Part 23 (1/2)

He gathered her up and laid her head backward on his shoulder, so that her face was foreshortened and close to his.

”Goldie-eyes,” he said, ”I'll make it up to you! I'll make it up to you!” And he made a motion as though to kiss her where the curls lay on her face, but drew back as if sickened.

”Good G.o.d!” he said. ”Poor little baby!”

Quick as a throb of a heart she turned her left cheek, smooth as a lily petal, to his lips.

”It's all right, Harry!” she said, in a voice that was tight. ”I'm crazy, I guess; but, gee, it's great to be crazy!”

”I'll make it up to you, baby. See if I don't! I'll make it up to you.”

She kissed him, and his lips were hot and dry.

”Lemme fix your plaster, dearie; you got one of your colds.”

”Don't get it too hot, hon.”

”Gee! Lemme straighten up. Say, ain't you a messer, though! Look at this here wash-stand and those neckties! Ain't you a messer, though, dearie!”

She crammed the ties into a dresser drawer, dragged a chair into place, removed a small tin can from the wash-stand drawer, hung her hat and jacket on their peg, and lowered the shade.

MARKED DOWN

Along with radium, parcels post, wireless telegraphy, and orchestral church music came tight skirts and the hipless movement.

Adolph Katzenstein placed his figurative ear to the ground, heard the stealthy whisper of soft messalines and clinging charmeuse, and sold out the Empire s.h.i.+rt-waist Company for twenty-five hundred dollars at a slight loss.

Five years later the Katzenstein Neat-Fit Petticoat was flaunted in the red and white electric lights in the lightest part of Broadway, and the figure of an ecstatic girl in an elastic-top, charmeuse-ruffled petticoat had become as much of an epic in street-car advertising as the flakiest breakfast food or the safest safety razor.

Then the Katzensteins moved from a simplex to a complex apartment, furnished the dining-room in Flemish oak and the bedroom in white mahogany; Mrs. Katzenstein telephoned to her fancy grocer's for artichokes instead of buying cabbages from the street-vender, and Mr.

Katzenstein walked with the four fingers of each hand thrust into the distended front pockets of his trousers.

On the first Tuesday of each month Mrs. Katzenstein entertained at whist--an antediluvian survival of a bridgeless era.

At eight o'clock in the morning of one of these first Tuesdays she entered her daughter's white-mahogany bedroom, raised the shades with a clatter, and drew back the curtains.

”Birdie, get up! It's late, and we got house-cleaning this morning.

Papa's been gone already an hour.”

The pink-and-white flowered comforter on the bed stirred, and two plump arms, with frills of lace falling backward, raised up like st.u.r.dy monoliths in the stretch that accompanies a yawn.

”Aw--yaw--yaw--mamma! Can't you let a girl sleep after she's been up late? Tell Tillie she should begin her sweeping in the hall.”

”I should know what time you got home last night. You sneak in like you was afraid it would give me some pleasure to wake up and hear about it!

Who was there? What did Marcus have to say?”

”Aw, mamma, let me sleep--can't you? I'll get up in a minute.”