O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 Part 53

He broke in again: "Sure; she likes 'em for change. But for a steady diet--Besides, I've got a business to 'tend to. My gosh! I've got a business to--"

"You know perfectly well that Wetzler practically runs the whole thing--or could, if you'd let him." Youth is cruel like that, when it wants its way.

He did not even deny it. He seemed suddenly old. Pinky's heart smote her a little. "It's just that you've got so used to this great barracks you don't know how unhappy it's making you. Why, mother said to-day that she hated it. I asked about the attic--the cleaning and all--and she said that she hated it."

"Did she say that, Paula?"

"Yes."

He dusted his hands together, slowly, spiritlessly. His eyes looked pained and dull. "She did, h'm? You say she did?" He was talking to himself, and thinking, thinking.

Pinky, sensing victory, left him. She ran lightly up the cellar stairs, through the first-floor rooms and up to the second floor. Her mother's bedroom door was open.

A little mauve lamp shed its glow upon the tired woman in one of the plump, grey-enamel beds. "No, I'm not sleeping. Come here, dear. What in the world have you been doing in the cellar all this time?"

"Talking to dad." She came over and perched herself on the side of the bed. She looked down at her mother. Then she bent and kissed her. Mrs.

Brewster looked incredibly girlish with the lamp's rosy glow on her face and her hair, warmly brown and profuse, rippling out over the pillow.

Scarcely a thread of grey in it. "You know, mother, I think dad isn't well. He ought to go away."

As if by magic the youth and glow faded out of the face on the pillow.

As she sat up, clutching her nightgown to her breast, she looked suddenly pinched and old. "What do you mean, Pinky! Father--but he isn't sick. He--"

"Not sick. I don't mean sick exactly. But sort of worn out. That furnace. He's sick and tired of the thing; that's what he said to Fred.

He needs a change. He ought to retire and enjoy life. He could. This house is killing both of you. Why in the world don't you close it up, or sell it, and come to New York?"

"But we do. We did. Last winter--"

"I don't mean just for a little trip. I mean to live. Take a little two-room apartment in one of the new buildings--near my studio--and relax. Enjoy yourselves. Meet new men and women. Live! You're in a rut--both of you. Besides, dad needs it. That rheumatism of his, with these Wisconsin winters--"

"But California--we could go to California--"

"That's only a stop-gap. Get your little place in New York all settled, and then run away whenever you like, without feeling that this great bulk of a house is waiting for you. Father hates it; I know it."

"Did he ever say so?"

"Well, practically. He thinks you're fond of it. He--"

Slow steps ascending the stairs--heavy, painful steps. The two women listened in silence. Every footfall seemed to emphasize Pinky's words.

The older woman turned her face toward the sound, her lips parted, her eyes anxious, tender.

"How tired he sounds," said Pinky; "and old. And he's only--why, dad's only fifty-eight."

"Fifty-seven," snapped Mrs. Brewster sharply, protectingly.

Pinky leaned forward and kissed her. "Good night, mummy dear. You're so tired, aren't you?"

Her father stood in the doorway.

"Good night, dear. I ought to be tucking you into bed. It's all turned around, isn't it? Biscuits and honey for breakfast, remember."

So Pinky went off to her own room (_sans_ "slp cov") and slept soundly, dreamlessly, as does one whose work is well done.

Three days later Pinky left. She waved a good-bye from the car platform, a radiant, electric, confident Pinky, her work well done.

"_Au 'voir!_ The first of November! Everything begins then. You'll love it. You'll be real New Yorkers by Christmas. Now, no changing your minds, remember."

And by Christmas, somehow, miraculously, there they were, real New Yorkers; or as real and as New York as anyone can be who is living in a studio apartment (duplex) that has been rented (furnished) from a lady who turned out to be from Des Moines.

When they arrived, Pinky had four apartments waiting for their inspection. She told them this in triumph and well she might, it being the winter after the war when New York apartments were as scarce as black diamonds and twice as costly.

Father Brewster, on hearing the price, emitted a long low whistle and said: "How many rooms did you say?"

Two--and a kitchenette, of course."

"Well, then, all I can say is the furniture ought to be solid gold for that; inlaid with rubies and picked out with platinum."

But it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't solid anything, being mostly of a very impermanent structure and style. Pinky explained that she had kept the best for the last. The thing that worried Father Brewster was that, no matter at what hour of the day they might happen to call on the prospective lessor, that person was always feminine and hatted. Once it was eleven in the morning. Once five in the afternoon.

"Do these New York women wear hats in the house all the time?" demanded Hosea Brewster worriedly. "I think they sleep in 'em. It's a wonder they ain't bald. Maybe they are. Maybe that's why. Anyway, it makes you feel like a book agent."

He sounded excited and tired. "Now, father!" said Mrs. Brewster, soothingly.

They were in the elevator that was taking them up to the fourth and (according to Pinky) choicest apartment. The building was what is known as a studio apartment, in the West Sixties. The corridors were done in red flagstones, with grey-tone walls. The metal doors were painted grey.

Pinky was snickering. "Now she'll say: 'Well, we've been very comfortable here.' They always do. Don't look too eager."

"No fear," put in Hosey Brewster.

"It's really lovely. And a real fireplace. Everything new and good.

She's asking two hundred and twenty-five. Offer her one seventy-five.

She'll take two hundred"

"You bet she will," growled Hosea.

She answered the door--hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season's chosen colour. A small dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio living-room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was window. There were j.a.panese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as you've seen it in the second-act library.

Hosea Brewster twisted his head around and up to gaze at the lofty ceiling. "Feel's if I was standing at the bottom of a well," he remarked.

But the hatted one did not hear him. "No; no dining-room," she was saying briskly. "No, indeed. I always use this gate-legged table. You see? It pulls out like this. You can easily seat six--eight, in fact."

"Heaven forbid!" in fervent _sotto voce_ from Father Brewster.

"It's an enormous saving in time and labour."

"The--kitchen!" inquired Mrs. Brewster.

The hat waxed playful. "You'll never guess where the kitchen is!" She skipped across the room. "You see this screen?" They saw it. A really handsome affair, and so placed at one end of the room that it looked a part of it. "Come here." They came. The reverse side of the screen was dotted with hooks, and on each hook hung a pot, a pan, a ladle, a spoon.

And there was the tiny gas range, the infinitesimal ice chest, the miniature sink. The whole would have been lost in one corner of the Brewster's Winnebago china closet.