Part 27 (1/2)
”Such talk!”
”You think I let on to anybody! All I say is to you; but a girl needs advice from her parents. Look at your sister Ray--she was a smart and sensible girl.”
”Abe, with his stuttering and all!”
”Just the same he is a good husband to her and makes her a good living.
You think she would have got him if she hadn't fixed things for herself--kind of! Believe me, it was hard enough for us, then, before papa went into petticoats.”
”She can have him!”
”I always say Ray was a smart girl. She wasn't no beauty, and the chances didn't come so thick; and now to walk in her house you wouldn't think she did the courting! A more devoted boy than Abe I don't know.”
”Do you like that bow at the belt, mamma?”
”Yes.... Tillie,” called Mrs. Katzenstein, raising her voice, ”turn on the lights in the parlor, and then tell Mr. Katzenstein I said to put on his coat.”
”I don't want the lights on, mamma--it looks better that way.”
”You want it to look like we was stingy with light yet! How does that look--just the gas-logs going! You tell Mr. Katzenstein, Tillie, that I insist that he should put on his coat to meet Birdie's company--his newspaper will keep. There's the bell! Tillie, go to the door.”
After a well-timed interval Birdie entered the soft-lighted parlor; the gas-logs gave out a mellow but uncertain light. It was as if the spirit of fire were doing an elf dance about the room--glinting on the polished surface of the floor, glancing on and off the gilt frame of a wall-picture, and gleaming at its own reflection in the mahogany table-legs and gla.s.s doors of the curio cabinet.
Mr. Gump was seated in a remote corner, elbows on knees and face in hands, like a Marius mourning among the ruins of his Carthage.
”Howdy-do, Marcus? Such a dark corner you pick out! It's just as cheap to sit in the light,” said Birdie.
He rose and came toward her, squaring his shoulders and tossing his head backward after the manner of a man throwing off a mood, or of the strong man before he stoops to raise the thousand-pound bar of iron.
”What's the matter, Marcus? You aren't sick, are you?”
”Sure I'm not,” he said. ”I'm just catching up on sleep.”
They shook hands and smiled, both of them full of the sweet mystery of their new shyness. His hand trembled, and he released her fingers abruptly.
”Well, how did you get over last night, Marcus? Honest, you look real tired! Didn't we have the grandest time? Henrietta called me up this morning and said she nearly split her sides laughing when you imitated how Mr. Latz sells cigars.”
”To-night,” he said, running a hand over the woolly surface of his hair and exhaling loudly, ”I feel as funny as a funeral.”
”Marcus,” she said, ”honest, you don't look right; you're pale!”
He seated himself on the divan, with her as his immediate _vis-a-vis_.
The light played over them.
”You can believe me, Birdie; somehow when I'm with you I got so many kinds of feelings I don't know how to tell you.”
Nature had been in a slightly playful mood when she chiseled Mr. Gump.
He was a well-set-up young man--solidly knit and close packed--but five inches short of the stuff that matinee idols and policemen are made of.
Napoleon and Don Quixote lacked those same five inches.