"Ain't it funny, Mr. Myers, my runnin' into you right off. I never thought I'd find you in this town. My little sister I was tellin' you about will be here soon and—"
"This way!"
"I'm ready to take that job you was tellin' me about till—"
"In here, sister, where we can talk business alone."
She followed him back through the glazed door, through an outer office arranged like a school-room with aisle-forming desks, and white-shirt-waisted girls and men clerks with green eye-shades bent double over typewriters and books as big as the marble tablets on which are writ the debit and credit of all men for all time.
Boys scurried and darted; telephone bells jangled; and finally the quiet of an inner office, shut off from the noises like a padded cell, almost entirely carpeted in a leopard's skin and hung with colored lithographs of many season's comedy queens, whose dynasties were sprung from caprice and whose papier-mâché thrones had long since slumped to pulp.
"Now sit here, sister—here in this chair next to my desk, where I can look at you. Gad, ain't you grown to be a big girl, though!"
"I'm ready for that job now, Mr.—Mr. Myers."
"Well—well—well!"
Mr. Myers swung on his swivel-chair, squinted his eyes further back into his head, and nodded further appraisal and approval.
"Big little girl—can I call you that, Queenie? How have you been?"
"I've had a hard time of it, Mr.—"
"Hold out your hand and lemme tell your fortune, sister."
"Quit!"
"Dear child—you mustn't act like that—here—hold out your—"
"Quit!"
"Come now—"
"We want jobs, me and my little sister—when she gets here. I told you about her, you remember. I—I've had experience on Western—"
"Naughty—naughty eyes—devilish eyes! Don't you look at me like that—don't! You big little devil, you!"
"What is it, sir?"
"Good! Sit there with the sun on you—you've got hair like—"
"I've had experience with first-row—"
"Gad!" He swerved suddenly forward in his chair so that his small feet touched the floor. "Gad, stand up there—stand over there in that sunshine by the window!"
"What—"
"Stand up—there, agin that screen there—"
Dark as a nun in her wimple, but golden as a sun-flower, she rose as Trilby rose to the eye of Svengali—
"Gad!" he repeated, bringing his small tight fist down on a littered ash-tray, "by Gad!"
Wine was suddenly in her blood.
"You ought to see me and my little sister when we pose together; we—"
"Take off your hat, girl."
She stood suddenly quiet, as if the wine in her blood had seethed and quieted.
"Aw—no—whatta you think I am—I—"
"Take off your hat, big little girl, and if you're good to me I'll tell you something. If I hadn't taken a fancy to you I wouldn't tell you, neither."
She lifted the heavy brim with both hands and stood in the bar of sunlight.
"Gad!" he cried—"Gad!" and jerked open a drawer and threw the big bulk of a typewritten manuscript on the desk before him. "Read that; read that, sister!" His heavy spatulate finger underlined the caption.
"'The—Red—Widow,' 'The Red Widow,' by Al Wilson."
He rose and jerked her by her two wrists so that she flounced toward him, her hair awry and the breath jumping out of her bosom.
"That's you, sister—the Red Widow!"
"The Red—Widow?"
"You're goin' out in a road chorus next week and get broke in. At the end of a season I'm goin' to feature you in the biggest show that ever I had up my sleeve."
She regarded him with glazed eyes of one dazed, and backed away from him.
"Me!"
"You—the Red Widow, sister! You know what a Hy Myers production means, don't you? You know what an Al Wilson show is, don't you? Add them two. I'll make you make that show or bust. Stand off there and lemme look at you again—there—so!"
"Quit!"
She sprang back from his touch and raised her hand with the glove dangling in the attitude of a horseman cracking his whip. "You—you quit!" Like Dryope changed into a tree, with the woodiness creeping up her limbs and the glove in her passive hand, she stood with her arm flung upward. "You quit!"
"Dear child, you mustn't—"
"I—I'm goin'—lemme go!"
"Aw, come now, sister; don't get frisky—I didn't mean to make you sore. Gee! Ain't you a touchy little devil?"
"I'm goin'."
"If that's your number, all righty—but you're just kiddin'—you ain't goin' to be too independent in one of the worst seasons in the business."
She moved toward the door with her hand outstretched to the knob.
"You better think twice, sister—but don't lemme keep you—there's other Red Widows as good and better'n you beatin' like an army at my door this minute. But don't lemme keep you."
"Will—will you lemme alone?"
"Sure I will, if it'll make you feel any better—you cold little queen, you. Nervous as a unbroke colt, ain't you? Sit down there and watch."
He touched a buzzer, and a uniformed boy sprang through the door to his elbow.
"Write Al Wilson to meet me here to-morrow at ten."
"Yes, sir." The uniform flashed out.
She moved around him cautiously, not taking her eyes from his face.
"Have I—have I got a job?"
"Sure you have. I'll send you out to Frisco in a chorus that'll limber you up, all right, but I won't let you stay long. I won't let a little queen like you run away for long."
"Frisco—me—gee!"
"Gad! maybe I won't neither. How would you like to play right close to home over in Brooklyn? I've got a chorus over there that'll take the stiffness out of you. I don't want to let a great, big, beautiful doll like you too far away."
"Frisco—I like Frisco."
"But hold up your right hand. Don't you tell nobody I'm pushing you for next season's feature—that's our little secret—between you and me and Al."
"I was gettin' thirty dollars."
"Don't you worry about that, Doll-Doll. You come back here to-morrow at ten. I wanna show Al how the Red Widow we've been lookin' for dropped right into my hands. He can't squeal to me no more about types."
"I—I'm going now, Mr. Myers—to-morrow, then, at ten—"
"Where you goin', Doll?"
"Home. I guess I've lost my friend now."
"Wait; I'm going your way."
"You don't even know which way I'm goin'."
"Sure I do. I'll drop you there in my car."
"Oh—I—I want—to walk—I do."
"None of that, sister. I'm treatin' you white, and you gotta do the same by me. I won't bite you, you little scare-cat! I'm goin' to make things happen to you that'll make you wake up every day pinchin' yourself."
"My little sister, Mr. Myers, has got me beat on looks."
"But you gotta treat me white, sister. We can talk business in the car, but you gotta have confidence in me. I won't bite—you big little girl, you."
"I don't want—to go—that way, Mr. Myers—I gotta go some place first."
"Comin', sister?"
"I—I—"
"Comin'?"
"Yes."
On its hundredth night "The Red Widow," playing capacity houses at the Gotham Theater, presented each lady in the audience a "handsome souvenir" of Red Widow perfume attractively nestled in a red-satin box with a color picture of Della Delaney on the label.
To the pretty whifflings and "ah's!" of every feminine nose present, to the over-a-million-copies-sold waltz-theme that was puckering the mouth of every newsboy in New York, to the rustly settling back into chairs, furs, and standing-room-only attitudes against Corinthian pillars, the hundredth-night, second-act curtain rose on an audience with an additional sense unexpectedly gratified and the souvenir-loving soul of every woman present sniffing its appreciation.
Comedy is a classic prodigal who has wandered far. Comus has discarded his mantle and donned a red nose, a split-up-the-back waistcoat, and a pair of clap-sticks.
Harlequin and Cap-and-Bells have doffed the sock and many colors for the sixty-dollar-a-week rôle of million-dollar pickle-magnate pursuing a forty-dollar juvenile, who, in turn, is pursuing the two-hundred-dollar-a-week Red Widow from Act One—summer hotel at Manhattan Beach to Act Two—tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.
For the hundredth time the opening act of "The Red Widow"—a ghoul at the grave of a hundred musical comedies—sang to its background of white-flannel chorus-men, drop-curtain of too-blue ocean and jungle of cotton-back palms.
A painted ship idled on a painted ocean. Trees reared their tropical leaves into a visible drop-net.
announced the two front rows, kicking backward three times.
agreed the kicked-at, white-flannel background.
A shapely octet in silk-and-lisle regimentals, black-astrakhan capes flung over one shoulder, and black-astrakhan hats as high as a majordomo's bent eight silk-and-lisle left knees with rhythmic regularity. Six ponies in yellow skirts, as effulgent as inverted chrysanthemums, and led by a black pony with a gold star in her hair, kicked to the wings and adored the audience. A chain of "Bungel belles" stretched their thin arms above their heads in a letter O and prinked about on their toes like bantams in a dust road.
Five trombones, ten violas, twelve violins, a drum and bass-viol bombardment rose to a high-C climax, with the chorus scrambling loyally after them like a mountaineer scaling a cliff for an eaglet's nest.
shouted the seventy-five of them, receding with a grape-vine motion into the wings.
Enter Cyrus Hinkelstein, mayor and pickle-magnate of Brineytown, on the Suwanee, in a too large white waistcoat, white-duck comedy spats, and a pink-canvas bald head.
He institutes an immediate search behind tropical vines and along the under sides of palm fronds for the forty-dollar juvenile who is pursuing the Red Widow from the summer hotel, Act One to Act Two, tropical isle off the Bay of Bungel.
Enter the Red Widow in a black, fish-scale gown that calls out the stealthy pencil of every Middle West dressmaker in the house and rapid calculation from the women with a good memory and some fish-scales on a discarded basque.
The Red Widow, with a poinsettia sprawling like a frantic clutch at her heart, and her burnished gold head rising with the grace of a gold flower out of a vase!
Cyrus assumes a swoon of delight, throws out a cue—"The date-trees are blooming"—the conductor raps his baton twice for their feature duet entitled, "Oh, Let Me Die on Broadway," and the spot-light focuses.
The house clamors for a fourth encore, but the lights flash on. The pursuing son, in the face of prolonged applause, white trousers, and a straw katy, bursts upon the scene with his features in first position for the dénouement.
But the audience clamors on. The son postpones his expression and leans against a jungle to a fourth encore of the tuneful Thanatopsis.
On the final curtain of the hundredth night the company bowed two curtain-calls to the capacity house busily struggling into wraps and up aisles.
The Red Widow, linked between the pickle-magnate and the triumphant son, flanked by sextets, octets, and regimentals, bowed four times over three sheaths of American beauties and a high-handled basket of carnations.
Then, almost on the drop of the curtain, the immediate roar of sliding wings, which mingled with the exit strains of the orchestra, like a Debussy right-hand theme defying the left, and the rumble of forests, retreating.
Scene-shifters, to whom every encore is a knell, demolished whole kingdoms at a lunge, half a hundred satin slippers flashed up a spiral staircase to chorus dressing-rooms, the Red Widow flung the trail of the gown she had on—so carelessly dragged across the tarpaulin terra firma of Bungel—across one bare arm and darted through the door with a red star painted on the panel.
Her dressing-room, hung in vivid chintz, with a canopied table replacing the make-up shelf, and a passing show of signed photographs tacked along the wall, was as fantastic as Gnomes' Cave.
A wildness of chiffon and sleazy silk hung from the wall-hooks, a pair of gauze aeroplane wings hovered across a chair, and, atop a trunk, impertinent as a Pierette, the black pony was removing the gold star from her hair.
"Warm house to-night, Del. I sent Sibbie across to the hotel with your flowers."
"Yeh—best house yet."
"But gee! it's a wonder he wouldn't give away kerosene."
"Rotten stuff."
"It made me so dizzy I nearly flopped like a seal in the pony prance. He must 'a' bought it by the keg."
"I told him it was strong enough to run his new motor-boat. Gawd, ain't I tired! How'd the aeroplane song go, Ysobel?"
"Swell! But leave it to Billy to hog your act every time. I seen him grab a laugh when the propellers was workin'."
"Undo me, Ysobel? Why'd you let Sibbie go? Can't you let me get used to having a maid, hon'?"
"Poor kid, you're dead, ain't you? But you gotta go with him to-night or he'll howl."
Della lowered her beaded lashes over eyes that smarted, and raised her arms like Niobe entreating fate.
"Sure, I gotta go. He's been bragging about this hundredth-night blow-out for a month."
"Quit squirming, Del! Hold still, can't you?"
"Five recalls on 'Let me die,' Ysobel."
"You never went better."
Della slid out of her gown and into a gold-colored kimono embroidered in black flying swans, and creamed off her make-up in long, even strokes.
"Look, he wants me to wear that silver-fox coat and the cloth-of-silver gown. Honest, it's so heavy I nearly fainted in it the other night. Lots he cares!"
"It'll be a swell blow, Del. The hundredth night he gave when Perfecta was starring was town talk. He don't stop at nothin'."
"No, he don't stop at nothin'."
"He gimme a look to-night when I came off from the prance. He'd gimme notice in a minute if he didn't need me. He knows that ballet would fall like a bride's biscuit without me."
"Sure it would! He likes your work, hon'. I never pulled any strings for you, neither. He just seen your try-out and liked it swell."
"Sure he did, but he's that jealous of you! He was dead sore when you brought me down here to dress with you. Gee, you're tired, ain't you, dearie?"
"Dog-tired! That staircase waltz always does me up."
"Lay your head down here a minute. Ain't that just life, though? Here we are kicking just like a year ago in Fallows's 'Neatly Furnished.'"
"I ain't kickin', Ysobel. I wake up every morning pinchin' myself."
"Gawd, if you gotta long face, what ought the rest of us to have? You're the luckiest girl any of us knows. Did you see what the new Yellow Book says about you? 'The Titian-headed Venus de Meelo'—how's that—huh?"
"Just the same, you wouldn't change places with me, Ysobel! Don't wriggle out of answering me! Now, would you?"
"Watch out, you're mussing up your beauty curls. Here, lemme pin that diamond heart on the left shoulder of your dress. Hurry up, honey, Myers will be here any minute, and you know how sore he gets if you keep him waitin'."
"Do I?"
"Say, but that silver's swell on you!"
"Say, Ysobel, wait till they see my little sister. We could do a twin act that would take 'em off their feet. That new 'Heavenly Twin' show that Al read us the first act of, with Cottie and me featured, and you doin' the Columbine—gee—"
"'Sh-h-h-h! There—he—is—knockin'."
"It can't be Hy already. I—I ain't dressed yet, Hy—just a minute! Oh, it's a telegram, Ysobel; take it, like a good girl."
"Say, it ain't another from Third Row Bobbie, is it? You ought to tip him off that he's wastin' his pin-money on you, hon'."
Della ripped the flap, read, and very suddenly sat down on the silver-fox coat. The color drained out of her face, and her breath came irregularly as if her heart had missed a beat.
"Della—Del—darlin'—what's the matter?"
"Oh, Gawd!"
"What, darlin'—what?"
"Read!"
Ysobel peered across the bare shoulder, her slim silk legs tiptoed and her neck arched.
Maw buried yesterday. Money you sent for her birthday paid funeral. Am ready. Wire directions.
Cottie.
"Aw—aw, Del darlin'—honest, I—I don't know what to say, only it—only—it ain't like she was your real mother, Del darlin'. You can't be hard hit over a blind old dame that used to make it hot as sixty for you."
"Poor old soul—she lived like a rat and—died like one, I guess."
"With you sending her money all the time—nixy!"
"Like a rat! Poor old maw."
Della's voice was far removed, like one who speaks through the film of a trance.
"When my old dame died I felt bad, too, but Gawd knows she wasn't peaches and cream to have around the house. And look, darlin'—Cottie's comin' now—look—Cottie's comin'!"
"Cottie—Cottie—comin'?"
"Sure she is—see, read, honey—'Am ready.'"
"Oh, Gawd, Ysobel, now that it's come I—I'm scared—she—she's such a kid—she—Ysobel—I—I'm scared—I—"
"'Sh-h-h. There he is knockin', Del. Try and smile, hon'. You know how sore a long face makes him. Maybe you won't have to go to-night, now—smile, darlin'—smile! Come in!"
The door opened with a fling, and enter Mr. Hy Myers, an unlighted cigar at a sharp oblique in one corner of his mouth, hat slightly askew, and a full-length overcoat flung open to reveal a mink lining and studded shirt-front.
"Gad," he said, dallying backward on his heels, his thumbs in the arm-circles of his waistcoat, and regarding the shining silver figure—"Gad, girl, you're all right."
Della drew back against the dressing-table and twirled the rings on her fingers.
"I—I got bad news, Hy. I can't go to-night. Here, read for yourself."
He reached for the paper, passing Ysobel as if she belonged to the trappings of the room.
"I—I can't—go to-night, Hy."
He read with the sharp eyes of a gray hawk of the world, and drew his coat together in a gesture of buttoning up.
"Don't pull any of that stuff on me, Beauty. Just because the old devil you've been tellin' me about—"
"Oh—you—you—"
"Them ain't real tears—you'd be laughin' in your sleeve if you had any on. Come on; step lively, Beauty. I ain't givin' this blow-out to be made a fool out of. Give her a daub of color there, Du Prez."
"Hy! She was my stepmother, and—"
"Come, Beauty, what you actin' up for? Ain't that doll you've been piping about all these months comin' now that the old woman is out of the way? Bring her on and lemme have a look at her. If she's in your class, lemme look her over."
"Gimme—a minute, Hy. I—I just wanna send—a wire."
"Sure; tell her to come on. I'll send it for you. I'll look her over, and—"
"No—no! Let Ysobel send it. You do it, Ysobel. Here, gimme your pen, Hy."
She wrote with her breath half a moan in her throat, and her bosom heaving and flashing the diamond heart.
"Send it right off, Ysobel darlin'—read it and send it off, darlin'."
She daubed a rabbit's foot under each eye and slid into the silver-fox coat.
"Read it, darlin', and send it."
Ysobel read slowly like a child spelling out its task.
Breakers—ahead. Stay at home, dearie.
Della.
Through eyes that were magnified through the glaze of tears Ysobel burrowed her head in the silver-fox collar.
"Oh, Del—Del darlin'—I'm wise—but, oh, my darlin'."
"Come on. Whatta you think this is, a soul-kiss scene—you two?"
"Comin', Hy—comin'."
"Della darlin'."
"Good night, Ysobel; lemme go, dearie—lemme go."
Then out through a labyrinth of stacked scenery, with her elbow in the cup of his hand, and the silver shimmering in the gloom.
"Gad, you will have that scrawny little hanger-on around and gettin' on my nerves! If I weren't always humorin' the daylights out of you she wouldn't spoil a ballet of mine for fifteen minutes, she—"
"It's darn little I ask out of you, but you gotta lemme have her—you gotta lemme have that much, or the whole blame show can—"
"Keep cool, there, Tragedy Queen, and watch your step! I don't want you limpin' in there to-night with a busted ankle on top of your long face."
They high-stepped through a dirty passageway stacked with stage bric-à-brac, out into a whiff of night air, across a pavement, and into a wine-colored limousine.
He climbed in after her, throwing open the great fur collar of his coat and lighting his cigar.
They plunged forward into the white flare of Broadway, and within her plate-glass inclosure she was like a doomed queen riding to her destiny.
"Light up there, Dolly! No long face to-night! The crowd's going to be there waitin' for you. Look at me, you little devil—you little devil!"
"Gawd, what are you made of? Ain't you got no feelings?"
"Tush! You ain't real on that talk. I know you better'n you know yourself. Ain't I told you that you can bring the little sister on and lemme look her over? There's nothin' I wouldn't do for you, Beauty. You got me crazy to-night over you. Eh! Pretty soft for a little hayseed like you!"
She smiled suddenly, flashed her teeth, cooed in her throat, and reared her white throat out of its fur like a swan rears its head out of its snowy neck.
"I—I'll be all right in a minute, Hy. Just lemme sit quiet a second, Hy. I—I'm dog-tired, encores and all. Gimme a little while to tune up—before—we get there. Just a minute, Hy."
"That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?"
"Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'."
"I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh—do you, Beauty?"
She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery, and within the satin-down interior of her muff her fingers clasped each other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh.
"Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann, answer like a good girl. Love me?"
"Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'."
"No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to answer—love me?"
"Aw, now—"
"One—two—three—four—five—"
"Yes."
Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and motor-cars.
Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue.
The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature via the five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance.
Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed. Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring. Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the flower-seed catalogue.
The commuter lives with his head in the rarefied atmosphere of his thirty-fifth-story office, his heart in the five-hundred-dollars-down plot of improved soil, and one eye on the time-table.
For longer than its most unprogressive dared hope, the township of Newton lay comfortable enough without the pale, until one year the interurban reached out steel arms and scooped her to the bosom of the city.
Overnight, as it were, the inoculation was complete. Bungalows and one-story, vine-grown real-estate offices sprang up on large, light-brown tracts of improved property, traffic sold by the book. The new Banner Store, stirred by the heavy, three-trolley interurban cars and the new proximity of the city, swung a three-color electric sign across the sidewalk and instituted a trading-stamp system. But in spite of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising space in the Newton Weekly Gazette, Julius Binswanger felt the suction of the city drawing at his strength, and at the close of the second summer he took invoice and frowned at what he saw.
The frown remained an indelible furrow between his eyes. Mrs. Binswanger observed it across the family table one Saturday, and paused in the epic rite of ladling soup out of a tureen, a slight pucker on her large, soft-fleshed face.
"Honest, Julius, when you come home from the store nights right away I get the blues."
Mr. Binswanger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the bulging bib of his napkin. Late sunshine percolated into the dining-room through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design like coarse lace across his inquiring features.
"Right away you get what, Becky?"
"Right away I get the blues. A long face you've had for so long I can't remember."
"Ya, ya, Becky, something you got to have to talk about. A long face she puts on me yet, children."
"Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed backward the mane of his black pompadour.
"Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it."
Mr. Binswanger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.
"A dude like you with a red-and-white shirt like I wouldn't keep in stock ain't—"
"See, ma, you started something."
"'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something—something what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?"
Miss Pearl Binswanger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and showed the oval of her teeth against the clear, gold-olive of her skin. The same scarf of sunshine fell like a Spanish shawl across her shoulders, and lay warm on her little bosom and across her head, which was small and dark as Giaconda's.
"I ain't saying nothing, am I, mamma? The minute I try to talk to papa about—about moving to the city or anything, he gets excited like the store was on fire."
"Ya, ya, more as that I get excited over such nonsenses."
"No, to your papa you children say nothing. It's me that gets my head dinned full. Your children, Julius, think that for me you do anything what I ask you; but I don't see it. Pass your papa the dumplings, Poil. Can I help it that he carries on him a face like a funeral?"
"Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at me no more."
"See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more Kartoffel Salad, Julius?"
"Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet, that's the latest."
"Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him since he's in the new store I don't know."
"Ach, you—the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?"
"No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed."
"A little more Kartoffel Salad, Becky? Not so much!"
"Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us."
"I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie."
"Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this hole."
"Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood—"
"For a young girl can you blame her? She feels like if she lived in the city she would meet people and Izzy's friends. Talk for yourself, Poil."
"I—"
"Boys like Ignatz Landauer and Max Teitlebaum, what he meets at the Young Men's Association. Talk for yourself, Poil."
"I—"
"Poil's got a tenant for the house, Julius. I ain't afraid to tell you."
"I don't listen to such nonsense."
"From the real-estate offices they sent 'em, Julius, and Poil took 'em through. Furnished off our hands they take it for three months, till their bungalow is done for 'em. Forty dollars for a house like ours on the wrong side of town away from the improvements ain't so bad. A grand young couple, no children. Izzy thinks it's a grand idea, too, Julius. He says if we move to the city he don't have to live in such a dark little hall-room no more. To the hotel he can come with us on family rates just so cheap. Ain't it, Izzy?"
Mr. Isadore Binswanger broke his conspiracy of silence gently, like a skeptic at breakfast taps his candle-blown egg with the tip of a silver spoon once, twice, thrice, then opens it slowly, suspiciously.
"I said, pa, that with forty dollars a month rent from the house, and—"
"In my own house, where I belong and can afford, I stay. I'm an old man, and—"
"Not so fast, pa, not so fast! I only said that with forty dollars from the house for three months this winter you can live almost as cheap in the city as here. And for me to come out every Saturday night to take Pearlie to the theater ain't such a cinch, neither. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum, he likes her well enough to take her to the theater hisself, but by the time he gets out here for her he ain't go no enjoyment left in him."
"When a young man likes well enough a young lady, a forty-five-minutes street-car ride is like nothing."
"Aw, papa, in story-books such talk is all right, but when a young man has got to change cars at Low Bridge and wait for the Owl going home it don't work out so easy—does it Izzy, does it, mamma?"
"For three years, pa, even before I got my first job in the city, always mamma and Pearlie been wantin' a few months away."
"With my son in the city losing every two months his job I got enough city to last me so long as I live. When in my store I need so bad a good young man for the new-fashioned advertising and stock, to the city he has to go for a salesman's job. When a young man can't get along in business with his old father I don't go running after him in the city."
"Pa, for heaven's sakes don't begin that! I'm sick of listening to it. Newton ain't no place for a fellow to waste his time in."
"What else you do in the city, I like to know!"
"Julius, leave Izzy alone when one night a week he comes home."
"For my part you don't need to move to the city. I only said to Pearlie and ma, when they asked me, that a few months in a family hotel like the Wellington can't bust you. For me to come out home every Saturday night to take Pearlie into the theater ain't no cinch. In town there's plenty of grand boys that I know who live at the Wellington—Ignatz Landauer, Max Teitlebaum, and all that crowd. Yourself I've heard you say how much you like Max."
"For why, when everybody is moving out to Newton, we move away?"
"That's just it, papa, now with the interurban boom you got the chance to sublet. Ain't it, mamma and Izzy?"
"Sure it—"
"Ya, ya; I know just what's coming, but for me Newton is good enough."
"What about your children, Julius? You ain't the only one in the family."
"Twenty-five year I've lived in this one place since the store was only so big as this room, and on this house we didn't have a second story. A home that I did everything but build with my own hands I don't move out of so easy. Such ideas you let your children pump you with, Becky."
"See, children, you say he can't never refuse me nothing; listen how he won't let me get in a word crossways before he snaps me off. If we sublet, Julius, we—"
"Sublet we don't neither! I should ride forty-five minutes into the city after my hard day's work, when away from the city forty-five minutes every one else is riding. My house is my house, my yard is my yard. I don't got no ideas like my high-toned son and daughter for a hotel where to stretch your feet you got to pay for the space."
"Listen to your papa, children, even before I got my mouth open good how he talks back to a wife that nursed him through ten years of bronchitis. All he thinks I'm good enough for is to make poultices and rub on his chest goose grease."
"Ach, Becky, don't fuss so with your old man. Look, even the cat you got scared. Here, Billy—here, kitty, kitty."
"Ain't I asked you often enough, Julius, not to feed on the carpet a piece of meat to the cat? 'Sh-h-h-h, Billy, scat! All that I'm good enough for is to clean up. How he talks to his wife yet!"
Miss Binswanger caught her breath on the crest of a sob and pushed her untouched plate toward the center of the table; tears swam on a heavy film across her eyes and thickened her gaze and voice.
"This—ain't—no—hole for—for a girl to live in."
"All I wish is you should never live in a worse."
"I ain't got nothin' here, papa, but sit and sit and sit on the porch every night with you and mamma. When Izzy comes out once a week to take me to a show, how he fusses and fusses you hear for yourselves. For a girl nearly—twenty—it ain't no joke."
"It ain't, papa; it ain't no joke for me to have to take her in and out every week, lemme tell you."
"Eat your supper, Poil; not eating don't get you nowheres with your papa."
"I—I don't want nothin'."
A tear wiggle—waggled down Miss Binswanger's smooth cheek, and she fumbled at her waist-line for her handkerchief.
"I—I—I just wish sometimes I—was dead."
Mr. Binswanger shot his bald head outward suddenly, as a turtle darts forward from its case, and rapped the table noisily with his fist clutched around an upright fork, and his voice climbing to a falsetto.
"I—I wish in my life I had never heard the name of the city."
"Now, Julius, don't begin."
"Ruination it has brought me. My boy won't stay by me in the store so he can't gallivant in the city; my goil won't talk to me no more for madness because we ain't in the city; my wife eats out of me my heart because we ain't in the city. For supper every night when I come home tired from the store all I get served to me is the city. I can't swallow no more! Money you all think I got what grows on trees, just because I give all what I got. You should know how tight—how tight I got to squeeze for it."
Mrs. Binswanger threw her arms apart in a wide gesture of helplessness.
"See, children, just as soon as I say a word, mad like a wet hen he gets and right away puts on a poor mouth."
"Mad yet I shouldn't get with such nonsense. Too good they both got it. Always I told you how we spoilt 'em."
"Don't holler so, pa."
"Don't tell me what to do! You with your pretty man suit and your hair and finger-nails polished like a shoe-shine. You go to the city, and I stay home where I belong in my own house."
"His house—always his house!"
"Ya, a eight-room house and running water she's got if she wants to have company. Your mamma didn't have no eight rooms and finished attic when she was your age. In back of a feed store she sat me. Too good you got it, I say. New hard-wood floors down-stairs didn't I have to put in, and electric light on the porch so your company don't break his neck? Always something new, and now no more I can't eat a meal in peace."
"'Sh-h-h-h, Julius!"
"I should worry that the Teitlebaums and the Landauers live in a fine family hotel in Seventy-second Street. Such people with big stores in Sixth Avenue can buy and sell us. Not even if I could afford it would I want to give up my house and my porch, where I can smoke my pipe, and my comforts that I worked for all my life, and move to the city in rooms so little and so far up I can't afford to pay for 'em. I should give up my chickens and my comforts!"
"Your comforts, always your comforts! Do I think of my comforts?"
"Ma, don't you and pa begin now with your fussing. Like cats you are one minute and the next like doves."
"Don't boss me in my own house, Izzy! So afraid your papa is that he won't get all the comforts what's coming to him. I wish you was so good to me as you are to that cat, Julius—twice I asked you not to feed him on the carpet. Scat, Billy!"
"Pass me some noodles, maw."
"Good ones, eh, Izzy?"
"Fine, maw."
"I ask you, is it more comfortable, Julius, for me to be cooped up in the city in rooms that all together ain't as big as my kitchen? No, but of my children I think too besides my own comforts."
"Ya, ya; now, Becky, don't get excited. Look at your mamma, Pearlie; shame on her, eh? How mad she gets at me till blue like her wrapper her face gets."
"My house and my yard so smooth like your hand, and my big porch and my new laundry with patent wringer is more to me as a hotel in the city. But when I got a young lady daughter with no attentions and no prospects I can't think always of my own comforts."
"Ya, ya, Becky; don't get excited."
"Don't ya—ya me, neither."
"Ach, old lady, that only means how much I love you."
"We got a young lady daughter; do you want that she should sit and sit and sit till for ever we got a daughter, only she ain't young no more. I tell you out here ain't no place for a young goil—what has she got?"
"Yes, papa; what have I got? The trees for company!"
"Do you see, Julius, in the new bungalows any families moving in with young ladies? Would even your son Isadore what ain't a young lady stay out here when he was old enough to get hisself a job in the city?"
"That a boy should leave his old father like that!"
"Wasn't you always kickin' to me, pa, that there wasn't a future in the business after the transaction came—wasn't you?"
"No more arguments you get with me!"
"What chance, Julius, I ask you, has a goil like Poil got out here in Newton? To sit on the front porch nights with Meena Schlossman don't get her nowheres; to go to the moving—pictures with Eddie Goldstone, what can't make salt for hisself, ain't nothing for a goil that hopes to do well for herself. If she only looks out of the corner of her eye at Mike Donnely three fits right away you take!"
"Gott, that's what we need yet!"
"See, even when I mention it, look at him, Poil, how red he gets! But should she sit and sit?"
"Ach, such talk makes me sick. Plenty girls outside the city gets better husbands as in it. Na, na, mamma, did you find me in the city?"
"Ach, Julius, stop foolin'. When I got you for a husband enough trouble I found for myself."
"In my business like it goes down every day, Becky, I ain't got the right to make a move."
"See, the poor mouth again! Just so soon as we begin to talk about things. A man that can afford only last March to take out a new five-thousand-dollar life-insurance policy—"
"'Sh-h-h-h, Becky."
"For why shouldn't your children know it? Yes, up-stairs in my little green box along with my cameo ear-rings and gold watch-chain I got it put away, children. A new life-insurance policy on light-blue paper, with a red seal I put only last week. When a man that never had any insurance before takes it out so easy he can afford it."
"Not—not because I could afford it I took it, Becky, but with business low I squeeze myself a little to look ahead."
"Only since we got the new store you got so tight. Now you got more you don't let it go so easy. A two-story brick with plate-glass fronts now, and always a long face."
"A long face! You should be worried like I with big expenses and big stock and little business. Why you think I take out a policy so late at such a terrible premium? Why? So when I'm gone you got something besides debts!"
"Just such a poor mouth you had, Julius, when we wanted on the second story."
"I ask you, Becky: one thing that you and the children ever wanted ain't I found a way to get it for you? I ask you?"
"Ya, but a woman that was always economical like me you didn't need to refuse. Never for myself I asked for things."
"Ach, ma and pa, don't begin that on the one night a week I'm home."
"So economical all my life I been. Till Izzy was ashamed to go to school in 'em I made him pants out of yours. You been a good husband, but I been just as good a wife, and don't you forget it!"
"Na, na, old lady; don't get excited again. But right here at my table, even while I hate you should have to know it, Becky, in front of your children I say it, I—I'm all mortgaged up, even on this house I'm—"
"On the old store you was mortgaged, too. In a business a man has got to raise money on his assets. Didn't you always say that yourself? Business is business."
"But I ain't got the business no more, Becky. I—I ain't said nothing, but—but next week I close out the trimmed hats, Becky."
"Papa!"
"Trimmed hats! Julius, your finest department."
"For why I keep a department that don't pay its salt? I ain't like you three; looks ain't everything."
"I know. I know. Ten years ago the biggest year what we ever had you closed out the rubber coats, too, right in the middle of the season. A poor mouth you'd have, Julius, if right now you was eating gold dumplings instead of chicken dumplings."
"Na, na, Becky; don't pick on your old man."
"Since we been married I—"
"Aw, ma and pa, go hire a hall."
Suddenly Miss Binswanger clattered down her fork and pushed backward from the table; tears streamed toward the corners of her mouth.
"That's always the way! What's the use of getting off the track? All we want to say, papa, is we got a chance like we never had before to sublet. Forty dollars a month, and no children. For three months we could live in the city on family rates, and maybe for three months I'd know I was alive. A—a girl's got feelings, papa! And, honest, it—it ain't no trip, papa—what's forty-five minutes on the car with your newspaper?—honest, papa, it ain't."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger drained a glass of water.
"Give 'er a chance, pa. The boys'll show her a swell time in the city—Max Teitlebaum and all that crowd. It ain't no fun for me traipsin' out after her, lemme tell you."
Mr. Binswanger pushed back his chair and rose from the table. His eyes, the wet-looking eyes of age and asthma, retreated behind a network of wrinkles as intricate as overhead wiring.
"I wish," he cried, "I was as far as the bottom of the ocean away from such nonsense as I find in my own family. Up to my neck I'm full. Like wolfs you are! On my neck I can feel your breath hot like a furnace. Like wolfs you drive me till I—I can't stand it no more. All what I ask is my peace—my little house, my little pipe, my little porch, and not even my peace can I have. You—you're a pack of wolfs, I tell you—even your fangs I can see, and—and I—I wish I was so far away as the bottom of the ocean."
He shambled toward the door on legs bent to the cruel curve of rheumatism. The sun had dropped into a bursting west, and was as red as a mist of blood. Its reflection lay on the smooth lawn and hung in the dark shadows of quiet trees, and through the fulvous haze of evening's first moment came the chirruping of crickets.
"I wish I was so far away as the bottom of the ocean."
The tight-springed screen door sprang shut on his words, and his footsteps shambled across the wide ledge of porch. A silence fell across the little dining-table, and Miss Binswanger wiped at fresh tears, but her mother threw her a confident gesture of reassurance.
"Don't say no more now for a while, children."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger inserted a toothpick between his lips and stretched his limbs out at a hypotenuse from the chair.
"I'm done. I knew the old man would jump all over me."
"Izzy, you and Poil go on now; for the theater you won't catch the seven-ten car if you don't hurry. Leave it to me, Poil; I can tell by your papa's voice we got him won. How he fusses like just now don't make no difference; you know how your papa is. Here, Poil, lemme help you with your coat."
"I—I don't want to go, mamma!"
"Ach, now, Poil, you—"
"If you're coming with me you'd better get a hustle. I ain't going to hang around this graveyard all evening."
Her brother rose to his slightly corpulent five feet five and shook his trousers into their careful creases. His face was a soft-fleshed rather careless replica of his mother's, with a dimple-cleft chin, and a delicate down of beard that made his shaving a manly accomplishment rather than a hirsute necessity.
"Here on the sideboard is your hat, Poil—powder a little around your eyes. Just leave papa to me, Poil. Ach, how sweet that hat with them roses out of stock looks on you! Come out here the side way—ach, how nice it is out here on the porch! How short the days get—dark nearly already at seven! Good-by, children. Izzy, take your sister by the arm; the whole world don't need to know you're her brother."
"Leave the door on the latch, mamma."
"Have a good time, children. Ain't you going to say good-by to your papa, Poil? Your worst enemy he ain't. Julius, leave Billy alone—honest, he likes that cat better as his family. Tell your papa good-by, Poil."
"I—said—good-by."
"She should say good-by to me only if she wants to. Izzy, when you go out the gate drive back that rooster—I'll wring his little gallivantin' neck if he don't stop roosting in that bush!"
"Good night, children; take good care of the cars."
"Good night, mamma...papa."
The gate clicked shut, and the two figures moved into the mist of growing gloom; over their heads the trees met and formed across the brick sidewalk a roof as softly dark as the ceiling of a church. Birds chirped.
Mrs. Binswanger leaned her wide, uncorseted figure against a pillar and watched them until a curve in the avenue cut her view, then she dragged a low wicker rocker across the veranda.
"We can sit out on the porch a while yet, Julius. Not like midsummer it is for your rheumatism."
"Ya, ya. My slippers, Becky."
"Here."
"Ya, ya."
"Look across the yard, will you, Julius. The Schlossmans are still at the supper-table. Fruit gelatin they got. I seen it cooling on the fence. We got new apples on the side-yard tree, you wouldn't believe, Julius. To-morrow I make pies."
"Ya, ya."
The light tulle of early evening hung like a veil, and through it the sad fragrance of burning leaves, which is autumn's incense, drifted from an adjoining lawn.
"'Sh-h-h-h, chickey—sh-h-h-h! Back in the yard I can't keep that rooster, Julius. And to-day for thirty cents I had that paling in the garden fence fixed, too. Honest, to keep a yard like ours going is an expense all the time. People in the city without yards is lucky."
"In all Newton there ain't one like ours. Look, Becky, at that white-rose bush flowering so late just like she was a bride."
"When Izzy was home always, we didn't have the expense of weeding."
"Now when he comes home all he does is change neckties and make trouble."
"Ach, my moon vines! Don't get your chair so close, Julius. Look how those white flowers open right in your face. One by one like big stars coming out."
"M-m-m-m and smell, Becky, how good!"
"Here, lemme pull them heavy shoes off for you, papa. Listen, there goes that oriole up in the cherry-tree again. Listen to the thrills he's got in him. Pull, Julius; I ain't no derrick!"
"Ah-h-h, how good it feels to get 'em off! Now light my pipe, Becky. Always when you light it, better it tastes. Hold—there—make out of your hand a cup—there—pu-pu-pu—there! Now sit down by me, Becky!"
"Move over."
"Ach, Becky, when we got our little home like this, with a yard so smooth as my hand, where we don't need shoes or collars, and with our own fruit right under our noses, for why ain't you satisfied?"
"For myself, Julius, believe me it's too good, but for Poil we—"
"Look all what you can see right here from our porch! Look there through the trees at the river; right in front of our eyes it bends for us. Look what a street we live on. We should worry it ain't in the booming part. Quiet like a temple, with trees on it older as you and me together."
"The caterpillars is bad this year, Julius; trees ain't so cheap, neither. In the city such worries they ain't got."
"For what with a place like this, Becky, with running water and—"
"It's Poil, Julius. Not a thing a beau-ti-fool girl like Poil has out here."
"Nonsense. It's a sin she should want a better place as this. Ain't she got a plush parlor and a piano and—"
"It's like Izzy says, Julius: there's too many fine goils in the city for the boys to come out here on a forty-five-minute ride. What boys has she got out here, Mike Donnely and—"
"Ach!"
"That's what we need; just something like that should happen to us. But, believe me, it's happened before when a girl ain't got no better to pick from. How I worry about it you should know."
"Becky, with even such talk you make me sick."
"Mark my word, it's happened before, Julius! That's why I say, Julius, a few months in the city this winter and she could meet the right young man. Take a boy like Max Teitlebaum. Yourself you said how grand and steady he is. Twice with Izzy he's been out here, and not once his eyes off Poil did he take."
"Teitlebaum, with a store twice so big as ours on Sixth Avenue, don't need to look for us—twice they can buy and sell us."
"Is—that—so! To me that makes not one difference. Put Poil in the city, where it don't take an hour to get to be, and, ach, almost anything could happen! Not once did he take his eyes off her—such a grand, quiet boy, too."
"When a young man's got thoughts, forty-five minutes' street-car ride don't keep him away."
"Nonsense! I always say I never feel hungry till I see in front of me a good meal. If I have to get dressed and go out and market for it I don't want it. It's the same with marriage. You got to work up in the young man the appetite. What they don't see they don't get hungry for. They got to get eyes bigger as their stomachs first."
"Such talk makes me sick. Suppose she don't get married, ain't she got a good home and—"
"An old maid you want yet! A beau-ti-fool goil like our Poil he wants to make out of her an old maid, or she should break her parents' hearts with a match like Mike Donnely—"
"Becky."
"Aw, Julius, now we got the chance to rent for three months. Say we live them three months at the Wellington Hotel. Say it costs us a little more; everybody always says what a grand provider you are, Julius; let them say a little more, Julius."
"I—I ain't got the money, Becky, I tell you. For me to refuse what you want is like I stick a knife in my heart, but I got poor business, Becky."
"Maybe in the end, Julius, it's the cheapest thing we ever done."
"I can't afford it, Becky."
"For only three months we can go, Julius."
"I got notes, Becky, notes already twice extended. If I don't meet in March God knows where—"
"Ya, ya, Julius; all that talk I know by heart!"
"I ain't getting no younger neither, Becky. Hardly through the insurance examination I could get. I ain't so strong no more. When I get big worries I don't sleep so good. I ain't so well nights, Becky."
"Always the imagination sickness, Julius."
"I ain't so well, I tell you, Becky."
"Last time when all you had was the neuralgia, and you came home from the store like you was dying, Dr. Ellenburg told me hisself right here on this porch that never did he know a man so nervous of dying like you."
"I can't help it, Becky."
"If I was so afraid like you of dying, Julius, not one meal could I enjoy. A healthy man like you with nothing but the rheumatism and a little asthma. Only last week you came home pale like a ghost with a pain in your side, when it wasn't nothing but where your pipe burnt a hole in your pants pocket to give me some more mending to do."
"Just for five minutes you should have felt that pain!"
"Honest, Julius, to be a coward like you for dying it ain't nice—honest, it ain't."
"Always, Becky, when I think I ain't always going to be with you and the children such a feeling comes over me."
"Ach, Julius, be quiet! Without you I might just as well be dead, too."
"I'm getting old, Becky; sixty-six ain't no spring chicken no more."
"That's right, Julius; stick knives in me."
"Life is short, Becky; we must be happy while we got each other."
"Life is short, Julius, and for our children we should do all what we can. We can't always be with them, Julius. We—we must do the right thing by 'em. Like you say we—we're getting old—together, Julius. We don't want nothing to reproach ourselves with."
"Ya, ya, Becky."
Darkness fell thickly, like blue velvet portières swinging together, and stars sprang out in a clear sky.
They rocked in silence, their heads touching. The gray cat, with eyes like opals, sprang into the hollow of Mr. Binswanger's arm.
"Billy, you come to sit by mamma and me? Ni-ce Bil-ly!"
"We go in now, papa; in the damp you get rheumatism."
"Ya, ya, Becky—hear how he purrs, like an engine."
"Come on, papa; damper every minute it gets."
He rose with his rheumatic jerkiness, placed the cat gently on all fours on the floor, and closed his fingers around the curve of his wife's outstretched arm.
"When—when we go—go to the city, Becky, we don't sublet Billy; we—we take him with us, not, Becky?"
"Yes, papa."
"Ya, ya, Becky."
The chief sponsors for the family hotel are neurasthenia and bridge whist, the inability of the homemaker and the debility of the housekeeper.
Under these invasions Hestia turns out the gas-logs, pastes a To Let sign on the windows, locks the front door behind her, and gives the key to the auctioneer.
The family holds out the dining-room clock and a pair of silver candlesticks that came over on the stupendously huge cargo which time and curio dealers have piled upon the good ship Mayflower; engages a three-room suite on the ninth floor of a European-plan hotel, and inaugurates upon the sly American paradox of housekeeping in non-housekeeping apartments.
The Wellington Hotel was a rococo haven for such refugees from the modern social choler, and its doors flew open and offered them a family rate, excellent cuisine, quarantine.
Excellent cuisine, however, is a clever but spiceless parody on home cookery.
Mr. Binswanger read his evening menu with the furrow deepening between his eyes.
"Such a soup they got! Mulla-ga-what?"
"'Shh-h-h, papa; mullagatawny! Rice soup."
"Mullagatawny! Fine mess!"
"'Shh-h-h, Julius; don't talk so loud. Does the whole dining-room got to know you don't know nothing?"
Mrs. Binswanger took nervous résumé of the red-and-gold, bright-lighted dining-room.
"For a plate of noodles soup, Becky, they can have all their mullagatawny! Fifteen cents for a plate of soup, Becky, and at home for that you could make a whole pot full twice so good."
"'Sh-h-h-h, papa."
"Don't 'sh-h-h-h-h me no more neither, Pearlie. Five months, from October to February, I been shooed like I was one of our roosters at home got over in Schlossman's yard. There, you read for me, Izzy; such language I don't know."
Isadore took up a card and crinkled one eye in a sly wink toward his mother and sister.
"Rinderbrust und Kartoffel Salad, pa, mit Apful Küchen und Kaletraufschnitt."
"Ya, ya, make fun yet! A square meal like that should happen to me yet in a highway-robbery place like this."
Mrs. Binswanger straightened her large-bosomed, stiff-corseted figure in its large-design, black-lace basque, and pulled gently at her daughter's flesh-colored chiffon sleeve, which fell from her shoulders like angels' wings.
"Look across the room, Poil. There's Max just coming in the dining-room with his mother. Always the first thing he looks over at our table. Bow, Julius; don't you see across the room the Teitlebaums coming in? I guess old man Teitlebaum is out on the road again."
Miss Binswanger flushed the same delicate pink as her chiffon, and showed her oval teeth in a vivid smile.
"Ain't he silly, though, to-night, mamma! Look, when he holds up two fingers at me it means first he takes his mother up to her pinochle club, and then by nine o'clock he comes back to me."
"How good that woman has got it! Look, Poil, another waist she's wearing again."
"Look how he pulls out the chair for his mother, Izzy. It would hurt you to do that for me and mamma, wouldn't it?"
"Say, missy, I learnt manners two years before you ever done anything but hold down the front porch out on Newton Avenue. I'd been meetin' Max Teitlebaum and Ignatz Landauer and that crowd over at the Young Men's Association before you'd ever been to the movie with anybody except Meena Schlossman."
"I don't see that all your good start got you anywheres."
"Don't let swell society go to your head, missy. You ain't got Max yet, neither. You ought to be ashamed to be so crazy about a boy. Wait till I tell you something when we get up-stairs that'll take some of your kink out, missy."
"Children, children, hush your fussing! Julius, don't read all the names off the bill of fare."
Miss Binswanger regarded her brother under level brows, and threw him a retort that sizzed across the table like drops of water on a hot stove-top.
"Anyways, if I was a fellow that couldn't keep a job more than two months at a time I'd lay quiet. I wouldn't be out of a job all the time, and beggin' my father to set me up in business when I was always getting fired from every place I worked."
"Children!"
"Well, he always starts with me, mamma."
"Izzy, ain't you got no respect for your sister? For Gawd's sakes take that bill of fare away from your papa, Izzy. He'll burn a hole in it. Always the prices he reads out loud till so embarrassed I get. No ears and eyes he has for anything else. He reads and reads, but enough he don't eat to keep alive a bird."
Mr. Binswanger drew his spectacles off his nose, snapped them into a worn-leather case and into his vest pocket; a wan smile lay on his lips.
"I got only eyes for you, Becky, eh? All dressed up, ain't you?—black lace yet! What you think of your mamma, children? Young she gets, not?"
"Ach, Julius!"
The little bout of tenderness sent a smile around the table, and behind the veil of her lashes Miss Binswanger sent the arrow of a glance across the room.
"Honest, mamma, I wonder if Max sees anything green on me."
"He sees something sweet on you, maybe, Poil. Izzy, pass your papa some radishes. Not a thing does that man eat, and such an appetite he used to have."
"Radishes better as these we get in our yard at home. Ten cents for six radishes! Against my appetite it goes to eat 'em, when in my yard at home—"
"Home, always home!"
"Papa, please don't put your napkin in your collar like a bib. Mamma, make him take it out. Honest, even for the waiter I'm ashamed. How he watches us, too, and laffs behind the tray."
"Leave me alone, Pearlie. My shirt-front I don't use for no bib! Laundry rates in this hold-up place ain't so cheap."
"Mamma, please make him take it out."
"Julius!"
"Look, papa, at the Teitlebaums and Schoenfeldts, laughing at us, papa. Look now at him, mamma; just for to spite me he bends over and drinks his soup out loud out of the tip of his spoon—please, papa."
Mr. Binswanger jerked his napkin from its mooring beneath each ear and peered across at his daughter with his face as deeply creased as a raisin.
"I wish," he said, low in his throat, and with angry emphasis quivering his lips behind the gray and black bristles of his mustache—"ten times a day I wish I was back in my little house in Newton, where I got my comfort and my peace—you children I got to thank for this, you children."
Mr. Isadore Binswanger replaced his spoon in his soup-plate and leaned back against his chair.