Part 42 (1/2)

”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 m.u.f.f 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.”

THE GOOD PROVIDER

Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the towns.h.i.+p 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 towns.h.i.+p 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 inst.i.tuted a trading-stamp system. But in spite of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising s.p.a.ce in the Newton _Weekly Gazette_, Julius Binsw.a.n.ger 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. Binsw.a.n.ger observed it across the family table one Sat.u.r.day, 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. Binsw.a.n.ger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the bulging bib of his napkin. Late suns.h.i.+ne percolated into the dining-room through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design like coa.r.s.e 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.”