CHAPTER VIII
The family rose from the table and moved into the living room, a little constraint upon them. Mrs. Payson stayed behind to give directions to Hulda. Hulda, who dined in a heap off the end of the kitchen table, was rarely allowed to consume her meal in peace. Between Hulda and Mrs. Payson there was waged the unending battle of the coffee-pot. After breakfast, luncheon, dinner the mistress of the house would go into the kitchen, take the coffee-pot off the gas stove and peer into its dark depths.
"My goodness, Hulda, you've made enough coffee for a regiment! That's wasteful. It'll only have to be thrown away."
"Ay drink him."
"You can't drink all this, girl. You'll be sick. You drink altogether too much coffee. Coffee makes you nervous, don't you know that? Yellow!"
Hulda munched a piece of bread and took another long gulp of her beloved beverage, her capable red hand wrapped fondly about the steaming cup. "Naw Mrs. Pay-son. My grandfather he was drink twenty cup a day in old country."
"Yes, but what happened to him? He'd be living to-day——"
"He ban living to-day. Ninety years and red cheeks like apples."
In the living room Lottie took up her knitting again. The front parlor was unlighted but Charley went in and sat down at the old piano. She did not play particularly well and she had no voice. Lottie, knitting as she went, walked into the dim front room and sat down near Charley at the piano. Charley did not turn her head.
"That you, Lotta?" She went on playing.
"Yes, dear."
A little silence. "Now you stick to it!"
"I will."
In the living room Henry Kemp leaned over and kissed his wife. Straightening, he took a cigar out of his vest pocket and eyed it lovingly. He pressed its resilient oily black sides with a tender thumb and finger. He lighted it, took a deep pull at it, exhaled with a long-drawnpf-f-f, and closed his eyes for a moment, a little sigh of content breathing from him. He glanced, then, at his watch. Only seven-fifty. Good Lord! He strolled over to Great-aunt Charlotte who was seated near the front parlour doorway and the music. Her head was cocked. He patted her black-silk shoulder, genially.
"That cigar smells good, Henry."
"Good cigar, Aunt Charlotte." He rolled it between his lips.
Aunt Charlotte's fingers tapped the arm of her chair. She waggled her head a little in time with the music. "It's nice to have something that smells like a man in the house."
"You vamp!" shouted Henry Kemp. He came over to Belle again who was seated in the most gracious chair the room boasted, doing nothing with a really charming effect. "Say, listen Belle, we don't have to stay so very late this evening, do we? I'm all tired out. I worked like a horse to-day downtown."
Before Belle could answer Charley called in from the other room, "Oh, mother, I'm going to be called for, you know."
Belle raised her voice slightly. "The poet?"
"Yes."
"In the flivver?" Her father's question.
"Yes. Now roar, Dad, you silly old thing. Imagine a girl like me being cursed with a father who thinks poets and flivvers are funny. If you'd ever tried to manage either of them you'd know there's nothing comic about them."
"There is too," contended Henry Kemp. "Either one of 'em's funny; and the combination's killing. The modern—uh—what's this horse the poets are supposed to ride?"
His wife supplied the classicism, "Pegasus."
"Pegasus!" he called in to Charley.
"You stick to your importing, Henry," retorted his gay young daughter, "and leave the book larnin' to mother and me."
Henry Kemp, suddenly serious, strolled over to his wife again. He lowered his voice. "About nine o'clock, anyway, can't we? Eh, Belle?"
"Not before nine-thirty. You know how mama——"
Henry sighed, resignedly. He stood a moment, balancing from heel to toe. "Lot's a peach, that's what she is," he confided irrelevantly to his wife. He puffed a moment in silence, his eyes squinting up through the smoke. "And it's a damn shame, that's what. Damn shame."
He picked up the discarded newspaper and seated himself in the buffalo chair. The buffalo chair was a hideous monstrosity whose arms, back, and sides were made of buffalo horns ingeniously put together. Fortunately, their tips curved away from the sitter. The chair had been presented to old Isaac Thrift by some lodge or real estate board or society. It was known to the family as Ole Bull. The women never sat in it and always warned feminine callers away from it. Its horns had a disastrous way with flounces, ruffles, plackets, frills. It was one of those household encumbrances which common sense tells you to cast off at every housecleaning and sentiment bids you retain. Thus far sentiment had triumphed on Prairie Avenue. Once you resigned yourself to him Ole Bull was unexpectedly comfortable. Here Henry Kemp sat reading, smoking, glancing up over the top of his paper at the women folk of his family—at his wife, his daughter, his mother-in-law, thoughtfully through the soothing haze of his cigar. He pondered on many things during these family Friday evenings, did Henry Kemp. And said little.
The conversation was the intimate, frank, often brutal talk common to families whose members see each other too often and know one another too well. Belle to Lottie, for example:
"Oh, why don't you get something a little different! You've been wearing blue for ten years."
"Yes, but it's so practical; and it always looks well."
"Cut loose and be impractical for a change. They're going to wear a lot of that fawn colour this spring—sand, I think they call it.... How did Mrs. Hines get along with that old taffeta she made over for you?"
"I don't know; it kind of draws across the front, and the sleeves—I have to remember to keep my arms down. I wish you'd look at it."
"You'd have to put it on. How can I tell?"
"Too much trouble."
"Well, then, go on looking frumpy. These home dressmakers!"
Lottie did not look frumpy, as a matter of fact. No one with a figure so vigorous and erect, a back so straight, a head so well set on its fine column of a throat, a habit of such fastidious cleanliness of person, could be frumpy. But she resorted to few feminine wiles of clothing, as of speech or manner. Lottie's laces, and silks and fine white garments, like her dear secret thoughts and fancies, were worn hidden, by the world unsuspected. All the dearer to Lottie for that.
To-night Belle sat dangling her slipper at the end of her toe, her knees crossed. She had a small slim foot and a trick of shooting her pump loose at the heel so that it hung half on half off as she waggled her foot in its fine silk stocking. Henry Kemp had found it an entrancing trick when first they were married. He found it less fascinating now, after twenty years. Sometimes the slipper dropped—accidentally. "Henry dear, my slipper." Well, even the Prince must have remonstrated with Cinderella if she made a practice of the slipper-dropping business after their marriage. Twenty years after.
Belle, dangling the slipper, called in now to Lottie: "Nice party, Lot?"
"Oh, nice enough."
"Who was there?"
"The girls. You know."
"Is her flat pretty? What did she serve?"
"Chicken salad with aspic—hot biscuits—olives—a cake——"
"Really!"
"Oh, yes. A party."
"Is she happy with her Orville—now that she's waited ten years for him?"
"Yes—at least, she was until this afternoon."
"Until!—Oh, come in here, Lottie. I can't shout at you like——"
Lottie, knitting as she walked, came back into the living room. Charley followed her after a moment; came over to her father, perched herself on a slippery arm of Ole Bull and leaned back, her shoulder against his.
Lottie stood, still knitting. She smiled a little. "Beck Schaefer was on one of her reckless rampages. She teased Celia until Celia cried."
"About what? Teased her about what? Pretty kind of guest, I must say."
"Oh, marriage. Marriage and happiness and—she said every unmarried woman was a failure."
"That shouldn't have bothered Celia. She's married, safe enough. She certainly had Beck there."
"Beck intimated that Orville wasn't worth waiting ten years for."
"Most men aren't," spoke up great-aunt Charlotte from her corner, "and their wives don't know it until after they've been married ten years; and then it's too late. Celia had plenty of time to find it out first and she married him anyway. That's better. She'll be happy with him."
"Charlotte Thrift!" called Charley, through the laughter. "Youcouldn'tbe so wise just living to be seventy-four. Oh, you hoop-skirted gals weren't so prunes-and-prismy. You've had a past. I'm sure of it."
"How d'you suppose I could have faced the future all these years if I hadn't had!" retorted Aunt Charlotte.
"That Schaefer girl had better go slow." Henry Kemp blew a whole flock of smoke-rings for Charley's edification at which Charley, unedified, announced that she could blow better rings than any of these in size, number, and velocity with a despised gold-tipped perfumed cigarette and cold-sore on the upper lip. "Some day," he predicted, "some day she'll run away with a bell-hop. Just the type."
"Who's run away with a bell-hop?" Mrs. Payson chose this unfortunate moment to enter the living room after her kitchen conference.
"Beck Schaefer," said Charley, mischievously.
You should have seen, then, the quick glance of terror that Mrs. Payson darted at Lottie. You might almost have thought that Lottie had been the one who had succumbed to the lure of youth in blue suit and brass buttons.
"Beck! She hasn't! She didn't! Beck Schaefer!"
"No mama, she hasn't. Henry just thinks she will—in time."
Mrs. Payson turned on the overhead electric lights (they had been sitting in the soothing twilight of the lamps), signified that Charley was to hand her the evening paper that lay at the side of Henry's chair, and seated herself in an ancient rocker—the only rocker the house contained. It squeaked. She rocked. Glaring lights, rustling paper, squeaking chair. The comfort of the room, of the group, was dispelled.
"I'd like to know why!" demanded Mrs. Payson, turning to the stock market page. "A good family. Money. And Beck Schaefer's a fine looking girl."
One thought flashed through the minds of all of them. The others looked at Lottie and left the thought unspoken. Lottie herself put it into words then. Bluntly: "She isn't a girl, mother. She's thirty-five."
"Thirty-five's just a nice age." The paper crackled as she passed to the real estate transfers. "If this keeps on I'd like to know what they're going to do about building. Material's so high now it's prohibitive." More rustling of paper and squeaking of chair. "Beck Schaefer's got her mother to look out for her."
"That's why," said Aunt Charlotte, suddenly. Lottie looked at her, knitting needles poised a moment.
"Why what?" asked Mrs. Payson. Then, as her sister Charlotte did not answer, "You don't even know what we're talking about, Charlotte. Sit there in the corner half asleep."
"It's you who're asleep," snapped great-aunt Charlotte tartly. "With your eyes wide open."
When the doorbell rang then, opportunely, they all sighed a little, whether in relief or disappointment.
"I'll go," said Lottie. So it was she who opened the door to admit Ben Gartz.
You heard him as Lottie opened the door. "Hello! Well, Lottie! How's every little thing with you?...That'sgood! You cer'nly look it."
Ben Gartz came into the living room, rubbing his hands and smiling genially. A genial man, Ben, and yet you did not warm yourself at his geniality. A little too anxious, he was. Not quite spruce. Looking his forty-nine years. A pale and mackerel eye in a rubicund countenance, had Ben Gartz. Combed his thinning hair in careful wisps across the top of his head to hide the spreading bald spot. The kind of man who says, "H'are you, sir!" on meeting you, and offers you a cigar at once; who sits in the smokers of Pullmans; who speaks of children always as "Kiddies." He toed in a little as he walked. A plumpish man and yet with an oddly shrunken look about him somehow. The flame had pretty well died out in him. He and his kind fought a little shy of what they called "the old girls." But he was undoubtedly attracted to Lottie. Ben Gartz had been a good son to his mother. She had regarded every unmarried woman as her possible rival. She always had said, "Ben ought to get married, I'd like to see him settled." But it was her one horror. The South Side, after her death, said as one voice, "Well, Ben, you certainly have nothing to reproach yourself with. You were a wonderful son to her." And the South Side was right.
Once Mrs. Payson said of him, "He's a good boy."
Aunt Charlotte had cocked an eye. "He's uninteresting enough to be good. But I don't know. He looks to me as if he was just waiting for a chance to be bad." She had caught in Ben Gartz's face a certain wistfulness—a something unfulfilled—that her worldly-wise sister had mistaken for mildness.
Henry Kemp brightened at the visitor's entrance as well he might in this roomful of women. "Well, Ben, glad to see you. Come into the harem."
Ben shook hands with Mrs. Payson, with Aunt Charlotte, with Belle, with Charley. "My, my, look at this kiddy! Why, she's a young lady! Better look out, Miss Lottie; you'll be letting your little niece get ahead of you." Shook hands with Henry Kemp. Out came the cigar.
"No, no!" protested Henry. "You've got to smoke one of mine." They exchanged cigars, eyed them, tucked them in vest pockets and lighted one of their own, according to the solemn and ridiculous ritual of men. Ben Gartz settled back in a chair and crossed his chubby knees. "This is mighty nice, let me tell you, for an old batch living in a hotel room. The family circle, like this. Mighty nice." He glanced at Lottie. He admired Lottie with an admiration that had in it something of fear, so he always assumed a boisterous bluffness with her. Sometimes he felt, vaguely, that she was laughing at him. But she wasn't. She was sorry for him. He was to her as obvious as a child to its mother.
"You might have come for dinner," Lottie said, kindly, "if I'd known, earlier. The folks had dinner here."
"Oh, no!" protested Ben as though the invitation were now being tendered. "I couldn't think of troubling you. Mighty nice of you, though, to think of me. Maybe some other time——"
Mrs. Carrie Payson said nothing. She did not issue dinner invitations thus, helter-skelter. She did not look displeased, though.
"Well, how's business?"
Great-aunt Charlotte made a little clucking sound between tongue and palate and prepared to drift from the room. She had a knack of drifting out of the room—evaporating, almost. You looked up, suddenly, and she was not there. Outside there sounded the sharp bleat of a motor horn—a one-lung motor horn. Two short staccato blasts followed by a long one. A signal, certainly.
"The poet, Charley," said Henry Kemp; and laughed his big kind laugh.
"Ask him in," Mrs. Payson said. "Aren't you going to ask your young man to come in?" Charley was preparing to go.
"What for?" she asked now.
"To meet the family. Unless you're ashamed of him. When I was a girl——"
Great-aunt Charlotte sat back again, waiting.
"All right," said Charley. "He'll hate it." She walked across the room smiling; opened the door and called out to the bleat in the blackness:
"Come on in!"
"What for?"
"Meet the family."
"Oh, say, listen——"
You heard them talking and giggling a little together in the hall. Then they came down the hall and into the living room, these two young things; these two beautiful young things. And suddenly the others in the room felt old—old and fat and futile and done with life. The two stood there in the doorway a moment. The very texture of their skin; the vitality of their vigorous hair as it sprang away in a fine line from their foreheads; the liquid blue-white clearness of the eyeball; the poise of their slim bodies—was youth.
She was tall but he was taller. His hair had a warmer glint; it was almost red. In certain lights it was red. The faun type. Ears a little pointed. Contemptuous of systems, you could see that; metric or rhythmic. A good game of tennis, probably. Loathing golf. So graceful as to seem almost slouchy. Lean, composed, self-possessed. White flannel trousers for some athletic reason (indoor tennis, perhaps, at the gym); a loose great-coat buttoned over what seemed to be no shirt at all. Certainly not a costume for a Chicago March night. He wore it with a full dress air. And yet a certain lovable shyness.
Charley waved a hand in a gesture that somehow united him with the room—the room full of eyes critical, amused, appraising, speculative, disapproving.
"Mother and Dad you know, of course. Grandmother Payson, my Aunt Lottie—Lotta for short. Mr. Ben Gartz.... Oh, forgive me, Aunt Charlotte, I thought you'd gone. There in the corner—my great-aunt Charlotte Thrift.... This is Jesse Dick."
It is a terrible thing to see an old woman blush. The swift, dull almost thick red surged painfully to great-aunt Charlotte's face now, and her eyes were suddenly wide and dark, like a young girl's, startled. Then the red faded and left her face chalky, ghastly. It was as though a relentless hand had wrapped iron fingers around her heart and squeezed it and wrenched it once—tight and hard!—and then relaxed its grip. She peered at the boy standing there in the doorway; peered at him with dim old eyes that tried to pierce the veil of years and years and years. The others were talking. Charley had got her wraps from the hall, and was getting into her galoshes. This cumbersome and disfiguring footgear had this winter become the fad among university co-eds and South Side flappers. They wore galoshes on stormy days and fair. The craze had started during a blizzardy week in January. It was considered chic to leave the two top clasps or the two lower clasps open and flapping. The origin of this could readily be traced to breathless co-eds late for classes. All young and feminine Hyde Park now clumped along the streets, slim silken shins ending grotesquely in thick black felt-and-rubber.
Jesse Dick stooped now to assist in the clasping of Charley's galoshes. He was down on one knee. Charley, teetering a little, put one hand on his head to preserve her balance. He looked up at her, smiling; she looked down at him, smiling. Almost sixty years of life swept back over great-aunt Charlotte Thrift and left her eighteen again; eighteen, and hoop-skirted in her second-best merino, with a green-velvet bonnet and a frill of blond lace, and little muddied boots and white stockings.
She could not resist the force that impelled her now. She got up from her corner and came over to them. The talk went on in the living room. They did not notice her.
"I knew your—I knew a Jesse Dick," she said, "years ago."
The boy stood up. "Yes? Did you?"
"He died in the Civil War. At Donelson. He was killed—at Donelson."
The boy spatted his hands together a little, briskly, to rid them of a bit of dried mud that had clung to the galoshes. "That must have been my grandfather's brother," he said politely. "I've heard them speak of him."
He had heard them speak of him. Charlotte Thrift, with seventy-four years of a ruined life heavy upon her, looked at him. He had heard them speak of him. "Pomroy Dick? Your grandfather? Pomroy Dick?"
"Why, yes! Yes. Did you know him, too? He wasn't—we Dicks aren't—How did you happen to know him?"
"I didn't know your grandfather Pomroy Dick," said Great-aunt Charlotte, and smiled so that the withered lips drew away from the blue-white, even teeth. "It was Jesse I knew." She looked up at him. "Jesse Dick."
Charley leaned over and pressed her fresh dewy young lips to the parchment cheek. "Now isn't that interesting! Good-bye dear." She stopped and flashed a mischievous glance at the boy. "Was he a poet too, Aunt Charlotte?"
"Yes."
Jesse Dick turned his head quickly at that. "He was? I didn't know that. Are you sure? No one in our family ever said——"
"I'm sure," Great-aunt Charlotte Thrift said, quietly. "Families don't always know. About each other, I mean."
"No, indeed," both he and Charley agreed, politely. They were anxious to be off. They were off, with a good-bye to the group in the living room. Charlotte Thrift turned to go upstairs. "Jesse Dick——" she heard, from the room where the others sat. "Dick——" She turned and came back swiftly, and seated herself again in the dim corner. Henry Kemp was speaking, his face all agrin.
"She's a case, that kid. We never know. Some weeks it's the son of one of the professors, with horn glasses and no hat. And then it'll be a millionaire youngster she's met at a dance, and the place will be cluttered up with his Stutz and his orchids and Plow's candy for awhile. Now it's this young Dick."
Ben Gartz waggled his head. "These youngsters!" he remarked, meaninglessly. "These youngsters!"
But Mrs. Carrie Payson spoke with meaning. "Who is he? Dick? I've never heard the name. Who're his folks?"
An uneasy rustle from Belle. "He is a poet," she said. "Quite a good one, too. Some of his stuff is really——"
"Who're his folks?" demanded Mrs. Carrie Payson. "They're not poets too, are they?"
Henry Kemp's big laugh burst out again, then, in spite of Belle's warning rustle. "His father's 'Delicatessen Dick,' over on Fifty-third. We get all our cold cuts there, and the most wonderful pickled herring. They say they're put up in some special way from a recipe that's been in the family for years. Holland Dutch, I guess——"
But Mrs. Carrie Payson had heard enough. "Well, I must say, Belle, you're overdoing this freedom business with Charley. 'Delicatessen Dick!' I suppose the poet sells the herrings over the counter? I suppose he gives you an extra spoonful of onions when you——"
Belle spoke up tartly: "He isn't in the store, mother. His people have loads of money. They're very thrifty and nice respectable people. Of course—everybody in Hyde Park goes to Dick's for their Sunday night supper things."
"His mother's a fine looking woman," Henry Kemp put in. "She's the smart one. Practically runs the business, I hear. Old Dick is kind of a dreamer. I guess dreaming doesn't go in the delicatessen business."
"It'll be nice for Charley," Mrs. Payson remarked, grimly. "With her training at college. I shouldn't wonder if they'd put her in charge of all the cold meats, maybe. Or the cheese."
"Now Mother Payson, Charley's only a kid. Don't you go worrying——"
Belle spoke with some hauteur. "He does not live at home. He has a room near the University. He's fond of his parents but not in sympathy with the business. His work appears regularly inPoetry, and they accept only the best. He worked his way through college without a penny from his people. And," as a triumphant finish—"he has a book coming out this spring."
"Ha!" laughed Henry Kemp, jovially. Then suddenly sobering, regarded the glowing end of his cigar. "But they do say it's darned good poetry. People who know. Crazy—but good. I read one of 'em. It's all about dead horses and entrails and——" he stopped and coughed apologetically. "His new book is going to be called——" Here he went off into a silent spasm of laughter.
"Henry, you know that's just because you don't understand. It's the new verse."
"His new book," Henry Kemp went on, gravely, "is called 'White Worms.'"
He looked at Ben Gartz. The two men laughed uproariously.
Mrs. Payson sat forward stiffly in her rocking chair. "And you let Charley go about with this person!"
"Oh, mother, please. Let's not discuss Charley's affairs. Mr. Gartz can't be interested."
"Oh, but I am! Aren't you, Miss Lottie? Young folks——"
"Besides, all the girls are quite mad about him. Charley's the envy of them all. He's the most sought-after young man in Hyde Park. He wrote a poem to Charley that appeared inPoetrylast month." Belle dismissed the whole affair with a little impatient kick of her foot that sent the dangling slipper flying. "Oh, Henry—my slipper!" Henry retrieved it. "Besides they're only children. Charley's a baby."
Mrs. Carrie Payson began to rock in the squeaky chair, violently. "You heard what she said about the five."
"The five?"
"About the five—you know."
In the laughter that followed great-aunt Charlotte slipped out of the room, vanished up the stairs.
Then the War, of course. Ben Gartz was the sort that kept a map in his office, with coloured pins stuck everywhere in it. They began to talk about the War. They say it'll go on for years and years; it can't, the Germans are starving; don't you believe it, they've prepared for this for forty years; aren't the French wonderful, would you believe it to look at them so shrimpy; it's beginning to look pretty black for them just the same; we'll be in it yet, you mark my words; should have gone in a year ago, that was the time; if ever we do—zowie.
Lottie sat knitting. Ben Gartz reached over and fingered the soft springy mass of wool. There was an intimacy about the act. "If we go into it and I go off to war will you knit me some of these, Miss Lottie? H'm?"
Lottie lifted her eyes. "If you go off to fight I'll knit you a whole outfit, complete: socks, muffler, helmet, wristlets, sweater."
"'Death, where is thy sting'!" Ben Gartz rolled a pale blue eye.
Henry Kemp was not laughing now. His face looked a little drawn and old. He had allowed his cigar to go dead in the earnestness of the war talk. "You're safe, Lottie. It'll be over before we can ever go into it."
Ben Gartz flapped a hand in disagreement. "Don't you be too sure of that. I've heard it pretty straight that we'll be in by this time next year—if not before. I've had an offer to go into the men's watch-bracelet business on the strength of it. And if we do I'm going to take it. Fortune in it."
"Men's watch bracelets! Real men don't wear them. Mollycoddles!"
"Oh, don't they! No I guess not! Only engineers, and policemen and aviators and soldiers, that's all. Mollycoddles like that. They say they aren't wearing any kindbutwrist watches over there. Well, if we go into the war I go into the men's watch-bracelet business, that's what. Fortune in it."
"Yeh," said Henry Kemp, haggardly. "If we go into the war I go into the poor-house."
Belle stood up, decisively. "It's getting late, Henry."
Mrs. Payson bristled. "It's only a little after nine. You only come once a week. I should think you needn't run off right after dinner."
"But it isn't right after dinner, mother. Besides Henry has been working terribly hard. He's worn out."
Mrs. Payson, who knew the state of Henry's business, sniffed in unbelief. But they went. In the hall:
"Then you'll be in to-morrow morning, Lottie?"
"Yes." Lottie seemed a little pale.
Mrs. Payson's face hardened.
You heard a roar outside. Henry warming up the engine. Snorts and chugs, then a gigantic purr. They were off.
The three settled down again in the living room. Mrs. Payson liked to talk to men. Years of business intercourse had accustomed her to them. She liked the way their minds worked, clear and hard. When Lottie had company she almost always sat with them. Lottie had never hinted that this was not quite as it should be. She never even told herself that perhaps this might have had something to do with her being Lottie Payson still.
She was glad enough to have her mother remain in the room this evening. She sat, knitting. She was thinking of Orville Sprague, and of Ben Gartz. Of Charley and this boy—this Jesse Dick. How slim the boy was, and how young, and how—vital! That was it, vital. His jaw made such a clean, clear line. It almost hurt you with its beauty.... Beck Schaefer.... Bell hop.... So that was what Henry had meant. Youth's appeal to women of her age. A morbid appeal....
She shook herself a little. Her mother and Ben Gartz were talking.
"That's a pretty good proposition you got there, Mrs. Payson, if you can swing it. I wouldn't be in any hurry, if I was you. You hang on to it."
There always was talk of "propositions" and "deals" when Mrs. Payson conversed with one of Lottie's callers.
"I think a good deal of your advice, Mr. Gartz. After all, I'm only a woman alone. I haven't got anyone to advise me."
"You don't need anybody, Mrs. Payson. You're as shrewd as that Rolfe is, any day. He's waiting to see how this war's going to go. Well, you wait too. You've got a good proposition there——"
Lottie rose. "I'll get you something to drink," she said.
He caught her arm. "Now don't you bother, Miss Lottie." He always called her "Miss Lottie" when others were there, and "Lottie" when they were alone.
But she went, and came back with ginger ale, and some cookies. Something in his face as he caught sight of these chaste viands smote her kindly and understanding heart. She knew her mother would disapprove, would oppose it. But the same boldness that had prompted her to speak at dinner now urged her to fresh flights of daring.
"What would you say to a cup of nice hot coffee and some cold chicken sandwiches!"
"Oh, say, Miss Lottie! I couldn't think—this is all right." But his eyes brightened.
"Nonsense, Lottie!" said Mrs. Payson, sharply. "Mr. Gartz doesn't want coffee."
"Yes he does. Don't you? Come on in the kitchen while I make it. We'll all have a bite at the dining room table. I'll cut the bread if you'll butter it."
Ben Gartz got up with alacrity. "No man who lives in a hotel could resist an offer like that, Miss Lottie." He frisked heavily off to the kitchen in her wake. Mrs. Payson stood a moment, tasting the unaccustomed bitter pill of opposition. Then she took her stout cane from a corner where she had placed it and followed after them to the kitchen, sniffing the delicious scent of coffee-in-the-making as though it were poison gas. Later they played dummy bridge. Lottie did not play bridge well. She failed to take the red and black spots seriously. Mrs. Payson would overbid regularly. If you had told her that this was a form of dishonesty she would have put you down as queer. Ben Gartz squinted through his cigar smoke, slapped the cards down hard, roared at Mrs. Payson's tactics (he had been a good son to his mother, remember) and sought Lottie's knee under the table.
"... going to marry at twenty and have five children, one right after the other——"
"Lottie Payson, what are you thinking of!" Her mother's outraged voice.
"Why—what——"
"You trumped my ace!"