Part 28 (2/2)

”I don't know anything about that. But I tell you I won't have them thinking that we're hard up. I'll take them to a restaurant somewhere, and show that little b.o.o.b a square meal!”

He finally selected an oppressively magnificent restaurant where a dollar-and-a-half table-d'hote dinner was served.

”But I'd like to blow them to a real dinner!” he regretted.

”Oh, Wallace, I'm not trying to impress them! We'll have more than enough to eat, and music, and a talk. Then we can break up at about ten, and we'll have done the decent thing!”

The four were to meet at half-past six, but both Adele and Wallace were late, and John and Martie had half an hour's talk while they waited.

Martie fairly bubbled in her joy at the chance to speak of books and poems, ideals and reforms again. She told him frankly and happily that she had missed him; she had wanted to see him so many times! And he looked tired; he had had grippe?

”Always motherly!” he said, a smile on the strange mouth, but no corresponding smile in the faunlike eyes.

Wallace arrived in a bad mood, as Martie instantly perceived. But Adele, radiant in a new hat, was prettily concerned for his cold and fatigue, and they were quickly escorted to a table near the fountain, and supplied with c.o.c.ktails. Cheered, Wallace demanded the bill-of-fare, ”the table-d'hote, Handsome!” said he to the appreciative waiter.

The man lowered his head and murmured obsequiously. The table-d'hote dinner was served only on the balcony, sir.

This caused a halt in the rising gaiety. The group looked a little blank. They were established here, the ladies had surrendered their wraps, envious late-comers were eying their table. Still Martie did not hesitate. She straightened back in her chair, and pushed her hands at full length upon the table, preliminary to rising.

”Then we'll go up!” she said sensibly. But Wallace demurred. What was the difference! They would stay here.

The difference proved to be about twenty dollars.

”I hope it was worth it to you!” Wallace said bitterly to his wife at breakfast the next day. ”Twenty-six dollars the check was. It was worth about twenty-six cents to me!”

”But, Wallie, you didn't have to order wine!”

”I didn't expect to order it, and if that b.o.o.b had had the sense to know it, it was up to him to pay for it!”

”Why, he's a perfect babe-in-the-woods about such things, Wallie! And none of us wanted it!” Martie tried to speak quietly, but at the memory of the night before her anger began to smoulder. Wallace had deliberately urged the ordering of wine, John quite as innocently disclaimed it. Adele had laughed that she could always manage a gla.s.s of champagne; Martie had merely murmured, ”But we don't need it, Wallie; we've had so much now!”

”We couldn't sit there holding that table down all evening,” Wallace said now. Martie with a great effort kept silence. Opening his paper, her husband finished the subject sharply. ”I want to tell you right now, Mart, that with me ordering the dinner, it was up to him to pay for the wine! Any man would know that! Ask any one of the crowd. He's a b.o.o.b, that's all, and I'm done with him!”

Martie rose, and went quietly into the kitchen. There was nothing to say. She did not speak of the Drydens again for a long while. Her own condition engrossed her; and she was not eager to take the initiative in hospitality or anything else.

In April Wallace went on the road again for eleven weeks, and Martie and Ted enjoyed a delicious spring together. They spent hours on the omnibuses, hours in the parks. Spring in the West was cold, erratic; spring here came with what a heavenly wash of fragrance and heat! It was like a re-birth to abandon all the heavy clothing of the winter, to send Teddy dancing into the suns.h.i.+ne in socks and galatea and straw hat again!

Martie's son was almost painfully dear to her. Every hour of his life, from the helpless days in the big hospital, through creeping and stammering and stumbling, she had clung to his little phases with hungry adoration, and that there was a deep sympathy between their two natures she came to feel more strongly every day. They talked confidentially together, his little body jolting against hers on the jolting omnibus, or leaning against her knees as she sat in the Park.

She lingered in the lonely evening over the ceremony of his bath, his undressing, his prayers, and the romping that was always the last thing. For his sake, her love went out to meet the newcomer; another soft little Teddy to watch and bathe and rock to sleep; the reign of double-gowns and safety-pins and bottles again! Writing Wallace one of the gossipy, detailed letters that acknowledged his irregular checks, she said that they must move in the fall. They really, truly needed a better neighbourhood, a better nursery for ”the children.”

One hot, heavy July morning she fell into serious musing over the news of Grandma Curley's death. Her son, a spoiled idler of forty, inherited the business. He wanted to know if Mrs. Bannister could come back. The house had never prospered so well as under her management. She could make her own terms.

The sun was pouring into East Twenty-sixth Street, flas.h.i.+ng an ugly glaring reflection against the awnings. At nine, the day was burning hot. Teddy, promised a trip to the Zoo, was loitering on the shady steps of the houses opposite, conscious of clean clothes, and of a holiday mood. The street was empty; a hurdy-gurdy unseen poured forth a bra.s.sy flood of sound. Trains, on the elevated road at the corner, crashed by. Martie had been packing a lunch; she went slowly back to the cut loaf and the rapidly softening b.u.t.ter.

”Happy, Teddy?” she asked, when they had found seats in the train, and were rus.h.i.+ng over the baking stillness of the city.

”Are you, Moth'?” he asked quickly.

<script>