Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 7

"How soon?"

"Maybe after--after I've had some lessons in Paris."

He was suddenly grave. "Aw, there you go on that old trip again! Gee! I wish I could grab that bag out of your hand and throw it with tickets and all in the lake!"

"You know with me it's right funny too. The minute I get something I want, then I don't want it any more. Before papa said yes I was so crazy to go, and now that I got the tickets bought I'm not so anxious at all."

"Then don't go, Miss Miriam."

She withdrew her hand and danced to her feet, her incert.i.tude vanishing like a candle flame blown out. "Look over there, will you--a redbird!"

"If it ain't!" and he followed her quickly, high-stepping between violet patches.

"Honest, it's hard to walk, the violets are so thick."

"Here, let me pick you a bunch of them to take home, Miss Miriam.

Say, ain't they beauties! Look, great big purple ones, and black and soft-looking toward the middle just like your eyes. Look what beauties--they'll keep a long time when you get home, if you wrap them in wet tissue-paper."

They fell to plucking, now here, now there.

The sun had got low when they retraced their steps to the train, and the chill of evening long since had set in.

"You--you ought to told me it was so late."

"I didn't know it myself, Miss Miriam."

"Let's hurry. Mamma won't know where--how--"

"We'll make it back in thirty minutes."

"Let's run for that train."

"Give me your hand."

They were off and against the wind, their faces thrust forward and upward. Homeward in the coach they were strangely silent, this time his hat in her lap. At the entrance to her apartment-house he left her with reiterated farewells.

"Then I can come to-morrow night, Miss Miriam?"

"Y-yes." And she stepped into the elevator. He waved through the trellis-work, as she moved upward, brandishing his hat. She answered with a flourish of her bunch of violets.

"Good-by!"

At the threshold her mother met her, querulous and in the midst of adjusting summer covers to furniture.

"How late! I hope, Miriam, right away you had the steamer-trunk sent up.

Good berths--good state-rooms you got? What you got in that paper, that aloes root I told you to get against seasickness? Gimme and right away I boil it."

"No, no, don't touch them! They--they're violets. Let me put them in water with wet tissue-paper over them."

To the early clattering of that faithful chariot of daybreak, the milk-wagon, and with the April dawn quivering and flushing over the roofs of houses, Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger rose from her restless couch and into a black flannelette wrapper.

"Simon, wake up! How a man can sleep like that the day what he starts for Europe!"

To her husband's continued and stentorian evidences of sleep she tiptoed to the adjoining bedroom, slippered feet sloughing as she walked.

"Girls!"

Only their light breathing answered her. Atop the bed-coverlet her younger daughter's hand lay upturned, the fingers curling toward the palm.

"Ray! Miriam!"

Miriam stirred and burrowed deeper into her pillow, her hair darkly spread against the white in a luxury of confusion.

"Girls!"

"What, mamma?"

"Five o'clock, Miriam, and we ain't got the trunks strapped yet, or that seasick medicine from Mrs. Berkovitz."

"For Heaven's sake, mamma, the boat don't sail till three o'clock this afternoon! There's plenty time. Go back to bed awhile, mamma."

"When such a trip I got before me as twelve days on water, I don't lay me in bed until the last minute. Ray, get up and help mamma. In a minute the milkman comes, and I want you should tell him we don't take no more for ten weeks. Get up, Ray, and help mamma see that all the windows is locked tight."

"M-m-m-m."

"Miriam, get up! I want you should throw this quilt from your bed over the bra.s.s table in the parlor so it don't get rust. Miriam, didn't you say yourself last night you must get up early? Always only at night my children got mouths about how early they get up."

From the soft mound of her couch Miriam rose to the dawn with the beautiful gesture of tossing backward her black hair. Sleep trembled on her lashes and she yawned frankly with her arms outflung.

"Oh-h-h-h-h dear!"

"I tell you I got more gumption as my daughters. I want, Miriam, you should go down by Berkovitz's for that prescription for your papa."

"Aw, now, mamma, you've got six different kinds of--"

"I tell you when I let your papa get seasick or any kind of sick on this trip, with his going-on about hisself, right away my whole trip is spoilt. Ray, if you don't get up and sew in them cuffs and collars on your coat don't expect as I will do it for you. For my part you can travel just like a rag-bag, Ray!"

"M-m-m-m."

Shivering and with her small ankles pressed together, Miriam peered out into the pale light.

"A grand day, mamma."

"Miriam, I think if I sew all the express checks up in a bag and wear them right here under my waist with the jewelry, they are better as in papa's pockets. With his tobacco-bag, easy as anything he can pull them out and lose them. That's what we need yet, to lose our express checks!"

"Mamma, that's been on your mind for ten days. For goodness' sakes, n.o.body's going to lose the express checks!"