Part 24 (2/2)

Again Milton became entranced and his fingers remained motionless on the strings, while, instead of sawing away on the music-stand, his right arm hung by his side. Once more the drummer missed a beat and struck him in the ribs, and Milton, looking up, caught sight of the glaring, demoniacal l.u.s.thaus.

The composition was one of Professor l.u.s.thaus's own and had been especially devised for grand marches to supper. In rhythm and melody it was exceedingly conventional, not to say reminiscent, and when Milton seized his bow with the energy of despair and drew it sharply across the strings of the _contra ba.s.so_ there was introduced a melodic and harmonic element so totally at variance with the character of the composition as to outrage the ears of even Ferdy Rothman. For one fatal moment he turned his head, as did his six aids, and at once the grand march to supper became a hopeless tangle. Simultaneously Milton saw that in five minutes he would be propelled violently to the street at the head of a flying wedge, and he sawed away with a grim smile on his face. Groans like the ultimate sighs of a dying elephant came from underneath his bow, while occasionally he surprised himself with a weird harmonic. At length Professor l.u.s.thaus could stand it no longer.

He threw his baton at Milton and followed it up with his violin case, at which Milton deemed it time to retreat. He grabbed his hat and overcoat and dashed wildly through the ranks of the thirty-nine performers toward the front of the platform. Thence he leaped to the ballroom floor, and two minutes later he was safely on the sidewalk with nothing to hinder his exit save a glancing kick from Ferdy Rothman.

It was precisely eleven o'clock, the very shank of the evening, and Milton fairly shuddered at the idea of going home, but what was he to do? His credit at all of the pool parlours had been strained to the utmost and he was absolutely penniless. For two minutes he surveyed the empty street and, with a stretch and a yawn, he started off home.

Ten minutes later Mrs. Zwiebel recognized with a leaping heart his footsteps on the areaway. She ran to the door and opened it.

”Loafer!” she cried. ”Where was you?”

”Aw, what's the matter now?” Milton asked as he kissed her perfunctorily. ”It's only just eleven o'clock.”

”Sure, I know,” Mrs. Zwiebel said. ”What you come home so early for?”

Again Milton yawned and stretched.

”I was to a racket what the I.O.M.A.'s run off,” he said.

He rubbed the dust from his trouser leg where Ferdy Rothman's kick had soiled it.

”Things was getting pretty slow,” he concluded, ”so I put on my hat and come home.”

Breakfast at the Zwiebels' was a solemn feast. Mr. Zwiebel usually drank his coffee in silence, or in as much silence as was compatible with an operation which, with Mr. Zwiebel, involved screening the coffee through his moustache. It emerged all dripping from the coffee, and Mr. Zwiebel was accustomed to cleansing it with his lower lip and polis.h.i.+ng it off with his table napkin. Eggs and toast followed, and, unless Mrs. Zwiebel was especially vigilant, her husband went downtown with fragments of the yolks clinging to his eyebrows, for Mr. Zwiebel was a hearty eater and no great stickler for table manners.

To Milton, whose table manners were both easy and correct, the primitive methods of his father were irritating.

”Get a sponge!” he exclaimed on the morning after his orchestral experience, as Mr. Zwiebel absorbed his coffee in long, gurgling inhalations.

”Yes, Milton,” Mr. Zwiebel commented, replacing his cup in the saucer, ”maybe I ain't such a fine gentleman what you are, but I ain't no loafer, neither, y'understand. When I was your age I didn't sit down and eat my breakfast at nine o'clock. I didn't have it so easy.”

”Aw, what yer kicking about?” Milton replied. ”You don't let me do nothing down at the store, anyway. All I got to do is sit around. Why don't you send me out on the road and give me a show?”

”A show I would give you,” Zwiebel cried. ”You mean a picnic, not a show. No, Milton, I got some pretty good customers already, but I wouldn't take no such liberties with 'em as sending out a lowlife like you to sell 'em goods.”

”All right,” Milton said, and relapsed into a sulky silence.

”Lookyhere, Milton,” Zwiebel commenced. ”If I thought you was really willing to work, y'understand, I would get you a good job. But with a feller what's all the time fooling away his time, what's the use?”

”Maybe the boy would behave himself this time, popper,” Mrs. Zwiebel interceded. ”Maybe he would attend to business this time, popper. Ain't it?”

”Business!” Mr. Zwiebel exclaimed. ”Business is something what the boy ain't got in him at all. Honest, mommer, I got to sit down sometimes and ask myself what did I done that I should have such a boy. He wouldn't work; he wouldn't do nothing. Just a common, low-life b.u.m, what you see hanging around street corners. If I was a young feller like that, Milton, I would be ashamed to show myself.”

”Aw, cut it out!” Milton replied.

”Yes, mommer, if I would get that boy a good job, y'understand,” Mr.

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