The Baron screwed up into the tightest of grimaces.

"Nice Teenie—nice old Teenie!"

She tossed him a coin from the small saucerful of them on the table beside her. He caught it with the simian agility of his tiny hands.

"Nice Teenie! Nice old Teenie!"

A first group had strolled up, indolent and insolent at the spectacle of them.

"Photographs! Photographs! Take the folks back home a signed photograph of Teenie—only ten cents, one dime. Give the kiddies a treat—signed photograph of little Teenie!"

She would solicit thus, canorous of phrase, a fan of her cardboard likenesses held out, invitational.

Occasionally there were sales, the coins rattling down into the china saucer beside her; oftener a mere bombardment of insolence and indolence, occasionally a question.

This day from a motorman, loitering in uniform between runs, "Say, skinnay, whatcha weigh?"

Whatever of living tissue may have shrunk and quivered deep beneath the surface of Miss Hoag was further insulated by a certain professional pride—that of the champion middleweight for his cauliflower ear, of the beauty for the tiny mole where her neck is whitest, the ballerina for her double joints.

"Wanna come up and dance with me and find out?"

"O Lord!"—receding from the crowd and its trail of laughter. "O Lord! Excuse me. Good night!"

A CHILD: Missus, is all of you just one lady?

"Bless your heart, little pettie, they gimme a good measure, didn't they? Here's a chocolate drop for the little pettie."

"Come away! Don't take nothing from her!"

"I wouldn't hurt your little girl, lady. I wouldn't harm a pretty hair of her head; I love the kiddies."

"Good-by, missus."

"Good-by, little pettie."

A MAN: Say, was you born in captivity—in this line o' work, I mean?

"Law, no, friend! I never seen the light of the show business up to eight year ago. There wasn't a member of my family, all dead and put away now, weighed more 'n one-fifty. They say it of my mother, she was married at ninety pounds and died at a hundred and six."

"You don't say so."

"I was born and raised on a farm out in Ohio. Bet not far from your part of the country, from the looks of you, friend. Buckeye?"

"Not a bad guess at that—Indiana's mine."

"Law! to my way of thinking, there's no part of the Union got anything on the Middle States. Knock me around all you want, I always say, but let me be buried in the Buckeye State. Photographs? Signed photographs at ten cents each. Take one home to the wife, friend, out in Indiana. Come, friends, what's a dime? Ten cents!"

The crowd, treacle-slow, and swinging its children shoulder-high, would shuffle on, pause next at the falsetto exhortations of the Baron, then on to the collapsibilities of the Boneless Wonder, the flexuosities of the Snake-charmer, the goose-fleshing, the terrible crunching of Jastrow the Granite Jaw. A commotion, this last, not unlike the steam-roller leveling of a rock road.

Miss Hoag retired then back to her chair, readjusting the photographs to their table display, wielding her fan largely.

"Lord!" she said, across the right railing, "wouldn't this weather fry you!"

The Baron wilted to a mock swoon, his little legs stiffening at a hypotenuse.

"Ice-cream cone!" he cried. "Ice-cream cone, or I faint!"

"Poor Jastrow! Just listen to him! Honest, that grinding goes right through me. He hadn't ought to be showing to-day, after the way they had to have the doctor in on him last night. He hadn't ought to be eating that nasty glass."

"Ain't it awful, Mabel!"

"Yes, it's awful, Mabel! A fellow snagging up his insides like Jastrow. I never knew a glass-eating artist in my life that lived to old age. I was showing once with a pair of glass-eating sisters, the Twins Delamar, as fine a pair of girls as ever—"

"Sure, the Delamars—I know 'em."

"Remember the specialty they carried, stepping on a piece of plate glass and feeding each other with the grounds—"

"Sure."

"Well, I sat up for three weeks running, with one of them girls—the red-haired one, till she died off of sorosis of the liver—"

"Sure enough—Lizzie Delamar!"

"Lida, the other one, is still carrying the act on street-fair time, but it won't surprise me to hear of her next. That's what'll happen to Granite Jaw one of these days, too, if he—"

"Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw, ain't cha? M-m-n! Yum-yum! Pretty soft!" When the Baron mouthed he became in expression Punchinello with his finger alongside his nose, his face tightening and knotting into cunning. "Pretty soft on the Granite Jaw! Yum—yum—yum!"

"Little devil! Little devil! I'll catch you and spank you to death."

"Yum! Yum!"

"It's better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall."

"Little peewee, you! Jastrow ain't short. Them thick, strong-necked kind never look their height. That boy is five feet two, if he's an inch. Them stocky ones is the build that make the strong kind. Looka him lift up that cannon-ball with just his left hand. B-r-r-r-r! Listen how it shakes the place when he lets its fall! Looka! Honest, it makes me sick! It's a wonder he don't kill himself."

"Better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall."

The day, sun-riddled, stare-riddled, sawdusty, and white with glare, slouched into the clanging, banging, electric-pianoed, electrifying Babylonia of a Coney Island Saturday night. The erupting lava of a pent-up work-a-week, odoriferous of strong foods and wilted clothing, poured hotly down that boulevard of the bourgeoise, Ocean Avenue. The slow, thick cir culation of six days of pants-pressing and boiler-making, of cigarette-rolling and typewriting, of machine-operating and truck-driving, of third-floor-backs, congestion and indigestion, of depression and suppression, demanding the spurious kind of excitation that can whip the blood to foam. The terrific gyration of looping the loop. The comet-tail plunge of shooting the chutes; the rocketing skyward, and the delicious madness at the pit of the stomach on the downward swoop. The bead on the apple juice, the dash of mustard to the frankfurter, the feather tickler in the eye, the barker to the ear, and the thick festival-flavored sawdust to the throat. By eleven o'clock the Freak Palace was a gelatinous congestion of the quickened of heart, of blood, of tongue, and of purse. The crowd stared, gaped, squirmed through itself, sweated.

By twelve o'clock, from her benchlike throne that had become a straitjacket to the back, a heaviness had set in that seemed to thicken Miss Hoag's eyelids, the flush receding before doughiness.

A weary mountain of the cruelly enhancing red silk and melting sequin paste, the billowy arms inundated with the thumb-deep dimples lax out along the chair-sides, as preponderous and preposterous a heroine as ever fell the lot of scribe, she was nature's huge joke—a practical joke, too, at eighteen dollars a week, bank-books from three trust companies, and a china pig about ready to burst.

"Cheer up, Ossi! It might be worse," she said across the left rail, but her lids twitching involuntarily of tiredness.

"Sacred Mother of the Sacred Child!" said the Ossified Man, in Italian.

The sword-swallower, at the megaphone instance of the barker, waggled suddenly into motion, and, flouncing back her bushy knee-skirts and kissing to the four winds, threw back her head and swallowed an eighteen-inch carpenter's saw to the hilt. The crowd flowed up and around her.

Miss Hoag felt on the undershelf of her table for a glass of water, draining it. "Thank God," she said, "another day done!" and began getting together her photographs into a neat packet, tilting the contents of the saucer into a small biscuit-tin and snapping it around with a rubber band.

The Baron de Ross was counting, too, his small hands eager at the task. "This Island is getting as hard-boiled as an egg," he said.

"It is that," said Miss Hoag, making a pencil insert into a small memorandum-book.

"You!" cried the Baron, the screw lines out again. "You money-bag tied in the middle! I know a tattooed girl worked with you once on the St. Louis World's Fair Pike says you slept on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks."

"You're crazy with the heat," said Miss Hoag. "What I've got out of this business, I've sweated for."

Then the Baron de Ross executed a pirouette of tiny self. "Worth your weight in gold! Worth your weight in gold!"

"If you don't behave yourself, you little peewee, I'll leave you to plow home through the sand alone. If it wasn't for me playing nurse-girl to you, you'd have to be hiring a keeper. You better behave."

"Worth your weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Ossi?"

The crowd had sifted out; all but one of the center aisle of grill arc-lights flickered out, leaving the Freak Palace to a spluttering kind of gloom. The Snake-charmer, of a thousand iridescencies, wound the last of her devitalized cobras down into its painted chest. The Siamese Twins untwisted out of their embrace and went each his way. The Princess Albino wove her cotton hair into a plait, finishing it with a rapidly wound bit of thread. An attendant trundled the Ossified Man through a rear door. Jastrow the Granite Jaw flopped on his derby, slightly askew, and strolled over toward that same door, hands in pocket. He was thewed like an ox. Short and as squattily packed down as a Buddha, the great sinews of his strength bulged in his short neck and in the backs of the calves of his legs, even rippled beneath his coat. It was as if a compress had reduced him from great height down to his tightest compactness, concentrating the strength of him. Even in repose, the undershot jaw was plunged forward, the jowls bonily defined.

"Worth her weight in gold! Blow us to a ice-cream cone. Eh, Jastrow? She's worth her weight in gold."

Passing within reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de Ross to a high-flung torch.

"Lay off that noise," said Jastrow the Granite Jaw, threatening to dangle him head downward. "Lay off, or I'll drown you like a kitten!"

With an agility that could have swung him from bough to bough, the Baron de Ross somersaulted astride the rear of Jastrow the Granite Jaw's great neck, pounding little futile fists against the bulwark of head.

"Leggo me! Leggo!"

"Gr-r-r-r! I'll step on you and squash you like a caterpillar."

"Don't hurt him, Mr. Jastrow! Don't let him fall off backwards. He is so little. Teenie'll catch you if you fall, honey. Teenie's here in back of you."

With another double twist, the Baron de Ross somersaulted backward off the shoulder of his captor, landing upright in the outstretched skirts of Miss Hoag.

"Yah, yah!" he cried, dancing in the net of skirt and waggling his hands from his ears. "Yah, yah!"

The Granite Jaw smoothed down the outraged rear of his head, eyes rolling and smile terrible.

"Wow!" he said, making a false feint toward him.

The Baron, shrill with hysteria, plunged into a fold of Miss Hoag's skirt.

"Don't hurt him, Jastrow. He's so awful little! Don't play rough."

THE BARON (projecting his face around a fold of skirt): Worth her weight in go-uld—go-uld!

"He's always guying me for my saving ways, Jastrow. I tell him I 'ain't got no little twenty-eight-inch wife out in San Francisco sending me pin-money. Neither am I the prize little grafter of the world. I tell him he's the littlest man and the biggest grafter in this show. Come out of there, you little devil! He thinks because I got a few hundred dollars laid by I'm a bigger freak than the one I get paid for being."

Jastrow the Granite Jaw flung the crook of his walking-stick against his hip, leaning into it, the flanges of his nostrils widening a bit, as if scenting.

"You old mountain-top," he said, screwing at the up-curving mustache, "who'd have thought you had that pretty a penny saved?"

"I don't look to see myself live and die in the show business, Mr. Jastrow."

"Now you said something, Big Tent."

"There's a farm out near Xenia, Ohio, where I lay up in winter, that I'm going to own for myself one of these days. I've seen too many in this business die right in exhibition, and the show have to chip in to bury 'em, for me not to save up against a rainy day."

"Lay it on, Big Tent. I like your philosophy."

"That's me every time, Mr. Jastrow. I'm going to die in a little story-and-a-half frame house of my own with a cute little pointy roof, a potato-patch right up to my back steps, and my own white Leghorns crossin' my own country road to get to the other side. Why, I know a Fat in this business, Aggie Lament—"

"Sure, me and the Baroness played Mexico City Carnival with Aggie Lament. Some heavy!"

"Well, that girl, in her day, was one of the biggest tips to the scale this business ever seen. What happens? All of a sudden, just like that—pneumonia! Gets up out of bed, eight weeks later, skin and bones —down to three hundred and sixty-five pounds and not a penny saved. I chipped in what I could to keep her going, but she just down and died one night. Job gone. No weight. In the exhibit business, just like any other line, you got to have a long head. A Fat's got to look ahead for a thin day. Strong for a weak day. That's why I wish, Mr. Jastrow, you'd cut out that glass-eating feature of yours."

"How much you got, Airy-Fairy? Lemme double your money for you!"

"She's worth her weight in gold."

"Lemme double it!"

"Like fun I will. A spendthrift like you!"

"Which way you going?"

"We always go home by the beach. Shapiro made it a rule that the Bigs and Littles can't ever show themselves on Ocean Avenue."

"Come on, you little flea; I'll ride you up the beach on my shoulder."

"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, you—you going to walk home with me—and—Baron?"

"Come on was what I said."

He mounted the Baron de Ross to his bulge of shoulder with veriest toss, Miss Hoag, in a multi-fold cape that was a merciful shroud to the bulk of her, descending from the platform. The place had emptied itself of its fantastic congress of nature's pranks, only the grotesque print of it remaining. The painted snake-chests closed. The array of gustatory swords, each in flannelet slip-cover. The wild man's cage, empty. The tiny velocipede of the Baron de Ross, upside down against rust. A hall of wonder here. A cave of distorted fancy. The Land of the Cow Jumped over the Moon and the Dish Ran away with the Spoon.

Outside, a moon, something bridal in its whiteness, beat down upon a kicked-up stretch of beach, the banana-skins, the pop-corn boxes, the gambados of erstwhile revelers violently printed into its sands. A platinum-colored sea undulated in.

The leaping, bounding outline of Luna Park winked out even as they emerged, the whole violent contortion fading back into silver mist. There was a new breeze, spicily cool.

Miss Hoag breathed out, "Ain't this something grand?"

"Giddy-ap!" cried the Baron, slappity-slappity at the great boulder of the Granite Jaw's head. "Giddy-ap!"

They plowed forward, a group out of Phantasmagoria—as motley a threesome as ever strode this side of the Land of Anesthesia.

"How do you like it at Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, Mr. Jastrow? I never stop anywheres else on the Island. Most of the Shapiro concession always stops there."

"Good as the next," said Mr. Jastrow, kicking onward.

"I was sorry to hear you was ailing so last night, Mr. Jastrow, and I was sorry there was nothing you would let me do for you. They always call me 'the Doc' around exhibits. I say—but you just ought to heard yourself yell me out of the room when I come in to offer myself—"

"They had me crazy with pain."

"You wasn't so crazy with pain when the albino girl come down with the bottle of fire-water, was he, Baron? We seen him throwing goo-goos at Albino, didn't we, Baron?"

THE BARON (impish in the moonlight): He fell for a cotton-top.

"He didn't yell the albino and her bottle out, did he, Baron?"

"It's this darn business," said Mr. Jastrow, creating a storm of sand-spray with each stride. "I'm punctured up like a tire."

"I been saying to the Baron, Mr. Jastrow, if you'd only cut out the glass-eating feature. You got as fine a appearance and as fine a strong act by itself as you could want. A short fellow like you with all your muscle-power is a novelty in himself. Honest, Mr. Jastrow, it—it's a sin to see a fine-set-up fellow like you killing yourself this way. You ought to cut out the granite-jaw feature."

"Yeh—and cut down my act to half-pay. I'd be full of them tricks—wouldn't I? Show me another jaw act measures up to mine. Show me the strong-arm number that ever pulled down the coin a jaw act did. I'd be a, sweet boob, wouldn't I, to cut my pocket-book in two? I need money, Airy-Fairy. My God! how I got the capacity for needing money!"

"What's money to health, Mr. Jastrow? It ain't human or freak nature to digest glass. Honest, every time I hear you crunching I get the chills!"

Then Mr. Jastrow shot forward his lower jaw with a milling motion:

"Gr-r-r-r-r!"

"She's sweet on you, Jastrow, like all the rest of 'em."

"Better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall."

"Baron, I—I'll spank!" "Worth her weight in gold!"

"Where you got all that money soaked, Big Tent?" "Aw, Mr. Jastrow, the Baron's only tormenting me."

"She sleeps on a pillow stuffed with greenbacks." "Sure I got a few dollars saved, and I ain't ashamed of it. I've had steady work in this business eight years, now, ever since the circus came to my town out in Ohio and made me the offer, but that's no sign I can be in it eight years longer. Sure I got a few dollars saved."

"Well, whatta you know—a big tent like you?"

"Ain't a big tent like me human, Mr. Jastrow? Ain't I—ain't I just like any other—girl—twenty years old—ain't I just like—other—girls—underneath all this?"

"Sure, sure!" said Mr. Jastrow. "How much you to the good, little one?"

"I've about eleven hundred dollars with my bank-books and pig."

"'Leven hundred! Well, whatta you know about that? Say, Big Tent, better lemme double your money for you!"

"Aw, you go on, Mr. Jastrow! Ain't you the torment, too?"

"Say, gal, next time I get the misery you can hold my hand as long as your little heart desires. 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night! Get down off my shoulder, you little flea, you. I got to turn in here and take a drink on the strength of that! 'Leven hundred to the good! Good night!"

"Oh, Mr. Jastrow, in your state! In your state alcohol's poison. Mr. Jastrow—please—you mustn't!"

"Blow me, too, Jas! Aw, say—have a heart; blow me to a bracer, too!"

"No, no, Mr. Jastrow, don't take the Baron. The little fellow can't stand alcohol. His baroness don't want it. Anyways, it's against the rules—please—"

"You stay and take the lady home, flea. See the lady home like a gentleman. 'Leven hundred to the good! Say, I'd see a lady as far as the devil on that. Good night!"

* * * * *

At Mrs. Bostum's boarding-house, one of a row of the stare-faced packing-cases of the summer city, bathing-suits drying and kicking over veranda rails, a late quiet had fallen, only one window showing yellowly in the peak of its top story. A white-net screen door was unhooked from without by inserting a hand through a slit in the fabric. An uncarpeted pocket of hall lay deep in absolute blackness. Miss Hoag fumbled for the switch, finally leaving the Baron to the meager comfort of his first-floor back.

"Y'all right, honey? Can you reach what you want?"

The Baron clambered to a chair and up to her. His face had unknotted, the turmoil of little lines scattering.

"Aw!" he said. "Good old tub, Teenie! Good old Big Tent!"

A layer of tears sprang across Miss Hoag's glance and, suddenly gaining rush, ran down over her lashes. She dashed at them.

"I'm human, Baron. Maybe you don't know it, but I'm human."

"Now what did I do, Teenie?"

"It—it ain't you, Baron; it—it ain't anybody. It—it's—only I just wonder sometimes what God had in mind, anyways—making our kind. Where do we belong—"

"Aw, you're a great Heavy, Teenie—and it's the Bigs and the Littles got the cinch in this business. Looka the poor Siamese. How'd you like to be hitched up thataway all day. Looka Ossi. How'd you like to let 'em stick pins in you all for their ten cents' worth. Looka poor old Jas. Why, a girl's a fool to waste any heartache gettin' stuck on him. That old boy's going to wake up out of one of them spells dead some day. How'd you like to chew glass because it's big money and then drink it up so fast you'd got to borrow money off the albino girl for the doctor's prescription—"

The tears came now rivuleting down Miss Hoag's cheeks, bouncing off to the cape.

"O God!" she said, her hand closing over the Baron's, pressing it. "With us freaks, even if we win, we lose. Take me. What's the good of ten million dollars to me—twenty millions? Last night when I went in to offer him help—him in the same business and that ought to be used to me—right in the middle of being crazy with pain, what did he yell every time he looked at me, 'Take her away! Take her away!'"

"Aw now, Teenie, Jas had the D.T.'s last night; he—"

'"Take her away!' he kept yelling. 'Take her away!' One of my own kind getting the horrors just to look at me!"

"You're sweet on the Granite Jaw; you are, Teenie; that's what's eating you—you're sweet on the Granite Jaw—"

Suddenly Miss Hoag turned, slamming the door afterward so that the silence re-echoed sharply.

"What if I am?" she said, standing out in the hall pocket of absolute blackness, her hand cupped against her mouth and the blinding tears staggering. "What if I am? What if I am?"

Within her own room, a second-floor-back, augmented slightly by an immaculate layout of pink-celluloid toilet articles and a white water-pitcher of three pink carnations, Miss Hoag snapped on her light where it dangled above the celluloid toilet articles. A summer-bug was bumbling against the ceiling; it dashed itself between Miss Hoag and her mirror, as she stood there breathing from the climb and looking back at herself with salt-bitten eyes, mouth twitching. Finally, after an inanimate period of unseeing stare, she unhooked the long cape, brushing it, and, ever dainty of self, folding it across a chair-back. A voluminous garment, fold and fold upon itself, but sheer and crisp dimity, even streaming a length of pink ribbon, lay across the bed-edge. Miss Hoag took it up, her hand already slowly and tiredly at the business of unfettering herself of the monstrous red silk.

Came a sudden avalanche of knocking and a rattling of door-knob, the voice of Mrs. Bostrum. landlady, high with panic.

"Teenie! Jastrow's dyin' in his room! He's yellin' for you! For God's sakes—quick—down in his room!"

In the instant that followed, across the sudden black that blocked Miss Hoag of vision, there swam a million stars.

"Teenie! For God's sakes—quick! He's yellin' for you—"

"Coming, Mrs. Bostrum—coming—coming—coming!"

In a dawn that came up as pink as the palm of a babe, but flowed rather futilely against the tired, speckled eye of incandescent bulb dangling above the Granite Jaw's rumpled, tumbled bed of pain, a gray-looking group stood in whispered conference beside a slit of window that overlooked a narrow clapboard slit of street.

THE DOCTOR: Even with recovery, he will be on his back at least six months.

MISS HOAG: Oh, my God! Doctor!

THE DOCTOR: Has the man means?

THE BARON: Not a penny. He only came to the concession two months ago from a row with the Flying-Fish Troupe. He's in debt already to half the exhibit.

THE LANDLADY: He's two weeks in arrears. Not that I'm pestering the poor devil now, but Gawd knows I—need—

THE DOCTOR: Any relatives or friends to consult about the operation?

MISS HOAG (turning and stooping): 'Ain't you got no relations or friends, Jastrow? What was it you hollered about the aerial-wonder act? Are they friends of yours? 'Ain't you got no relatives, no—no friends, maybe, that you could stay with awhile? Sid? Who's he? 'Ain't you, Jastrow, got no relations?

The figure under the sheet, pain-huddled, limb-twisted, turned toward the wall, palm slapping out against it.

"Hell!" said Jastrow, the Granite Jaw.

THE DOCTOR (drawing down his shirt-sleeves): I'll have an ambulance around in twenty minutes.

MISS HOAG: Where for, Doctor?

THE DOCTOR: Brooklyn Public Institute, for the present.

THE LANDLADY (apron up over her head): Poor fellow! Poor handsome fellow!

MISS HOAG: No, Doctor. No! No! No!

THE DOCTOR (rather tiredly): Sorry, madam, but there is no alternative.

MISS HOAG: No, no! I'll pay, Doctor. How much? How much?

THE BARON: Yeh. I'll throw in a tenner myself. Don't throw the poor devil to charity. We'll collect from the troupe. We raised forty dollars for a nigger wild man, once when—

THE DOCTOR: Come now; all this is not a drop in the bucket. This man needs an operation and then constant attention. If he pulls through, it is a question of months. What he actually needs then is country air, fresh milk, eggs, professional nursing, and plenty of it!

Miss HOAG: That's me, Doc! That's me! I'm going to fix just that for him. I got the means. I can show you three bank-books. I got the means and a place out in Ohio I can rent 'til I buy it some day. A farm! Fresh milk! Leghorns! I'll take him out there, Doc. Eighty miles from where I was born. I was thinking of laying up awhile, anyways. I got the means. I'll pull him through, Doctor. I'll pull him through!

THE BARON: Good God! Teenie—you crazy—

FROM THE BED: Worth her weight in gold. Worth her weight in gold.

* * * * *

In the cup of a spring dusk that was filled to overflowing with an ineffable sweetness and the rich, loamy odors of turned earth; with rising sap and low mists; with blackening tree-tops and the chittering of birds—the first lamplight of all the broad and fertile landscape moved across the window of a story-and-a-half white house which might have been either itself or its own outlying barn. A roof, sheer of slant, dipped down over the window, giving the facade the expression of a coolie under peaked hat.

"Great Scott! Move that lamp off the sill! You want to gimme the blind staggers?"

"I didn't know it was in your eyes, honey. There—that better?"

Silence.

A parlor hastily improvised into a bedroom came out softly in the glow. A room of matting and marble-topped, bottle-littered walnut table, of white iron hospital-cot and curly horsehair divan, a dapple-marble mantelpiece of conch-shell, medicated gauze, bisque figurines, and hot-water kettle; in the sheerest of dimity, still dainty of ribbon, the figure of Miss Hoag, hugely, omnipotently omnipresent.

"That better, Jas?" Silence. "Better? That's good! Now for the boy's supper. Beautiful white egg laid by beautiful white hen and all beat up fluffy with sugar to make boy well, eh?"

Emaciated to boniness, the great frame jutting and straining rather terribly to break through the restraint of too tight flesh, Mr. Jastrow rose to his elbow, jaw-lines sullen.

"Cut out that baby talk and get me a swig, Teenie. Get me a drink before I get ugly."

"Oh, Jastrow honey, don't begin that. Please, Jastrow, don't begin that. You been so good all day, honey—"

"Get me a swig," he repeated through set teeth. "You and a boob country quack of a doctor ain't going to own my soul. I'll bust up the place again. I ain't all dead yet. Get me a swig—quick, too."

"Jas, there ain't none."

"There is!"

"That's just for to whip up five drops at a time with your medicine. That's medicine, Jas; it ain't to be took like drink. You know what the doc said last time. He ain't responsible if you disobey. I ain't—neither. Please, Jas!"

"I know a thing or two about the deal I'm getting around here. No quack boob is going to own my soul."

"Ain't it enough the way you nearly died last time, Jas? Honest, didn't that teach you a lesson? Be good, Jas. Don't scare poor old Teenie all alone here with you. Looka out there through the door. Ain't it something grand? Honest, Jas, I just never get tired looking. See them low little hills out there. I always say they look like chiffon this time of evening. Don't they? Just looka the whole fields out there, so still—like—like a old horse standing up dozing. Smell! Listen to the little birds! Ain't we happy out here, me and my boy that's getting well so fine?"

Then Jastrow the Granite Jaw began to whimper, half-moans engendered by weakness. "Put me out of my misery. Shoot!"

"Jas—Jas—ain't that just an awful way for you to talk? Ain't that just terrible to say to your poor old Big Tent?"

She smoothed out his pillow, and drew out his cot on ready casters, closer toward the open door.

"See, Jas—honest, can you ever get enough of how beautiful it is? When I was a kid on my pap's farm out there, eighty miles beyond the ridge, instead of playing with the kids that used to torment me because I was a heavy, I just used to lay out evenings like this on a hay-rack or something and look and look and look. There's something about this soft kind of scenery that a person that's born in it never gets tired of. Why, I've exhibited out in California right under the nose of the highest kind of mountains; but gimme the little scenery every time."

"I'm a lump—that's what I am. Nine months of laying. I'm a lump—on a woman, too."

"Why, Jas, Teenie's proud to have you on—on her. 'Ain't we got plans for each other after—you get well? Why, half the time I'm just in heaven over that. That's why, honey, if only you won't let yourself get setbacks! That's all the doctor says is between you and getting well. That's all that keeps you down, Jas, you scaring me and making me go against the doctor's orders. Last week your eating that steak—that drink you stole—ain't you ashamed to have got out of bed that way and broke the lock? You—you mustn't ever again, Jas, make me go against the doctor."

"I gets crazy. Crazy with laying."

"Just think, Jas; here I've drew out my last six hundred, ready to make first payment down on the place and us all ready to begin to farm it. Ain't that worth holding yourself in for? It wouldn't be right, Jas; it would be something terrible if we had to break into that six hundred for medicine and doctors. I don't know what to make of you, honey, all those months so quiet and behaved on your back, and, now that you're getting well, the—the old liquor-thirst setting in. We never will get our start that way, Jas. We got plans, if you don't hinder your poor Teenie. The doctor told me, honey—honest, he did—one of them spells—from liquor could—could take you off just like that. Even getting well the way you are!"

"I'm a lump; that's what I am."

"You ain't, Jas; you're just everything in the world."

"Sponging off a woman!"

"'Sponging'! With our own little farm and us farming it to pay it off! I like that!"

"Gimme a swig, Teenie. For God's sake gimme a swig!"

"Jas—Jas, if you get to cutting up again, I'm going to get me a man-nurse out here—honest I am!"

"A swig, Teenie."

"Please, Jas—it's only for bad spells—five drops mixed up in your medicine. That's six dollars a bottle, Jas, and only for bad spells."

"Stingy gut!"

"Looka down there, honey—there's old man Wyncoop's cow broke tether again. What you bet he's out looking for her. See her winding up the road."

"Stingy gut!"

"You know I ain't stingy. If the doctor didn't forbid, I'd buy you ten bottles, I would, if it cost twenty a bottle. I'm trying to do what the doctor says is best, Jas."

"'Best'! I know what's best. A few dollars in my pocket for me to boss over and buy me the things I need is what's best. I'm a man born to having money in his pocket. I'm none of your mollycoddles."

"Sure you ain't! Haven't you got over ninety dollars under your pillow this minute? 'Ain't the boy got all the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it? Ain't that a good one, Jas? All the spending-money he wants and nowheres to spend it. Next thing the boy knows, he's going to be working the farm and sticky with money. Ain't it wonderful, Jas, never no showing for us again? God! ain't that just wonderful?"

He reached up then to stroke her hand, a short pincushion of a hand, white enough, but amazingly inundated with dimples.

"Nice old Big Tent!"

"That's the way, honey! Honest, when you get one of your nice spells, your poor old Teenie would do just anything for you."

"I get crazy with pain. It makes me ugly."

"I know, Jas—I know—anyway, you fix it, honey. I 'ain't got a kick coming—a—tub like me to have—you."

She loomed behind his cot, carefully out of his range of vision, her own gaze out across the drowsing countryside. A veil of haze was beginning to thicken, whole schools of crickets whirring into it,

"If—if not for one thing, Jas, you know—you know what? I think if a person was any happier than me, she—she'd die."

"Let's play I'm Rockefeller laying on his country estate, Teenie. Come on; let's kid ourselves along. Gimme the six hundred, Teenie—"

"Why don't you ask me, Jas, except for what I'd be the happiest girl? Well, it's this. If only I could wear a cloak so when I got in it you couldn't see me! If only I never had to walk in front of you so—so you got to look at me!"

"You been a good gal to me, Big Tent. I never even look twice at you—that's how used a fellow can get to anything. I'm going to square it up with you, too."

"You mean it's me will square it with you, Jas—you see if I don't. Why, there'll be nothing too much for me to do to make up for the happiness we're going to have, Jas. I'm going to make this the kinda little home you read about in the magazines. Tear out all this old rented junk furniture, paint it up white after we got the six hundred paid down and the money beginning to come in. I'm even going to fix up the little trap-door room in the attic, so that if the Baron or any of the old exhibit crowd happens to be showing in Xenia or around, they can visit us. Just think, Jas—a spare room for the old crowd. Honest, it's funny, but there's not one thing scares me about all these months on the place alone here, Jas, now that we bought the gun, except the nightmares sometimes that we—we're back exhibiting. That's why I want to keep open house for them that ain't as lucky as us. Honest, Jas—I—I just can't think it's real, not, anyways, till we've paid down six hundred and—the fellow you keep joking about that wears his collar wrong side 'fore comes out from Xenia to read the ceremony. Oh, Jas, I—I'll make it square with you. You'll never have a sorry day for it!"

"You're all right, Big Tent," said the Granite Jaw, lying back suddenly, lips twitching.

"Ain't you feeling well, honey? Let me fix you an egg?"

"A little swig, Teenie—a little one, is all I ask."

"No, no—please, Jastrow; don't begin—just as I had you forgetting."

"It does me good, I tell you. I know my constitution better than a quack country boob does. I'm a freak, I am—a prize concession that has to be treated special. Since that last swig, I tell you, I been a different man. I need the strength. I got to have a little in my system. I'm a freak, I tell you. Everybody knows there's nothing like a swig for strength."

"Not for you! It's poison, Jas, so much poison! Don't you remember what they said to you after the operation? All your life you got to watch out—just the little prescribed for you is all your system has got to have. Wouldn't I give it to you otherwise—wouldn't I?"

"Swig, Teenie! Honest to God, just a swig!"

"No, no, Jas! No, no, no!"

Suddenly Jastrow the Granite Jaw drew down his lips to a snarl, his hands clutching into the coverlet and drawing it up off his feet.

"Gimme!" he said. "I've done it before and I'll do it now—smash up the place! Gimme! You're getting me crazy! This time you got me crazy. Gimme—you hear—gimme!"

"Jas—for God's sakes—no—no!"

"Gimme! By God! you hear—gimme!" There was a wrenching movement of his body, a fumbling beneath the pillow, and Mr. Jastrow suddenly held forth, in crouched attitude of cunning, something cold, something glittering, something steel.

"Now," he said, head jutting forward, and through shut teeth—"now gimme, or by God—"

"Jas—Jas—for God's sake have you gone crazy? Where'd you get that gun? Is that where I heard you sneaking this morning—over to my trunk for my watch-dog? Gimme that gun—Jas! You—you're crazy—Jas!"

"You gimme, was what I said, and gimme quick! You see this thing pointing? Well, gimme quick."

"Jas—"

"Don't 'Jas' me. I'm ugly this time, and when I'm ugly I'm ugly!"

"All right! All right! Only, for God's sakes, Jas, don't get out of bed, don't get crazy enough to shoot that thing. I'll get it. Wait, Jastrow; it's all right, you're all right. I'll get it. See, Teenie's going. Wait—wait—Teenie's going—"

She edged out and she edged in, hysteria audible in her breathing.

"Jas honey, won't you please—"

"Gimme, was what I said—gimme and quick!"

Her arm under his head, the glass tilted high against his teeth, he drank deeply, gratefully, breathing out finally and lying back against his pillow, his right hand uncurling of its clutch.

She lifted the short-snouted, wide-barreled, and steely object off the bed-edge gingerly, tremblingly.

"More like it," he said, running his tongue around his mouth; "more like it."

"Jas—Jas, what have you done?"

"Great stuff! Great stuff!" He kept repeating.

"If—if you wasn't so sick, honey—I don't know what I'd do after such a terrible thing like this—you acting like this—so terrible—God! I—I'm all trembling."

"Great stuff!" he said, and reaching out and eyes still closed, patting her. "Great stuff, nice old Big Tent!"

"Try to sleep now, Jas. You musta had a spell of craziness! This is awful! Try to sleep. If only you don't get a spell—Sleep—please!"

"You wait! Guy with the collar on wrong side round—he's the one; he's the one!"

"Yes—yes, honey. Try to sleep!"

"I wanna dream I'm Rockefeller. If there's one thing I want to dream, it's Rockefeller."

"Not now—not now—"

"Lemme go to sleep like a king."

"Yes, honey."

"Like a king," I said.

She slid her hand finally into one of the voluminous folds of her dress, withdrawing and placing a rubber-bound roll into his hands.

"There, honey. Go to sleep now—like a king."

He fingered it, finally sitting up to count, leaning forward to the ring of lamplight.

"Six hundred bucks! Six hundred! Wow—oh, wow! If Sid could only see me now!"

"He can, honey—he can. Go to sleep. 'Sh-h-h-h!'"

"Slide 'em under—slide 'em under—Rockefeller."

She lifted his head, placing the small wad beneath. He turned over, cupping his hand in his cheek, breathing outward deeply, very deeply.

"Jas!"

"Huh?"

"Ain't you all right? You're breathing so hard. Quit breathing so hard. It scares me. Quit making those funny noises. Honey—for God's sake—quit!"

Jastrow the Granite Jaw did quit, so suddenly, so completely, his face turned outward toward the purpling meadows, and his mouth slightly open, that a mirror held finally and frantically against it did not so much as cloud.

At nine o'clock there drew up outside the coolie-faced house one of those small tin motor-cars which are tiny mile-scavengers to the country road. With a thridding of engine and a play of lamps which turned green landscape, gray, it drew up short, a rattling at the screen door following almost immediately.

"Doctor, that you? O my God! Doctor, it's too late! It's all over, Doctor—Doctor—it's all over!" Trembling in a frenzy of haste, Miss Hoag drew back the door, the room behind her flickering with shadows from an uneven wick.

"You're the Fat, ain't you? The one that's keeping him?"

"What—what—"

"So you're the meal-ticket! Say, leave it to Will, Leave it to that boy not to get lost in this world. Ain't it like him to the T to pick a good-natured Fat?"

There entered into Miss Hoag's front room Miss Sidonia Sabrina, of the Flying-Fish Troupe, World's Aeronaut Trapeze Wonder, gloved and ringleted, beaded of eyelash and pink of ear-lobe, the teeth somewhat crookedly, but pearlily white because the lips were so red, the parasol long and impudently parrot-handled, gilt mesh bag clanking against a cluster of sister baubles.

"If it ain't Will to the T! Pickin' hisself a Fat to sponge on. Can you beat it? M-m! Was you the Fat in the Coney concession?"

"Who—Whatta you—want?"

"We was playin' the Zadalia County Fair. I heard he was on his back. The Little in our show, Baroness de Ross, has a husband played Coney with youse. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here. Was his little Sid fool enough to beat it all the way over here in a flivver for eight bucks the round trip? She was! Where is he?"

"He—Who—You—"

"You're one of them good-natured simps, ain't you? So was I, dearie. It don't pay! I always said of Will he could bleed a sour pickle. Where is he? Tell him his little Sid is here with thirty minutes before she meets up with the show on the ten-forty, when it shoots through Xenia. Tell him she was fool enough to come because he's flat on his back."

"I—That's him—Jastrow—there—O my God—that's him laying there, miss! Who are you? Sid—I thought—I never knew—Who are you? I thought it was Doc. He went off in a flash. I was standing right here— I—O God!"

There seemed to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop the parrot.

"My God!" she said. "Will dead! Will dead! I musta had a hunch. God! I musta! All of a sudden I makes up my mind. I jumps ahead of the show. God! I musta had one of my hunches. That lookin'-glass I broke in Dayton. I—I musta!"

"It come so sudden, miss. It's a wonder I didn't die, too, right on the spot. I was standing here and—"

Suddenly, Miss Sabrina fumbled in the gilt mesh bag for her kerchief, her face lifting to cry.

"He spun me dirt, Will did. If ever a girl was spun dirt, that girl was me, but just the same it—it's my husband laying there—it's my husband, no matter what dirt he spun me. O God—O—O—"

At half after ten to a powdering of eye-sockets, a touching up with lip-stick, a readjustment of three-tiered hat, Miss Sidonia Sabrina took leave. There were still streaks showing through her retouched cheeks.

"I left you the collar-and-cuff box with his initials on, dearie, for a remembrance. I give it to him the first Christmas after we was married, before he got to developing rough. I been through his things now entire. I got 'em all with me. If there's such a thing as a recordin' angel, you'll go down on the book. Will was a bad lot, but he's done with it now, dearie. I never seen the roughness crop up in a man so sudden the way it did in Will. You can imagine, dearie, when the men in the troupe horsewhipped him one night for the way he lit in on me one night in drink. That was the night he quit. O Gawd! maybe I don't look it, dearie, but I been through the mill in my day. But that's all over now, him layin' there—my husband. Will was a good Strong in his day—nobody can't ever take that away from him. I'm leavin' you the funeral money out of what he had under his pillow. It's a godsend to me my husband layin' up that few hundred when things ain't so good with me. You was a good influence, dearie. I never knew him to save a cent. I'd never have thought it. Not a cent from him all these months. My legs for the air-work ain't what they used to be. Inflammatory rheumatism, y'know. I've got a mind to buy me a farm, too, dearie. Settle down. Say, I got to hand it to you, dearie—you're one fine Fat. Baby Ella herself had nothin' on you, and I've worked with as fine Fats as there is in the business. You're sure one fine Fat, and if there's such a thing as a recordin' angel—I got to catch that train, dearie—the chauff's honkin'—no grandmother stories goes with my concession. God, to think of Will layin' on a cool six hundred! Here's twenty-five for the funeral. If it's more, lemme know. Sidonia Sabrina, care Flying-Fish Troupe, State Fair, Butler County, Ohio. Good-by, dearie, and God bless you!"

Long after the thridding of engine had died down, and the purple quiet flowed over the path of twin lamplights, Miss Hoag stood in her half-open screen door, gazing after. There were no tears in her eyes; indeed, on the contrary, the echo of the chugg-chugging which still lay on the air had taken on this rhythm:

Better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall.

Better to have loved a short man Than never to have loved atall.



THE WRONG PEW

For six midnights of the week, on the roof of the Moncrieff Frolic, grape-wreathed and with the ecstatic quivering of the flesh that is Asia's, Folly, robed in veils, lifts her carmined lips to be kissed, and Bacchus, whose pot-belly has made him unloved of fair women, raises his perpetual goblet and drinks that he may not weep.

On the stroke of twelve, when on stretches of prairie the invisible joinder of night and day is a majestic thing, the Moncrieff Follies—twenty-four of them, not counting two specialty acts and a pair of whistling Pierrots—burst forth into frolic with a terrific candle and rhinestone power.

Saint Genevieve, who loved so to brood over the enigmatic roofs of the city, would have here found pause. Within the golden inclosure of the Moncrieff Roof, a ceiling canopied in deep waves of burnt-orange velvet cunningly concealed, yet disclosed, amber light, the color of wine in the pouring. Behind burnt-orange portieres of great length and great depth of nap, the Twenty-Four Follies, each tempered like a knife edge, stood identically poised for the first clash of Negroid music from a Negroid orchestra.

At a box-office built to imitate a sedan chair—Louis Quinze without and Louis Slupsky within—Million-Dollar Jimmie Cox, of a hundred hundred Broadway all-nights; the Success Shirt Waist Company, incorporated, entertaining the Keokuk Emporium; the newest husband of the oldest prima donna; and Mr. Herman Loeb, of Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, St. Louis, waited in line for the privilege of ordering a la carte from the most a la mode menu in Oh-la-la, New York.

The line grew, eighty emptying theaters fifteen stories below, sending each its trickle toward the Midnight Frolic—men too tired to sleep, women with slim, syncopated hips, and eyes none too nice. The smell of fur and fragrant powder on warm flesh began to rise on a fog of best Havana smoke. At the elevators women dropped out of their cloaks and, in the bustle of checking, stood by, not unconscious of the damask finish to bare shoulders.

When Mr. Herman Loeb detached himself from the human tape-line before the box-office, the firm and not easily discomposed lines of his face had fallen into loose curves, the lower lip thrust forward and the eyebrows upward. Sheep and men in their least admirable moments have that same trick of face. He rejoined his companion, two slips of cardboard well up in the cup of his palm.

"Good seats, Herman?"

"I ask you, Sam, is it an outrage? Twenty bucks for a table on the side!"

"No!"

"Is that highway robbery or not, I ask you!"

Mr. Samuel Kahn hitched at his belt, an indication of mental ferment.

"I wouldn't live in this town, not if you gave it to me!"

"It's not the money, Sam. What's twenty dollars more or less on a business trip, and New-Year's Eve at that? But it's the principle of the thing. I hate to be made a good thing of!"

"Twenty bucks!"

"Yes, and like he was doing me a favor, that Louis Slups kyin the box-office who used to take tickets in our Olympic at home. Somebody at the last minute let go of his reservation or we couldn't have got a table."

"Twenty bucks, and we got to feel honored yet that they let us sit at a table to buy a dinner! But say, Herm, it's a great sight, ain't it?"

"There's only one little old New York! Got to hand it to this town—they're a gang of cut-throats, but they do things up brown. A little of it goes a long ways, but I always say a trip to New York isn't complete without a night at the Moncrieff Roof. You sit here, Sam, facing the stage."

"No, you! An old bachelor has got the right to sit closer to a girl-show than a married man."

They drew up before a small table edging a shining area of reserved floor space and only once removed from the burnt-orange curtains.

"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Samuel Kahn, his rather strongly aquiline face lifted in profile.

"A-ha!" exuded Mr. Loeb, smiling out of eyes ten years younger.

"What'll you have, Sam?"

"Say, what's the difference? I'll take a cheese sandwich and a glass of beer."

"Now cut that! Maybe I squealed about the twenty bucks, but that don't make me out a short skate. This isn't Cherokee Garden at home, man. I'm going to blow my brother-in-law to New-Year's Eve in my own way, or know the reason why not. Here, waiter, a pint of extra dry and a layout of sandwiches."

"If you can stand it, I guess I can!"

"It's not on the firm, either, Sam; it's on me!"

"For the price of to-night ma and Etta would hang themselves, ain't it?"

"Say, we only live once. I always tell ma she can't take it with her when she goes. Anyways, for the discount we got on those Adler sport skirts, we can afford to celebrate."

"Say, Herman, I wish I had a dime for every dollar that is spent up here to-night. Look at the women! I guess American men don't make queens out of their wives!"

"For every wife who's up here to-night I wouldn't take the trouble to collect the dimes," said Mr. Loeb, with cunning distinction.

"I guess that ain't all wrong, neither. It isn't such a pleasure to be away from your family New-Year's Eve, but I can assure you I'd rather have Etta having her celebration with ma and grandma, and maybe the Bambergers over at the house, than up here where even a married woman can blush to be."

"Take it from me, old man, a flannel petticoat in the family is worth all the ballet skirts on this roof put together."

"I bought ma and Etta each one of them handbags to-day at Lauer's for nine dollars. What they don't know about the price won't hurt them. Two for nine I'll tell them."

"To this day ma believes that five-hundred-dollar bar pin I brought her two years ago from Pittsburgh cost fifty at auction."

"There's Moe Marx from Kansas City just coming in! Spy the blonde he's with, will you? I guess Moe is used to that from home, nix! There's a firm, Marx-Jastrow, made a mint last year."

"Look!"

The lights had sunk down, the sea of faces receding into fog. The buzz died, too, and doors were swung against the steady shuffle of incomers. From behind the curtains a chime tonged roundly and in one key. One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—eleven —twelve!

Then the orange curtains parted and on a gilded dais the width of the room, in startling relief against a purple circle the size of a tower clock, the Old Year, hoar on his beard and with limbs that shivered in an attitude of abdication, held out an hourglass to a pink-legged cherub with a gold band in his or her short curls.

A shout went up and a great clanging of forks against frail glass, the pop of corks and the quick fizz ensuing. The curtains closed and the lights flashed up. Time had just sailed another knot into space, and who cared?

At a center table a woman's slipper was already going the rounds. It began to sag and wine to ooze through the brocade.

"Well, Hermie, here's a happy New Year to you!"

"And to you, Sam, and many of 'em!"

"To ma and Etta and grandma!"

"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien!"

"To Kahn, Loeb & Schulien and that to this time next year we got the Men's Clothing Annex."

They drank in solemn libation.

The curtains had parted again. A Pierrot, chalky white, whistled in three registers, soprano, bass, and baser. A row of soubrettes rollicked in and out again in a flash of bushy skirts.

"Say, look at the third one from this end with the black curls all bobbing. I'm for her!"

"Where?"

"Gone now!"

Mr. Kahn leaned across his singing glass, his eye quickened into a wink.

"Old man, you can pull that woman-hater stuff on the home folks, but it takes your brother-in-law to lead you to the live ones. Eh?"

"You dry up," said Mr. Loeb, peering between the halves of a sandwich.

On a glass runway built over the heads of the assembled, a crystal aisle for satin feet, the row of soubrettes suddenly appeared, peering over the crystal rail, singing down upon the sea of marcelled, bald, and dead heads. Men, sheepish of their smiles but with the small heels overhead clanging like castanets into their spirits, dared to glance up.

"Gad, Herman! What'll they think up next? Whatta you know about that—all those little devils dancing right over our heads!"

"There she is!"

"Who?"

"The little one in the boy's black-satin suit, with the black curls bobbing!"

"Watch out, Herm! You'll die of crick in the neck."

"I don't see any blinkers on you!"

"Hey, old man! Your mouth's open."

"I know. I opened it," said Mr. Loeb, his head back and eyes that were suddenly bold staring up at the twinkling aisle.

At a table adjoining, a man reached up, flecking one of the tiny black-satin feet with a whirl of his napkin.

Then Mr. Herman Loeb, of St. Louis, committed an act of spontaneous combustion. When came the turn of the black satin and the bobbing curls to bend over the rail directly above him, he flung wide his arms, overturning a wine bottle.

"Jump!" he cried.

Beneath the short, black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and quicker than Harlequin's wink the aisle was clean.

"Gad!" said Mr. Loeb, his strong profile thrust forward and a light on it.

"That little one with the black curls? Say! You can put her on your watch-fob and take her home."

"Wouldn't mind!" said Mr. Loeb.

"You and Moe Marx are like all the women-haters. You don't know it, but you're walking in your sleep and the tenth-story window's open."

"We oughtn't to come up here in business clothes," said Mr. Loeb, eying his cuff-edges.

A woman sang of love. A chorus, crowned and girdled in inflated toy balloons, wreathed in and out among the tables.

"She's not in that crowd."

Men to whom life for the most part was grim enough vied for whose cigarette end should prick the painted bubbles. A fusillade ensued; explosions on the gold-powdered air—a battle de luxe!

Mr. Kahn threw back his head, yawned, and slid a watch from his waistcoat pocket.

"W-ell, a little of this goes a long way. If we want to pull out of this town day after to-morrow we've got to get down to Cedar Street early in the morning on that sweater job lot. It's about time for us to be getting across to the hotel."

"Wait!" said Mr. Loeb.

A jingling and a right merry cacophony of sound came fast upon the bubble bombardment, and then, to a light runnel of song, the row of twenty-four, harnessed in slotted sleigh-bells and with little-girl flounced frocks to their very sophisticated pink-silk knees.

The devices of vaudeville are perennial. Rigoletto, who set a court's sides aching, danced to bells. The row of twenty-four, pink and white as if the cradle had just yielded them up, shivered suddenly into an ecstasy of sound, the jerked-up shoulder of one, the tossing curls of another, the naughty shrug of a third, eking out a melody.

A laugh rose off the crowd.

"Say, this town'll fall for anything! That act's got barnacles. But the little devils look cute, though. Say—say, old man, cut that out! This is no place for your mother's son. Say!"

Mr. Loeb was leaning forward across the table, his head well ahead of his shoulders. From the third from the end of the row of twenty-four, a shoulder shrugging to the musical nonsense of bells was arching none too indirectly toward him, and once the black curls bobbed, giving a share of tremolo to the melody. But the bob was carefully directed, and Herman Loeb returned it in fashion, only more vehemently and with repetition.

"Say, Herman, enough is enough! You'll have her here at the table next. It's like Al Suss always says, the reason he woke up one morning and found himself married to the first pony in the sextet was because he stuck a stamp upside down on a letter to her and found he could be held for a proposal in stamp language."

To a great flare of the Negroid music, the row of twenty-four suddenly turned turtle, and prone on a strip of rug, heads to audience and faces to ceiling, twenty-four pairs of legs, ankleted in bells, kicked up a syncopated melody. From a Niagara of lace, insteps quivered an arpeggio. A chromatic scale bounced off a row of rapidly pointing toes. The third from the end, seized with sudden chill, quivered into grace notes, small pink feet kicking violently to the chandelier.

Men red with laughter pounded their plates. The rhythmic convulsion passed down the prostrate line, forty-eight little feet twinkled a grand finale, and the curtains swung, then opened, remaining so.

The line of twenty-four danced down and across the wide hair-line that separates life and stage, butterflies sipping from table to table. The cabaret was done. Lights resumed, and the business of food and drink.

Mr. Loeb flung out an arm, pulling awry a carefully averted pink sash.

"Say, little Jingle Bells, you and your friend!"

"Cut it out, Herm! If we want to be down on Cedar Street by—"

"What's your hurry, little one?"

"It ain't mine; it belongs to the management."

"Won't you join us?"

"Herm, that job-lot of sweaters—"

"Oh, come on, little Jingle Bells!"

"My friend, too?"

"Sure your friend."

They teetered, the two of them like animated dolls, arm in arm, and so at ease.

"Here, you little Black Curls, sit next to me, and you, Blondey, over there by my brother-in-law."

"What'll you have, girls?"

"Anchovies and fine-chopped onions for mine. Tell 'em in the kitchen, waiter, I said fine, and if the gentlemen are going to order wine, bring me a plate of oyster crackers first to take off the edge of my emptiness."

"Sure, another bottle of wine, waiter."

"Hermie, we—"

"And you, little Jingle Bells, same as Blondey's order?"

"Yeh."

"Say, you know what?"

"No. What?"

"I fell for those bouncing black curls of yours before I was in the place five minutes."

At that there was an incredible flow of baby talk.

"Gemmemen ike ikkie gurl wiz naughty-naughty black curl-curlies?"

"You bet your life I do," said Mr. Loeb, unashamed of comprehension.

Mr. Kahn flashed another look at his watch.

"Say, don't you know, you girls oughtn't to keep us boys up so late. Ain't there no wear out to you?"

The yellow curls to his right bounced sharply.

"He asks if there's a wear out to us, Cleone? I wish it to you this minute, Baldy, that you had the muscles in the back of my legs. I guess you think it's choice for us girls to come out on the floor after the show!"

"Sylvette!"

"Yah, it's my New-Year's resolution to tell the truth for thirty minutes if I'm bounced for it. If you got to know it, it's a ten-per-cent. rake-off for us girls on every bottle of golden vichy you boys blow us to."

"Honest, Sylvette, you're wearing scrambled eggs instead of brains to-night. Why don't you cry a few brinies for the gemmemen while you're at it!"

That so quickened Mr. Loeb's risibilities that he dropped his hand over Miss Cleone St. Claire's, completely covering yet not touching it.

"You're a scream, kiddo! Gee! I like you!"

She drank with her chin flung up and her throat very white.

"Bubbles! Bubbles! God bless all my troubles!"

"Well, I'll be darned!" said Mr. Kahn, smiling at her.

"The gemmemen from out of town?"

"St. Louis."

"I had a friend out there—Joe Kelsannie, of Albuquerque. Remember him, Sylvette?"

"Do I!"

"I'm going out there myself some day if the going's good, and get me a cowboy west of Newark."

Mr. Loeb leaned forward, smiling into her quick-fire eyes.

"I'll take you!"

"Stick her on your watch-fob, Herman."

"No, sirree, I'll take her life size."

"Watch out, Hermie; remember the upside-down postage stamp!"

"Want to go, Jingle Bells?"

"Sure."

"But I'm on the level, little one. No kidding. Day after to-morrow. St. Louis—with me!"

Miss Cleone St. Claire drew herself up, the doll look receding somewhat from her gaze.

"Say, bo, you got me wrong. I'm one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand chorus girls you could introduce your sister to. Aren't I, Syl?"

"You let that kid alone," said Miss Sylvette de Long, in a tone not part of her role. "When the traffic policeman sticks up his mitt it's time to halt, see?" Lines not before discernible in Miss De Long's face had long since begun to creep out, smoky shadows beneath her eyes and a sunburst of fine lines showing through the powder like stencil designs.

"Come on, Herm. It's getting late, and if we want to be down on Cedar—"

"You think I'm kidding this little black-eyed chum of yours, don't you, Blondey?"

"Sure not! You want 'er to grace the head of your table and wear the family heirlooms!"

"Well, Sam, you're my brother-in-law—married to my own sister and living under the same roof with me—am I a habitual lady-fusser, or do they call me Hermie the Hermit at home?"

"Never knew him to talk ten straight words to a skirt before, girls," said Mr. Kahn through a yawn; "and if you don't believe it, go out and ask Louis Slupsky, who used to play chinies with him."

"Say, you," said Miss De Long, edging slightly, "you're about as funny as a machine-gun, you are! If you got a private life, why ain't you back in St. Louis a night like this, showing her and the kids a good time?"

She was frankly tired, her eyelids darkening.

"I wish to Heaven I was," said Mr. Kahn, suddenly. "Take it from me, girl, it was nothing but a business hang-over kept me. Come, Herm, if we—"

"You think I'm kidding little Jingle Bells, don't you?"

Miss St. Claire sat back against her chair; her black eyes had quieted. "If you ain't kidding you must be crazy with the heat or dr—"

"Look at my glass. Have I touched it?"

"The man's raving, Syl! Wants to marry me and take me back to St. Louis, Thursday."

"Cut the comedy and come! Herm, it's getting on to three in the morning."

"This little girl keeps thinking I'm kidding, Blondey. I always knew if I ever fell for matrimony it would be just like this. Right off the reel. No funny business. Just bing! Bang! Done!"

"Catch me while I swoon—but he sounds on the level, Cleone."

"Well, what if he is? Of all the nerve! Whatta you know about me? How do you know I haven't got three kids and a crippled husband at home? How do you know—?"

"I know, little Jingle Bells! Why, I was as sure of you, the minute I clapped eyes on you, as if we'd been raised next door to each other. I can see right down in your little life like it was this glass of wine."

Miss St. Claire threw out her arms in a beautiful and sleepy gesture.

"Well, boys, this is a nice little party, but I got to get up at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, and I need the sleep. Oh, how I love my morning sleep!" She drew back, her bare outflung arm pushing her from the table. "If you'll call me and my room-mate a taxi—"

"No, you don't, Jingle Bells!"

He placed a hand that trembled slightly on the sleeved part of her arm. She opened wider her very wide black eyes.

"Are you bats?" she said.

"I'm going to marry you and take you home with me, if I have to carry you off like a partridge."

"Cleone, I tell you the man means it!"

"You're right, Blondey. I never meant anything more in my life."

A sudden shortness of manner crept over Mr. Kahn.

"Man, you're drunk!" he cried, springing to his feet.

"See my glass!"

"Then you're crazy!"

"Sit down, old Baldy. Why's he crazy? That little room-mate of mine is as straight a little girl as—"

"Why, I tell you he's crazy! That man's the head of a big business. He can't kick up any nonsense like this. Come on, Herm, cut the comedy. It's time we were getting across to our hotel. Look at the crowd thinning, and what's left is getting rough. Come!"

"If you don't know how to behave yourself, Sam, in the presence of these ladies, maybe you better go back to the hotel alone. I'm going to see these young ladies to their door, and before we go me and this little girl are going to understand each other."

Mr. Kahn sat down again in some stupefaction.

"Well, of all the nerve! Who are you? Whatta you think I am? Syl, what's his game?"

Miss De Long thrust forward her tired and thinning face; her eyes had a mica gleam.

"Cleone, he wants to marry you. A decent man with a decent face from a decent town has taken a shine to you and wants to marry you. M-a-r-r-y! Do you get it, girl?"

"How do you know he's decent? I don't know no more about him than he knows about me. I—"

"'Ain't you got no hunch on life, girl? Look at him! That's how I know he's decent. So would you if you'd been in this business as long as me. Can't you tell a real honest-to-God man when you see one? A business man at that!"

"You got me right, Blondey. Kahn, Loeb & Schulien, Ladies' Wear, St. Louis. Here's my card. You give me an hour to-morrow, Jingle Bells, and I'll do all the credential stuff your little heart desires. Louis Slupsky knows me and my whole family. His mother used to stuff feather pillows for mine. Kahn here is my brother-in-law and partner in business. He's a slow cuss and 'ain't grasped the situation yet. But are you on, little one? Is it St. Louis Thursday morning, as Mrs.—?"

"Herm! You're cr—"

"Syl—what'll I—do?"

"An on-the-level guy, Cleone. Marry! Do you hear? M-a-r-r-y! Say, and it couldn't happen to me!"

"Herman, man, I tell you you're off your head. Think once of your home—ma, Etta, grandma—with a goy girl that—"

"Easy there, Baldy, you're adding up wrong. You and her both celebrates the same Sundays. If anybody should ask you for Sylvette de Long's birth certificate, look it up under the P's. Birdie Pozner. It's the same with my friend. Cleone, tell the gemmemen your real name! Well, I'll tell it for you. Sadie Mosher, sister to the great Felix Mosher who played heavy down at Shefsky's theater for twenty years. Goy! Say, Sammie, it's too bad a nut from the bug-house bought the Brooklyn Bridge to-day or I'd try to sell it to you."

"Little Jingle Bells, if I put you in a taxi now and shoot up those credentials, will you marry me to-morrow at noon?"

"I—oh, I dunno."

"Marry, he says to you, girl. Think of the minus number of times girls like us get that little word whispered to 'em. Think of the short season. Moncrieff's grouch. The back muscles of your legs! Marry, he says to you, girl! Marry!"

"To-morrow at noon, little one?"

"I—I sleep till three."

"And it couldn't 'a' been me!"

"Little Jingle Bells?"

"Why, y-yes, I—I'm on."

At three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, in a magistrate's office, beneath a framed engraving of a judicial court in wigged session, Herman Schulien Loeb and Sadie Helen Mosher became as one. A bar of scant metropolitan sunshine, miraculously let in by a cleft between two skyscrapers, lay at the feet of the bride.

Slightly arear of them: Mr. Louis Slupsky; Mr. Samuel Kahn, with a tinge the color of apoplexy in his face; and Miss Sylvette de Long, her face thrust forward as if she heard melody. The voice of the magistrate rose like a bird in slow flight, then settled to a brief drone.

* * * * *

East is East and West is West, and St. Louis is neither. It lies like a mediator, the westerly hand of the east end of the country stretching across the sullenest part of the Mississippi to clasp the easterly hand of the west end of the country.

Indians have at one time or another left their chirography upon the face of St. Louis. But all that is effaced now under the hot lava of Americanism that is covering the major cities in more or less even layers. Now it stands atop its Indian mounds, a metropolis of almost a million souls, a twenty-story office-building upon the site of an old trading-post, and a subway threatening the city's inners. There is a highly restricted residence district given over to homes of the most stucco period of the Italian Renaissance, and an art-museum, as high on the brow of a hill as the Athenians loved to build. St. Louis has not yet a Champs-Elysees or a Fifth Avenue. And of warm evenings it takes its walks without hats. Neither is the cafe or the cabaret its evening solace.

It dines, even in its renaissance section, placidly chez soi; the family activities of the day here thrown into a common pool of discussion.

On Washington Boulevard, probably sixty dollars a foot removed from the renaissance section, architecture suddenly turns an indifferent shoulder to period, Queen Anne rubbing sloping roof with neighbor's concrete sleeping-porch of the hygienic period. Only the building-line is maintained, the houses sitting comfortably back and a well-hosed strip of sidewalk, bordered in hardy maples, running clear and white out to De Balaviere Avenue, where the art-nouveau apartment-house begins to invade. In winter bare branches meet in deadlock over this walk. On the smooth macadamized road of Washington Boulevard automobiles try out their speed limit.

One such wintry day, with the early dusk already invading, Mrs. Herman Loeb, with red circles round her very black eyes, and her unrouged face rather blotched, sat in one of the second-floor-front rooms of a double buff-brick house on Washington Boulevard, hunched up in a red-velvet chair, chin cupped in palm, and gazing, through perfectly adjusted Honiton lace curtains, at the steady line of home-to-dinner motor-cars.

Warmth lay in that room, and a conservative mahogany elegance—a great mahogany double bed, immaculately covered in white, with a large monogram heavily hand-embroidered in its center; a mahogany swell-front dresser, with a Honiton lace cover and a precise outlay of monogramed silver. Over it a gilt-framed French engraving with "Maternal Love" writ in elegant script beneath. A two-toned red rug ate in footsteps.

Mrs. Loeb let her head fall back against the chair and closed her eyes. In her dark-stuff dress with its sheer-white collar, she was part of the note of the room, except that her small bosom rose and fell too rapidly. A pungent odor of cookery began to invade; the street lamps of Washington Boulevard to pop out. The door from the hallway opened, but at the entrance of her mother-in-law Mrs. Loeb did not rise, only folded one foot closer under her.

"You, Sadie?"

"Yes."

"Herman home yet?"

"No."

"Smell? I fixed him red cabbage to-night."

"Yes, I smell."

"How she sits here in the dark. Thank goodness, Sadie, electricity we don't have to economize on."

She pushed a wall key, a center chandelier of frosted electric bulbs springing into radiance. In its immediate glare Mrs. Loeb regarded her daughter-in-law, inert there beside the window.

"Get your embroidery, Sadie, and come down by me and Etta till the men get home to supper. I want her to show you that cut-work stitch she's putting in her lunch napkins."

"Ugh!"

"What?"

Mrs. Bertha Loeb approached with the forward peer of the nearsighted. Time and maternity had had their whacks at her figure, her stoutness enhanced by a bothersome shelf of bust, but her face—the same virile profile of her son's and with the graying hair parted tightly from it—guiltless of lines, except now, regarding her daughter-in-law, a horizontal crease came into her brow.

"You want to go sit a while by grandma, then?"

"No. Gee! can't—can't a girl just sit up in her room quiet? I'm all right."

"I didn't say, Sadie, you wasn't all right. Only a young girl with everything to be thankful for don't need to sit up in her room like it was a funeral, with her mother and sister and grandma in the same house."

On the mahogany arms of her chair Mrs. Herman Loeb's small hand closed in a tight fist over her damp wad of handkerchief,

"I—I—"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Sadie, you been crying again."

"What if I have?"

"A fine answer from a girl to her mother."

"I—you—you drive me to it—your questions—"

"I shouldn't have the interest of my own son's wife at heart!"

"Can't a girl get—get blue?"

"Blue?"

"Yes, blue."

Mrs. Bertha Loeb reached out her hand with its wide marriage band slightly indented in flesh; the back of that hand was speckled with large, lightish freckles and trembled slightly.

"Sadie, ain't there just no way we can make you feel happy in St. Louis? Last night through the door to my room I couldn't help hear again you and Herman with a scene. Take your feet down off the plush, Sadie."

"Oh yes, you heard, all right."

"'Ain't you got a good home here, Sadie? Everything in the world a girl could wish for! A husband as good as gold, like his poor dead father before him. 'Ain't we done everything, me and my Etta, to make you feel how—how glad we are to have you for our Hermie's wife?"

"Oh, I know, I know."

"What maybe we felt in the beginning—well, wasn't it natural, an only son and coming such a surprise—all that's over now. Why, it's a pleasure to see how grandma she loves you."

"I—I'm all right, I tell you."

"Didn't we even fix it you should go in a flat on Waterman Avenue housekeeping for yourself, if you wanted it?"

"Yes, and tie myself down to this dump yet. Not much!"

"Well, I only hope, Sadie Loeb, you never got in your life to live in a worse dump. I know this much, I have tried to do my part. Did I sign over this house to you and Herman for a wedding present, giving only to my own daughter the row of Grand Avenue stores?"

"I never said you didn't."

"Have you got the responsibility even to run your own house, with me and Etta carrying it on like always?"

"Am I complaining?"

"Do I ask of you one thing, Sadie, except maybe that you learn a little housekeeping and watch how I order from the butcher, things that every wife should know if she needs it or not? In the whole year you been my daughter, Sadie, have I asked of you more than you should maybe help the up-stairs girl a little mornings, and do a little embroidery for your linen-chest, and that maybe, instead of sleeping so late till noon every morning, you should get up and have breakfast with your husband?"

"If you begin going over all that again I—I'll just yell!"

"With anybody pouting in the house I just 'ain't got heart to do nothing. I don't see, Sadie, that you had such fine connections in the East that you shouldn't be satisfied here."

"You just leave my friends in the East out of it. If you wanna know it, they're a darn sight better than the wads of respectability I see waddlin' in here to swap Kaffee Klatsches with you!"

"Just let me tell you, Sadie Loeb, you can be proud such ladies call on you. A girl what don't think no more of her husband's business connections than not to come down-stairs when Mrs. Nathan Bamberger calls! Maybe our friends out here got being good wifes and good housekeepers on the brain more as high kicking in New York; but just the same Mrs. Nathan Bamberger, what can buy and sell you three times over, ain't ashamed to go in her Lindell Avenue kitchen, when her husband or her son likes red cabbage, what you can't hire cooked, or once in a while a miltz."

"Say, if I've heard that once, I've—"

"Then, too, Sadie, since we're talking—it's a little thing—I haven't liked to talk about it, but I—I got the first time I should hear the word ma on your lips. You think it's so nice that a daughter-in-law should always call me 'Say,' like a bed-post?"

"I—I can't, Mrs. Loeb—it—it just won't come—mother."

"Don't tell me you don't know any better! A girl what can be so nice with poor old blind grandma, like you been, can be nice with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, too, if she wants to be. I didn't want I should ever have to talk to you like this, Sadie, but sometimes a—a person she just busts out."

And then Mrs. Herman Loeb leaped forward in her chair, her small tight fist pounding each word:

"Then let me go! Whatta you holding me here for? Let me go back, Mrs.—mother! Let me go! I don't deny it, you're too good for me round here. I don't fit! Let me go back to the old room and—my old room-mate where—where I belong with my—my crowd. You tell what you just said to Herm! Get him to let me go back with him on his trip to-morrow night. Please, Mrs.—mother—please!"

"You mean to New York with him on his business trip for a visit?"

"Call it that if you want to, only let me go! You—you can tell them later that—that I ain't coming back. I—I've begged him so! I don't belong here. You just said as much yourself. I don't belong here. Let me go, Mrs. Loeb. Let me go! You tell him, Mrs. Loeb, to let me go."

Mrs. Bertha Loeb suddenly sat down, and the color flowed out of her face.

"That I should live to see this day! My Herman's wife wants to leave him! Oh, my son, my son! What did you do to yourself! A di—a separation in the Loeb family! I knew last night when I heard through the door and how worried my poor boy has looked for months, that it didn't mean no good. Since her first month here I've seen it coming. I did my part to—"

"Yes, Mrs. Loeb, and I done my part!"

"Oh—oh—oh, and how that boy of mine has catered to her! Humored her every whim to keep her contented! I always say it's the nix-nux wives get the most attentions and thanks from their husbands. I—"

"I done my part. I've tried as much as you to make myself fit in out here. I—I just ain't your kind, Mrs. Loeb. Yours and—Etta's. I—I can't be saving and economical when I see there's plenty to spend. I—I was raised with my brother down in Shefsky's theater, where nobody cares about monogramed guest towels and about getting up before noon if they don't want to. The evenings here kill me! Kill me! I hate pinochle! I gotta have life, Mrs. Loeb. I hate Kaffee Klatsches with a lot of—I—I tell you I got different blood in my veins, Mrs. Loeb, I—"

"No, no, Sadie Mosher Loeb, that kind of talk don't go. You got just the same shabbos like us. Saturday is your—"

"Yes, yes, I'm in the right church, all right, Mrs. Loeb, but I'm in the wrong pew. Mrs. Loeb, please can't you understand I'm in the wrong pew!"

And all her carefully confined curls, springing their pins, she fell forward a shivering mass.

In that surcharged moment and brisky exuding a wintry out-of-doors, Mr. Herman Loeb entered and stood for a moment in the open doorway, in the act of removing his greatcoat.

"Herman, my son! Oh, my son!"

"What's wrong, ma? Sadie!"

"It's come, Herman, like I always predicted to Etta it would. Your wife, my poor boy, she wants to leave you. This should happen to a Loeb yet—a separation in the family! My poor boy! My poor boy!"

"Why, ma, what—what's Sadie been telling you?"

At that Mrs. Herman Loeb raised her streaming face, her eyes all rid of their roguery and stretched in despair.

"I didn't want to let out to her, Herman. I wanted to make a quiet get-away, you know I did. But she nagged me! She nagged me!"

"Ma, you shouldn't—"

"She heard us last night and Heaven knows how many nights before that. She's wise. She knows. She knows it's been a year of prison here for—"

"Oh, my poor boy! Prison! A girl like her finds herself married into one of the most genteel families in St. Louis, a girl what never in her life was used to even decent sheets to sleep on!"

"Ma!"

"Till three o'clock in the afternoon she told me herself how her and them girls used to sleep, two and three in a boarding-house room, and such a mess!"

"Ma, if you and Sadie don't cut out this rowing I'll put on my hat and go back down-town where I came from. What is this, anyway, a barroom or a home out on Washington Boulevard? You want grandma to hear you? Ma! Sadie!"

"My poor boy! My poor boy!"

"I didn't start it, Herm. I was sitting up here quiet. All I ask, Herm, is for you to take me back to New York to-morrow night on your trip. Let me go, Herm, for—for an indefinite stay. It ain't this house, Herm, and it ain't your mother or your sister and—-and it ain't you—it ain't any one. It's all of you put together! I can't stand the speed out here! There ain't none!"

"I guess she wants, Hermie, for her bad-girl notions you should give up the best retail business in St. Louis and take her to live in New York, where she can always be in with that nix-nux theatri—"

"No, no, he knows I don't want that!"

"If she did, ma, we'd go!"

"Herm knows it was all a mistake with me. I didn't know my own mind. I wanna go back along where I came from and where I belong! It ain't like I was the kind of a girl with another man in the case—"

"We should thank her, Hermie, that there ain't more scandal mixed up in it yet!"

"Ma!"

"My poor boy, what could have had his pick from the first girls in St.—"

"Ma!"

There was an edge to Mr. Loeb's voice that had the bite of steel. He tossed his greatcoat to the snowy bed, walking between the bed-end and the mantel, round to the crouched figure of his wife.

"There, there, Sadie!" he said in his throat, and, stooping over her: "I give in! I give in!"

Her head flew up.

"Herm!"

"My son!"

"No, no, ma, it's no use trying to put anything but a jingle-bell harness on poor little Jingle Bells. She don't understand us any more than we—we can understand her!"

"That's it, Herm; that's why I say if you'll only let me go!"

"Oh, my God! A separation in the Loeb family? My poor dead husband! My daughter Etta, president of the Ladies' Auxiliary! Grandma—"

"'Sh-h-h, ma! You want grandma to hear?"

"My son, the cleanest, finest—"

"Ma!" There were lines in his face as if a knot at his heart were tightening them. "You mustn't blame her, ma; and, Sadie, you mustn't feel this way toward my mother. Nobody's to blame. I've been thinking this thing over more than you think, Sadie, and I—I give in. She's a poor little thing, ma, that's been trapped into something she can't fit into."

"Yes, Herm, that's it."

"It's natural. My fault, too. I carried her off like a partridge. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells! To-morrow night we leave for New York, and when I come back you're going to stay on with—"

"Sylvette says—"

"With friends, indefinitely. Don't cry, little Jingle Bells, don't! 'Sh-h-h, ma! There, didn't I tell you you'd rouse grandma!"

With her hands stuffed against rising sobs, his mother ceased rocking herself to and fro in her straight chair, her eyes straining through the open door. A thin voice came through, querulous, and then the tap-tap of a cane.

Mr. Herman Loeb answered the voice, standing quiet at the bed-end.

"Nothing is the matter, grandma."

"Come and get me, Herman."

"Yes, grandma."

He hastened out and re-entered almost immediately, leading Mrs. Simon Schulien, her little figure so fragile that the hand directing the cane quavered of palsy, and the sightless face, so full of years and even some of their sweetness, fallen in slightly, in presage of dust to dust.

"Bertha?"

"Yes, mamma."

"Here, grandma, by the window is your chair."

He lowered her to the red-velvet arm-chair, placing her cane gently alongside.

"So!"

She moved her sightless face from one to the other, interrogating each presence.

"Sadie?"

"Yes, grandma."

"How you holler, children! Everything ain't right?"

"Yes, grandma. Ma and Sadie and me been making plans. To-morrow night Sadie goes with me to New York on my trip. A little pleasure trip."

The little face, littler with each year, broke into smile.

"So, little Sadie-sha, you got good times, not? A good husband and good times? New York! To New York she goes, Bertha?"

"Yes, mamma."

Mrs. Schulien fell to crooning slightly, redigesting with the senility of years.

"To New York! Nowadays young wives got it good. How long you stay, Hermie?"

"It's just my Pittsburgh-New York trip, grandma."

"Sadie, come here by grandma."

She approached with the tears drying on her face, her bosom heaving in suppressed jerks.

"Yes, grandma." And patted the little clawlike hand, and the bit of white hair beneath the fluted cap, and a bit of old lace fastened with an old ivory cameo and covering the old throat.

"You got good times, not?"

"Yes, grandma."

"And you'm a good girl, Sadie. Eh? Eh?"

"Y-yes, grandma."

"When you come back from New York, you bring grandma a fine present, not?"

"Yes, yes, grandma."

"A quilted under jacket wholesale, for when grandma rides out in the wheel-chair."

"Y-yes, grandma."

To the saturnine, New York of its spangled nights is like a Scylla of a thousand heads, each head a menace. Glancing from his cab window one such midnight, an inarticulate expression of that fear must have crept over and sickened Mr. Herman Loeb. He reached out and placed his enveloping hand over that of his wife,

"Well, Sadie, you take good care of yourself, girl. No matter how we decide to—to end this thing, remember you're my wife—yet."

"Yes, Herman," said Mrs. Loeb, through a gulp.

"Don't stint, and remember how easily you get cold from draughts."

"I won't. I will."

"If you find yourself too crowded in that room with your friend, get a better one farther away from the theaters, where it isn't so noisy—maybe by yourself."

"I'll see."

"You won't be afraid to go back to that room now, with Sylvette still at the show?"

"N-no."

"If I was you—now mind, I'm only suggesting it—but if I was you I wouldn't be in such a hurry about getting back in that roof show, Sadie. Maybe in a few days something better may show up or—or you'll change your mind or something."

"I gotta get back to work to keep from thinking. Anyway, I don't want to be sponging on you any longer than I can help."

"You're my wife, aren't you?"

She sat, a small cold huddle in the center of the cab seat, toward him her quivering face flashing out as street lamps bounced past. They were nearing the great marble facade of the Seventh Avenue Terminal.

"Herman, I—I hate to see everything bust up like this—you—you such a prince and all—but like Syl says, I—I guess all fools ain't dead yet!"

"You've had time to work this thing out for yourself now, Sadie, but like I was saying before, anybody can play stubborn, but—but it's a wise person who ain't ashamed to change his mind. Eh, Sadie? Eh?"

They were sliding down a runway and drew up now alongside a curb. A redcap, wild for fee, swung open the cab door, immediately confiscating all luggage.

"No, no, not that! You carry that box, Herm. It's the padded underjacket for grandma. Tell her I—I sent it to her, Herm—with—with love."

"Yes, Sadie."

She was frankly crying now, edging her way through the crowd, running in little quick steps to match her pace to his.

At the trainside, during the business of ticket inspection, she stood by, her palm pat against her mouth and tears galumphing down. With a face that stood out whitely in the gaseous fog, Mr. Loeb fumbled for the red slip of his berth reservation.

"Well, Sadie girl, three minutes more and—"

"Oh—oh, Herm!"

"If you feel as bad as that, it's not too late, Sadie. I—you—it takes a wise little girlie to change her mind. Eh? Eh?"

"No—no, Herm, I—"

He clenched her arm suddenly and tightly.

"If you want to come, girl, for God's sake now's your time. Sadie honey, you want to?"

She shook him off through gasps.

"No, no. Herm, I—I can't stand it—it's only that I feel so bad at seeing you—No—no—not—not now."

The all-aboard call rang out like a shout in a cave.

He was fumbling at his luggage for the small pasteboard box, haste fuddling his movements.

"I'll be in Pittsburgh to-morrow till seven, honey. Sleep over it, and if you change your mind, catch the eleven-forty-five St. Louis flyer out of here to-morrow morning, and that train'll pick me up at Pittsburgh—eleven forty-five."

"Oh, I—"

"You be the one to bring this box home, with your own little hands, to poor grandma, honey, and—and if you don't change your mind, why—why, you can send it. You be the one to bring it to her, honey. Remember, it's a wise girlie knows when to change her mind!"

"Oh, Hermie—Hermie!"

"All—aboard!"

With her hands clasped and her uncovered face twisted, she watched the snakelike train crawl into oblivion.

When she re-entered the taxicab she was half swooning of tears.

"Don't cry, baby," said the emboldened chauffeur, placing the small pasteboard box up beside her.

* * * * *

In the great old-fashioned room in Fortieth Street—of two beds and two decades ago—she finally in complete exhaustion slid into her white iron cot against the wall, winding an alarm-clock and placing it on the floor beside her.

Long before Miss Sylvette de Long, with her eyelids very dark, tiptoed in, and, rubbing the calves of her legs in alcohol, undressed in the dark, she was asleep, her mouth still moist and quivering like a child's.

At nine-thirty and with dirty daylight cluttering up the cluttered room, the alarm-clock, full of heinous vigor, bored like an awl into the morning.

THE END