Just Around the Corner Part 54

"Just you wait, ma! This time next year life'll be one long ice-cream soda for you and her. Wait till my dynamo gets to charging like I want her to--I'll be runnin' this whole shebang with a bang!"

"You're a good boy, Jimmie; but a kid of seventeen ain't expected to have shoulders for three."

"Just the samey, I showed a draft of my dynamo to the head operator, ma, and he's comin' up Sunday to have a look. Leave it here on the table just like it is, ma. You'll be ridin' in your Birdsong self-charging electric automobile yet!"

She let her fingers wander up and down his cheek and across his shoulders and into his uneven nappy hair.

"Poor Jimmie! If only you had the trainin'! Miss Maisie was up from the store to-day in her noon-hour and seen it standing here next to my bed; and she thought it was such a pretty-lookin' dynamo, with its copper wires and all."

"You didn't let her--"

"No--honest, Jimmie! See--it ain't been touched; I didn't even let her go near the table's edge. She wanted to know when I was comin' back to the store--she says the corsets have run down since they got the new head saleslady, Jimmie."

"If I'd 'a' been here I'd 'a' told her you ain't going back."

"Sometimes I--I think I ain't, neither, Jimmie."

"What?"

"Nothin'."

"When you get well, ma, then I--"

"Then I'm going back on my job, Jimmie. Eighteen years--not countin' the three years your papa lived--at doing one thing sort of makes you married to it. I got my heart as set as always, Jimmie, on gettin' you in at the Electric Training School next door. If I hadn't broke down--"

"Nix for mine, ma!"

"Every day I sit by the window, Jimmie, and see the young engineers and electricians who board there goin' to work; and it breaks my heart to think of you, with your mind for inventions, runnin' the streets--a messenger boy--just when I was beginnin' to get where I could do for you."

"Aw, cut that, ma! Don't I work round on my dynamo every morning till I go on duty? Wouldn't I look swell with an electricity book under my arm?

I'd feel like Battling John drinking tea out of an egg-sh.e.l.l."

"The trainin'-school's the place for you, Jimmie. If you'd only take the dynamo over to the superintendent and show him where you're stuck he'd help you, Jimmie. I been beggin' you so long, and if only you wasn't so stubborn!"

"I ain't got the nerve b.u.t.tin' in over there; it's for fellows who got swell jobs already."

"There's cla.s.ses for boys, too, Jimmie; the janitor told me. Just go to-morrow and show your dynamo. It won't hurt nothin', and maybe they'll know just what the trouble is--it's only a little thing, Jimmie--three times in succession it worked last night, didn't it? It won't hurt to go, Jimmie--just to go and show it."

"Nix; I ain't got the nerve. You just wait! I ain't got the trainin'; but didn't I sell my double lens the day after I got the patent? Didn't I make that twenty-five just like battin' your eye?"

"The janitor says you was robbed in it, Jimmie."

"We should worry! Didn't we get a rockin'-chair and a string of beads and a tool-chest out of it?"

"It ain't you worries me so much, Jimmie. Here, put your head here on the pillow next to me, Jimmie. My heart's actin' up to-night. It ain't you worries me you're a man like your papa was and can hit back; but Essie--if only Essie--"

"You don't handle her right, ma; you're too easy-going with her. Since she went on her new job she's gettin' too gay--too gay!"

"Jimmie!"

"Sure she is. Like I told her last night when she came in all hours from dancing--if she didn't take that war-paint off her face I'd get her in a corner and rub it off till--"

"I've begged her and begged her, Jimmie, just as hard as I ever begged you about the dynamo, to wash her face of it. It's eatin' me, Jimmie--eatin' me! There wasn't a girl in the store that didn't envy that girl her complexion. Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, it ain't paint alone--it's where it can lead to."

"She needs an old-time spankin'."

"Them girls down at the theayter where she works put them ideas in her head. It's only of late with her, Jimmie. Wasn't she like a little baby when I had her across from me in the notions?"

"She's gotta keep her face clean or I'll--"

"She needs somebody strong like her papa was to handle her, Jimmie.

She's stubborn in ways, like you, and needs somebody older, my boy--somebody strong that can handle her and love her all at once."

"She's gotta quit sneakin' home at all hours. She don't pay no attention to me; but she's gotta quit or I--I'll go down and smash up that whole theayter crowd of 'em!"

"If she'd 'a' had a father to grow up under it would 'a' been different.

He was one of the strongest men in the power-house, Jimmie. Mechanics make strong men, my boy, and that's why my heart's set on you, Jimmie, takin' up where he left off."

"It's that job of hers, ma; it ain't no hang-out for her down there round the lights. She's gettin' too gay. I'll smash that ticket-speculator to gelatin if he don't show up or leave her alone!"

"'Sh-h-h, Jimmie! He's her young man; she says he's a upright and honorable young man with intentions."

"Where she hidin' him, then?"

"He--he's bashful about comin', Jimmie. Last night on her knees right here by this bed she told me, Jimmie, with her eyes like saucers, that he's said everything but come right out and ask her."

"What's the matter? Is he tongue-tied?"

"A fine fellow, she says, Jimmie--up to date as a new dime, makin' from thirty to forty a week. Get that, Jimmie? Gawd--forty a week! On forty a week, Jimmie, what they could do for themselves and for you!"

"I wanna look him over first. I knew a fellow in that game got forty a week and ninety days once, too."

"Jimmie!"

"There's a bunch of speculators used to hang round the Forty-second Street telegraph office, with one eye always on the cop and the other always open for rubes. They was all hunchbacks from dodging the law."

"He ain't one of them kind, Jimmie."

"Then why don't he have a roof over his head instead of doing sidewalk business?"

"Ticket-speculatin' is like any other business, Essie says. Profit is profit, whether you make it on a sheet of music, a washboard, or a theayter ticket."

"Then why don't he show his face round here, instead of runnin' her round night after night when she ought to be home sleepin'?"

"Gawd, Jimmie! I don't know, except what she says. I just feel like I couldn't stand her not bringing him to-night--like--like I couldn't stand it, Jimmie."

"Lay easy there, ma."

"They're young, I guess, and gotta have life; but I lay here with it in front of me all night, long after she gets home and is sleepin' here next to me as light as a daisy. She's so little and pretty, Jimmie."