+sweetness of clematis blossoms; a fountain throwing fine spray; your
+neck white as ivory, and--what of the Van Ness ball last night?
+
+Only Sara Juke played her poor little game frankly, and the cards of her
+heart lay on the counter.
+
+"Charley!" Her voice lay in a veil.
+
+"Was you getting sore, Sweetness?"
+
+"All day you didn't come over."
+
+"Couldn't, Sweetness. Did you hear me let up on the new hit for a
+minute?"
+
+"It's swell, though, Charley; all the girls was humming it. You play it
+like lightning, too."
+
+"It must have been written for you, Sweetness. That's what you are, Up
+to Snuff, eh, Queenie?" He leaned closer, and above his tall, narrow
+collar dull red flowed beneath the sallow, and his long, white teeth and
+slick-brushed hair shone in the arc-light. "Eh, Queenie?"
+
+"I gotta go now, Charley. Hattie's waiting home for me." She attempted
+to pass him and to slip into the outgoing stream of the store, but with
+a hesitation that belied her. "I--I gotta go, Charley."
+
+He laughed, clapped his hat slightly askew on his polished hair, and
+slid his arm into hers.
+
+"Forget it! But I had you going, didn't I, sister? Thought I'd forgot
+about to-night, didn't you, and didn't have the nerve to pipe up? Like
+fun I forgot!"
+
+"I didn't know, Charley; you not coming over all day and all. I thought
+maybe your friend didn't give you the tickets like he promised."
+
+"Didn't he? Look! See if he didn't!"
+
+He produced a square of pink cardboard from his waistcoat pocket and she
+read it, with a sudden lightness underlying her voice:
+
+  HIBERNIAN MASQUE AND HOP
+  SUPPER       WARDROBE FREE
+  ADMIT GENT AND LADY  FIFTY CENTS
+
+"Oh, gee, Charley! And me such a sight in this old waist and all. I
+didn't know there was supper, too."
+
+"Sure! Hurry, Sweetness, and we'll catch a Sixth Avenue car. We wanna
+get in on it while the tamales are hot."
+
+She grasped his arm closer, and straightening her velveteen poke-bonnet
+so that the curls lay pat, together they wormed through the sidewalk
+crush; once or twice she coughed, with the hollow resonance of a chain
+drawn upward from a deep well.
+
+"Gee! I bet there'll be a jam!"
+
+"Sure! There's some live crowd down there."
+
+They were in the street-car, swaying, swinging, clutching; hemmed in by
+frantic, home-going New York, nose to nose, eye to eye, tooth to tooth.
+Around Sara Juke's slim waist lay Charley Chubb's saving arm, and with
+each lurch they laughed immoderately, except when she coughed.
+
+"Gee! ain't it the limit? It's a wonder they wouldn't open a window in
+this car!"
+
+"Nix on that. Whatta you wanna do--freeze a fellow out?"
+
+Her eyes would betray her. "Any old time I could freeze you, Charley."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"You're the one that freezes me all the time. You're the one that keeps
+me guessing and guessing where I stand with you."
+
+A sudden lurch and he caught her as she swayed.
+
+"Come, Sweetness, this is our corner. Quit your coughing, there, hon;
+this ain't no T.B. hop we're going to."
+
+"No what?"
+
+"Come along; hurry! Look at the crowd already."
+
+"This ain't no--what did you say, Charley?"
+
+But they were pushing, shoving, worming into the great lighted entrance
+of the hall. More lurching, crowding, jamming.
+
+"I'll meet you inside, kiddo, in five minutes. Pick out a red domino;
+red's my color."
+
+"A red one? Gee! Looka; mine's got black pompons on it. Five minutes,
+Charley five minutes!"
+
+Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue
+hall. An orchestra played beneath an arch of them. Supper, consisting
+of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in
+their buckets, bottles of beer and soda-water, was spread on a long
+picnic-table running the entire length of the balcony.
+
+The main floor, big as an armory, airless as a tomb, swarmed with
+dancers.
+
+After supper a red sateen Pierrette, quivering, teeth flashing beneath a
+sucy half-mask, bowed to a sateen Pierrot, whose face was as slim as a
+satyr's and whose smile was as upturned as the eye-slits in his mask.
+
+"Gee! Charley, you look just like a devil in that costume--all red, and
+your mouth squinted like that!"
+
+"And you look just like a little red cherry, ready to bust."
+
+And they were off in the whirl of the dance, except that the
+close-packed dancers hemmed them in a swaying mob; and once she fell
+back against his shoulder, faint.
+
+"Ain't there a--a up-stairs somewheres, Charley, where they got air? All
+this jam and no windows open! Gee! ain't it hot? Let's go outside where
+it's cool--let's."
+
+"There you go again! No wonder you got a cold on you--always wanting air
+on you! Come, Sweetness; this ain't hot. Here, lemme show you the dip I
+get the girls crazy with. One, two, three--dip! One, two, three--dip!
+Ugh!"
+
+"Gee! ain't it a jam, though?"
+
+"One, two, three!"
+
+"That's swell, Charley! Quit! You mustn't squeeze me like that
+till--till you've asked me to be engaged, Charley. We--we ain't engaged
+yet, are we, Charley?"
+
+"Aw, what difference does that make? You girls make me sick--always
+wanting to know that."
+
+"It--it makes a lot of difference, Charley."
+
+"There you go on that Amen talk again. All right, then; I won't squeeze
+you no more, stingy!"
+
+Her step was suddenly less elastic and she lagged on his arm. "I--I
+never said you couldn't, Charley. Gee! ain't you a great one to get mad
+so quick! Touchy! I only said not till we're engaged."
+
+He skirted the crowd, guiding her skilfully. "Stingy! Stingy! I know 'em
+that ain't so stingy as you."
+
+"Charley!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"Aw, I'm ashamed to say it."
+
+"Listen! They're playing the new one--'Up to Snuff!' Faster! Don't make
+me drag you, kiddo. Faster!"
+
+They were suddenly in the center of the maze, as tight-packed as though
+an army had conspired to close round them. She coughed, and in her
+effort of repression, coughed again.
+
+"Charley, I--honest, I--I'm going to keel. I--I can't stand it packed
+in here--like this."
+
+She leaned to him, with the color drained out of her face; and the crowd
+of black and pink and red dominoes, gnomes gone mad, pressed, batted,
+surged.
+
+"Look out, Sweetness! Don't give out in here! They'll crush us out.
+'Ain't you got no nerve? Here; don't give out now! Gee! Watch out,
+there! The lady's sick. Watch out! Here; now sit down a minute and get
+your wind."
+
+He pressed her shoulders downward and she dropped whitely on a little
+camp-chair hidden underneath the balcony.
+
+"I gotta get out, Charley; I gotta get out and get air. I feel like I'm
+going to suffocate in here. It's this old cough takes the breath out of
+me."
+
+In the foyer she revived a bit and drank gratefully of the water he
+brought; but the color remained out of her cheeks and the cough would
+rack her.
+
+"I guess I oughtta go home, Charley."
+
+"Aw, cut it! You ain't the only girl I've seen give out. Sit here and
+rest a minute and you'll be all right. Great Scott! I came here to
+dance."
+
+She rose to her feet a bit unsteadily, but smiling. "Fussy! Who said I
+didn't?"
+
+"That's more like it."
+
+And they were off again to the lilt of the music, but, struggle as she
+would, the coughing and the dizziness and the heat took hold of her, and
+at the close of the dance she fainted quietly against his shoulder.
+
+When she finally caught at consciousness, as it passed and repassed
+her befuddled mind, she was on the floor of the cloak-room, her head
+pillowed on the skirt of a pink domino.
+
+"There, there, dearie; your young man's waiting outside to take you
+home."
+
+"I--I'm all right!"
+
+"Certainly you are. The heat done it. Here; lemme help you out of your
+domino."
+
+"It was the heat done it."
+
+"There; you're all right now. I gotta get back to my dance. You fainted
+right up against him, dearie; and I seen you keel."
+
+"Gee! ain't I the limit!"
+
+"Here; lemme help on with your coat. Right there he is, waiting."
+
+In the foyer Sara Juke met Charley Chubb shamefacedly. "I spoilt
+everything, didn't I?"
+
+"I guess you couldn't help it. All right?"
+
+"Yes, Charley." She met the air gratefully, worming her little hand into
+the curve of his elbow. "Gee! I feel fine now."
+
+"Come; here's a car."
+
+"Let's walk up Sixth Avenue, Charley; the air feels fine."
+
+"All right."
+
+"You ain't sore, are you, Charley? It was so jammed dancing, anyway."
+
+"I ain't sore."
+
+"It was the heat done it."
+
+"Yeh."
+
+"Honest, it's grand to be outdoors, ain't it? The stars and--and
+chilliness and--and--all!"
+
+"Listen to the garden stuff!"
+
+"Silly!" She squeezed his arm, and drew back, shamefaced.
+
+His spirits rose. "You're a right loving little thing when you wanna
+be."
+
+They laughed in duet; and before the plate-glass window of a furniture
+emporium they paused to regard a monthly-payment display, designed to
+represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting-room, parlor,
+and dining-room of the home felicitous--a golden-oak room, with an
+incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp redly
+diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting a dart
+from the mantelpiece; and last, two figures of connubial bliss, smiling
+and waxen, in rocking-chairs, their waxen infant, block-building on the
+floor, completing the picture.
+
+"Gee! it looks as snug as a bug in a rug! Looka what it says too: 'You
+Get the Girl; We'll Do the Rest!' Some little advertisement, ain't it? I
+got the girl all right--'ain't I, hon?"
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"Look at the papa--slippers and all! And the kid! Look at the kid,
+Sweetness."
+
+Her confusion nearly choked her and her rapid breath clouded the
+window-glass. "Yeh, Charley! Looka the little kid! Ain't he cute?"
+
+An Elevated train crashed over their heads, drowning out her words; but
+her smile, which flickered like light over her face, persisted and her
+arm crept back into his. At each shop window they lingered, but the glow
+of the first one remained with her.
+
+"Look, Sweetness--'Red Swag, the Train King! Performance going on now.'
+Wanna go in?"
+
+"Not to-night. Let's stay outside."
+
+"Anything your little heart de-sires."
+
+They bought hot chestnuts, city harbingers of autumn, from a vender, and
+let fall the hulls as they walked. They drank strawberry ice-cream soda,
+pink with foam. Her resuscitation was complete; his spirits did not
+wane.
+
+"I gotta like a queen pretty much not to get sore at a busted evening
+like this. It's a good thing the ticket didn't cost me nothing."
+
+"Ain't it, though?"
+
+"Look! What's in there--a exhibit?"
+
+They paused before a white-lighted store-front, and read, laboriously:
+
+    FREE TUBERCULOSIS EXHIBIT
+
+    TO EDUCATE THE PEOPLE HOW TO PREVENT CONSUMPTION
+
+"Oh!" She dragged at his arm.
+
+"Aw, come on, Sweetness; nothing but a lot of T.B.'s."
+
+"Let's--let's go in. See, it's free. Looka! it's all lit up and all;
+see, pictures and all."
+
+"Say, ain't I enough of a dead one without dragging me in there? Free! I
+bet they pinch you for something before you get out."
+
+"Come on, Charley. I never did see a place like this."
+
+"Aw, they're all over town."
+
+He followed her in surlily enough and then, with a morbid interest,
+round a room hung with photographs of victims in various emaciated
+stages of the white plague.
+
+"Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful? Ain't it awful? Read them symptoms. Almost with
+nothing it--it begins. Night--sweats and losing weight and coughing,
+and--oh--"
+
+"Look! Little kids and all! Thin as matches."
+
+"Aw, see, a poor little shaver like that! Look! It says sleeping in
+that dirty room without a window gave it to him. Ugh! that old
+man! Self-indulgence and intemperance.' Looka that girl in the
+tobacco--factory. Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful! Dirty shops and stores, it
+says; dirty saloons and dance-halls--weak lungs can't stand them."
+
+"Let's get out of here."
+
+"Aw, look! How pretty she is in this first picture; and look at her
+here--nothing but a stack of bones on a stretcher. Aw! Aw!"
+
+"Come on!"
+
+"Courage is very important, it says. Consumptives can be helped and many
+are cured. Courage is--"
+
+"Come on; let's get out of this dump. Say, it's a swell night for a
+funeral."
+
+She grasped at his coat sleeve, pinching the flesh with it, and he drew
+away half angrily.
+
+"Come on, I said."
+
+"All right!"
+
+A thin line filed past them, grim-faced, silent. At the far end of the
+room, statistics in red inch-high type ran columnwise down the wall's
+length. She read, with a gasp in her throat:
+
+    1. Ten thousand people died from tuberculosis in the city of New
+    York last year.
+
+    2. Two hundred thousand people died from tuberculosis in the United
+    States last year.
+
+    3. Records of the Health Department show 31,631 living cases of
+    tuberculosis in the city of New York.
+
+    4. Every three minutes some one in the United States dies from
+    consumption.
+
+"Oh, Charley, ain't it awful!"
+
+At a desk a young man, with skin as pink as though a strong wind had
+whipped it into color, distributed pamphlets to the outgoing visitors--a
+thin streamlet of them; some cautious, some curious, some afraid.
+
+"Come on; let's hurry out of here, Sweetness. My lung's hurting this
+minute."
+
+They hurried past the desk; but the young man with the clear, pink skin
+reached over the heads of an intervening group, waving a long printed
+booklet toward the pair.
+
+"Circular, missy?"
+
+Sara Juke straightened, with every nerve in her body twanging like a
+plucked violin-string, and her eyes met the clear eyes of the young
+clerk.
+
+Like a doll automaton she accepted the booklet from him; like a doll
+automaton she followed Charley Chubb out into the street, and her limbs
+were trembling so she could scarcely stand.
+
+"Gotta hand it to you, Sweetness. Even made a hit on the fellow in the
+lung-shop! He didn't hand me out no literachure. Some little hit!"
+
+"I gotta go home now, Charley."
+
+"It's only ten."
+
+"I better go, Charley. It ain't Saturday night."
+
+At the stoop of her rooming-house they lingered. A honey-colored moon
+hung like a lantern over the block-long row of shabby-fronted houses. On
+her steps and to her fermenting fancy the shadow of an ash-can sprawled
+like a prostrate human being.
+
+"Charley!" She clutched his arm.
+
+"Whatcha scared about, Sweetness?"
+
+"Oh, Charley, I--I feel creepy to-night."
+
+"That visit to the morgue was enough to give anybody the blind
+staggers."
+
+Her pamphlet was tight in her hand. "You ain't mad at me, Charley?"
+
+He stroked her arm, and the taste of tears found its way to her mouth.
+
+"I'm feeling so silly-like to-night, Charley."
+
+"You're all in, kiddo." In the shadow he kissed her.
+
+"Charley, you--you mustn't, unless we're--engaged." But she could
+not find the strength to unfold herself from his arms. "You mustn't,
+Charley!"
+
+"Great little girl you are, Sweetness--one great little girl!"
+
+"Aw, Charley!"
+
+"And, to show you that I like you, I'm going to make up for this
+to-morrow night. A real little Saturday-night blow! And don't forget
+Sunday afternoon--two o'clock for us, down at Crissey's Hall. Two
+o'clock."
+
+"Two o'clock."
+
+"Good!"
+
+"Oh, Charley, I--"
+
+"What, Sweetness?"
+
+"Oh, nothing; I--I'm just silly to-night."
+
+Her hand lay on his arm, white in the moonlight and light as a leaf; and
+he kissed her again, scorching her lips.
+
+"Good night, Sweetness."
+
+"Good night, Charley."
+
+Then up three flights of stairs, through musty halls and past closed
+doors, their white china knobs showing through the darkness, and up to
+the fourth-floor rear, and then on tiptoe into a long, narrow room, with
+the moonlight flowing in.
+
+Clothing lay about in grotesque heaps--a woman's blouse was flung across
+the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the
+bed in the attitude of walking--tired-looking shoes, run down at the
+heels and skinned at the toes. And on the far side of the three-quarter
+bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with
+sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.
+
+Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded
+her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping
+carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her
+straight-falling nightdress, her hair spreading over her shoulders, her
+bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed lightly,
+scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece the alarm-clock ticked
+with emphasis.
+
+An hour she lay there. Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow.
+Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered
+dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the
+window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her
+nightrobe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the
+moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.
+
+After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a
+current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the
+bedside.
+
+On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses
+battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the
+air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She
+stirred and half opened her eyes.
+
+"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to
+freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!
+Put--it--down!"
+
+Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed with
+teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with her
+mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to full
+consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown at
+the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with cold
+perspiration.
+
+"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"
+
+She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her. The
+moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her
+in--the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of
+peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that
+comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream
+and Reality visits the couch.
+
+Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night-sweat.
+
+Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too
+weary to follow her mind's dictate.
+
+"Sara! 'Smatter, Sara? 'Smat-ter?" Hattie's tired hand crept toward her
+friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert
+across the coverlet. "'Smatter, dearie?"
+
+"N-nothing."
+
+"'Smat-ter, dear-ie?"
+
+"N-nothing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes
+a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree-branch tapping at the window an
+armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther
+across the chest, sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light
+of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of
+Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by
+day.
+
+So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbasement of
+the Titanic Store, the morning following, her laughter was ready enough.
+But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the
+importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday
+swarm of Sixth Avenue.
+
+Down one block--two, three; then a sudden pause before a narrow
+store-front liberally placarded with invitatory signs to the public, and
+with a red cross blazoning above the doorway. And Sara Juke, whose heart
+was full of fear, faltered, entered.
+
+The same thin file passed round the room, halting, sauntering, like
+grim visitors in a grim gallery. At a front desk a sleek young interne,
+tiptilted in a swivel chair, read a pink sheet through horn-rimmed
+glasses.
+
+Toward the rear the young man whose skin was the wind-lashed pink sorted
+pamphlets and circulars in tall, even piles on his desk.
+
+Round and round the gallery walked Sara Juke; twice she read over the
+list of symptoms printed in inch-high type; her heart lay within her as
+though icy dead, and her eyes would blur over with tears. Once, when she
+passed the rear desk, the young man paused in his stacking and regarded
+her with a warming glance of recognition.
+
+"Hello!" he said. "You back?"
+
+"Yes." Her voice was the thin cry of quail.
+
+"You must like our little picture-gallery, eh?"
+
+"Oh! Oh!" She caught at the edge of his desk, and tears lay heavy in her
+eyes.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Yes; I--I like it. I wanna buy it for my yacht." Her ghastly simulacrum
+of a jest died in her throat; and he said, quickly, a big blush
+suffusing his face:
+
+"I was only fooling, missy. You 'ain't got the scare, have you?"
+
+"The scare?"
+
+"Yes; the bug? You ain't afraid you've ate the germ, are you?"
+
+"I--I dun'no'."
+
+"Pshaw! There's a lot of 'em comes in here more scared than hurt, missy.
+Never throw a scare till you've had a examination. For all you know, you
+got hay fever, eh! Hay fever!" And he laughed as though to salve his
+words.
+
+"I--I got all them things on the red-printed list, I tell you. I--I got
+'em all, night-sweats and all. I--I got 'em."
+
+"Sure you got 'em, missy; but that don't need to mean nothing much."
+
+"I got 'em, I tell you."
+
+"Losing weight?"
+
+"Feel."
+
+He inserted two fingers in her waistband. "Huh!"
+
+"You a doctor?"
+
+He performed a great flourish. "I ain't in the profesh, missy. I'm only
+chief clerk and bottle-washer round here; but--"
+
+"Where is the doctor? That him reading down there? Can I ask him? I--Oh!
+Ain't I scared!"
+
+He placed his big, cool hand over her wrist and his face had none of its
+smile. "I know you are, little missy. I seen it in you last night when
+you and--and--"
+
+"My--my friend."
+
+"--your friend was in here. There's thousands come in here with the
+scare on, and most of 'em with a reason; but I picked you out last night
+from the gang. Funny thing, but right away I picked you. 'A pretty
+little thing like her'--if you'll excuse me for saying it--'a pretty
+little thing like her,' I says to myself. 'And I bet she 'ain't got
+nobody to steer her!'"
+
+"Honest, did you?"
+
+"Gee! it ain't none of my put-in; but when I seen you last night--funny
+thing--but when I seen you, why, you just kinda hit me in the eye; and,
+with all that gang round me, I says to myself: 'Gee! a pretty little
+thing like her, scared as a gazelle, and so pretty and all; and no one
+to give her the right steer!'"
+
+"Aw, you seen me?"
+
+"Sure! Wasn't it me reached out the pamphlet to you? You had on that
+there same cutey little hat and jacket and all."
+
+"Does it cost anything to talk to the doctor down there?"
+
+"Forget it! Go right down and he'll give you a card to the Victoria
+Clinic. I know them all over there and they'll look you over right,
+little missy, and steer you. Aw, don't be scared; there ain't nothing
+much wrong with you--maybe a sore spot, that's all. That cough ain't a
+double-lunger. You run over to the clinic."
+
+"I gotta go back to the store now."
+
+"After store, then?"
+
+"Free?"
+
+"Sure! Old Doc Strauss is on after five, too. If I ain't too nervy I'm
+off after six myself. I could meet you after and we could talk over what
+he tells you--if I ain't too nervy?"
+
+"I--"
+
+"Blaney's my name--Eddie Blaney. Ask anybody round here about me. I--I
+could meet you, little missy, and--"
+
+"I can't to-night, Mr. Blaney. I gotta go somewheres."
+
+"Aw!"
+
+"I gotta."
+
+"To-morrow? To-morrow's Sunday, little missy. There's a swell lot of
+country I bet you 'ain't never seen, and Old Doc Strauss is going to
+tell you to get acquainted with it pretty soon."
+
+"Country?"
+
+"Yes. That's what you need--outdoors; that's what you need. You got a
+color like all indoors--pretty, but putty."
+
+"You--you don't think there's nothing much the matter with me, do you,
+Mr. Blaney?"
+
+"Sure I don't. Why, I got a bunch of Don'ts for you up my sleeve that'll
+color you up like drug-store daub."
+
+Tears and laughter trembled in her voice. "You mean that the outdoor
+stuff will do it, Mr. Blaney?"
+
+"That's the talk!"
+
+"But you--you ain't the doctor."
+
+"I ain't, but I 'ain't been deaf and dumb and blind round here for three
+years. I can pick 'em every time. You're taking your stitch in time. You
+'ain't even got a wheeze in you. Why, I bet you 'ain't never seen red!"
+
+"No!" she cried, with quick comprehension.
+
+"Sure you 'ain't!"
+
+More tears and laughter in her voice. "I'm going to-night, then--at six,
+Mr. Blaney."
+
+"Good! And to-morrow? There's a lot of swell country and breathing-space
+round here I'd like to introduce you to. I bet you don't know whether
+Ingleside Woods is kindling or a breakfast food. Now do you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ever had a chigger on you?"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Ever sleep outdoors in a bag?"
+
+"Say, whatta you think I am?"
+
+"Ever seen the sun rise, or took the time to look up and see several
+dozen or a couple of thousand or so stars glittering all at once?"
+
+"Aw, come off! We ain't doing team-work in vaudeville."
+
+"Gee! wouldn't I like to take you out and be the first one to make you
+acquainted with a few of the things that are happening beyond Sixth
+Avenue--if I ain't too nervy, little missy?"
+
+"I gotta go somewhere at two o'clock to-morrow afternoon, Mr.--Mr.
+Blaney; but I can go in the morning--if it ain't going to look like I'm
+a freshie."
+
+"In the morning! Swell! But where--who--" She scribbled on a slip of
+paper and fluttered it into his hand. "Sara Juke! Some little name. Gee!
+I know right where you live. I know a lot of cases that come from round
+there. I used to live near there myself, round on Third Avenue. I'll
+call round at nine, little missy. I'm going to introduce you to the
+country, eh?"
+
+"They won't hurt at the clinic, will they, Mr. Blaney? I'm losing my
+nerve again."
+
+"Shame on a pretty little thing like you losing her nerve! Gee! I've
+seen 'em come in here all pale round the gills and with nothing but the
+whooping-cough. There was a little girl in here last week who thought
+she was ready for Arizona on a canvas bed; and it wasn't nothing but her
+rubber skirtband had stretched. Shame on you, little missy! Don't you
+get scared! Wait till you see what I'm going to show you out in the
+country to-morrow--leaves turning red and all. We're going to have a
+heart-to-heart talk out there--eh? A regular lung-to-lung talk!"
+
+"Aw, Mr. Blaney! Ain't you killing!" She hurried down the room,
+laughing.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Sharkey's on Saturday night the entire basement cafe and dance-hall
+assumed a hebdomadal air of expectancy; extra marble-topped tables were
+crowded about the polished square of dancing-space; the odor of hops and
+sawdust and cookery hung in visible mists over the bar.
+
+Girls, with white faces and red lips and bare throats, sat alone at
+tables or tête-à-tête with men too old or too young, and ate; but drank
+with keener appetite.
+
+A self-playing piano performed beneath a large painting of an undraped
+Psyche; a youth with yellow fingers sang of Love. A woman whose
+shame was gone acquired a sudden hysteria at her lone table over her
+milky-green drink, and a waiter hustled her out none too gently.
+
+In the foyer at seven o'clock Sara Juke met Charley Chubb, and he slid
+up quite frankly behind her and kissed her on the lips. At Sharkey's a
+miss is as good as her kiss!
+
+"You--you quit! You mustn't!"
+
+She sprang back, quivering, her face cold-looking and blue; and he
+regarded her with his mouth quirking.
+
+"Huh! Hoity-toity, ain't you? Hoity-toity and white-faced and late, all
+at once, ain't you? Say, them airs don't get across with me. Come on!
+I'm hungry."
+
+"I didn't mean to yell, Charley--only you scared me. I thought maybe
+it was one of them fresh guys that hang round here; all of 'em look so
+dopey and all. I--You know I never was strong for this place, Charley."
+
+"Beginning to nag, are you?"
+
+"No, no, Charley. No, no!"
+
+They drew up at a small table.
+
+"No fancy keeling act to-night, kiddo. I ain't taking out a hospital
+ward, you know. Gad! I like you, though, when you're white-looking like
+this! Why'd you dodge me at noon to-day and to-night after closing? New
+guy? I won't stand for it, you know, you little white-faced Sweetness,
+you!"
+
+"I hadda go somewheres, Charley. I came near not coming to-night,
+neither, Charley."
+
+"What'll you eat?"
+
+"I ain't hungry."
+
+"Thirsty, eh?"
+
+"No."
+
+He regarded her over the rim of the smirchy bill of fare. "What are you,
+then, you little white-faced, big-eyed devil?"
+
+"Charley, I--I got something to--to tell you. I--"
+
+"Bring me a lamb stew and a beer, light. What'll you have, little
+white-face?"
+
+"Some milk and--"
+
+"She means with suds on, waiter."
+
+"No--no; milk, I said--milk over toast. Milk toast--I gotta eat it. Why
+don't you lemme talk, Charley? I gotta tell you."
+
+He was suddenly sober. "What's hurting you? One milk toast, waiter. Tell
+them in the kitchen the lady's teeth hurt her. What's up, Sweetness?"
+And he leaned across the table to imprint a fresh kiss on her lips.
+
+"Don't--don't--don't! For Gawd's sake, don't!"
+
+She covered her face with her hands; and such a trembling seized her
+that they fell pitifully away again and showed her features, each
+distorted. "You mustn't, Charley! Mustn't do that again, not--not for
+three months--you--you mustn't."
+
+He leaned across the table; his voice was like sleet--cold, thin,
+cutting: "What's the matter--going to quit?"
+
+"No--no--no!"
+
+"Got another guy you like better?"
+
+"Oh! Oh!"
+
+"A queenie can't quit me first and get away with it, kiddo. I may be a
+soft-fingered sort of fellow, but a queenie can't quit me first and get
+away with it. Ask 'em about me round here; they know me. If anybody in
+this little duet is going to do the quitting act first it ain't going to
+be you. What's the matter? Out with it!"
+
+"Charley, it ain't that--I swear it ain't that!"
+
+"What's hurting you, then?"
+
+"I gotta tell you. We gotta go easy for a little while. We gotta quit
+doing the rounds for a while till--only for a little while. Three months
+he said would fix me. A grand old doc he was!
+
+"I been to the clinic, Charley. I hadda go. The cough--the cough was
+cutting me in two. It ain't like me to go keeling like I did. I never
+said much about it; but, nights and all, the sweats and the cough and
+the shooting pains was cutting me in two. We gotta go easy for a while,
+Charley; just--"
+
+"You sick, Sara?" His fatty-white face lost a shade of its animation.
+"Sick?"
+
+"But it ain't, Charley. On his word he promised it ain't! A grand old
+doc, with whiskers--he promised me that. I--I am just beginning; but the
+stitch was in time. It ain't a real case yet, Charley. I swear on my
+mother's curl of hair it ain't."
+
+"Ain't what? Ain't what?"
+
+"It ain't! Air, he said, right living--early hours and all. I gotta get
+out of the basement. He'll get me a job. A grand old man! Windows open;
+right living. No--no dancing and all, for a while, Charley. Three months
+only, Charley; and then--"
+
+"What, I say--"
+
+"It ain't, Charley! I swear it ain't. Just one--the left one--a little
+sore down at the base--the bottom. Charley, quit looking at me like
+that! It ain't a real case--it ain't; it ain't!"
+
+"It ain't what?"
+
+"The--the T.B. Just the left one; down at--"
+
+"You--you--" An oath as hot as a live coal dropped from his lips, and
+he drew back, strangling. "You--you got it, and you're letting me down
+easy. You got it, and it's catching as hell! You got it, you white
+devil, and--and you're trying to lie out of it--you--you--"
+
+"Charley! Charley!"
+
+"You got it, and you been letting me eat it off your lips! You devil,
+you! You devil, you! You devil, you!"
+
+"Charley, I--"
+
+"I could kill you! Lemme wash my mouth! You got it; and if you got it I
+got it! I got it! I got it! I--I--"
+
+He rushed from the table, strangling, stuttering, staggering; and his
+face was twisted with fear.
+
+For an hour she sat there, waiting, her hands folded in her lap and her
+eyes growing larger in her face. The dish of stew took on a thin coating
+of grease and the beer died in the glass. The waiter snickered. After a
+while she paid for the meal out of her newly opened wage-envelope and
+walked out into the air.
+
+Once on the street, she moaned audibly into her handkerchief. There is
+relief in articulation. Her way lay through dark streets where figures
+love to slink in the shadows. One threw a taunt at her and she ran. At
+the stoop of her rooming-house she faltered, half fainting and breathing
+deep from exhaustion, her head thrown back and her eyes gazing upward.
+
+Over the narrow street stars glittered, dozens and myriads of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Literature has little enough to say of the heartaches and the heartburns
+of the Sara Jukes and the Hattie Krakows and the Eddie Blaneys. Medical
+science concedes them a hollow organ for keeping up the circulation. Yet
+Mrs. Van Ness's heartbreak over the death of her Chinese terrier, Wang,
+claims a first-page column in the morning edition; her heartburn--a
+complication of midnight terrapin and the strain of her most recent rôle
+of corespondent--obtains her a _suite de luxe_ in a private sanitarium.
+
+Vivisectionists believe the dog is less sensitive to pain than man; so
+the social vivisectionists, in problem plays and best sellers, are
+more concerned with the heartaches and heartburns of the classes. But
+analysis would show that the sediment of salt in Sara Juke's and Mrs.
+Van Ness's tears is equal.
+
+Indeed, when Sara Juke stepped out of the streetcar on a golden Sunday
+morning in October, her heart beat higher and more full of emotion than
+Mrs. Van Ness could find at that breakfast hour, reclining on her fine
+linen pillows, an electric massage and a four-dollars-an-hour masseuse
+forcing her sluggish blood to flow.
+
+Eddie Blaney gently helped Sara to alight, cupping the point of her
+elbow in his hand; and they stood huddled for a moment by the roadway
+while the car whizzed past, leaving them in the yellow and ocher,
+saffron and crimson, countryside.
+
+"Gee! Gee whiz!"
+
+"See! I told you. And you not wanting to come when I called for you this
+morning--you trying to dodge me and the swellest Indian-summer Sunday on
+the calendar!"
+
+"Looka!"
+
+"Wait! We 'ain't started yet, if you think this is swell."
+
+"Oh! Let's go over in them woods. Let's." Her lips were apart and pink
+crept into her cheeks, effacing the dark rims of pain beneath her eyes.
+
+"Let's hurry."
+
+"Sure; that's where we're going--right over in there, where the woods
+look like they're on fire; but, gee! this ain't nothing to the country
+places I know round here. This ain't nothing. Wait!"
+
+The ardor of the inspired guide was his, and with each exclamation from
+her the joy of his task doubled itself.
+
+"If you think this is great, wait--just you wait. Gee! if you like this,
+what would you have said to the farm? Wait till we get to the top of the
+hill."
+
+Fallen leaves, crisp as paper, crackled pleasantly under their feet; and
+through the haze that is October's veil glowed a reddish sun, vague as
+an opal. A footpath crawled like a serpent through the woods and they
+followed it, kicking up the leaves before them, pausing, darting,
+exclaiming.
+
+"I--Honest, Mr. Blaney, I--"
+
+"Eddie!"
+
+"Eddie, I--I never did feel so--I never was so--so--Aw, I can't say it."
+Tears sprang to her eyes.
+
+"Sure you never was. I never was, neither, before--before--"
+
+"Before what?"
+
+"Before I had to."
+
+"Had to?"
+
+"Yeh; both of them. Bleeding all the time. Didn't see nothing but red
+for 'leven months."
+
+"You!"
+
+"Yeh; three years ago. Looked like Arizona on a stretcher for me."
+
+"You--so big and strong and all!"
+
+He smiled at her and his teeth flashed. "Gad! little girl, if you got a
+right to be scared, whatta you think I had? I seen your card over at the
+clinic last night, and you 'ain't got no right to have that down-and-out
+look on you had this morning. If you think you got something to be
+scared at you looka my old card at the clinic some day; they keep it for
+show. You oughtta seen me the day I quit the shipping-room, right over
+at the Titanic, too, and then see whether you got something to be scared
+at."
+
+"You--you used to work there?"
+
+"Six years."
+
+"I--I ain't scared no more, Eddie; honest, I ain't!"
+
+"Gee! I should say not! They ain't even sending you up to the farm."
+
+"No, no! They're going to get me a job. A regular outdoor, on-the-level
+kind of a job. A grand old doc, with whiskers! I ain't a regular one,
+Eddie; just the bottom of one lung don't make a regular one."
+
+"Well, I guess not, poor little missy. Well, I guess not."
+
+"Three months, he said, Eddie. Three months of right living like this,
+and air and all, and I'll be as round as a peach, he said. Said it
+hisself, without me asking--that's how scared I was. Round as a peach!"
+
+"You can't beat that gang over there at the clinic, little missy. They
+took me out of the department when all the spring-water I knew about ran
+out of a keg. Even when they got me out on the farm--a grown-up guy like
+me--for a week I thought the crow in the rooster was a sidewalk faker.
+You can't beat that, little missy."
+
+"He's a grand old man, with whiskers, that's going to get me the job.
+Then in three months I--"
+
+"Three months nothing! That gang won't let you slip back after the three
+months. They took a extra shine to me because I did the prize-pupil
+stunt; but they won't let anybody slip back if they give 'em half a
+chance. When they got me sound again, did they ship me back to the
+shipping department in the subbasement? Not muchy! Looka me now, little
+missy! Clerk in their biggest display; in three months a raise to
+ninety dollars. Can you beat it? Ninety dollars would send all the
+shipping-clerks of the world off in a faint."
+
+"Gee! it--it's swell!"
+
+"And--"
+
+"Look! Look!"
+
+"Persimmons!" A golden mound of them lay at the base of a tree, piled up
+against the hole, bursting, brown. "Persimmons! Here; taste one. They're
+fine."
+
+"Eat 'em?"
+
+"Sure!"
+
+She bit into one gently; then with appetite. "M-m-m! Good!"
+
+"Want another?"
+
+"M-m-m--my mouth! Ouch! My m-mouth!"
+
+"Gee! you cute little thing, you! See, my mouth's the same way, too.
+Feels like a knot. Gee! you cute little thing, you--all puckered up and
+all."
+
+And linking her arm in his they crunch-crunched over the brittle leaves
+and up a hillside to a plateau of rock overlooking the flaming country;
+and from the valley below smoke from burning mounds of leaves wound in
+spirals, its pungency drifting to them.
+
+"See that tree there? It's a oak. Look; from a little acorn like this it
+grew. See, this is a acorn, and in the start that tree wasn't no bigger
+than this little thing."
+
+"Quit your kidding!" But she smiled and her lips were parted sweetly;
+and always unformed tears would gloze her eyes.
+
+"Here, sit here, little lady. Wait till I spread this newspaper out.
+Gee! Don't I wish you didn't have to go back to the city by two o'clock,
+little lady! We could make a great day of it here, out in the country;
+lunch at a farm and see the sun set and all. Some day of it we could
+make if--"
+
+"I--I don't have to go back, Eddie."
+
+His face expanded into his widest smile. "Gee! that's great! That's just
+great!"
+
+Silence.
+
+"What you thinking of, little lady, sitting there so pretty and all?"
+
+"N-nothing."
+
+"Nothing? Aw, surely something!"
+
+A tear formed and zigzagged down her cheek. "Nothing, honest; only I--I
+feel right happy."
+
+"That's just how you oughtta feel, little lady."
+
+"In three months, if--Aw, ain't I the nut?"
+
+"It'll be a big Christmas, won't it, little missy, for both of us? A big
+Christmas for both of us; you as sound and round as a peach again, and
+me shooting up like a skyrocket on the pay-roll."
+
+A laugh bubbled to her lips before the tear was dry. "In three months I
+won't be a T.B., not even a little bit."
+
+"'Sh-h-h! On the farm we wasn't allowed to say even that. We wasn't
+supposed to even know what them letters mean."
+
+"Don't you know what they mean, Eddie?"
+
+"Sure I do!" He leaned toward her and placed his hand lightly over hers.
+"T.B.--True Blue--that's what they mean, little lady."
+
+She could feel the veins in his palm throbbing.
+
+
+
+
+SUMMER RESOURCES
+
+
+At seven o'clock the Seaside Hotel struggled into full dress--ladies
+emerged from siestas and curlpapers, dowagers wormed into straight
+fronts and spread the spousal vestments of boiled shirt, U-shaped
+waistcoat _et al_. across the bed. Slim young men in the swelter
+of their inside two-fifty-a-day rooms carefully extracted their
+braided-at-the-seams trousers from beneath the mattresses and removed
+trees from patent-leather pumps.
+
+At seven-thirty young girls fluttered in and out from the dining-room
+like brilliant night moths, the straight-front dowagers, U-vested
+spouses, and slim young men in braided trousers seams crowded about the
+desk for the influx of mail, and read their tailor and modiste duns with
+the rapt and misleading expression that suggested a love rune rather
+than a "Please remit." Interested mothers elbowed for the most desirable
+veranda rockers; the blather of voices, the emph-umph-umph of the
+three-nights-a-week orchestra and the remote pound of the ocean joined
+in united effort.
+
+At eight o'clock Miss Myra Sternberger yawned in her wicker rocker and
+raised two round and bare-to-the-elbow arms high above her head.
+
+"Gee!" she said. "This place is so slow it gets on my nerves--it does!"
+
+Mrs. Blondheim, who carried toast away from the breakfast-table
+concealed beneath a napkin for her daughter who remained abed until
+noon, paused in her Irish crochet, spread a lace wheel upon her ample
+knee, and regarded it approvingly.
+
+"What you got to kick about, Miss Sternberger? Didn't I see you in the
+surf this morning with that shirtwaist drummer from Cincinnati?"
+
+"Mr. Eckstein--oh, I been meetin' him down here in July for two years.
+He's a nice fellow an' makes a good livin'--but he ain't my style."
+
+"Girls are too particular nowadays. Take my Bella--why, that girl's
+had chances you wouldn't believe! But she always says to me, she says,
+'Mamma, I ain't goin' to marry till Mr. Right comes along.'"
+
+"That's just the same way with me."
+
+"My Bella's had chances--not one, but six. You can ask anybody who knows
+us in New York the chances that goil has had."
+
+"I ain't in a hurry to take the first man that asks me, neither."
+
+Mrs. Blondheim wrapped the forefinger of her left hand with mercerized
+cotton thread, and her needle flashed deftly.
+
+"What about the little Baltimore fellow that went away yesterday? I seen
+he was keepin' you pretty busy."
+
+"Aw, Mrs. Blondheim, can't a girl have a good time with a fellow without
+gettin' serious?"
+
+But she giggled in pleased self-consciousness and pushed her combs into
+place--Miss Sternberger wore her hair oval about her face like Mona
+Lisa; her cheeks were pink-tinted, like the lining of a conch-shell.
+
+"My Bella always says a goil can't be too careful at these here summer
+resorts--that's why she ain't out every night like some of these goils.
+She won't go out with a young man till she knows he comes from nice
+people."
+
+Miss Sternberger patted the back of her hand against her mouth and
+stifled a yawn.
+
+"One thing I must say for my Bella--no matter where I take that goil,
+everybody says what a nice, retirin' goil she is!"
+
+"Bella does retire rather early," agreed Miss Sternberger in tones
+drippingly sweet.
+
+"I try to make her rest up in summer," pursued Mrs. Blondheim,
+unpunctured. "You goils wear yourselves out--nothin' but beaus, beaus
+all the time. There ain't a night in New York that my Bella ain't out
+with some young man. I always say to her, 'Bella, the theayters ought to
+give you a commission.'"
+
+Miss Sternberger rocked.
+
+"Where did you say you live in New York, Miss Sternberger?"
+
+"West One Hundred and Eleventh Street."
+
+"Oh yes--are you related to the Morris Sternbergers in the boys'-pants
+business?"
+
+"I think--on my father's side."
+
+"Honest, now! Carrie Sternberger married my brother-in-law; and they're
+doin' grand, too! He's built up a fine business there. Ain't this a
+small woild after all!"
+
+"It is that," agreed Miss Sternberger. "Why, last summer I was eatin'
+three meals a day next to my first cousin and didn't know it."
+
+"Look!" said Mrs. Blondheim. "There's those made-up Rosenstein goils
+comin' out of the dinin'-room. Look at the agony they put on, would you!
+I knew 'em when they were livin' over their hair-store on Twenty-thoid
+Street. I wonder where my Bella is!"
+
+"That's a stylish messaline the second one's got on, all right. I think
+them beaded tunics are swell."
+
+"If it hadn't been for the false-hair craze old man Rosenstein
+wouldn't--"
+
+Mrs. Blondheim leaned forward in her chair; her little flowered-silk
+work-bag dropped to the floor. "There's Bella now! Honest, that Mr.
+Arnheim 'ain't left her once to-day, and he only got here this morning,
+too! Such a fine young man, the clerk says; he's been abroad six months
+and just landed yesterday--and been with her all day. When I think of
+the chances that goil had. Why, Marcus Finberg, who was down here last
+week, was crazy about her!"
+
+"Did you say that fellow's name was Arnheim?"
+
+"Yes. 'Ain't you heard of the Arnheim models? He's a grand boy, the
+clerk says, and the swellest importer of ladies' wear in New York."
+
+Miss Sternberger leaned forward in her chair. "Is that Simon Arnheim?"
+
+"Sure. He's the one that introduced the hobble skoit. My Bella was one
+of the foist to wear one. There ain't a fad that he don't go over to
+Europe and get. He made a fortune off the hobble skoit alone."
+
+"Is that so?"
+
+"Believe me, if he wasn't all right my Bella wouldn't let him hang on
+that way."
+
+"I've heard of him."
+
+"I wish you could see that Babette Dreyfous eying my Bella! She's just
+green because Bella's got him."
+
+"Do you use the double stitch in your crochet, Mrs. Blondheim? That's a
+pretty pattern you're workin' on."
+
+"Yes. I've just finished a set of doilies you'd pay twenty-five dollars
+for anywhere."
+
+Miss Sternberger rose languidly to her feet. "Well," she said, "I guess
+I'll take a stroll and go up to bed."
+
+"Don't be so fidgety, Miss Sternberger; sit down by me and talk."
+
+Miss Sternberger smiled. "I'll see you later, Mrs. Blondheim; and don't
+forget that preparation I was tellin' you about--Sloand's Mosquito Skit.
+Just rub the bottle stopper over your pillow and see if it don't work."
+
+She moved away with the dignity of an emperor moth, slim and
+supple-hipped in a tight-wrapped gown.
+
+The Seaside Hotel lobby leaned forward in its chairs; young men moved
+their feet from the veranda rail and gazed after her; pleasantries fell
+in her pathway as roses before a queen.
+
+A splay-mouthed youth, his face and neck sunburnt to a beefy red, tugged
+at her gold-colored scarf as she passed.
+
+"Oh, you Myra!" he sang.
+
+"Quit your kiddin', Izzy!" she parried back. "Who was that blonde I seen
+you with down at the beach this mornin'?"
+
+A voluptuous brunette in a rose-pink dress and diamonds dragged her down
+to the arm of her rocker.
+
+"I got a trade-last for you, Myra."
+
+"For me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Give it to me, Clara."
+
+"No, I said a trade--and a dandy, too!"
+
+"Who from--man?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, I got one for you, too--Leon Eckstein says he thinks you're an
+awfully sweet girl and will make some man a grand wife."
+
+Clara giggled and fingered the gold-fringe edging of Miss Sternberger's
+sleeve. She spoke slowly and stressed each word alike.
+
+"Well, there's a fellow just got here from Paris yesterday--says you
+sure know how to dress and that you got a swell figure."
+
+"Who said it?"
+
+"Guess."
+
+"I should know!"
+
+"That fellow over there with Bella Blondheim--the one with the smooth
+face and grayish hair. I hear he's a swell New York fellow in the
+importin' business."
+
+"How'd Bella grab him?"
+
+"She's been holdin' on to him like a crawfish all day. She won't let
+anybody get near him--neither will her mother."
+
+"Here comes Izzy over here after me! If there's one fellow I can't stand
+it's him."
+
+Miss Sternberger moved away with her chin tilted at a sharp angle. At a
+turn in the veranda she came suddenly upon Miss Bella Blondheim and a
+sleek, well-dressed young man with grayish hair. Miss Blondheim's hand
+was hooked with a deadlock clutch to the arm of her companion.
+
+Miss Sternberger threw herself before them like a melodrama queen
+flagging a train. "Hello, Bella!" she said in a voice as low as a
+'cello.
+
+Miss Blondheim, who had once sold the greatest number of aprons at a
+charity bazar, turned cold eyes upon the intruder.
+
+"Hello, Myra!" she said in cool tones of dismissal.
+
+There was a pause; the color swept up and surged over Miss Blondheim's
+face.
+
+"Are you finished with _Love in a Cottage_, Bella? I promised it to Mrs.
+Weiss when you're finished with it."
+
+"Yes," said Bella. "I'll bring it down to-night."
+
+There was another pause; the young man with the grayish hair coughed.
+
+"Mr. Arnheim, let me introduce you to my friend, Miss Sternberger."
+
+Miss Sternberger extended a highly groomed hand. "Pleased to meet you,"
+she said.
+
+"Howdy-do, Miss Sternberger?" His arm squirmed free from the deadlock
+clutch. "Won't you join us?"
+
+"Thanks," said Myra, smiling until an amazing quantity of small white
+teeth showed; "but I just stopped by to tell Bella that Mrs. Blondheim
+was askin' for her."
+
+There was a third pause.
+
+"Won't you come along, Mr. Arnheim? Mamma's always so worried about me;
+and I'd like for you to meet mamma," said Bella, anxiously.
+
+With a heroic jerk Mr. Arnheim managed to free himself entirely.
+"Thanks," he said; "but I think I'll stay out and have a smoke."
+
+Miss Blondheim's lips drooped at the corners. She entered the bright,
+gabbling lobby, threading her way to her mother's stronghold. The
+maternal glance that greeted her was cold and withering.
+
+"I knew if I couldn't hold her she'd get him away. That's why I didn't
+go and play lotto with the ladies."
+
+"Well, I couldn't help it, could I? You're always nosin' after me
+so--anybody could say you want me and not be lyin'."
+
+"That's the thanks I get for tryin' to do the right thing by my
+children. When I was your age I had more gumption in my little finger
+than you got in your whole hand! I'd like to see a little piece like her
+get ahead of me. No wonder you ain't got no luck!"
+
+Miss Blondheim sat down wearily beside her mother. "I wish I knew how
+she does it."
+
+"Nerve! That's how. 'Ain't I been preachin' nerve to you since you could
+talk? You'd be married to Marcus Finberg now if you'd 'a' worked it
+right and listened to your mother."
+
+"Aw, maw, lemme alone. I couldn't make him pop, could I? I don't see
+other girls' mothers always buttin' in."
+
+Out in the cool of the veranda Miss Sternberger strolled over to the
+railing and leaned her back against a white wooden column. Her eyes,
+upslanting and full of languor, looked out over the toiling, moiling
+ocean. She was outlined as gently as a Rembrandt.
+
+"A penny for your thoughts, Miss Sternberger."
+
+Mr. Arnheim, the glowing end of a newly lighted cigar in one corner of
+his mouth, peered his head over her shoulder.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Arnheim, how you scared me!" Miss Sternberger placed the
+well-groomed left hand, with a seal ring on the third finger, upon the
+thread-lace bosom of her gown. "How you frightened me!"
+
+"It's a nice night, Miss Sternberger. Want to walk on the beach?"
+
+"Don't mind if I do," she said.
+
+They strolled the length of the veranda, down the steps to the boardwalk
+and the beach beyond.
+
+Mrs. Blondheim rolled her crochet into a tight ball and stuck her needle
+upright. "Come on, Bella; let's go to bed."
+
+They trailed past the desk like birds with damp feathers.
+
+"Send up some ice-water to three-hundred-and-eighteen," said Miss Bella
+over the counter, her eyes straining meanwhile past the veranda to the
+beach below.
+
+Without, a moon low and heavy and red came out from the horizon; it cast
+a copper-gold band across the water.
+
+"Let's go down to the edge, kiddo."
+
+Mr. Arnheim helped Miss Sternberger plow daintily through the sand.
+
+"If I get sand in my shoes I'll blame you, Mr. Arnheim."
+
+"Little slippers like yours can't hold much."
+
+She giggled.
+
+They seated themselves like small dunes on the white expanse of beach;
+he drew his knees up under his chin and nursed them.
+
+In the eery light they might have been a fay and a faun in evening
+dress.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Arnheim, exhaling loudly, "this is something like it."
+
+"Ain't that a grand moon, though, Mr. Arnheim?"
+
+"The moon 'ain't got a show when you're round, little one."
+
+"I'll bet you say that to every girl you meet."
+
+"Nix I do; but I know when a girl looks good to me."
+
+"I wish I knew if you was jollyin' me or not."
+
+He tossed his cigar into the surf that curled at their very feet,
+leaving a rim of foam and scum. The red end died with a fizz. Then he
+turned his dark eyes full upon her with a steady focus.
+
+"If you knew me better you'd know that I ain't that sort of a fellow.
+When I say a thing I mean it."
+
+His hand lay outstretched; she poured rivulets of white sand between the
+fingers. They watched the little mounds of sand which she patted into
+shape.
+
+"I'll bet you're a New York girl."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I can tell them every time--style and all."
+
+"I'll bet you're a New York fellow, too."
+
+"Little New York is good enough for me. I've been over in Paris four
+months, now, and, believe me, it looked good yesterday to see the old
+girlie holdin' her lamp over the harbor."
+
+Miss Sternberger ran her hand over the smooth sheen of her dress; her
+gown was chaste, even stern, in its simplicity--the expensive simplicity
+that is artful rather than artless.
+
+"That's a neat little model you're wearin'."
+
+"Aw, Mr. Arnheim, what do you know about clothes?"
+
+Mr. Arnheim threw back his head and laughed long and loud. "What do I
+know about clothes? I only been in the biz for eight years. What I don't
+know about ladies' wear ain't in the dictionary."
+
+"Well," said Miss Sternberger, "that's so; I did hear you was in the
+business."
+
+"I'm in the importin' line, I am. Why, girl, I've put through every fad
+that's taken hold in the last five years--brought them over myself, too,
+I've dressed Broadway and Fifth Avenue in everything from rainy-day to
+harem skirts."
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"Sure! I've imported more good sellers than any dealer in New York. I
+got a new model now passin' customs that's to be a bigger hit than the
+sheath was. Say, when I brought over the hobble every house on the
+Avenue laughed in my face; and when I finally dumped a consignment on to
+one of them, the firm was scared stiff and wanted to countermand; but I
+had 'em and they couldn't jump me."
+
+"Just think!"
+
+"By Jove! it wasn't two weeks before that very model was the talk of New
+York and Lillian Russell was wearin' one in the second act of her show;
+and when she wears a model it's as good as made."
+
+"Gee!" she said. "I could just sit and listen to you talk and talk."
+
+He hunched close. "I sold the first dozen pannier dresses for a sum that
+would give you the blind staggers. I was just as scared as she was, too,
+but all you got to do with women is to get a few good-lookin' bell-sheep
+to lead and the others will follow fast."
+
+She regarded him in the wan moonlight. "If there's anything I admire,"
+she said, "it's a smart man."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said. "I've just got a little better judgment
+than the next fellow. Those things come natural, that's all. In my line
+a fellow's got to know human nature. If I'd sprung the hobble on the
+Avenue five years ago I'd gone broke on the gamble; but I sprung the
+idea on 'em at just the right time."
+
+Her hand, long and slim, lay like a bit of carved ivory on the sand; he
+leaned forward and covered it with his.
+
+"I want to see a great deal of you while I'm down here."
+
+She did not reply, but drew her hand away with a shy diffidence.
+
+"I'll bet I could show you some things that would warm you up all right.
+I'm goin' into New York with the swellest bunch of French novelties you
+ever seen. I've got a peach-colored Piquette model I've brought over
+that's goin' to be the talk of the town."
+
+"A Piquette?"
+
+He laughed delightedly. "Sure! You never heard of the firm? Wait till
+you see 'em on show at the openin'. It's got the new butterfly back;
+and, believe me, it wasn't no cinch to grab that pattern, neither. I
+laid low in Paris two months before I even got a smell at it."
+
+"You talk just like a story-book," she said.
+
+He stretched himself full length on the sand and looked up into her
+face. "I'll show you a thing or two when we get back to New York, little
+one."
+
+"You ain't like most of the boys I know, Mr. Arnheim. You got something
+different about you."
+
+"And you got a face like the kind you see painted on fans--on the order
+of a Japanese dame. I got some swell Japanese imports, too."
+
+"Everybody says that about me. I take after paw."
+
+"Say, little one, I want your telephone number when I get back to New
+York."
+
+"I'll be pleased to have you call me up, Mr. Arnheim."
+
+"Will I call you up? Well, rather!"
+
+"I know some nice girls I'll introduce you to."
+
+He looked at her insinuatingly. "I know one nice girl, and that's
+enough," he said.
+
+"Aw, Mr. Arnheim, of all the jolliers I ever knew you got 'em beat." She
+rose to her feet like a gold-colored phoenix from a mound of white sand.
+"When I meet a fellow I like I don't want him to tell me nothin' but the
+truth."
+
+"That's just the way with me--when I meet a girl that looks good I want
+to treat her white, and I want her to do the same by me."
+
+They strolled along the edge of the beach. Once the foaming surf
+threatened to lap over her slippers; he caught her deftly and raised her
+high above the swirl.
+
+"Oh," she cried, a little breathlessly, "ain't you strong!" Then she
+laughed in a high-pitched voice.
+
+They dallied until the moon hardened from a soft, low ball to a
+high, yellow disk and the night damp seeped into their clothes. Miss
+Sternberger's yellow scarf lay like a limp rag on her shoulders.
+
+"You're a perfect thirty-six, ain't you, little one?"
+
+"That's what they say when I try on ready-mades," she replied, with
+sweet reticence.
+
+"Gee!" he said. "Wouldn't I like you in some of my models! Maybe if you
+ain't no snitch I'll show you the colored plates some day."
+
+"I ain't no snitch," she said. Her voice was like a far-away echo.
+
+They climbed the wooden steps to their hotel like glorified children who
+had been caught in a silver weft of enchantment.
+
+The lobby was semi-dark; they asked for their keys in whispers and
+exchanged good-nights in long-drawn undertones.
+
+"Until to-morrow, little one."
+
+"Until to-morrow."
+
+She entered the elevator with a smile on her lips and in her eyes. They
+regarded each other through the iron framework until she shot from
+sight.
+
+* * * *
+
+At breakfast next morning Mrs. Blondheim drew up before her "small
+steak, French-fried potatoes, jelly omelet, buttered toast, buckwheat
+cakes, and coffee."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve!" she exclaimed to her vis-à-vis, Mrs. Epstein.
+"If there ain't Myra Sternberger eatin' breakfast with that Mr.
+Arnheim!"
+
+Mrs. Epstein opened a steaming muffin, inserted a lump of butter, and
+pressed the halves together. "I said to my husband last night," she
+remarked, 'I'm glad we 'ain't got no daughters'; till they're married
+off and all, it ain't no fun. With my Louie, now, it's different. When
+he came out of the business school my husband put him in business, and
+now I 'ain't got no worry."
+
+"My Bella 'ain't never given me a day's worry, neither. I ain't in no
+hurry to marry her off. She always says to me, 'Mamma,' she says, 'I
+ain't in no hurry to marry till Mr. Right comes along.'"
+
+"My Louie is comin' down to-day or to-morrow on his vacation if he can
+get away from business. Louie's a good boy--if I do say so myself."
+
+"I don't want to talk--but I often say what my Bella gets when she
+marries is enough to give any young man a fine start in a good
+business."
+
+"I must have my Louie meet Miss Bella. The notes and letters Louie gets
+from girls you wouldn't believe; he don't pay no attention to 'em. He's
+an awful mamma-boy, Mrs. Blondheim."
+
+"It will be grand for them to meet," said Mrs. Blondheim. "If I do say
+it, my Bella's had proposals you wouldn't believe! Look at Simon Arnheim
+over there--he only met her yesterday, and do you think he would leave
+her side all day? No, siree. Honest, it makes me mad sometimes. A grand
+young man comes along and Bella introduces him to every one, but she
+won't have nothin' to do with him."
+
+"Try some of this liver and onions, Mrs. Blondheim; it's delicious."
+
+Mrs. Blondheim partook and nibbled between her front teeth. "I got a
+grand recipe for suss und sauer liver. When we're at home my Bella
+always says, 'Mamma, let's have some liver and _gedämftes fleisch_ for
+lunch.'"
+
+"Do you soak your liver first?" inquired Mrs. Epstein. "My Louie won't
+eat nothin' suss und sauer. It makes me so mad. I got to cook different
+for every one in my family. Louie won't eat this and his father won't
+eat that!"
+
+"I'll give you the recipe when I give you the one for the noodles. Bella
+says it's the best she ever ate. My husband gets so mad when I go down
+in the kitchen--me with two grand girls and washerwoman two days a week!
+But the girls can't cook to suit me."
+
+"Excuse me, too, from American cookin'."
+
+Mrs. Blondheim's interest and gaze wandered down the dining-hall.
+"I wish you'd look at that Sternberger girl actin' up! Ain't it
+disgusting?"
+
+"Please pass the salt, Mrs. Blondheim. That's the trouble with hotel
+cooking--they don't season. At home we like plenty of it, too. I season
+and season, and then at the table my husband has to have more."
+
+"She wouldn't have met him at all if it hadn't been for Bella," pursued
+Mrs. Blondheim.
+
+The object of Mrs. Blondheim's solicitude, fresh as spring in crisp
+white linen, turned her long eyes upon Mr. Arnheim.
+
+"You ought to feel flattered, Mr. Arnheim, that I let you come over to
+my table."
+
+Mr. Arnheim regarded her through a mist of fragrant coffee steam. "You
+betcher life I feel flattered. I'd get up earlier than this to have
+breakfast with a little queen."
+
+"Ain't you ever goin' to quit jollyin'?"
+
+He leaned across the table. "That ain't a bad linen model you're
+wearin'--it's domestic goods, too. Where'd you get it?"
+
+"At Lipman's."
+
+"I sold them a consignment last year; but, say, if you want to see real
+classy white goods you ought to see some ratine cutaways I'm bringing
+over. I've brought a model I'm goin' to call the Phoebe Snow. It's the
+niftiest thing for early fall you ever saw."
+
+"Ratine?"
+
+"You never heard of it? That's where I get my work in--it's the new
+lines, the novelty stuff, that gets the money."
+
+"Are you goin' in the surf this morning, Mr. Arnheim?"
+
+"I'm goin' where you go, little one." He dropped two lumps of sugar into
+her coffee-cup. "Sweets to the sweet," he said.
+
+"Silly!" But she giggled under her breath.
+
+They pushed back their chairs and strolled down the aisle between the
+tables. She smiled brightly to her right and left.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Blondheim. Is it warm enough for you?"
+
+"Good morning," replied Mrs. Blondheim, stabbing a bit of omelet with
+vindictive fork.
+
+Mrs. Epstein looked after the pair with warming eyes. "She is a stylish
+dresser, ain't she?"
+
+"I wish you'd see the white linen my Bella's got. It's got sixteen yards
+of Cluny lace in the waist alone--and such Cluny, too! I paid a dollar
+and a half a yard wholesale."
+
+"Just look at this waist I'm wearin', Mrs. Blondheim. You wouldn't think
+I paid three and a half for the lace, would you?"
+
+"Oh yes; I can always tell good stuff when I see it, and I always say it
+pays best in the end," said Mrs. Blondheim, feeling the heavy lace edge
+of Mrs. Epstein's sleeve between discriminating thumb and forefinger.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Epstein's eyes widened; she rose to her feet, drawing a
+corner of the table-cloth awry. "If it ain't my Louie!"
+
+Mr. Louis Epstein, a faithful replica of his mother, with close black
+hair that curled on his head like the nap of a Persian lamb, imprinted a
+large, moist kiss upon the maternal lips.
+
+"Hello, maw! Didn't you expect me?"
+
+"Not till the ten-o'clock train, Louie. How's papa?"
+
+"He'th fine. I left him billing thom goods to Thpokane."
+
+"How's business, Louie?"
+
+"Not tho bad, but pa can't get away yet for a week. The fall goods ain't
+all out yet."
+
+"Ain't it awful, the way that man is all for business, Mrs. Blondheim?
+This is my son Louie."
+
+"Well, well, Mr. Epstein. I've heard a lot about you. I want you to meet
+my daughter Bella. You ought to make friends."
+
+"Yeth'm," said Mr. Epstein.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Out on the clean-washed beach the sun glinted on the water and sent
+points of light dancing on the wavelets like bits of glass. Children
+in blue rompers burrowed and jangled their painted spades and pails;
+nursemaids planted umbrellas in the sand and watched their charges romp;
+parasols flashed past like gay-colored meteors.
+
+In the white-capped surf bathers bobbed and shouted, and all along the
+shore-line the tide ran gently up the beach and down again, leaving a
+smooth, damp stretch of sand which soughed and sucked beneath the steps
+of the bathers.
+
+Far out, where the waters were highest and the whitecaps maddest, Mr.
+Arnheim held Miss Sternberger about her slim waist and raised her high
+over each rushing breaker. They caught the swells and lay back against
+the heavy tow, letting the wavelets lap up to their chins.
+
+Mr. Arnheim, with little rivulets running down his cheeks, shook the
+water out of his grayish hair and looked at her with salt-bitten,
+red-rimmed eyes.
+
+"Gee!" he wheezed. "You're a spunky little devil! Excuse me from the
+beach-walkers; I like 'em when they're game like you."
+
+She danced about like an Amphitrite. "Who would be afraid of the water
+with a dandy swimmer like you?"
+
+"This ain't nothin'," said Mr. Arnheim. "You ought to see me in still
+water. At Arverne last summer I was the talk of the place."
+
+They emerged from the water, dripping and heavy-footed. She wrung out
+her brief little skirts and stamped her feet on the sand. Mr. Arnheim
+hopped on one foot and then on the other, holding his head aslant.
+Then they stretched out on the white, sunbaked beach. Miss Sternberger
+loosened her hair and it showered about her.
+
+"Gee! 'Ain't you got a swell bunch of hair!"
+
+She shook and fluffed it. "You ought to seen it before I had typhoid. I
+could sit on it then."
+
+"That Phoebe Snow model that I got in mind for Lillian Russell would
+make you look like a queen, with that hair of yourn!"
+
+She buried his arm in the sand and patted the mound. "Now," she said, "I
+got you, and you can't do anything without askin' me."
+
+"You got me, anyway," he said, with an expressive glance.
+
+"Yes," she purred, "that's what you say now; but when you get back to
+New York you'll forget all about the little girl you met down at the
+shore."
+
+"That's all you know about me. I don't take up with every girl."
+
+"I'm glad you don't," she said.
+
+"But I'll bet you got a different fellow for every day when you're in
+New York."
+
+"Nothin' like that," she said; "but, anyway, there's always room for one
+more."
+
+Two young men without hats passed. Miss Sternberger called out her
+greeting.
+
+"Hello, Manny! Wasn't the water grand? What? Well, you tell Leo he don't
+know nothin'. No, we don't want to have our pictures taken! Mr.
+Arnheim, I want to introduce you to Mr. Landauer, a neckwear man out of
+Baltimore, and Mr. Manny Sinai, also neckwear, out of New York."
+
+They posed, with the white sunlight in their eyes.
+
+"I hope we won't break the camera," said Arnheim.
+
+The remark was greeted with laughter. The little machine clicked, the
+new-comers departed, and then Miss Sternberger and Mr. Arnheim turned to
+each other again.
+
+"You ain't tired, are you--Myra?"
+
+"No--Simon"--she danced to her feet and tossed the hair back from her
+face--"I ain't tired."
+
+They walked down the beach toward the bathhouse, humming softly to
+themselves.
+
+"I'll be out in ten minutes," she said, pausing at the door of her
+locker.
+
+"Me too," he said.
+
+When they met again they were regroomed and full of verve. She was as
+cool as a rose. They laughed at their crinkly finger-tips--wrinkled by
+the water like parchment; and his neck, where it rose above the soft
+high collar, was branded by the sun a flaming red.
+
+"Gee!" she cried. "Ain't you sunburnt!"
+
+"I always tan red," he said.
+
+"And me, I always tan tan."
+
+They exchanged these pithy and inspired bits of autobiography in warm,
+intimate tones. At their hotel steps she sighed with a delicious
+weariness.
+
+"I wish I could do everything for you, little one--even walk up-stairs."
+
+"I ain't tired, Simon; only--only--Oh, I don't know."
+
+"Little one," he said, softly.
+
+In the lobby Miss Bella Blondheim leaned an elbow on the clerk's desk
+and talked to a stout young man with a gold-mounted elk's tooth on his
+watch-fob, and black hair that curled close to his head.
+
+They made a group of four for a moment, Miss Blondheim regarding the
+arrivals with bright, triumphant eyes.
+
+"My friend, Mr. Louis Epstein," she said.
+
+The men shook hands.
+
+"Related to the Epstein & Son Millinery Company, Broadway and Spring?"
+
+"Thertainly am. I happen to be the thon mythelf."
+
+"Was you in the surf this mornin', Bella? It was grand!"
+
+"No, Myra," replied her friend. "Mr. Epstein and me took a trip to Ocean
+View."
+
+"You missed the water this mornin'. It was fine and dandy!" volunteered
+Mr. Arnheim.
+
+"Me and Mr. Epstein are goin' this afternoon--ain't we?"
+
+"We thertainly are," agreed Mr. Epstein, regarding Miss Blondheim with
+small, admiring eyes.
+
+Miss Sternberger edged away. "Pleased to have met you, Mr. Epstein."
+
+Mr. Arnheim edged with her and they moved on their way toward the
+dining-room.
+
+Mrs. Blondheim from her point of vantage--the wicker rocker--leaned
+toward her sister-in-law.
+
+"Look, Hanna! that's Louie Epstein, of the Epstein & Son Millinery
+Company, with Bella. He's a grand boy. I meet his mother at Doctor
+Bergenthal's lecture every Saturday morning. Epstein & Son have got a
+grand business, and Bella could do a whole lot worse."
+
+"Well, I wish her luck," said Mrs. Blondheim's sister-in-law.
+
+"I smell fried smelts. Let's go in to lunch."
+
+Mrs. Blondheim stabbed her crochet needle into her spool. "I usually dip
+my smelts in bread crumbs. Have you ever tried them that way, Hanna?"
+
+"Julius don't eat smelts."
+
+They moved toward the dining-room.
+
+Late that afternoon Miss Sternberger and Mr. Arnheim returned from a
+sail. Their faces were flushed and full of shy, sweet mystery.
+
+"I can't show you the models the way I'd like to, dearie, but I got 'em
+in colors just like the real thing."
+
+"Oh, Simon, you're doin' a thing like this for me without me even askin'
+you!"
+
+His hold of her arm tightened. "I wouldn't show these here to my own
+sister before the twenty-fifth of the month. Now you know how you stand
+with me, little one."
+
+"Oh," she cried, "I'm so excited! It's just like lookin' behind the
+scenes in a theayter."
+
+He left her and returned a few moments later with a flat, red-covered
+portfolio. They sought out an unmolested spot and snuggled in a corner
+of a plush divan in one of the deserted parlors. He drew back the cover
+and their heads bent low.
+
+At each turn of the pages she breathed her ecstasy and gave out shrills
+and calls of admiration.
+
+"Oh, Simon, ain't that pink one a beauty! Ain't that skirt the swellest
+thing you ever seen!"
+
+"That's the Piquette model, girlie. You and all New York will be buyin'
+it in another month. Ain't it the selectest little thing ever?"
+
+Her face was rapt. "It's the swellest thing I've ever seen!" she
+declared.
+
+He turned to another plate.
+
+"Oh-h-h-h-h!" she cried.
+
+"Ain't that a beauty! That there is going to be the biggest hit I've had
+yet. Watch out for the Phoebe Snow! I've got the original model in my
+trunks. That cutaway effect can't be beat."
+
+"Oh-h-h-h-h!" she repeated.
+
+They passed slowly over the gay-colored plates.
+
+"There's that flame-colored one I'd like to see you in."
+
+"Gee!" she said. "There's some class to that."
+
+After a while the book was laid aside and they talked in low, serious
+tones; occasionally his hand stroked hers.
+
+The afternoon waned; the lobby thinned; the dowagers and their daughters
+asked for room keys and disappeared for siestas and more mysterious
+processes; children trailed off to rest; the hot land-breezes, dry and
+listless, stirred the lace curtains of the parlor--but they remained on
+the plush divan, rapt as might have been Paolo and Francesca in their
+romance-imbued arbor.
+
+"How long will you be down here?" she asked.
+
+"As long as you," he replied, not taking his eyes from her face.
+
+"Honest?"
+
+"Sure. I don't have to go in to New York for a week or ten days yet. My
+season ain't on yet."
+
+She leaned her head against the back of the divan. "All nice things must
+end," she said, with the 'cello note in her voice.
+
+"Oh, I don't know!" he replied, with what might have been triple
+significance.
+
+They finally walked toward the elevator, loath to part for the interim
+of dressing.
+
+That evening they strolled together on the beach until the last lights
+of the hotel were blinking out. Then they stole into the semi-dark lobby
+like thieves--but soft-voiced, joyous thieves. A few straggling
+couples like themselves came in with the same sheepish but bright-eyed
+hesitancy. At the elevator Miss Blondheim and Mr. Epstein were lingering
+over good-nights.
+
+The quartette rode up to their respective floors together--the girls
+regarding each other with shy, happy eyes; the men covering up their
+self-consciousness with sallies.
+
+"Ain't you ashamed to keep such late hours, Miss Blondheim?" said Mr.
+Arnheim.
+
+"I don't see no early-to-bed-early-to-rise medals on none of us," she
+said, diffidently.
+
+"These thummer rethorts sure ain't no plathe for a minither's thon,"
+said Mr. Epstein.
+
+Laughter.
+
+"Remember, Mr. Arnheim, whoever's up first wait in the leather chair
+opposite the elevator."
+
+"Sure thing, Miss Sternberger."
+
+Her last glance, full of significance, was for Mr. Arnheim. The floor
+above he also left the elevator, the smile still on his lips.
+
+Left alone, Mr. Epstein turned to Miss Blondheim.
+
+"Good night, dearie," he whispered. "Thweet dreamth."
+
+"Good night, Louie," she replied. "Same to you."
+
+Mr. Arnheim awoke to a scudding rain; his ocean-ward window-sill
+dripping and a great patch of carpet beneath the window dark and soggy.
+Downstairs the lobby buzzed with restrained energies; a few venturesome
+ones in oils and turned-up collars paced the veranda without.
+
+Mr. Arnheim, in his invariable soft collar and shadow-checked suit,
+skirted the edge of the crowd in matinal ill humor and deposited his
+room key at the desk. The clerk gave him in return a folded newspaper
+and his morning mail.
+
+Mr. Arnheim's morning aspect was undeniable. He suggested too generous
+use of soap and bay rum, and his eyes had not lost the swollen heaviness
+that comes with too much or too little sleep. He yawned and seated
+himself in the heavy leather chair opposite the elevator.
+
+His first letter was unstamped and addressed to him on hotel stationery;
+the handwriting was an unfamiliar backhand and the inclosure brief:
+
+    DEAR MR. ARNHEIM: I am very sorry we could not keep our date, but I
+    got a message and I got to go in on the 7:10 train. Hope to see you
+    when I come back.
+
+    Sincerely, MYRA STERNBERGER.
+
+Mr. Arnheim replaced the letter slowly in the envelope. There were two
+remaining--a communication from a cloak-manufacturing firm and a check
+from a banking-house. He read them and placed them in his inside coat
+pocket. Then he settled the back of his neck against the rim of the
+chair, crossed one leg over the other, rattled his newspaper open, and
+turned to the stock-market reports.
+
+One week later Mr. Simon Arnheim, a red portfolio under one arm, walked
+into the mahogany, green-carpeted, soft-lighted establishment of an
+importing house on Fifth Avenue.
+
+Mrs. S.S. Schlimberg, senior member, greeted him in her third-floor
+office behind the fitting-rooms.
+
+"Well, well! _Wie geht's_, Arnheim? I thought it was gettin' time for
+you."
+
+Mr. Arnheim shook hands and settled himself in a chair beside the desk.
+"You know you can always depend upon me, madame, to look you up the
+minnit I get back. Don't I always give you first choice?"
+
+Mrs. Schlimberg weighed a crystal paper-weight up and down in her pudgy,
+ringed hands. "None of your fancy prices for me this season, Arnheim.
+There's too many good things lyin' loose. That's why I got my openin'
+a month sooner. I got a designer came in special off her vacation with
+some good things."
+
+Mr. Arnheim winked. "Schlim, I got some models here to show you that you
+can't beat. When you see 'em you'll pay any price."
+
+"I can't pay your fancy prices no more. I paid you too much for that
+plush fad last winter, and it never was a go."
+
+Mr. Arnheim chuckled. "When you see a couple of the designs I brought
+over this trip you'll be willin' to pay me twice as much as for the
+hobble. Come on--own up, Schlim; you can't beat my styles. Why, you can
+copy them for your import-room and make ninety per cent, on any one of
+'em!"
+
+"They won't pay the prices, I tell you. Some of my best customers have
+gone over to other houses for the cheaper goods."
+
+"You can't put over domestic stuff on your trade, Schlim. You might as
+well admit it. You gotta sting your class of trade in order to have 'em
+appreciate you."
+
+"Now, just to show you that I know what I'm talking about, Arnheim, I
+got the best lines of new models for this season I've had since I'm
+in business--every one of them domestics too. I'm puttin' some
+made-in-America models in the import-room to-day that will open your
+eyes."
+
+Mr. Arnheim laughed and opened his portfolio. "I'll show you these till
+my trunks come up," he said.
+
+"Just a minute, Arnheim. I want to show you some stuff--Miss
+Sternberger!" Mrs. Schlimberg raised her voice slightly, "Miss
+Sternberger!"
+
+Almost immediately a svelte, black-gowned figure appeared in the
+doorway; she wore her hair oval about her face, like a Mona Lisa, and
+her hands were long and the dusky white of ivory.
+
+"Mr. Arnheim, I want to introduce you to a designer we've got since you
+went away. Mr. Arnheim--Miss Sternberger."
+
+The whir of sewing-machines from the workrooms cut the silence.
+
+"How do you do?" said Miss Sternberger.
+
+"How do you do?" said Mr. Arnheim.
+
+"Miss Sternberger is like you, Mr. Arnheim--she's always out after
+novelties; and I will say for her she don't miss out! She put out a line
+of uncut velvets last winter that was the best sellers we had."
+
+Mr. Arnheim bowed. Mrs. Schlimberg turned to Miss Sternberger.
+
+"Miss Sternberger, will you bring in some of those new models that are
+going like hot cakes? Just on the forms will do."
+
+"Certainly." She disappeared from the doorway.
+
+Mrs. Schlimberg tapped her forefinger on the desk. "There's the finest
+little designer we've ever had! I got her off a Philadelphia house, and
+I 'ain't never regretted the money I'm payin' her. She's done more for
+the house in eight months than Miss Isaacs did in ten years!"
+
+Miss Sternberger returned; a stock-boy wheeled in the new models on
+wooden figures while Mrs. Schlimberg and her new designer arranged them
+for display. Mrs. Schlimberg turned to Mr. Arnheim.
+
+"How's the wife and boys, Arnheim? I 'ain't seen 'em since you brought
+'em all in to see the Labor Day parade from the store windows last fall.
+Them's fine boys you got there, Arnheim!"
+
+"Thanks," said Arnheim.
+
+"Now, Arnheim, I'm here to ask you if you can beat these. Look at that
+there peach-bloom Piquette--look! Can you beat it? That there's the new
+butterfly skirt--just one year ahead of anything that's being shown this
+season." Mrs. Schlimberg turned to a second model. "Look at this here
+ratine cutaway. If the Phoebe Snow ain't the talk of New York
+before next week, then I don't know my own name. Ain't it so, Miss
+Sternberger?"
+
+Miss Sternberger ran her smooth hand over the lace shoulder of the gown.
+"This is a great seller," she replied, smiling at Mr. Arnheim. "Lillian
+Russell is going to wear it in the second act of her new play when she
+opens to-morrow night."
+
+"I guess we're slow in here," chuckled Mrs. Schlimberg, nudging Mr.
+Arnheim with the point of her elbow.
+
+Miss Sternberger spread the square train of a flame-colored robe full
+length on the green carpet and drew back a corner of the hem to display
+the lacy avalanche beneath. Then she bowed slightly and turned toward
+the door.
+
+Mrs. Schlimberg laid a detaining hand on her sleeve. "Just a minute,
+Miss Sternberger. Mr. Arnheim's brought in some models he wants us to
+look at."
+
+
+
+
+SOB SISTER
+
+
+Physics can answer whence goes the candle-flame when it vanishes into
+blackness and what becomes of sound when the great maw of silence
+digests it. But what science can know the destiny of the pins and pins
+and pins, and what is the oblivion which swallows that great army of
+street-walking women whose cheeks are too pink and who dwell outside the
+barbed-wire fence of respectability?
+
+Let the pins go, unless one lies on the sidewalk point toward you, and
+let this be the story of Mae Munroe, herself one of the pink-cheeked
+grenadiers of that great army whose destiny is as vague as the destiny
+of pins, and who in more than one vain attempt to climb had snagged
+her imitation French embroidery petticoats on the outward side of that
+barbed-wire fence.
+
+Then, too, in the years that lead up to this moment Mae Munroe had taken
+on weight--the fair, flabby flesh of lack of exercise and no lack of
+chocolate bonbons. And a miss is as good as a mile, or a barbed-wire
+fence, only so long as she keeps her figure down and her diet up. When
+Mae Munroe ran for a street-car she breathed through her mouth for the
+first six blocks after she caught it. The top button of her shoe was no
+longer equal to the span. But her eyes were still blue, rather like sky
+when you look straight up; her hair yellow to the roots; and who can
+gainsay that a dimple in the chin is not worth two in the cheeks?
+
+In the florid disorder of a red velvet sitting-room cluttered with
+morning sunshine and unframed, unsigned photographs of stage favorites,
+empty bottles and dented-in cushions, Mae Munroe stirred on her high
+mound of red sateen sofa-pillows; placed her paper-bound book face down
+on the tabouret beside her; yawned; made a foray into an uncovered box
+of chocolate bonbons; sank her small teeth into a creamy oozing heart
+and dropped a particle of the sweet into the sniffling, upturned snout
+of a white wool dog cuddled in the curve of her arm; yawned again.
+
+"No more tandy! Make ittsie Snookie Ookie sick! Make muvver's ittsie
+bittsie bow-wow sick! No! No!"
+
+Each admonition she accompanied with a slight pat designed to intimidate
+further display of appetite. The small bunch in her arms raised his head
+and regarded her with pink, sick little eyes, his tongue darting this
+way and that in an aftermath of relish; then fell to licking her bare
+forearm with swift, dry strokes.
+
+"Muvver's ittsie bittsie Snookie! Him love him poor muvver! Him poor,
+poor muvver!"
+
+A cold tear oozed through one of Miss Munroe's closed eyes, zigzagged
+down her face, and she laid her cheek pat against the white wool.
+
+"Muvver just wishes she was dead, Snookie. God! don't she just!"
+
+An hour she lay so. The morning sunshine receded, leaving a certain
+grayness in the cluttered room. From the rear of the flat came the
+clatter of dishes and the harsh sing of water plunging from a faucet.
+The book slid from its incline on the pillow to the floor and lay with
+its leaves crumpled under. The dog fell to snoring. Another while ticked
+past--loudly. And as if the ticking were against her brain like drops of
+water, she rose to a half-sitting posture, reached for the small onyx
+clock on the mantelpiece and smothered it beneath one of the red sateen
+sofa-pillows. When she relaxed again two fresh tears waggled heavily
+down her cream-colored cheeks. Then for a while she slept, with her
+mouth ever so slightly open and revealing the white line of her teeth.
+The tears slid off her cheeks to the mussed frills of her negligée and
+dried there.
+
+The little dog emerged from his sleep gaping and stretching backward his
+hind legs. Mae Munroe yawned, extending her arms at full length before
+her; regarded her fair ringed fingers and the four dimples across the
+back of each hand; reached for a cigarette and with the wry face of
+nausea tossed it back into its box; swung to a sitting posture on the
+side of the sofa, the dog springing from the curve of her arm to the
+floor, shaking himself.
+
+Her blowsy hair, burned at the ends but the color of corn-silk, came
+unloosed of its morning plait and she braided it over one shoulder, her
+blue eyes fixed on space. Tears would come.
+
+Then she rose and crossed to the golden-oak piano between the windows,
+her negligee open its full length and revealing her nightdress; crossed
+with a slight limp and the dog yapping at the soiled and lacy train;
+fell to manipulating the self-playing attachment, peddling out a
+metallic avalanche of popular music.
+
+At its conclusion she swung around on the bench, her back drooping as if
+under pressure of indolence; yawned; crossed to the window and between
+the parted lace curtains stood regarding the street two stories beneath,
+and, beyond the patches of intervening roofs, a limited view of the
+Hudson River, a barge of coal passing leisurely up center stream, a tug
+suckling at its side.
+
+From the hallway and in the act of mopping a margin of floor, a
+maid-of-all-work swung back from all-fours and sat upright on her heels,
+inserting a head of curl-papers through the open doorway.
+
+"Play that over again, Miss Mae. That Mustard Glide' sure does tickle my
+soles."
+
+Miss Munroe turned to the room with the palm of her hand placed pat
+against her brow. "God!" said she, "my head!"
+
+"Aw, Miss Mae, can't you get yourself in a humor? What's the matter with
+you and me going to a movie this afternoon, eh?"
+
+"Movie! The way every damn thing gets on my nerves, I'd be a hit at a
+movie, wouldn't I? I'd be a hit anywheres!"
+
+"I tell you, Miss Mae, all this worry ain't going to get you nowheres.
+He'll come around again all right if you only give him time. And if he
+don't, you should worry! I tell you there ain't one of 'em breathes is
+worth more than his bank-book."
+
+"God! my head!"
+
+The figure on all-fours rose to full height, drying each forearm on her
+apron.
+
+"Lay down, dearie, and just don't you worry. I've seen 'em get spells or
+get holy and stay away for two months on a stretch, and the checks not
+coming in regular as clockwork like yours, neither. Two months at a time
+I've seen 'em stick away. Why, when I worked on the lower West Side they
+used to stick away two and three months like that and then come loafing
+in one night just like nothing hadn't happened. You ain't got no kick
+coming, Miss Mae."
+
+A layer of tears rose immediately to Miss Munroe's eyes, dimming them.
+She wiped them away with one of her sleeve frills.
+
+"Max ain't like that and you know it. You've seen for yourself how
+he 'ain't missed his every other night in three years. You seen for
+yourself."
+
+"They're all alike, I tell you, Miss Mae. The best way to handle 'em is
+to leave 'em alone."
+
+"How he's been falling off. Loo, all--"
+
+"'Sh-h-h, now, Miss Mae, don't begin getting excited--all last night
+while I was rubbing your head that's what you kept mumbling and mumbling
+even after you fell asleep. That--don't help none."
+
+"All last month so irregular and now only once last week, and--and not
+at all this week. Good heavens! I just wonder, I--just wonder."
+
+"Now, just whatta you bet he'll be up to supper to-night, Miss Mae? If
+I was you, dearie, I wouldn't be scared, I'd just go right to the
+telephone and--"
+
+"He gets so sore, Loo. You remember that time I telephoned him about
+that case of wine he sent up and it came busted, and his mother--his old
+woman was in the office. He raises hell if I try to telephone him during
+business."
+
+"Just the same, I got a hunch he'll be up to supper to-night, and when I
+get a hunch things happen."
+
+"It's his old woman, I tell you. It's his old woman is sniffing things
+again. Say, if he'd ever let me clap eyes on that old hag, wouldn't I
+learn her how to keep her nose out of his business alrighty. Wouldn't I
+just learn her! God! my head!"
+
+"Lay down on the sofa, dearie, and rest up your red eyes. Take my tip
+he'll be up to supper to-night. I'm going to order him a double sirloin
+and a can of them imported--"
+
+"Ugh! For Pete's sake cut it, Loo! If anybody mentions bill of fare to
+me I'll yell. Take them empty bottles out of here, Loo, and choke that
+damn clock with another pillow. My head'll just bust if I don't get some
+sleep."
+
+"There, there, dearie! Here, lemme pull down the shades. Just try to
+remember there ain't one of them is worth more than his bank-book. I
+ain't going down to the dance with Sharkey to-night; I'm going to stay
+right here and--"
+
+"No, no, Loo. You go. You can have that blue silk waist I promised you
+and wear them red satin roses he--he brought me that time from Hot
+Springs. Wear 'em, but be careful of 'em."
+
+"Aw, Miss Mae, with you here like a wet rag, and if he comes who'll
+fix--"
+
+"He--he ain't coming, Loo, and if he does I'm the one he likes to fix
+his things, anyway. I wanna be alone, Loo. I--I just wanna be alone."
+
+"That's just it, Miss Mae, you're too much alone; you--"
+
+"For Pete's sake, Loo, cut it or I'll holler. Cut the conversation,
+dearie!"
+
+"I'll fix the candied sweet-potatoes this morning, anyway, Miss Mae, so
+if he does come--"
+
+"I tell you I'm going to yell, Loo, if you mention bill of fare to me.
+Cover up my feet, like a good girl, and take them bottles out and lemme
+sleep. My head'll bust if I don't get some sleep."
+
+"I tell you, Miss Mae, there ain't one of 'em is worth more than his
+bank-book. You're always giving away everything you got, Miss Mae.
+Honest, you'd give your best blue silk coat off your back if--"
+
+"If that's what you're hinting for, Loo, for pity's sake take it! I
+don't want it. It's too tight for me in the arms. Take it, Loo. I don't
+want it. I don't want anything but to be let alone."
+
+"Aw, now, Miss Mae, I didn't mean--"
+
+"Get out, I tell you! Get out!"
+
+"Yes, Miss Mae." With a final pat to the rug across Mae Munroe's feet
+she scooped the litter of empty bottles under one arm and hurried out
+smiling and closing the door softly behind her and tiptoeing down the
+hallway to the kitchen.
+
+On the couch Mae Munroe lay huddled with her face to the wall, her
+cheeks crumpled against the white wool of the dog in her arms, her lips
+dry, each breath puffing them outward. Easy tears would flow, enhancing
+her lacy disorder. Noon slipped into afternoon.
+
+The dusk of the city which is so immediately peppered with lights came
+gradually to press against the drawn blinds. On the very crest of her
+unrest, as if her mental travail had stimulated a cocaine courage, Mae
+Munroe kicked aside the rug from her feet; rose and advanced to the wall
+telephone; unhooked the receiver; hooked it up again; unhooked it this
+time with a resolution that tightened and whitened her lips and sent the
+color high into her face; placed her mouth close to the transmitter.
+
+"Broad three-six." And tapped with one foot as she stood.
+
+"Zincas Importing Company? I want to speak to Mr. Max Zincas."
+
+Wrinkles crawled about her uncertain lips.
+
+"This is his--his mother. Yes, Mrs. Zincas."
+
+She closed her eyes as she waited.
+
+"Hello, Max? That you, Max?"
+
+She grasped at the snout of the instrument, tiptoeing up to it.
+
+"It's me, dear. But--I had to get you to the 'phone somehow. I--I--No,
+no, don't hang up, Max! Don't hang up, dear, I--I got to tell you
+something; I got to, dear."
+
+She raised herself closer to the mouthpiece for a tighter clutch of it.
+
+"I'm sick, dearie. I--I'm dog sick, dearie. 'Ain't been about in a week.
+The limp is bad and I'm sick all over. I am, dear. Come up to supper
+to-night, dearie. You 'ain't been near for--for a week. I got to see you
+about something. Just a quiet talk, dearie. I--I just got to see you,
+Max. I--I'm sick, dog sick."
+
+Her voice slipped up and away for the moment, and she crammed her lacy
+fribble of a handkerchief tight against her lips, tiptoeing closer to
+the transmitter.
+
+"No, no, Max, I swear to God I won't! Just quiet and no rough stuff. For
+my sake come home to supper to-night, dearie! I swear. It's my thigh,
+and I got a fever, dearie, that's eating me. What? Eight! No, that
+ain't too late. Any time you can come ain't too late. I'll wait. Sure?
+Good-by, dearie. At eight sharp. Good-by, dearie."
+
+When she replaced the receiver on its hook, points of light had come
+out in her eyes like water-lilies opening on a lake. The ashen sheaf of
+anxiety folded back from her, color ran up into her face, and she flung
+open the door, calling down the length of hallway.
+
+"Loo! Oh, Loo!"
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Put a couple of bottles of everything on ice before you go, dearie;
+order a double porterhouse; open a can of them imported sausages he sent
+up last month, and peel some sweet-potatoes. Hurry, Loo, I wanna candy
+'em myself. Hurry, dearie!"
+
+She snatched up her furry trifle of a dog, burying her warming face in
+his fleece.
+
+"M-m-muvver loves her bow-bow. Muvver loves whole world. Muvver just
+loves whole world. M-m-m-m, chocolate? Just one ittsie bittsie piece and
+muvver eat half--m-m-m! La-la! Bow-wow! La! La!"
+
+Along that end of Riverside Drive which is so far up that rents begin to
+come down, night takes on the aspect of an American Venetian carnival.
+Steamboats outlined in electric lights pass like phosphorescent phantoms
+up and down the Hudson River, which reflects with the blurry infidelity
+of moving waters light for light, deck for deck. Running strings of
+incandescent bulbs draped up into festoons every so often by equidistant
+arc-lights follow the course of the well-oiled driveway, which in turn
+follows the course of the river as truly as a path made by a canal
+horse. A ledge of park, narrow as a terrace, slants to the water's edge,
+and of summer nights lovers drag their benches into the shadow of trees
+and turn their backs to the lampposts and to the world.
+
+From the far side of the river, against the night sky and like an
+ablutionary message let slip from heaven, a soap-factory spells out
+its product in terms of electric bulbs, and atop that same industrial
+palisade rises the dim outline of stack and kiln. Street-cars, reduced
+by distance to miniature, bob through the blackness. At nine o'clock of
+October evenings the Knickerbocker River Queen, spangled with light and
+full of pride, moves up-stream with her bow toward Albany. And from her
+window and over the waves of intervening roofs Mae Munroe cupped her
+hands blinker fashion about her eyes and followed its gay excursional
+passage, even caught a drift of music from its decks.
+
+Motionless she stood there, bare-necked and bare-armed, against the cold
+window-pane, inclosed from behind with lace curtains and watching
+with large-pupiled eyes the steamer slip along into the night; the
+black-topped trees swaying in the ledge of park which slanted to the
+water's edge; the well-oiled driveway and its darting traffic of two
+low-sliding lines of motor-cars with acetylene eyes.
+
+At five minutes past eight Max Zincas fitted his key into the door and
+entered immediately into the front room. On that first click of the
+lock Mae Munroe stepped out from between the lace curtains, her face
+carefully powdered and bleached of all its morning inaccuracies, her
+lips thrust upward and forward.
+
+"Max!"
+
+"Whew!"
+
+He tossed his black derby hat to the red velvet couch and dropped down
+beside it, his knees far apart and straining his well-pressed trousers
+to capacity; placed a hand on each well-spread knee, then ran five
+fingers through his thinning hair; thrust his head well forward,
+foreshortening his face, and regarded her.
+
+"Well, girl," he said, "here I am."
+
+"I--I--"
+
+"Lied to me, eh? Pretty spry for a sick one, eh? Pretty slick! I knew
+you was lying, girl."
+
+"I been sick as a dog, Max. Loo can tell you."
+
+"What's got you? Thigh?"
+
+"God! I dun'no'! I dun'no'!"
+
+She paused in the center of the room, her lips trembling and the light
+from the chandelier raining full upon her. High-hipped and full-busted
+as Titian loved to paint them, she stood there in a black lace gown
+draped loosely over a tight foundation of white silk, and trying to
+compose her lips and her throat, which arched and flexed, revealing the
+heart-beats of her and the shortness of her breath.
+
+"Is this the way to say hello to--to your Maizie, Max? Is--is this the
+way?" Then she crossed and leaned to him, printing a kiss on his brow
+between the eyes. "I been sick as a dog, Max. Ain't you going to--to
+kiss me?"
+
+"Come, come, now, just cut that, Mae. Let's have supper and get down to
+brass tacks. What's eating you?"
+
+"Max!"
+
+"Come, come, now, I'm tired, girl, and got to stop off at Lenox Avenue
+to-night after I leave here. Where's your clock around here, anyways, so
+a fellow knows where he's at?"
+
+"There it is under the pillow next to you, Max. I smothered it because
+it gets on my nerves all day. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, right
+into my head like it was saying all the time: 'Oh-Mae! Oh-Mae! Oh-Mae!'
+till I nearly go crazy, Max. Tick-tock--God! it--it just gets me!"
+
+He reached for the small onyx clock, placing it upright on the mantel,
+and shrugged his shoulders loosely.
+
+"Gad!" he said, "you wimmin! Crazy as loons, all of you and your kind.
+Come, come, get down to brass tacks, girl. I'm tired and gotta get
+home."
+
+"Home, Max?"
+
+"Yes, home!"
+
+"Max, ain't--ain't this home no more, ain't it?"
+
+He leaned forward, an elbow on each knee and striking his left hand
+solidly into his right palm. "Now if that's the line of talk you got me
+up here for, girl, you can cut it and cut it quick!"
+
+"No, no, Max, it ain't my line of talk. Here, sit down, dearie, in your
+own chair and I'll go and dish up."
+
+"Where's Loo?"
+
+"Her night off, poor girl. Four nights straight she's rubbed my head
+and--"
+
+"Where's my--"
+
+"Right here, dearie, is your box of pills, underneath your napkin.
+There, dearie! See? Just like always."
+
+She was full of small movements that were quick as grace notes: pinning
+the black lace train up and about her hips; drawing out his chair;
+darting with the scarcely perceptible limp down the narrow hall, back
+with dishes that exuded aromatic steam; placing them with deft, sure
+fingers. Once she paused in her haste, edged up to where he stood
+with one arm resting on the mantelpiece, placed an arm on each of his
+shoulders and let her hands dangle loose-wristed down his back.
+
+"Tired boy, to-night! Huh? Maizie's poor tired boy!"
+
+"Now, now!"
+
+He removed her hands, but gently, and strolled over to where the table
+lay spread beside the cold, gilded radiator, a potted geranium in its
+center, a liberal display of showy imitation pearl-handled cutlery
+carefully laid out, and at each place a long-stemmed wineglass,
+gold-edged and the color of amber.
+
+"Come," he said, "let's eat and get it over."
+
+She made no sign, but with the corners of her lips propped bravely
+upward in her too red smile made a last hurried foray into the kitchen,
+returning with a covered vegetable-dish held outright from her.
+
+"Guess!" she cried.
+
+"Can't," he said, and seated himself.
+
+"Gowan, guess like you used to, dearie."
+
+He fell immediately to sampling with short, quick stabs of his fork the
+dish of carmine-red pickled beets beside his plate.
+
+"Aw, gowan, Max, give a guess. What did you used to pay for with six big
+kisses every time I candied them for you? Guess, Max."
+
+"Sit down," he said, and with his foot shoved a small stool before her
+chair.
+
+"Lordy!" she said, drawing up en tête-à-tête, unpinning and spreading
+her lacy train in glory about her, "but you're some little sunbeam to
+have around the house."
+
+"What these beets need is a little sugar."
+
+She passed him the bowl; elevated her left foot in its slightly soiled
+white slipper to the footstool; fastened her napkin to her florid bosom
+with one of her numerous display of breastpins; poured some opaque wine
+into his glass, coming back to flood her own to the brim; smiled at him
+across the red head of the potted geranium, as if when the heart bleeds
+the heart grows light.
+
+"Here's _to_ you, Max!"
+
+He raised his glass and drank in through his rather heavy mustache, then
+flecked it this way and that with his napkin "Ahh-h-h-h, that's the
+stuff!"
+
+"S'more?"
+
+"Yah-h-h-h-h-h!"
+
+"Such a cotton mouth my bad boy brought home."
+
+"Aha! Fee, fie, fum! Aha!"
+
+"I broiled it under the single burner, Max, slow like you like. Here,
+you carve it, dearie. Just like always, eh?"
+
+His fleshy, blue-shaved face took on the tenseness of concentrated
+effort, and he cut deep into the oozing beef, the red juice running out
+in quick streams.
+
+"Ah-h-h-h-h!"
+
+"No, no, you keep that, Max; it's your rare piece."
+
+"Gravy?"
+
+"Yes, dearie."
+
+The small dog shook himself and rose from sleep and the depths of a
+pillow, nosing at her bare elbow.
+
+"Was muvver's ittsie Snookie Ookie such a hungry bow-wow?"
+
+He yapped shortly, pawing her.
+
+"Ask big bossie sitting over there carving his din-din if him got
+chocolate tandy in him pocket like always for Snookie Ookie. No, no, bad
+red meat no good for ittsie bittsie bow-wow. Go ask big bossie what
+him got this time in him pocket for Snookie. Aw, look at him, Max; he
+remembers how you used to bring him--"
+
+"Get down! Get down, I said! For God's sake get that little red-eyed,
+mangy cur out of here while we're eating, can't you? Good gad! can't
+a man eat a meal in this joint without having that dirty cur whining
+around? Get him down off your dress there, Mae. Get out, you little cur!
+G-e-t out!"
+
+"Max!"
+
+"Chocolate candy in my pocket. Chocolate arsenic, you mean! My damn-fool
+days are over."
+
+"What's got you, Max? Didn't you buy him for me yourself that day at the
+races five whole years ago? Wasn't the first things you asked for, when
+you woke in the hospital with your burns, me and--and Snookie? What's
+soured you, Max? What? What?"
+
+"I'm soured on seeing a strapping, healthy woman sniveling over a little
+sick-eyed cur. Ain't that enough to sour any man? Why don't you get up
+and out and exercise yourself like the right kind of wimmin do? Play
+tennis or get something in you besides the rotten air of this flat, and
+mewling over that sick-eyed cur. Get out! Scc-c-c-c-c!"
+
+The animal bellied to the door, tail down, and into the rear darkness of
+the hallway.
+
+"Max, what's got you? What do I know about tennis or--things like that?
+You--you never used to want--things like that."
+
+"Aw, what's the use of wasting breath?"
+
+He flecked at his mustache, inserting the napkin between the two top
+buttons of his slight bay of waistcoat; carved a second helping of meat,
+masticating with care and strength so that his temples, where the hair
+thinned and grayed, contracted and expanded with the movements of his
+jaws.
+
+"What's the use?"
+
+"Max, I--"
+
+"Thigh bother you?"
+
+"A--a little."
+
+"Didn't I tell you not to spare expense on trying new doctors if--"
+
+"That ain't my real trouble, Max; it--"
+
+"Been out to-day?"
+
+"No, Max, I been sick as a dog, I tell you."
+
+"No wonder you're sick, cooped up in this flat with nobody but a
+servant-girl for company. Gad! ain't you ashamed to get so low that your
+own servant-girl is your running-mate? Ain't you?"
+
+"Max, she--"
+
+"I know. I know."
+
+"I been so blue, Max. Loo can tell you how I been waiting and wondering.
+I--Lord, I been so blue, Max. She's good to me, Max, and--and I been so
+blue."
+
+"Never knew one of you wimmin that wasn't that way half her time. You're
+a gang of sob sisters, every one of you--whining like you got your foot
+caught in a machine and can't get it out."
+
+"How you mean, Max?"
+
+"Aw, you're all either in the blues or nagging. Why ain't you sports
+enough to take the slice of life you get handed you? None of you ain't
+healthy enough, anyways, I tell you, indoors, eating and sleeping and
+mewling over poodle-dogs all the time. I'm damn sick of it all. Damn
+sick, if you want to know it."
+
+"But, Max, what's put this new stuff into your head all of a sudden? You
+never used to care if--"
+
+"And you got to quit writing me them long-winded letters, Mae, about
+what's come over me. Sometimes a fellow just comes to his senses, that's
+all."
+
+"Max!"
+
+"And you got to quit butting in my business hours on the telephone. I
+don't want to get ugly, but you got to cut it out. Cut it out, Mae, is
+what I said!"
+
+He quaffed his wine.
+
+"Max dear, if you'll only tell me what's hurting you I'll find a way to
+make good. I--I can learn lawn-tennis, if that's what you want. I can
+take off ten pounds in--"
+
+"Aw, I don't want nothing. Nothing, I tell you!"
+
+"If I only knew, Max, what's itching you. This way there's days when I
+just feel like I can't go on living if you don't tell me what's got you.
+I just feel like I can't go on living this way, Max."
+
+Tears hot and ever ready flowed over her words and she fumbled for her
+handkerchief, sobs rumbling up through her.
+
+"I just can't, I--I just can't!"
+
+He pushed back from his half-completed meal, rising, but stooping to rap
+his fist sharply against the table.
+
+"Now, lemme tell you this much right now, Mae, either you got to cut
+this sob stuff and get down to brass tacks and tell me what you want,
+or, by gad! I'll get out of here so quick it'll make your head swim. I
+ain't going to be let in for no tragedy-queen stuff, and the sooner you
+know it the better. Business! I'm a business man."
+
+She swallowed her tears, even smiling, and with her hand pat against her
+bosom as if to suppress its heaving.
+
+"I'm all right now, Max. I'm so full up with worry it--it just slipped
+out. I'm all right now, Max. Sit down. Sit down and finish, dearie."
+
+But he fell to pacing the red carpet in angry staccato strides. His
+napkin dropped from his waistcoat to the floor and he kicked it out of
+his path.
+
+"By gad! I didn't want to come, anyhow. I knew the sniveling I'd be let
+in for. Gimme a healthy woman with some outdoors in her. Gimme--"
+
+"I ain't going to let out any more, Max; I swear to God I ain't. Sit
+down, dear, and finish your supper. Looka, your coffee's all cold. Lemme
+go out and heat it up for you. I--"
+
+"I'm done. I'm done before I begin. Now, Mae, if you can behave yourself
+and hold in long enough, just say what you got me up here for, and for
+God's sake let's have it over!"
+
+He planted himself before her, feet well apart, and she rose, pushing
+back her chair, paling.
+
+"I--I 'ain't got much of anything to say, Max, except I--I thought maybe
+you'd tell me what's eating you, dearie."
+
+"I--"
+
+"After all these years we been together, Max, so--so happy, all of a
+sudden, dear, these last two months dropping off from every other night
+to--to twice a week and then to--to once, and this last week--not at
+all. I--I--heavens above, Max, I 'ain't got nothing to say except what's
+got you. Tell me, dearie, is it anything I've done? Is it--"
+
+"You talk like a loon, Mae, honest you do. You 'ain't done nothing.
+It's just that the--the time's come, that's all. You know it had to. It
+always has to. If you don't know it, a woman like--like you ought to.
+Gad! I used to think you was the kind would break as clean as a whistle
+when the time came to break."
+
+"Break, Max?"
+
+"Yes, break. And don't gimme the baby-stare like that, neither. You know
+what I mean alrighty. You wasn't born yesterday, old girl!"
+
+The blood ran from her face, blanching it. "You mean, Max--"
+
+"Aw, you know what I mean alrighty, Mae, only you ain't sport enough to
+take things as they come. You knew all these years it had to come sooner
+or later. I 'ain't never quizzed into your old life, but if you didn't
+learn that, you--well you ought to. There never was a New Year came in,
+Mae, that I didn't tell you that, if you got the chance, for you to go
+out after better business. I never stood in your light or made no bones
+about nothing!"
+
+"My God! Max, you--you're kidding!"
+
+"All these years I been preaching to you, even before I joined
+Forest Park Club out there. 'Don't get soft, Mae. Keep down. Use the
+dumb-bells. Hustle around and do a little housework even if I do give
+you a servant. Walk in the park. Keep your looks, girl; you may need
+'em,' I used to tell you."
+
+"Oh you--You!--"
+
+She clapped her hands over her mouth as if to stanch hysteria.
+
+"Another let-out like that, Mae, and, by gad! I'll take my hat and--"
+
+"No, no, Max, I--I didn't mean it. I'm all right. I--Only after all
+these years you wouldn't do it, Max. You wouldn't. You wouldn't throw me
+over and leave me cold, Max. What can I do after all these years? I--I
+'ain't got a show in a chorus no more. You're kidding, Max. You're a
+white man, Max, and--you--you wouldn't do it, Max. You wouldn't. You--"
+
+"Now, now, you can't say I 'ain't been as white as silk, girl, and I'm
+going to be just as white as I've been, too. Don't worry, girl. For six
+years there 'ain't been a better-stocked flat than this in town, has
+there?"
+
+"No, Max."
+
+"The best none too good, eh?"
+
+"No, Max."
+
+"Just the same stuff comes here that I send up to my mother's flat, eh?
+All the drinks and all the clothes you want and a servant in the house
+as good as my mother's own, eh? No kick coming, eh, girl?"
+
+"You--you wouldn't, Max--you wouldn't ditch me. What could I do?
+Nothing--nothing. I--I can't hire out as a scrubwoman, I--"
+
+"Come, come now, girl, you're pretty slick, but you--you don't quite
+slide. What about that thirty-five hundred you got down in your
+jeans--eh? Them thirty-five hundred in the Farmers' Savings Bank--eh?
+Eh?"
+
+"Max!"
+
+"Hah! Knocked you off your pins that time, didn't I? I found your
+bank-book one morning, kiddo--found it on the floor right next to the
+dresser--"
+
+"Max, I--Out of my checks I--I saved--I--"
+
+"Sure! Gad! I ain't kicking about it, girl. Glad for you! Glad you got
+it, girl, only don't try to tell me you can't take care of yourself in
+this world alrighty, girl. Any old time you can't! Gad! thirty-five
+hundred she snitches out of her allowance in six years, lives on the
+fat of the land, too, and then tries to bamboozle me that she's flat.
+Thirty-five hundred in six years. Gad! I got to hand it to you there,
+kiddo; I got to hand it to you!"
+
+"You can have it back, Max. I--I was going to surprise you when I had
+five thousand. I--"
+
+"Gad! I don't want your money, girl. It's yours. You're fixed for life
+on it. I'm even going to hand you over a couple of thou extra to show
+you that I'm no cheap sport. I won't have a woman breathing can say I
+ain't white as silk with her."
+
+"Max, you--you're killing me! Killing me! Killing me!"
+
+"Now, now, Mae, if I was you I wouldn't show my hand so. I don't want to
+hurt you, girl. It ain't like I got any but the finest feelings for you.
+You're all right, you are. You are."
+
+"Then, Max, for God's sake--"
+
+"But what are you going to do about it? What the hell is anybody going
+to do about it? You ain't no baby. You know what life is. And you know
+that the seams has got to show on one of the two sides and it ain't your
+fault you got turned on the under side. But you should worry, girl!
+You're fixed. And I'm here to tell you I'm going to hand you on top of
+the two thou this here little flat just as it stands, Mae. Just as it
+stands, piano and all. I just guess you got a kick coming!"
+
+Her hands flew to her bosom as if the steel of his words had slipped
+deep into the flesh. "You don't mean what you're saying, Max."
+
+"Sure, I do! Piano and all, girl."
+
+"No, no, you don't. You're just kidding me, Max, like you used to when
+you wanted to tease me and throw a scare in me that your mother was wise
+about the flat. Quit your kidding, Max, and take me in your arms and
+sing me 'Maizie you're a Daisie' like you used to after--after we had a
+little row. Lemme hear you call me 'Maizie,' dear, so I'll know you're
+only kidding. I'm a bum sport, dearie. I--I never could stand for
+guying. Cut the comedy, dear."
+
+She leaned to him with her lips twisted and dried in their frenzy to
+belie his words, but with little else to indicate that her heart
+lay ticking against her breast like a clock that makes its hour in
+half-time.
+
+"Quit guying, Max, for God's sake! You--you got me feeling sick clear
+down inside of me. Cut it, dear. Too much is enough."
+
+Her dress rustled with the faint swish of scything as she moved toward
+him, and he withdrew, taking hold of the back of his chair.
+
+"Now, now, Mae; come, come! You're a sensible woman. I ain't stuck on
+this business any more than you are. You ought to have let me stay away
+and just let it die out instead of raking up things like this. Come,
+buck up, old girl! Don't make it any harder than it's got to be. These
+things happen every day. This is business. There, there! Now! Now!"
+
+The sudden bout of tenderness brought the tears stinging to her eyes
+and she was for ingratiating herself into his embrace, but he withdrew,
+edging toward the piano with an entire flattening of tone.
+
+"Now, now, Mae, I tell you that you got to cut it. It would have been
+better if you had just let the old cat die, You oughtn't to tried that
+gag to get me here to-night. You'll get a lot more out of me if you do
+it dry, girl. A crying woman can drive me out of the house quicker 'n
+plague, and you ought to know it by now."
+
+She sat down suddenly, feeling queasy.
+
+"Now, now, old girl, buck up! Be a sport!"
+
+"Gimme a drink, Max. I--Just a swallow. I--I'm all right." And she
+squeezed her eyes tight shut to blink out the tears.
+
+He handed her a tumbler from the table, keeping his head averted, and
+after a bit she fell to sobbing and choking and trembling.
+
+"It's her! It's your old woman. She's been chloroforming you with a lot
+of dope talk about hitting the altar rail with a bunch of white satin
+with a good fat wad sewed in the lining. It's your old--"
+
+"Cut that!"
+
+"It's your old woman. She--she don't know you like I do, Max. She--"
+
+"Now, now, Mae! You knew this had to come sooner or later, I 'ain't
+never lied, have I? Right here in this room 'ain't you told me a dozen
+times you'd let me go quietly when the time came? 'Ain't you?"
+
+"I never thought you meant it, Max. You don't mean it now. Don't let
+your old woman upset you, dear. What she don't know won't hurt her.
+Stick around her a little more if you think she's got a hunch about me
+and the flat. But she 'ain't, dearie; there ain't a chance in the world
+she's got a hunch about me. Don't let her make a mollycoddle out of you,
+Max. That old woman don't know enough about life and things to--"
+
+"You cut that and cut it quick! I'm a decent fellow, I am. For six years
+I been tipping you off to leave my mother's name out--out of your mouth.
+There's a place for everything and, by gad! your mouth ain't the place
+for her name! By gad! I ain't no saint, but I won't stand for that! By
+gad! I--I won't!"
+
+"Oh-h-h-h-h! Oh-h-h-h! Oh-h-h!"
+
+She struck her breast twice with the flat of her hand, her voice so
+tight and high that it carried with it the quality of strangulation.
+
+"Ain't fit to mention her name, ain't I? Ain't fit to mention her name?
+My kind ain't fit to mention her name, eh?"
+
+"No, if you got to know it. Not--like that! My old mother's name. Not
+like that!"
+
+"Not fit, eh? What are we fit for, then, us that only get the husks of
+you men and nothing else?"
+
+"I--"
+
+"What am I fit for? Fit to run to when your decent friends won't stand
+for you? Fit to run to when you get mixed up in rotten customs deals?
+Fit to stand between you and hell when you got the law snapping at your
+heels for--for smuggling? Who was fit to run to then? Her whose name I
+ain't fit to mention? Her? Naw, you was afraid she'd turn on you. Naw,
+not her! Me! Me! I'm the one whose mouth is too dirty to mention your
+old lady's name--"
+
+"By gad! you got to cut that or--"
+
+"Just the same, who was it you hollered for when you woke up in the
+hospital with your back like raw meat? Who was it you hollered for then?
+Her whose name I ain't fit to mention? Naw, it wasn't! Me! Me! I was
+good enough then. I was good enough to smuggle you out of town overnight
+when you was dodging the law, and to sleep in my clothes for two weeks,
+ready to give the signal."
+
+"That's right, dig up! Dig up! You might forget something."
+
+"I been good enough to give you free all these years what you wasn't man
+enough to pay for. That's what we women are; we're the free lunch that
+you men get with a glass of beer, and what the hell do you care which
+garbage-pail what's left of us lands in after you're done with us!"
+
+"Cut that barroom talk around here if--"
+
+"Good enough for six years, wasn't I, to lay down like a door-mat for
+you to walk on, eh? Good enough. Good enough when it came to giving up
+chunks of my own flesh and blood when your burns was like hell's fire
+on your back and all your old woman could do to help was throw a swoon
+every time she looked at you. Good enough to--"
+
+"Gad! I knew it! I knew it! Knew you'd show your yellow streak."
+
+She fell to moaning in her hands. "No, no, Max, I--"
+
+"Bah! you can't throw that up to me, though. I never wanted it! I
+could have bought it off any one of them poor devils that hang around
+hospitals, as many inches off any one of 'em as I wanted. I never wanted
+them to graft it on me off you. I told the doctor I didn't. I knew you'd
+be throwing it up to me some day. If I'd bought it off a stranger I--I
+wouldn't have that limp in front of me always to--to rub things in. I
+knew you'd throw it up to me. I--Gad! I knew it! I knew it!"
+
+"No, no, Max, I didn't mean it. You--you just got me so crazy I don't
+know what I'm saying. Sure, I--I made you take it off me. I wanted 'em
+to cut it off me to graft on your burns because it--it was like finding
+a new way of saying how--how I love you, Max. Every drop of blood was
+like--like I could see for myself how--how I loved you, Max. I--"
+
+"Oh, my God!" he said, folded his arms atop the piano, and let his head
+fall into them. "Oh, my God!"
+
+"That's how I love you, Max. That's how you--you're all in the world I
+got, Max. That's why I--can't, just can't let you go, dear. Don't throw
+me over, Max. Cut the comedy and come down to earth. You 'ain't had a
+holy spell for two years now since the old woman sniffed me and wanted
+to marry you off to that cloak-and-suit buyer with ten thou in the bank
+and a rush of teeth to the front. You remember how we laffed, dearie,
+that night we seen her at the show? Don't let your old lady--"
+
+"Cut that, I tell you!"
+
+"You'd be a swell gink hitting the altar trail with a bunch of white
+satin, wouldn't you? At your time of life, forty and set in your ways,
+you'd have a swell time landing a young frisky one and trying to learn
+one of them mother's darlings how to rub in your hair-tonic and how to
+rub your salad-plate with garlic? Gosh-golly! I bust right out laffing
+when I even think about it! Come down to earth, Max! You'd be a swell
+hit welded for life with a gold band, now, wouldn't you?"
+
+She was suddenly seized with immoderate laughter not untinctured with
+hysteria, loud and full of emptiness, as if she were shouting for echoes
+in a cave.
+
+"Like hell you would! _You_ tied to a bunch of satin and tending the
+kids with the whooping-cough! Whoops la, la!" She fell to rocking
+herself backward and forward, her rollicking laughter staining her face
+dark red.
+
+"Whoops la, la! Whoops la, la!"
+
+Suddenly Max Zincas rose to his height, regarding her sprawling
+uncontrolled pose with writhing lips of distaste, straightened his
+waistcoat, cleared his throat twice, and, standing, drank the last of
+his wine. But a pallor crept up, riding down the flush.
+
+"Funny, ain't it? Laff! Laff! But I'd wait till you hear something
+funnier I got to tell you. Funny, ain't it? Laff! Laff!"
+
+She looked up with her lips still sagging from merriment, but the dark
+red in her face darker.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+His bravado suddenly oozed and the clock ticked roundly into the silence
+between them.
+
+"Huh?" she repeated, cocking her head.
+
+"You got to know it, Mae, and the sooner I get it out of me the better.
+But, remember, if you wanna drive me out before I'm finished, if you
+wanna get rid of me a damn sight quicker than any other way, throw me
+some sob stuff and watch. You--Well--I--The sooner I get it out of me
+the better, Mae."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"She's a--a nice little thing, Mae. Her mother's a crony with my old
+lady. Lives in a brownstone out on Lenox Avenue. Met her first at--at a
+tennis-match she was winning at--at Forest Park Club."
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Not a high-stepper or a looker like you in your day, Mae, none of--that
+chorus pep you used to have. Neat, though. Great little kid for
+outdoors. Nice little shape, too. Not in your class, but--but neat. Eyes
+like yours, Mae, only not--not in your class. A--a little cast in one of
+them, but all to the good, Mae. Nice clean little--girl, fifteen thou
+with her, and her old man half owner in the Weeko Woolen Mills. I--I
+need the money, Mae. The customs is digging up dirt again. It ain't
+like I 'ain't been on the level with you, girl. You knew it had to come
+sooner or later. Now, didn't you, Mae? Now there's the girl. Didn't
+you?"
+
+Reassured, he crossed to where she sat silent, and placed a large, heavy
+hand on her shoulder.
+
+"There's nothing needs to worry you, old girl. Thirty-five hundred in
+your jeans and a couple of thou and the flat from me on top. Gad! it's a
+cinch for you, old girl. I've seen 'em ready for the dump at your age,
+and you--you're on the boom yet. Gad! you're the only one I ever knew
+kept her looks and took on weight at the same time. You're all right,
+Mae, and--and, gad! if I don't wish sometimes the world was different!
+Gad! if--if I don't!"
+
+And, rather reassured, he tilted her chin and pinched her cold cheek and
+touched the corner of his eyes with the back of his wrist."
+
+"Gad, if--if I don't!"
+
+It was as if the flood of her emotion had risen to a wave and at his
+words frozen on its crest. She opened her lips to speak, but could only
+regard him with eyes as hard as ice-fields.
+
+"Now, now, Mae, don't look thataway. You're a sensible woman and know
+the world's just built thataway. I always told you it don't cost us men
+nothing but loose change to show ourselves a good time. You girls gotta
+pay up in different coin. If I hadn't come along some other fellow
+would, so what's the use a fellow not showing himself a good time?
+You girls know where you get off. Come, be a sport, old girl! With
+thirty-five hundred in your jeans and me wanting to do the square
+thing--the piano and all, lemme say to you that you 'ain't got a kick
+coming. Just lemme say that to you--piano and all, Mae!"
+
+Sobs trembled up, thawing the edge of ice that incased her. A thin blur
+of tears rose to her eyes like a premonitory ripple before the coming of
+the wind.
+
+"You can't! You can't! You--you can't ditch me like that, I tell you.
+You--"
+
+"By God! if you're going to begin to holler I'll get out of here so
+quick it'll make your head swim!"
+
+"Oh no, you don't! Aw, no, you don't! You ain't going to quit so easy
+for a squint-eyed little hank that--that your old woman found for you.
+Max, you ain't! You wouldn't! Tell me you wouldn't, dear. Tell me! Tell
+me!"
+
+"Get off your knees there and behave yourself, Mae! Looka your dress
+there, all torn. This ain't no barroom. Get up and behave yourself!
+Ain't you ashamed! Ain't you ashamed!"
+
+She was trembling so that her knees sent little ripples down the tight
+white silk drop-skirt.
+
+"You can't ditch me like this and get away with it. You and me
+can't--can't part peaceful. You can't throw me over after all these
+years for a little squint-eyed hank and get away with it! By Heaven! you
+can't!"
+
+He drew tight fists to his sides, his lower jaw shot forward. "You start
+a row here and, by gad! if I don't--"
+
+"I ain't! I ain't! But don't throw me over, Max, after all these years!
+Don't, Max! You need me. There ain't a woman on God's earth will do for
+you what I will. I--I 'ain't got nobody but you, Max, to do for. I
+tell you, Max, you--you need me. Think, dear, all them months when the
+customs was after you. Them hot days when you couldn't show your face,
+and I used to put you to bed and fan and fan you eight hours straight
+till you forgot to be scared and fell asleep like a baby."
+
+"Now, now, Mae, I--"
+
+"Them nights we used to mix a few drinks when we came home from a show
+or something and sit right here in this room and swill 'em off, laffing
+and laffing till we got a little lit up. That time when we sneaked down
+to Sheepshead and you lost your wad at the wheel and I won it back for
+you. All them times, Max! That--that Christmas Eve you sneaked away from
+your old woman! Remember? I tell you, Max, you can't throw me over after
+what we been through together, and get away with it. You can't, not by a
+damn sight! You can't!"
+
+In spite of herself her voice would slip up, raucous sobs tore through
+her words, tears rained down her frankly distorted face, carrying their
+bitter taste of salt to her lips.
+
+"You can't! You can't! I 'ain't got the strength! I 'ain't got a thing
+in life that ain't wrapped around you. I can't go back to hit or miss
+like--like I could ten years ago. I 'ain't got nothing saved out of it
+all but you. Don't try to ditch me, Max! Don't! I--I'll walk on my knees
+for you. I--"
+
+"For God's sake, Mae, I--"
+
+"If there's a way to raise two times fifteen thou for you, Max, I--I'll
+raise it. I'll find a way, Max. I tell you I will! I'm lucky at the
+wheel, Max. You watch and see. You just watch and see. I can work. Max,
+I--"
+
+"Get up, Mae, get up. There's a good girl. Get up and--"
+
+"I'll work my fingers down, Max, only don't try to ditch me, don't try
+to ditch me! I'll go out to the country where your old woman can't ever
+sniff me. I--I'll fix it, Max, so you--so you just can't lose. Don't
+ditch me, dear; take your Maizie back. Take me in your arms and call me
+Maizie. Take me!"
+
+"Girl, 'ain't you--'ain't you got no shame!"
+
+"Just try me back for a month, Max. For a month, Max, and see if--if I
+don't fix things so they come out right. Gimme a month, Max! Gimme, Max!
+Gimme! Gimme!"
+
+And with her last remnant of restraint gone, she lay downright at his
+feet, abandoned to virulent grief, and in her naked agony a shapeless
+mass of frill and flounce, a horrible and not dramatic spectacle of
+abandonment; decencies gone down before desire, the heart ruptured and
+broken through its walls. In such a moment of soul dishabille and
+her own dishabille of bosom bulging above the tight lacing of her
+corset-line as she lay prone, her mouth sagging and wet with tears, her
+lips blowing outward in bubbles, a picture, in fact, to gloss over, Mae
+Munroe dragged herself closer, flinging her arms about the knees of Mr.
+Zincas, sobbing through her raw throat.
+
+"Just a month, Max! Don't ditch me! Don't! Don't! Don't!"
+
+He looked away from the sorry spectacle of her bubbling lips and great,
+swollen eyelids.
+
+"Leggo! Leggo my knees!"
+
+"Just a month, Max, just--"
+
+"Leggo! Leggo my knees! Leggo, girl! Ain't you ashamed!"
+
+"Just a month, Max, I--"
+
+"Gad! 'ain't you got no shame, girl! Get up! Leggo! I can't stand
+this, I tell you. Be a sport and leggo me quiet, Mae. I--I'll send you
+everything, a--a check that'll surprise you, old girl! Lemme go quiet!
+Nothing can't change things. Quit your blubbering. It makes me sick,
+I tell you. Quit your blubbering, old girl, and leggo. Leggo! Leg-go!
+Leg-go, I say!"
+
+Suddenly he stooped and with a backward turn of her wrist unloosed
+himself and, while the pain still staggered her, side-stepped the huddle
+of her body, grasped his hat from the divan and lunged to the door,
+tugging for a frantic moment with the lock.
+
+On her knees beside the piano, in quite the attitude he had flung her,
+leaning forward on one palm and amid the lacy whirl of her train, Mae
+Munroe listened to his retreating steps; heard the slam of a lower door.
+
+You who recede before the sight of raw emotions with every delicacy
+shamed, do not turn from the spectacle of Mae Munroe prone there on the
+floor, her bosom upheaved and her mouth too loose. When the heart is
+torn the heart bleeds, whether under cover of culture and a boiled
+shirt-front or without shame and the wound laid bare. And Mae Munroe,
+who lay there, simple soul, only knew or cared that her heart lay
+quivering like a hurt thing, and for the sobs that bubbled too frankly
+to her lips had no concern.
+
+But after a while they ceased of exhaustion, and she rose to her feet,
+her train threatening to throw her; walked toward the cold, cloyed
+dinner, half-eaten and unappetizing on the table; and fell to scooping
+some of the cold gravy up from its dish, letting it dripple from the
+spoon back again. The powder had long since washed off her cheeks and
+her face was cold as dough. The tears had dried around her mouth.
+
+Presently she pinned up the lacy train about her, opened a cupboard door
+and slid into a dark, full-length coat, pinned on a hat with a feather
+that dropped over one side as if limp with wet, dabbed at her face with
+a pink powder-chamois and, wheezing ever so slightly, went out, tweaking
+off two of the three electric lights after her--down two flights of
+stairs through a quiet foyer and out into the fluid warmth of late
+October. Stars were out, myriads of them.
+
+An hour she walked--down the cross-town street and a bit along the
+wide, bright, lighted driveway, its traffic long since died down to an
+occasional night-prowling cab, a skimming motor-car; then down a flight
+of curving stone steps with her slightly perceptible limp, and into the
+ledge of parkway where shadows took her into their velvet silence; down
+a second flight, across a railroad track, and to the water's edge, where
+a great coal-station ran a jut of pier out into the river. She could
+walk its length, feeling it sway to the heavy tug of current.
+
+Out at the very edge the water washed up against the piles with a thick,
+inarticulate lisp, as if what it had to say might only be understood
+from the under side.
+
+
+
+
+THE NAME AND THE GAME
+
+
+At Christmas-tide men and women with soiled lives breathe alcoholic
+sighs and dare to glance back into the dim corridors of their long agos.
+
+Cronies, snug in an age of steam heat, turn their warm backs upon
+to-day, swap white-Christmas stories, and hanker with forefinger laid
+alongside of nose for the base-burners and cold backs of the good old
+days.
+
+Not least upon the busy magnate's table is his shopping-list.
+
+Evenings, six-dollar-a-week salesgirls sit in their five-dollar-a-week
+hall-bedrooms, with their aching feet in a tub of hot water and their
+aching fingers busy with baby-ribboned coat-hangers and silk needle-book
+tokens of Yuletide affection.
+
+Even as it flowered in a manger the Christmas spirit, a perennial lily
+upon the sooty face of the world, blooms out of the slack heap of men's
+rife and strife.
+
+In the hearts of children it is a pod filled with their first happiness.
+
+Down from a sky the color of cold dish-water a cloak of swift snow fell
+upon the city, muffling its voice like a hand held against its mouth.
+Children who had never before beheld a white Christmas leaped with the
+joy of it. A sudden army of men with blue faces and no overcoats sprang
+full-grown and armed with shovels, from out the storm. City parks lay
+etched in sudden finery. Men coming up out of the cañon of Wall Street
+remembered that it was Christmas and felt for bauble money.
+
+At early dusk and through the white dance of the white storm the city
+slid its four million packs off its four million backs and turned
+homeward. Pedestrians with the shopper's light in their eyes bent into
+the flurry and darted for surface cars and subways. Commuters, laden
+with bundles and with tickets between their teeth, rushed for early
+trains.
+
+Women with bearing-down bundles and babies wedged through the
+crowd, fighting for trains and place. Boys in cadet uniforms and
+boarding-school girls, homeward bound, thrust forward their shining
+faces as if into the to-morrow. A tight tangle of business men passed
+single file through a trellised gateway and on down to a lower level. A
+messenger with a tipsy spray of holly stuck upright in his cap whacked
+with a folded newspaper at a fellow-messenger's swift legs and darted in
+and around the knees of the crowd. A prodigal hesitated, then bought a
+second-class ticket for home. Two nuns hurried softly on missions of
+Christmas.
+
+The low thunder of a thousand feet: tired feet, eager feet; flat feet;
+shabby feet; young feet; callous feet; arched and archless feet.
+Voices that rose like wind to a gale. A child dragged by the arm and
+whimpering. A group of shawled strangers interchanging sharp jargon.
+
+Within the marble mausoleum of a waiting-room, its benches lined with
+the kaleidoscopic faces of the traveling public, a train-announcer
+bellowed a paean of tracks and stations.
+
+At the onyx-and-nickel-plated periodical stand men in passing snatched
+their evening paper from off the stack of the counter, flopping down
+their pennies as they ran. In the glow of a spray of red and white
+electric bulbs, in a bower of the instant's pretty-girl periodical
+covers, and herself the most vivid of them all, Miss Marjorie Clark
+caught a hastily flung copper coin on the fly, her laughter mounting
+with it.
+
+"Whoops, la-la!"
+
+"Good catch, kiddo."
+
+"Oh, you Charley-boy, who was you pitching for last season?"
+
+"The Reds, because that's your color."
+
+"Say, if you're going to catch that four-eighteen you've got to
+break somebody's speed limit between here and track ten. Run along,
+Charley-boy, and Merry Christmas."
+
+But Mr. Charles Scully swung to a halt, poured his armful of packages
+into a wire basket of six-city-postcard-views for ten cents, swung
+open his overcoat with a sprinkling of snow on its slick-napped velvet
+collar, lifted his small black mustache in a smile.
+
+"Black-eyes, I'd miss three trains for you."
+
+"There's not another until the four-forty."
+
+"I should worry. Anyway, for all I know you've changed your mind and are
+coming out with me to-night, little one."
+
+The quick blood ran up into her small face, dyeing it, and she withdrew
+from his nearing features.
+
+"I have not! Gee! you're about as square as a doughnut, you are."
+
+"Jumping Juniper, can't a fellow miss his train just to wish a little
+beauty like you a Merry Christmas? But on the level, I want to take you
+out home with me to-night; honest I do, little spitfire."
+
+"Crank up there, Charley-boy; you got about thirty seconds to make that
+train in."
+
+"Gets you sore every time I ask you out, don't it, black-eyes? Talk
+about your little tin saints!"
+
+"Say, if you was any slicker you'd slide."
+
+"You can't scare me with those black eyes."
+
+"Can't I, my brave boy! Say, you'd want to quarantine the dictionary if
+you found smallpox in it, that's how hard you are to scare."
+
+"Well, of all the lines of talk, if you 'ain't got the greatest. Cute is
+no name for you."
+
+"And say, the place where you clerk must be a classy clothes-parlor,
+Charley-boy."
+
+"Right-o, little one. If you ever pass by the Brown Haberdashery, on
+Twenty-third Street, drop in, and I'll buy you a lunch."
+
+"Tra-la! Where did you get that checked suit? And I'll bet you flag the
+train out at Glendale, where you live, with that tie. Oh, you Checkers!"
+
+"Some class to me, eh, kiddo?"
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't say that."
+
+He leaned closer. His smile had an uplift like a crescent and a slight
+depression in his left cheek, too low for a dimple, twinkled when he
+smiled, like an adjacent star.
+
+"Take it from me, Queenie, these glad rags are my stock in trade. In my
+line I got to sport them. At home I'm all to the overalls. If my boss
+was to see the old red wool smoking-jacket I wear around the house, he'd
+fire me for burlesquing the business."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve! Let go my hand."
+
+"Didn't know I had it, little one."
+
+"And say, you give back that kodak picture you swiped off me yesterday.
+I don't give my photographs out promiscuous."
+
+"That little snap-shot of you? Nix, I will! I took that home and hung it
+in a mother-of-pearl frame right over the parlor table."
+
+"Sure! And above the family Bible, huh? I had a fellow once tell me he
+was a bookmaker, and I was green enough then to beg him to take me out
+and let me see him make 'em. But I've learnt a thing or two about you
+and your kind since then, Charley-boy."
+
+"You come out to-night and I'll show it to you myself."
+
+"Haven't you got my number, yet, Cholly--haven't you?"
+
+"What is it, little one, number scared-cat?"
+
+She flung him a glance over the hump of one shoulder. Nineteen summers
+had breezed lightly over her, and her lips were cherry-like, but
+tilted slightly as if their fruit had been plucked from the tree of
+sophistication.
+
+"You bet your life I'm scared."
+
+"Why, out there in Glendale, little one, you won't meet your own shadow,
+if that's what's hurting you."
+
+"You bet your life I won't."
+
+"My old woman will fix you up all right."
+
+"Oh no, she won't!"
+
+"Aw, come on, kiddo. We're going to have a tree for the little brother,
+and the old woman will be rigged up like a mast in her spotted silk.
+Come on. Who'll be any the wiser?"
+
+Laughter and mockery rose to the surface of her eyes, bubbled to her
+lips.
+
+"Huh! What's that only-son stuff you gave me yesterday? All about how
+you had to land a job in the city and make good after your old man died,
+eh? How about your yesterday's line of talk?"
+
+"I--"
+
+"All about how mother's wandering boy found himself all plastered
+over with the mortgage and worked nights to get out from under. All
+about--Aw, say, what's the use? But I always say to you fellows, 'Boys,
+cultivate good memories; you need 'em.' Little brother! Ha, joke!"
+
+"I--aw--I--Little brother's what we call my sister Till's little
+red-headed kid. Aw, what--what you want to put me in bad for, sister?
+I'm not so easy to trip up as you think I am."
+
+"Little brother! And say, that's a bottle of malted milk there in your
+pocket that you're taking out to him, ain't it? Sure it is."
+
+"This? Aw, this--Say, you haven't got those snappy black eyes of yours
+for nothing, have you? This bottle here in my pocket, aw, this--this is
+a--bottle of brandy for my old woman. First snow flurry and her left
+foot begins to drag like a rag with rheumatism."
+
+Her laughter rose, and his confusion with it.
+
+"Sure," she cried.
+
+"Aw--aw, come on, Marjie."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve! My name's private property, it is."
+
+"It slipped. It said itself. But, gee! I like it. Marjie! Some little
+name."
+
+"Well, of all the nerve!"
+
+"Come on, black-eyes. You're off at five and we'll catch the
+five-eighteen. Who's going to be any the wiser? I got something out
+there I want to tell you."
+
+"My hearing's all right in the city."
+
+"It's something I want to whisper right where I can get next to that
+little ear of yours."
+
+"You got a swell chance at that little ear of mine, nix."
+
+"Stingy!"
+
+"You bet your life I'm stingy."
+
+"It's a white Christmas for sure out where I live. Come on out and let
+me show you a good time, little one."
+
+"I wish you was half as white as this Christmas is. Honest, sometimes I
+says to myself, I says, ain't there just none of you white? Has a girl
+like me got to keep dodging all her life?"
+
+"Come, sister, let's catch the five-eighteen."
+
+"You better run along before you get me all rubbed the wrong way. At
+five-eighteen I'll be buying my own meal ticket, let me tell you that."
+
+"Then buy your own meal ticket, if that's what's hurting you, little
+touchy, and come out on the eight-eighteen. It's only a thirty-minute
+run; and if you say the word I'll be at the station with bells on to
+meet you. Come on. I'll show you the Christmas Eve of your life. Be a
+sport, Marjie."
+
+"Yes, I always say, inviting a girl to be a sport is a slick way of
+inviting her to Hades. I've seen where being a sport lands a girl, I
+have. I ain't game, maybe, but, thank God, I ain't. Thank God, I ain't,
+is what I always say to them."
+
+"Well, of all the funny little propositions."
+
+"Well, there's nothing funny about your proposition."
+
+"You're one funny little girl, but, gee! I like you."
+
+There was that in his glance and the white flash of his teeth and the
+pomaded air of geniality about him that sent a quick network of thrills
+darting through her; all her perceptions rose, and her color.
+
+"Come on, little girl."
+
+"Oh," she cried, clenching her small tan hand, and a tempest of fury
+flashing across her face, "you--you fresh fellows up-town here think
+just because you wear good clothes and can hold down a decent job, that
+you--you can put up any kind of a proposition to a girl like me. Oh--oh,
+just every one of you!"
+
+"Well, of all the little spitfires."
+
+"What do you think I am? What does every one of you, up and down town,
+think I am? Do I look like I was born yesterday? Well, I wasn't, or
+the day before or the day before that. Honest to God, if I was a
+nice-appearing fellow like you I'd be ashamed, I would. I'd go out in
+the garden and eat worms, I would."
+
+He retreated before her scorn, but smiling. "I'll get you yet, you
+little vix," he said; "you pretty little black-eyed vix, you; I'll get
+you yet.'
+
+"Like hell you will."
+
+"If you change your mind, come out on the eight-eighteen, girlie. Two
+blocks to the left of the station; the corner house with a little
+weather-cock over the porch. Can't miss it. I'll be drapin' the tree in
+tin fringe and wishing you were there."
+
+"Oh," she cried, her voice cracked spang across with a sob, "I--I just
+hate you!"
+
+"No, you don't," he said, smiling and gathering his parcels.
+
+"Do."
+
+"Don't."
+
+"Do."
+
+"What's that on your wrist?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"There. I thought you said you threw it away."
+
+Her right hand flew to her left wrist as if a welt lay there. "This,
+I--huh--I--I forgot I had it on. This--this little old bracelet you said
+you found in the Subway. It--it's nothing but red celluloid, anyway.
+I--I nearly did throw it away."
+
+"You look just like a little gipsy, you do, with that red comb in that
+black hair of yours and that red bracelet on your little brown arm. I'll
+swear if I didn't miss my train by ten minutes the first time I seen you
+standing here at this counter with those big black eyes of yours shining
+out."
+
+"You'll miss it again if you don't run away, Charley-boy."
+
+"Dare you to come along! I'll wait for the five-eighteen."
+
+"Don't hold your breath till I do."
+
+"Dare you to come out on the eight-eighteen! Say the word, and I'll be
+at the station."
+
+"I'll see myself crazy with the blues first."
+
+"You might as well come, kiddo, because I'll get you yet."
+
+"Try the soft-pedal stuff about the kid and the Christmas tree on the
+girl at the Glendale station. Maybe she hasn't cut her eye-teeth."
+
+A flush swept his face like quick wind. "You're a bum sport, all
+righty."
+
+"And you! Gee! if I was to tell you what I think you are! If I was!" She
+sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but smiled.
+"But I wouldn't take the trouble, Charley-boy--honest, I wouldn't take
+the trouble."
+
+"I'll get you yet, you little vix," he insisted, his white smile
+flashing, and retreating into the crowd.
+
+"You--oh--oh, you!"
+
+She stood looking after him, head backward and hip arched forward in the
+pose of Carmen's immortal defiance. But behind her flashing attitude her
+heart rose to her throat and a warm gush of blood to her face, betraying
+it.
+
+When the illuminated hands of the illuminated tower clock swung to the
+wide angle of five o'clock, Miss Marjorie Clark and Miss Minnie Bundt,
+from the fancy-fruit stand opposite, cast off the brown cocoon of their
+workaday for the trim street finery which the American shopgirl, to the
+stupefaction of economists and theorists, can somehow evolve out of
+eight dollars a week.
+
+In the locker-room they met, the placid sky-colored eyes of Miss Bundt
+meeting Miss Clark's in the wavy square of mirror.
+
+"Snowing, ain't it?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"Gee! that's a nifty little hat, Min! Where'd you get the pompon?"
+
+"Five-and-Ten."
+
+"If it 'ain't got the Avenue written all over it."
+
+Silence.
+
+"Want some my powder, Min? Pink."
+
+"Nope."
+
+"Want to--want to go to a movie to-night or--or bum around the stores?
+It's Christmas Eve."
+
+"Can't."
+
+"Date?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+Silence.
+
+A flush rose to Miss Clark's face, darkening it. She adjusted her
+dyed-fur tippet and a small imitation-fur cap at just the angle which
+doubled its face value. Something seemed to leap out from her eyes and
+then retreat behind a smile and a squint.
+
+"Say, Min, if my voice hurt me like yours does, I'd rub salve on it,"
+and went out, slamming the door behind her. But a tear lay on the edge
+of her down-curved lashes, threatening to ricochet down her smoothly
+powdered cheek. She winked it in again. The station swarm was close to
+her, jostling, kicking her ankles in passing, buffeting.
+
+From out the swift tide a figure without an overcoat, and a cap vizor
+pulled well down over his eyes, locked her arm from the rear, so that
+she sprang about, releasing herself.
+
+"For God's sake, Blink, cut the pussy-foot tread, will you? I've jabbed
+with a hat-pin for less than that."
+
+"Merry Christmas, Marj."
+
+"Yes, I'm merry as a crutch. What brought you around, Blink?"
+
+"Can't a fellow drop around to pick you up?"
+
+"Land that job?"
+
+"Not a chance. What they want down there is a rough-neck, not a
+gentleman rubber-down. Say, take it from me; after a fellow has worked
+in the high-class Turkish baths, Third Avenue joints ain't up to his
+tone no more. I got to have class, kiddo. That's why I got such a lean
+toward you."
+
+"Cut that."
+
+"Come down to-night, Marj?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Harry's."
+
+"Well, I guess not."
+
+"Buy you a dinner."
+
+"But you're flat as your hand."
+
+He set up a jingling in his left pocket. "I am, am I?"
+
+"Well, I'm not going."
+
+"When you going to cut this comedy, Marj?"
+
+"I'm not. I'm just beginning."
+
+"Breaking into high society, eh? Fine chance."
+
+"Yes, with the gang of you down there hanging on like the plague, I got
+a swell chance, nix."
+
+"It's because we know you too well, Marj. Knew you when you had two
+black pigtails and used to carry a bucket into the family entrance of
+Harry's place, crying with madness every time your old man sent you.
+Gad! I can see you yet, sweetness, with your big black eyes blacker than
+ever, and steering home your old man from off a jamboree."
+
+"God! sometimes I wake up in the night just like him and ma was still
+alive and me and her was sitting there listening to him creak up the
+stairs on his bad nights. I wake up, I can tell you, in a sweat--right
+in a sweat."
+
+"I knew you in them days, kiddo, just like you knew me. That's why you
+can't pull nothing over on a fellow, kiddo, that's had as many pulls on
+your all-day suckers as I have. You're a little quitter, you are, and
+sometimes I think you're out for bigger game."
+
+"It don't mean because a girl was born in the mud she's got to stick
+there, does it?"
+
+"No, but she can't pretend she don't know one of the old mud-turtles
+when she sees one."
+
+"Mud-turtle is the right name."
+
+"The crowd has got your number, all right, kiddo; they know you're out
+after bigger game. You're a little turncoat, that's what they say about
+you."
+
+"Turncoat! Who wouldn't turn a coat they was ashamed of? I guess you all
+don't remember how I used to say, even back in those years when I was
+taking tickets down at Lute's old Fourteenth Street Amusement Parlors,
+how when my little minute came I was going to breeze away from the gang
+down there?"
+
+"I remember, all righty."
+
+"How I was going to get me a job up-town here, where I could get in with
+a decent crowd of girls, and not be known for the kind down there that
+you and all of 'em knew I--I wasn't."
+
+"Sure we knew."
+
+"Yes, but what good does that do me? Can a dirty little yellow-haired
+snip over in the Fancy Fruits give me the once-over and a turn-down?
+She can. And why? Because I ain't certified. I come from a counterfeit
+crowd, and who's going to take the trouble to find my number and see if
+it's real?"
+
+"Aw, now--"
+
+"Didn't a broken-down old granny over in the Thirty-fourth Street house
+where I roomed give me notice last week, because Addie Lynch found me
+out one night and came to see me, lit up like a Christmas tree?"
+
+"That's why I say, Marj, stick to the old ones who know you."
+
+"Like May Pope used to say, a girl might as well have the game as the
+name."
+
+"If I was a free man, Marj, I'd--"
+
+"Where has the strait and narrow got me to, I'd like to know? Sometimes
+I think it's nothing but a blind alley pushing me back."
+
+"If I was a free man, Marj--"
+
+"Let me meet a slick little up-stage fellow that doesn't have to look
+two ways before he walks the wrong beat in daylight; let me meet a
+fellow like that, and where does it get me?"
+
+"I'm no saint, Marj, but there ain't a beat in town I'd have to look two
+ways on. Ask any cop--"
+
+"Does the slick little up-stage fellow get my number? He does not. I'd
+like to see one of them ask that dirty little yellow-head over in the
+Fancy Fruits to go home with him. A little Nobody-Home like her, just
+because she was raised in an amen corner of the Bronx and has a six-foot
+master-mechanic brother to call for her every time she works fifteen
+minutes later, she can wear her hands crossed on her chest and a lily
+stuck in 'em and get away with it, too."
+
+"You're right, kiddo; you got more sand than ten of such put together."
+
+"I'm as good as her and better. I'm not so sure by a long shot that any
+of those baby faces would say no if they was ever invited to say yes.
+Watch out there, that cab, Blink. Gee! your nerves are as steady as
+gelatin."
+
+They were veering through the crowds and out into the soft flurry of the
+storm. Flakes like pulled-out bits of cotton floated to their shoulders,
+resting there. Seventh Avenue, for the instant before the eye left the
+great Greek façade of the Pennsylvania Terminal, was like a dream of
+Athens seen through the dapple of white shadows. Immediately the eye
+veered, however, the great cosmopolis formed by street meeting avenue
+tore down the illusion. Another block and second-hand clothing shops
+nudged one another, their flapping wares for sale outside them like
+clothes-wash on a line, empty arms and legs gallivanting in the wind. A
+storm-car combed through the driven snow, scuttling it and clearing
+the tracks. Down another block the hot, spicy smell of a Mexican dish
+floated out between the swinging doors of an all-night bar. A man
+lurched out, laughing and crying.
+
+Marjorie Clark's companion steered her past and turned toward her, his
+twitching features suddenly, and even through their looseness, softened.
+
+"Poor kiddo!" he said. "Just send them to me for reference. I can do
+some tall vouching for you."
+
+"The way I feel lately sometimes, honest, I think if I get to getting
+the indigoes much deeper, there's no telling where they'll land me. The
+game as well as the name ain't all poetry, let me tell you that."
+
+Through the fall of mild snow he could see her face shining out darkly,
+and his bare, eager fingers moved toward her arm, and except when the
+spasmodic twitch locked his features, his face, too, was thrust forward,
+keen and close to hers.
+
+"I've been telling you that for five years, girl."
+
+"Now don't go getting me wrong, Blink."
+
+"If I was what the law calls a free man, Marj, you know what kind of
+a proposition I would have put up to you five years ago when I had my
+health and my looks and--"
+
+"If you want to make me sore, just tune up on that old song. You ain't
+man enough to even get your own little kid out of the clutches of a
+mother that's pulling her down to Hades with her. Take it from me, if
+there wasn't something in me that's just sorry for you, I wouldn't walk
+these here blocks with you. Sometimes when I look at you right hard,
+Blink, honest, it looks to me like the coke's got you, Blink."
+
+"Now, Marjie--"
+
+"You wouldn't tell me if it had. But you got the twitches, all righty."
+
+"It's me nerves, Marj; me nerves and you."
+
+"Bah! you got about as much backbone as a jellyfish. Blaming things on a
+girl."
+
+"You took the backbone out of me, I tell you."
+
+"Oh no, I didn't; it's been missing since your first birthday."
+
+"Eating out my heart and vitals for you and your confounded highfalutin
+amen notions."
+
+"Before you ever clapped eyes on me you was more famous for your arm
+muscle than your backbone. I guess I don't remember how your own mother
+told me the very day before she died how she tried on her old knees to
+keep you out of a marriage with that woman. All that happened way back
+in the days when you had your muscles and was head rubber-down at
+Herschey's. You knew her kind when you did it, and now why ain't you man
+enough to blame yourself for what you are instead of blaming the girl?
+Gee!"
+
+"I didn't mean it, Marj. It slipped. S'help me, I didn't. Sometimes I
+just don't know what I'm saying, Marj; that's how my mind kinda gets
+sometimes. All fuzzed over like."
+
+"What's the odds what you say, Blink? You're just not man-size, I
+guess."
+
+She was a bleak little figure bowing into the wind, her tippet flapping
+back over one shoulder.
+
+"I ain't, ain't I? I 'ain't gone through a living hell sitting on the
+water-wagon for you, have I?"
+
+"Try to keep from twitching that way, Blink. You give me the horrors."
+
+"I 'ain't cut out playing stakes, have I? Gad! I can live from Sunday to
+Sunday on a pick-up from a little gamble here and a little gamble there.
+But when you hollered, I didn't cut it and begin to work up muscle to
+get back on the job again, did I? I didn't, did I?"
+
+"You can't pump that into me, Blink."
+
+His voice narrowed to a nasal quality. "I didn't send her and the kid
+a whole Christmas box like you wanted me to, did I? I didn't stick a
+brand-new fiver in the black-silk-dress pattern, knowing all the while
+she'd have it drunk up before she opened the creases out. I didn't, did
+I?"
+
+They were approaching the intersection of a wide and white-lighted
+cross-town street. The snowfall had lightened. Marjorie Clark let her
+gaze rest for the moment upon her companion, and her voice seemed
+suddenly to nestle deep in her throat.
+
+"Gee! Blink, if I thought any of the--the uplift stuff I've tried to
+pump into you had seeped in. Gee! if I could think that, Blink!"
+
+Tears lay close to the surface of her words, and his lean face was
+thrust farther forward in affirmation.
+
+"It has, Marj. All I got to do is to think of you and those big black
+eyes of yours shining, and I could lead a water-wagon parade."
+
+"It's the habits, Blink, you got to watch most. For a minute to-night
+you looked like coke and--and it scared me. Don't let the coke get you,
+Blink. For God's sake, don't!"
+
+"I sent her a fiver, Marj, and a black silk, and a doll with real hair
+for the kid. Y'oughtta seen, Marj, real hair on it."
+
+"That was fine, Blink. Fine!"
+
+"Where you going? Aw, come, Marj. For the love of Mike, you're not
+going."
+
+"Yes, yes. I got to go. This is Twenty-second Street, my corner. That's
+where I room; that fourth house to the right. That dark one. I got to
+go."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Where do you s'pose? Home."
+
+"What's doin' there?"
+
+"N-nothing."
+
+"Whatta you going to do Christmas Eve? Sit in your two-by-four and
+twiddle your thumbs?"
+
+Immediate sobs rose in her throat. "Lord!" she said, "I dun'no'! I
+dun'no'!"
+
+He set up the jangling again. "It's Christmas Eve, Marj."
+
+"That's right, rub it in," and looked away from him.
+
+"Come, Marj, don't leave me high and dry like this. Come, I'll blow you
+to a little supper, kiddo. I got a couple of meal tickets coming to me
+down at Harry's on some ivories I threw last night."
+
+"Dice! And after the line of talk you just tried to make me swallow. Did
+I believe it? I did not!"
+
+"No stakes, Marj. Just for a couple of meal tickets we tossed. Come,
+girl, you 'ain't been down to Harry's for months; you won't get your
+halo mussed from one time. It's Christmas Eve, Marj."
+
+"I heard you the first time."
+
+"If I got to go it alone to-night, Marj, it'll be the wettest Christmas
+I ever spent, it will. I'll pickle this Christmas Eve like it was never
+pickled before, I will."
+
+"Aren't you no man at all, threatening like that? Just no man at all?"
+
+"I tell you if I got to go it alone to-night, I won't be. I'm crazy
+enough to tear things wide open."
+
+"A line of talk like that will send me home quicker than anything, if
+you want to know it." She turned her face away and toward the dark aisle
+of the side street.
+
+"I didn't mean it, Marj."
+
+"I hate whining."
+
+"Don't go, girl. Don't. Don't give me the horrors and leave me alone
+to-night, Marj."
+
+She moved slowly into the gloom of the cross-town street. Solemn rows of
+blank-faced houses flanked it. Wind slewed as through a canon, whistling
+in high pitch.
+
+"Gee!"
+
+"Fine little joy lane for your Christmas Eve, eh? Don't go, Marj. Have
+a heart and be a sport. Let me blow you to a supper down at Harry's for
+old times' sake. Didn't you promise my old woman to keep an eye on me?
+Didn't you? For old times' sake, Marj. It's Christmas."
+
+She stood shivering and gazing down into the black throat of the street.
+
+"It'll be a merry evening in that two-by-four of yours, won't it? Look
+at it down there. Cheerful, ain't it?"
+
+Tears formed in a glaze over her eyes.
+
+"Be a sport, Marj."
+
+"All right--Blink!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the family entrance to Harry's place, and just around the corner from
+the main entrance of knee-high swinging doors and a broadside of frosted
+plate-glass front, a bead of gas burned sullenly through a red globe,
+winking, so to speak, at all who would enter there under cover of its
+murk.
+
+Women with faces the fatty white of jade, and lips that might have
+kissed blood, slipped from the dark tide of the side street into the
+entrance. Furtive couples rose out of the night: the men, lean as laths,
+collars turned up and caps drawn down; girls, some with red lights and
+some with no lights in their eyes, and most of them with too red lips of
+too few curves, and all of them with chalk-colored powder laid on over
+the golden pollen of youth.
+
+Within Harry's place, Christmas found little enough berth except that
+above the great soaped-over mirror at the far end of the room a
+holly wreath dangled from the tarnished gilt frame and against the
+clouded-over glass a forefinger had etched a careless Merry Christmas.
+
+At tables set so close that waiters side-stepped between them, the
+habitués of Harry's place dined--wined, too, but mostly out of uncovered
+steins or two-inch stemless glasses. And here and there at smaller
+tables a solitary figure with a seer's light in his eyes sipped his
+greenish milk!
+
+An electric piano, its shallow tones undigested by the crowded room,
+played in response to whomsoever slipped a coin into its maw. Kicked-up
+sawdust lay in the air like flakes.
+
+From her table near the door Miss Marjorie Clark pushed from her a
+litter of half-tasted dishes and sent her dark glance out over the room.
+A few pairs of too sinuous dancers circled a small clearing around the
+electric piano. Waiters with fans of foam-drifting steins clutched
+between fingers jostled them in passing. At a small table adjoining, a
+girl slept in her arms. Two more entered, elbow in elbow, and directly
+a youth in a wide-striped wool sweater muffled high to his teeth, and
+features that in spite of himself would twitch and twitch again.
+
+"Hi, Blink," he said in passing.
+
+"Hi."
+
+Reader, your heart lifted up and glowing with Yuletide and good-will
+toward men, turn not in warranted nausea from the reek of Harry's
+place. Mere plants can love the light and turn to it, but have not the
+beautiful mercy to share their loveliness with foul places. The human
+heart is a finer work. It can, if it will, turn its white light upon
+darkness, so that out of it even a single seed may take heart and grow.
+A fastidious olfactory nerve has no right to dominion over the quality
+of mercy. The heart should keep its thousand doors all open, each
+heart-string a latch-string, and each latch-string out.
+
+Marjorie Clark met her companion's eyes above the rim of his stein.
+"Looks more like hell on a busy day down here than like Christmas Eve,
+don't it?"
+
+He was warmed, and the tight skin had softened as dried fruit expands in
+water. "Ah-h-h, but I feel better, kiddo."
+
+"That's three steins you've had, Blink. And there's no telling what you
+filled up on those three times you went out."
+
+"It's Christmas Eve, kiddo. What kind of a good time do you want for
+your money? A Christmas tree trimmed in tin angels?"
+
+"Do I? You just bet your life I do."
+
+"Then let me get it for you, sugar-plum. You just stick to me to-night
+and you can have any little thing your heart desires. Here, waiter." And
+he jingled again in the depths of his pocket.
+
+"If you want to lose my company double quick, just you order another
+stein. Just look at you seeing double already."
+
+"I'm all right, baby; never felt better in my life."
+
+"You caught me when I was down and blue, didn't you, and pumped me full
+of a lot of Sunday-school talk, that's what you did. And I was fool
+enough to get soft and come down here with you, I was! But I felt it in
+my bones you was lying. I knew I was right about the coke. I seen you
+throw a high sign to that twitching guy in the striped sweater. I knew I
+was right. God, I--I just knew."
+
+He leaned for her hand. "Little bittsie, black-eyed baby, you got me
+wrong."
+
+"Ugh-h! Quit! Let go!"
+
+He straightened, regarding her solemnly and controlling the slight
+swaying of his figure. "I'm a gentleman."
+
+Her laugh was more of a cough. "There ain't no such animal."
+
+"There ain't? I seen you trying to rope one to-day, all righty. I seen
+you."
+
+"You what?"
+
+"Sure I did. The slick guy in checks."
+
+"You--"
+
+"Sure I seen you. I was loafing around the station a whole hour before
+you seen me to-day, baby doll. I seen the whole show. Grabbed the slick
+little Checkers right out of the line, didn't you? Bowled him over with
+those black eyes of yours. Went for him right like he was a stick of
+candy and you was licking it, eh? Pretty slick to take in a big eyeful
+like that, wasn't I? Some little Checkers, he was."
+
+Red leaped to her face. "Cut that!"
+
+"Gad! what you mad about, kiddo? Gentleman friend, eh?"
+
+"You just cut that talk, and double quick, too."
+
+"After bigger game, eh, kiddo?"
+
+"Fine chance."
+
+"Not good enough down here, eh?"
+
+"No, if you want to know it. No."
+
+"He liked you, kiddo."
+
+"Yes, he liked me. He liked me, all righty, like they all do. God! if
+I'd ever run across a fellow that was on the level with me, I'd get the
+hysterics right in his face, I would. Right in his face!"
+
+"I'm on the level, Marj, only--"
+
+"You try to begin that, now."
+
+"I am, and you know it."
+
+"You're about as straight as a horseshoe."
+
+"I may backslide now and then, sweetness, but--"
+
+"There's no backsliding for you any more, Blink. After that Gregory raid
+business you slid back as far in my mind as a fellow can slide."
+
+He drained his glass, and this time caught his sway a bit too late.
+"Forget that, kiddo."
+
+"I can't. It was that showed me plainer than all that went before how I
+was wasting my time working over you."
+
+"'Ain't I got something on you, too, peaches? But you don't hear me
+throwing it up to you, do you? 'Ain't I got Checkers on you?"
+
+"You--"
+
+"But I ain't blaming you. Come, Marj, let's swap our real names."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Sure, I ain't blaming you. Only be on the level, girl--be on the level.
+If it's big fry you're after, and we don't measure up down here, say
+so."
+
+"You--I think you're crazy, Blink."
+
+"I know life, kiddo. I've used up thirty years of my lease on it getting
+wise to it. Come now, is it Checkers, queenie? What's your game?"
+
+She leaned forward, looking him evenly between the eyes, but her lips
+seared as if from his hot insult. "You take that back."
+
+"What you green around the gills for, kiddo? Didn't you say yourself
+that the name and the game come together in the same package? I ain't
+arguing it with you."
+
+"You take it back, I said."
+
+He laughed and flecked his fingers for a waiter, flinging out his legs
+at full length alongside the table. "You're a clever little girl, Marj,
+and I've got to hand it to you. Another stein there, waiter, and one for
+the girl; she needs it."
+
+"I'll spill it right out if it comes."
+
+"Lord! what you so sheety-looking for? White with temper and green at
+the gills, eh? Gad! I like you that way. I like you for your temper, and
+if you want to know it, I like you for every blamed thing about you."
+
+"You--quit! Let go! Let go, I say! Ug-gh!" Her lips, with the greenish
+auro about them, would only move stiffly, and she pushed back from the
+table only half articulate. "Let me pass--please."
+
+"Where you going, peaches?" He reached for her hand. "You mad, Marj? I
+didn't mean to get you sore."
+
+"N-no, Blink."
+
+"You beauty, you."
+
+"'Sh-h-h!"
+
+"Gad! but I like you. Sit down, Marj, I got a new proposition to put to
+you. I can talk big money, girl."
+
+"Don't--Blink."
+
+"Sit down, girl. Harry don't stand for no stage stuff in here no more."
+
+"I--"
+
+"I got a new proposition, girl. One that'll make Checkers look like
+thirty cents. A white proposition, too, Marj. A baby could listen to
+it."
+
+"Yes, yes, Blink, but not now. When you get lit up you--you oughtn't
+begin to dream about those millionaire propositions, Blink. Try and keep
+your wits."
+
+"A baby could listen to this here proposition, Marj. And big money, too,
+Marj. It's diamonds for you."
+
+Somehow with her lips she smiled down at him, and did not tug for the
+release of her hand. Dallied for the instant instead.
+
+"You're lit up, Blink."
+
+"Some big guns in Wall Street, Marj, are after me, Marj, with a
+million-dollar proposition. I--"
+
+"Yes, yes, but wait a minute, Blink. I'll be back." She even lay a pat
+on his shoulder and slid past him lightly. "In a minute, Blink."
+
+"Hurry," he said, his smile broken by a swift twitch of feature, and
+raising his fresh stein.
+
+Once out of his vision, she veered sharply and in a bath of fear darted
+toward the small hallway, with its red bead of gaslight burning on and
+flickering against the two panels of colored glass in the dingy brown
+door.
+
+Outside, the flakes had ceased and the sinister-looking side street lay
+in a white hush, a single line of scraggly footsteps crunched into the
+snow of the sidewalk. A clock from a sky-scraping tower rang out eight,
+its echoes singing like anvils in the sharp, thin air. On the cross-town
+street the shops were full of light and activity, crowds wedging in and
+out. Marjorie Clark pulled at her strength and ran.
+
+At the Twenty-second Street corner she paused for the merest moment
+for breath and for a quick glance into the dark lane of the diverging
+street. The double row of stone houses, blank-faced and shouldering
+one another like paper dolls cut from a folded newspaper, stood back
+indistinctly against the night, most of the high stoops cushioned
+in untrod snow, the fourth of them from the right, lean-looking and
+undistinguished, except that the ash-can at its curb was a glorified urn
+of snow.
+
+As she stood there the ache in Marjorie Clark's throat threatened to
+become articulate. She took up her swift pace again, but onward.
+
+Ten minutes later, within the great heated mausoleum of the Pennsylvania
+Terminal, she bought a ticket for Glendale. On track ten the
+eight-eighteen had already made its first jerk outward as she made her
+dash for it.
+
+In the spick swaddling clothes of new-laid snow, its roadways and garden
+beds, macadamized streets and runty lanes all of one identity, Glendale
+lay in a miniature valley beneath the railroad elevation; meandered down
+a slight hillside and out toward the open country.
+
+Immediately removed from the steep flight of stairs leading down from
+the gabled station, small houses with roofs that wore the snow like
+coolies' hoods appeared in uncertain ranks forming uncertain streets.
+Lights gleamed in frequent windows, throwing squares of gold-colored
+light in the snow.
+
+Here and there where shades were drawn the grotesque shadow of a
+fir-tree stood against the window; silhouettes moved past. Picket
+fences marched crookedly along. At each intersection of streets a white
+arc-light dangled, hissing and spreading its radiance to the very stoops
+of adjoining houses.
+
+Two blocks from the left of the station Marjorie Clark paused in the
+white shower of one of these arc-lights. The wind had hauled around to
+the north and its raw breath galloped across the open country, stinging
+her.
+
+Across the street, diagonal, a low house of too many angles, the snow
+banked in a high drift across its north flank, stood well back in
+shadow, except that on the peak of its small veranda, and clearly
+defined by the arc-light, a weather-vane spun to the gale.
+
+Marjorie Clark ducked her head to the onslaught of wind and crossed the
+street, kicking up a fine flurry of snow before her. A convoy of trees
+stood in military precision down the quiet avenue, their bare branches
+embracing her in immediate shadows. The gate creaked when she drew it
+backward, scraping outward and upon the sidewalk a hill of loose snow.
+Before that small house a garden lay tucked beneath its blanket, a
+scrawny line of hedge fluted with snow inclosing it and a few stalks
+that would presently flower. The hood of the dark veranda, surmounted
+with its high ruche of snow, seemed to incline, invitational.
+
+Yet when Marjorie Clark pulled out the old-fashioned bell-handle her
+face sickened as she stood and she was down the steps again, the
+tightness squeezing her throat, her gloved hands fumbling the gate
+latch, and her knee flung against it, pressing it outward.
+
+In the moment of her most frenzied attitude a golden patch of light from
+an opened door streamed out and over her. In its radiance a woman's
+wide-bosomed, wide-hipped silhouette, hand bent in a vizor over her
+eyes, leaned forward, and, rushing past her and down the plushy steps,
+the bareheaded figure of Mr. Charley Scully, a red and antiquated red
+wool indoor jacket flying to the wind, and a forelock of his shiny hair
+lifted.
+
+"Marjie!"
+
+She backed against the gate.
+
+"Marj! Marjie?"
+
+"I--No, no--I--I--"
+
+"Why, little one! Marjie! Marjie!"
+
+"I--No--no--"
+
+But her inertia was of no moment, and very presently, Charles Scully's
+strong right arm propelling her, she was in the warm, bright-lighted
+hallway, its door closing her in and the wide-bosomed, wide-hipped
+figure in spotted silk fumbling the throat fastenings of her jacket, and
+the stooped form of Charley Scully dragging off her thin rubber shoes.
+
+"Whew! they're soaking wet, ma. Get her a pair of Till's slippers or
+something."
+
+"Don't jerk the child like that, son. Pull 'em off easy."
+
+Through glazed eyes Marjorie Clark, balancing herself first on one foot,
+then the other, the spotted silk arm half sustaining her, could glimpse
+the scene of an adjoining room: a fir-tree standing against a drawn
+window-blind half hung in tinsel fringe, and abandoned in the very act
+of being draped; a woman and a child stooping at its base. Above a
+carved black-walnut table and from a mother-of-pearl frame, a small
+amateur photograph of Marjorie Clark smiled out at herself.
+
+The figure in spotted silk dragged off the wet jacket and hurried with
+it toward the rear of the hallway, her left foot dragging slightly.
+
+"Just a second, dearie-child, until I find dry things for you. Son, stop
+fussing around the lamb until she gets rested."
+
+But on the first instant of the two of them standing alone there in
+the little hallway, Charley Scully turned swiftly to Marjorie Clark,
+catching up her small hand. His eyes carried the iridescence of bronze.
+
+"Marjie," he said, "to--why, to think you'd come! Why--why, little
+Marjie!"
+
+"I--oh, Charley-boy, I--"
+
+"What, little one? What?"
+
+"I--I dun'no'."
+
+"What is it, hon? Ain't you as glad as I am?"
+
+"I dun'no', only I--I--I'm scared, Charley--scared, I guess."
+
+"Why, you just never was so safe, Marjie, as now--you just never was!"
+
+She could not meet the eloquence of his eyes, but his smile was so near
+that the tightness at her throat seemed suddenly to thaw.
+
+"Charley-boy," she said.
+
+But at the sound of returning footsteps she sprang backward, clasping
+her hands behind her. A copper-haired woman with a copper-haired child
+in the curve of her arm moved through the lighted front room and toward
+them. Her smile was upturned, with a dimple low in one cheek, like a
+star in the cradle of a crescent moon. Charley Scully turned his vivid
+face toward her.
+
+"Till," he cried, "she come, anyway. Looka, she's come!"
+
+"Yes, I--I've come," said Marjorie Clark. There was a layer of hysteria
+in her voice.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Every Soul Hath Its Song, by Fannie Hurst
+
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