Americans All Part 21

She turned to rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy!

Can't wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon'

was the only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying over one day's wait. Bad honey boy!"

He reached back for the pink newspaper so habitually protruding from his hip-pocket. "You ought to see the way they're neck-breaking for the marriage-license bureaus since the draft. First thing we know the whole shebang of the boys will be claiming exemption of sole support of wife."

"It's a good thing we made up our minds quick, Jimmie. They'll be getting wise. If too many get exemption from the army by marrying right away, it'll be a give-away."

"I'd like to know who can lay his hands on the exemption of a little wife to support."

"Oh, Jimmie, it--it sounds so funny. Being supported! Me that always did the supporting, not only to me, but to my mother and great-grandmother up to the day they died."

"I'm the greatest little supporter you ever seen."

"Me getting up mornings to stay at home in my own darling little flat, and no bas.e.m.e.nt or time-clock. Nothing but a busy little hubby to eat him nice, smelly, bacon breakfast and grab him nice morning newspaper, kiss him wifie, and run downtown to support her. Jimmie, every morning for your breakfast I'm going to fry----"

"You bet your life he's going to support her, and he's going to pay back that forty dollars of his girl's that went into his wedding duds, that hundred and ninety of his girl's savings that went into furniture----"

"We got to meet our instalments every month first, Jimmie. That's what we want--no debts and every little darling piece of furniture paid up."

"We--I'm going to pay it, too."

"And my Jimmie is going to work to get himself promoted and quit being a sorehead at his steady hours and all."

"I know more about selling, honey, than the whole bunch of dubs in that store put together if they'd give me a chance to prove it."

She laid her palm to his lips.

"Shh-h-h! You don't nothing of the kind. It's not conceit, it's work is going to get my boy his raise."

"If they'd listen to me, that department would----"

"Sh-h-h! J. G. Hoffheimer don't have to get pointers from Jimmie Batch how to run his department store."

"There you go again. What's J. G. Hoffheimer got that I ain't? Luck and a few dollars in his pocket that, if I had in mine, would----"

"It was his own grit put those dollars there, Jimmie. Just put it out of your head that it's luck makes a self-made man."

"Self-made! You mean things just broke right for him. That's two-thirds of this self-made business."

"You mean he buckled right down to bra.s.s tacks, and that's what my boy is going to do."

"The trouble with this world is it takes money to make money. Get your first few dollars, I always say, no matter how, and then when you're on your feet scratch your conscience if it itches. That's why I said in the beginning, if we had took that hundred and ninety furniture money and staked it on----"

"Jimmie, please--please! You wouldn't want to take a girl's savings of years and years to gamble on a sporty cigar proposition with a card-room in the rear. You wouldn't, Jimmie. You ain't that kind of fellow. Tell me you wouldn't, Jimmie."

He turned away to dive into the barrel. "Naw," he said. "I wouldn't."

The sun had receded, leaving a sudden sullen gray; the little square room, littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture, and the paper-hanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, darkening and seeming to chill.

"We got to quit now, Jimmie. It's getting dark and the gas ain't turned on in the meter yet."

He rose up out of the barrel, holding out at arm's-length what might have been a tinsmith's version of a porcupine.

"What in-- What's this thing that scratched me?"

She danced to take it. "It's a grater, a darling grater for horseradish and nutmeg and cocoanut. I'm going to fix you a cocoanut cake for our honeymoon supper to-morrow night, honey-bee. Essie Wohlgemuth over in the cake-demonstrating department is going to bring me the recipe.

Cocoanut cake! And I'm going to fry us a little steak in this darling little skillet. Ain't it the cutest!"

"Cute she calls a tin skillet."

"Look what's pasted on it. 'Little Housewife's Skillet. The Kitchen Fairy.' That's what I'm going to be, Jimmie, the kitchen fairy. Give me that. It's a rolling-pin. All my life I've wanted a rolling-pin. Look honey, a little string to hang it up by. I'm going to hang everything up in rows. It's going to look like Tiffany's kitchen, all shiny. Give me, honey; that's an egg-beater. Look at it whiz. And this--this is a pan for war bread. I'm going to make us war bread to help the soldiers."

"You're a little soldier yourself," he said.

"That's what I would be if I was a man, a soldier all in bra.s.s b.u.t.tons."

"There's a bunch of the fellows going," said Mr. Batch, standing at the window, looking out over roofs, dilly-dallying up and down on his heels and breaking into a low, contemplative whistle.

She was at his shoulder, peering over it. "You wouldn't be afraid, would you, Jimmie?"

"You bet your life I wouldn't."

She was tiptoes now, her arms creeping up to him. "Only my boy's got a wife--a brand-new wifie to support, ain't he?"

"That's what he has," said Mr. Batch, stroking her forearm, but still gazing through and beyond whatever roofs he was seeing.

"Jimmie!"

"Huh?"

"Look! We got a view of the Hudson River from our flat, just like we lived on Riverside Drive."

"All the Hudson River I can see is fifteen smokestacks and somebody's wash-line out."

"It ain't so. We got a grand view. Look! Stand on tiptoe, Jimmie, like me. There, between that water-tank on that black roof over there and them two chimneys. See? Watch my finger. A little stream of something over there that moves."

"No, I don't see."

"Look, honey-bee, close! See that little streak?"

"All right, then, if you see it I see it."

"To think we got a river view from our flat! It's like living in the country. I'll peek out at it all day long. G.o.d! honey, I just never will be over the happiness of being done with bas.e.m.e.nts."

"It was swell of old Higgins to give us this half-Sat.u.r.day. It shows where you stood with the management, Gert--this and a five-dollar gold piece. Lord knows they wouldn't pony up that way if it was me getting married by myself."

"It's because my boy ain't shown them down there yet the best that's in him. You just watch his little safety-first wife see to it that from now on he keeps up her record of never in seven years pushing the time-clock even one minute late, and that he keeps his stock shelves O. K. and shows his department he's a comer-on."

"With that bunch of b.o.o.bs a fellow's got a swell chance to get anywheres."