Part 30 (2/2)

”You're some little dancer, Chug, I'll say. Honest, I could dance with you forever.” This with a pressure of the girl's arm, and spoken with a little accent, whether Swedish, Belgian, or Slavic.

”They all say that.”

”Crazy about yourself, ain't you!”

”Not as crazy as I am about you,” with tardy gallantry.

He was very little stirred, really.

”Yeh, you are. I wish you was. It makes no never minds to you who you're dancing with, s'long's you're dancing.”

This last came one evening as a variant in the usual formula. It startled Chug a little, so that he held the girl off the better to look at her. She was Wanda something-or-other, and anybody but Chug would have been alive to the fact that she had been stalking him for weeks with a stolid persistence.

”Danced with you three times to-night, haven't I?” he demanded. He was rather surprised to find that this was so.

”Wisht it was thirty.”

That was Wanda. Her very eagerness foiled her. She cheapened herself.

When Chug said, ”Can I see you home?” he knew the answer before he put the question. Too easy to get along with, Wanda. Always there ahead of time, waiting, when you made a date with her. Too ready to forgive you when you failed to show up. Telephoned you when you were busy. Didn't give a fellow a chance to come half way, but went seven eighths of it herself. An ignorant, kindly, dangerous girl, with the physical development of a woman and the mind of a child. There were dozens like her in Chippewa.

If the girls of his own cla.s.s noticed him at all it was the more to ignore him as a rather grimy mechanic pa.s.sing briefly before their vision down Outagamie Street on his way to and from dinner. He was shy of them. They had a middle-cla.s.s primness which forbade their making advances even had they been so inclined. Chug would no more have sc.r.a.ped acquaintance with them than he would have tried to flirt with Angie Hatton, Old Man Hatton's daughter, and the richest girl in Chippewa--so rich that she drove her own car with the chauffeur stuck up behind.

You didn't have to worry about Wanda and her kind. There they were, take them or leave them. They expected you to squeeze their waist when you danced with them, and so you did. You didn't have to think about what you were going to say to them.

Mrs. Scaritt suspected in a vague sort of way that Chug was ”running with the hired girls.” The thought distressed her. She was too smart a woman to nag him about it. She tried diplomacy.

”Why don't you bring some young folks home to eat, Chug? I like to fuss around for company.” She was a wonderful cook, Mrs. Scaritt, and liked to display her skill.

”Who is there to bring?”

”The boys and girls you go around with. Who is it you're always fixing up for, evenings?”

”n.o.body.”

Mrs. Scaritt tried another tack.

”I s'pose this house isn't good enough for 'em? Is that it?”

”Good enough!” Chug laughed rather grimly. ”I'd like to know what's the matter with it!”

There was, as a matter of fact, nothing the matter with it. It was as spick and span as paint and polish could make it. The curtain-stretching days were long past. There had even been talk of moving out of the house by the tracks, but at the last moment Mrs. Scaritt had rebelled.

”I'll miss the sound of the trains. I'm used to 'em. It's got so I can tell just where my right hand'll be when the seven fifty-two goes by in the morning, and I've got used to putting on the potatoes when I hear the 'leven-forty. Let's stay, Chug.”

So they had stayed. Gradually they had added an improvement here, a convenience there, as Chug's prosperity grew, until now the cottage by the tracks was newly painted, bathroomed, electric-lighted, with a cement walk front and back and a porch with a wicker swing and flower baskets. Chug gave his mother more housekeeping money than she needed, though she, in turn, served him meals that would have threatened the waist-line of an older and less active man. There was a banana pie, for instance (it sounds sickish, but wait!) which she baked in a deep pan, and over which she poured a golden-brown custard all flecked with crusty melted sugar. You took a bite and lo! it had vanished like a sweet dewdrop, leaving in your mouth a taste as of nectar, and clover-honey, and velvet cream.

Mrs. Scaritt learned to gauge Chug's plans for the evening by his ablutions. Elaborate enough at any time, on dance nights they amounted to a rite. In the old days Chug's father had always made a brief enough business of the process he called was.h.i.+ng up. A hand-basin in the kitchen sink or on the back-porch bench sufficed. The noises he made were out of all proportion to the results obtained. His snufflings, and snortings, and splas.h.i.+ngs were like those of a grampus at play. When he emerged from them you were surprised to find that he had merely washed his face.

Chug had grease to fight. He had learned how in his first days at the garage. His teacher had been old Rudie, a mechanic who had tinkered around automobiles since their kerosene days, and who knew more about them than their inventor. Soap and water alone were powerless against the grease and carbon and dust that ground themselves into Chug's skin.

<script>