Barbara picks a husband : a comedy in narrative

Front matter

V

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

II

T he performance was all that the members of Mrs.

Collingwood’s box-party expected of it. To Delia every new comic opera was a new vital experience, furnishing fresh glimpses of dazzling ecstasy. She welcomed every joke as though it were the first that Adam had cracked, and she were Eve, and this were Paradise. The music excited her. The indiscriminate love-making seemed to her thrillingly romantic.

Every one else expected to be bored, and was not disappointed. To Barbara comic operas were a part of the social system, to be endured as gracefully as one endured receptions and bridge and similar matters which one might conceivably dispense with if one were free to choose. To enjoy them as frankly as Delia enjoyed them was vulgar; to call them the stupid inanities that they were was “ high-brow.” One accepted them as a matter of course, as a well-bred person accepted everything from sin to canvas-back duck. Ruth, who was conscientious, thought of the wasted time and of her father, alone at home; answering distantly and half-heartedly the frivolous remarks which Chester Howell, seeing Barbara absorbed in Cleve Winsor, chose to address to her.

Mrs. Collingwood sat in the rear of the box with Tom Paraway, uncomplainingly enduring. They were excellent friends, for all Mrs. Collingwood’s forty-five years and Tom Paraway’s twenty-five; and they had a tacit understanding that Barbara was to be allowed to have her fling, but that they two would stand on guard and see that no harm should come to her.

This resolve entailed hardships ; for Barbara, who could 8 sleep aU day when she so wished, was a spendthrift of the nocturnal hours; and Tom’s day began relentlessly at seven. He had been well-trained in endurance, however, by an unflinching father and a clever mother who, through a quarter century of happy union with inflexibility had been forced to achieve a certain measure of smiling endurance herself. So Tom bore up on whatever sleep he could get, grew a bit hoUow in the cheeks, and clung on — not desperately, for despair was not in the family lexicon, but with a calm persistence which at times irritated Barbara to the point of sharp speech. He had proposed to her, off and on, for seven years — he seemed to remember that he had begun proposing at eighteen, though the thing had become such a habit since, that, as with most habits, its early history had become blurred in his mind.

He had proposed to her for the latest time at five-thirty that afternooji. It struck him that her refusal bore a new sincerity about it ; wherefore he did not record it with Mrs. Collingwood, as his playful custom was.

From the rear of the box, he glared at the silly performance, where wish-wash alternated only with vulgarity, jingling, jangling on through illimitable deserts of tawdry trash. He wondered for what particular sins he was being punished.

Barbara watched the stage, but he could see that she was happily unconscious of what was going on there. She was listening to the discourse of Young Lochinvar, who was leaning so close to her that his forehead now and again touched a stray wisp of her hair, silhouetted against the brightness of the stage.

Tom gritted his teeth, and rapidly mated the proverbial two and two. It was a month ago that Barbara had been bridesmaid at a wedding in Minneapolis. It was the evening following her return that she had given him what had been up to that time her most emphatic “ No.” Cleve Winsor was from Minneapolis.

He brought the man’s face before his mental vision — the popular-fiction lines, the “ straight nose, square chin ” and so forth, which could be called “ clear-cut ” only by a stretch of the romantic fancy that ignored the unmistakable marks of weakness and self-indulgence.

Tom Paraway’s heart sank a little. He could make up his mind to be a good loser, if necessary, but, for other reasons than his own happiness, he did not like to think of yielding the prize to this frontispiece hero, sitting with arms folded — quite in the approved fashion of heroes — a little behind the left shoulder of his lady. He suspected that living with Cleve Winsor might prove a difficult business for a proud, exacting, slightly vain, delicate, high-strung creature like Barbara. Of course, living with Barbara would be no sinecure. He himself was willing to take the risk, seeing the perils clearly, and, therefore, not utterly imprepared. Living with any one in holy wedlock was difficult, he surmised.

Mrs. Collingwood was sitting beside him with eyes closed. Her face seemed extraordinarily noble to him in its finely chiseled repose. He would have said that her ancestors had been well established in New York while it was yet Nieuw Amsterdam, if he had not known that the farm in Connecticut was only one generation behind her.

Slowly and a little wearily Mrs. Collingwood opened her eyes. It was possible that Barbara was an even greater strain on her than on any of the young lady’s devoted admirers.

You’ve been asleep,” said Tom accusingly.

She laughed a low, rippling laugh, very pleasant to hear, though it ended in a curious note of defiance, as though she were telling herself, “ I will laugh, and nothing is going to make me believe that I don’t want to.”

She leaned back over her chair, speaking in low tones.

I was just thinking,” she said. “ That is all. Do you know, I find these hours in the evening really a relief. At home there’s always something to do, a meal to order or a letter to write, or an argument with Barbara.” She laughed again, not altogether mirthfully. ‘‘ But I can’t bring a telephone or a desk along with me to a box-party, so I use the time in setting my inner house in order. I don’t find the music distracting. It seems unreal, and after the first three minutes I don’t believe I even hear it.”

‘‘ You’re rather wonderful,” he said simply.

She laughed again, and this time the laugh was hard and metallic. “ Oh, heavens ! Barbara has shown me up to myself.”

“ Exactly how do you figure that.^ ”

“ There has been something all wrong with me, or she would never have taken to the flesh-pots the way she has. Every new comic opera we go to seems to me a punishment for my sins and a screeching indictment of her bringing up. Imagine my mother letting me listen to stuff like that. But that isn’t all. Imagine my mother bringing me up to be able to endure it, not to say like it. She didn’t, and I loathe it. And I tried to bring up my daughter conscientiously, and she insists on having a box at every comic opera that comes to the city. And I can’t bring myself to use coercion. And there you are.” She tried again to laugh, but with no more success than before.

Tom Paraway stared thoughtfully over the heads of Barbara and her satellites into the dim and boisterous auditorium. “ You know what I think about Barbara,” he said quietly. “ And I think you take the fluffy ruffles part of her too seriously.”

“ That’s all she’ll ever show me.” There was a flash of resentment in her tones.

“ I wonder whether she doesn’t enjoy showing you what she thinks you’re looking for? ”

‘‘ I don’t know. But I feel absolutely in her way. She knows I disapprove of her. And she doesn’t seem to care.

And I can’t help feeling every hour of the day and night that she’s at the edge of an abyss and may fall over any minute.”

I guess you both need sleep,” said Tom in his grandfatherly way.

Perfectly absurd, as far as I’m concerned,” she exclaimed. “ But you do. You’re wearing yourself out, Tom. Why do you do it? You’re too good for her. Don’t waste your best years on a heartless flirt like Barbara. There are plenty of fine girls in the world.”

Tom laughed softly. Fire away,” he said. I think you’re a designing mother. You’re just trying to make me sit tight. You know as well as I do that you couldn’t pry me away with a crowbar.”

Mrs. Collingwood laughed so whole-heartedly at that, that Barbara heard her above the clashing cymbals of the Finale and turned half round over the back of her chair. “ Cheers ! ” she said. ‘‘ Mother’s laughed at a comic opera. What do you know? ”

The laugh died out in a wistful look of pain which only Tom Paraway saw. The next instant Mrs. Collingwood was up on her feet directing with friendly decisiveness the bundling up of three charming young ladies, expensively, but not over heavily clad.

“ Wasn’t it wonderful? ” cried Delia.

They all lied, agreeing that it was, no one considering the issue worth an argument ; as indeed it wasn’t.

Mrs. Collingwood drew the line at a supper-party dansant at ‘‘ The Green Umbrella,” declaring that she was not going to be even partially responsible for anybody’s nervous prostration, and emphatically advising bed as the next destination. Ruth squeezed her arm gratefully and Tom Paraway inconspicuously patted her left shoulderblade. Barbara was frankly annoyed and Delia nigh to tears, but Mrs. Collingwood pressed her lips quietly together and herself gave the chauffeur directions. She did not believe in coercion, but there were limits to license.

They dropped Ruth and Delia as near their respective beds as the curb allowed; then drove to Fifty-seventh Street. The men made their adieux at the top of the stoop.

“ Won’t you come in and have a bite.^ ” said Barbara, being able at the moment to think of nothing that would annoy her mother more.

Tom Paraway spoke quickly to forestall acceptance by either of the others. “Me for bed,” he said genially. “ Good night. Come along, Chet. You’ll lose your beauty sleep, and God knows you need every help of that sort you can get.”

Chester Howell cursed him inwardly, but followed his lead ; Winsor likewise. The three walked together toward Fifth Avenue, but at the corner, Winsor, slipping his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, suddenly stopped and announced that he had left his gloves at the Collingwoods’.

“ Wait a second,” he said. “ I’ll just get them.”

“ Oh, buy another pair,” said Tom.

“ Hate to. I’m broke,” Winsor answered. “ Just wait here. Won’t be a minute.” He was off.

“ Some bird,” remarked Tom as the figure sped westward.

“ I’m thirsty,” Chester confessed. “ Let’s have something.”

“ No, thanks.”

“ You don’t want to wait for him.^ ”

Tom was still watching a rapidly moving figure. It was ascending the Collingwood stoop now. “ I certainly do.”

“ Do you think — they’re engaged.? ”

“ Do you think — there’s — any danger? ”

« Yes.”

“ I’m thirsty. Come on.”

‘‘ You don’t expect to stay here all night, do you? ”

“ I want a gin fizz.”

I’m not a bar-keeper.”

« Come on!”

“ Good heavens ! How long do you expect to stay ? ” That depends on the amount of nerve our young hero brought along from Minnesota. I bet on forty-five minutes.”

“ Are you going to murder him when he comes out ? ”

What the deuce are you going to do ? ”

“ Go to bed.”

I am thirsty, Tom,” Chester remarked plaintively. “ And it’s immoral to drink alone.”

Get a soda.”

“ It isn’t that kind of a thirst.”

Five minutes gone.”

“ Forty to wait ? ”

“ More or less.”

‘‘ Lord!”

They waited together with increasing grimness.

Ill

I N the Collingwood mansion, meanwhile, there was war.

The three young men had descended the stoop. The front door was closed.

Barbara did not stop to divest herself of her wrap before firing the first gun. ‘‘ Mother, you are the limit,” she said.

Mrs. Collingwood’s face clouded, but she did not lose her composure. She was standing on the lowest step of the stairs, with one hand on the newel-post, a queenly figure against the dull ivory of the woodwork and the soft sea-green of the stair-carpet. ‘‘ What have I done now.? ” she asked quietly.

“ You know perfectly well. At dinner. Everything was going finely, when you had to burst in. I wish you’d learn that a dinner-party isn’t a missionary meeting. Nobody cares about the rights or wrongs of things at a dinner-party. People just want to have a good time. If you are going to disagree with a person at a dinner-party, you’ve got to disagree in a way that’s going to pump new life into the talk, not kill it. But you are always so nobly earnest that when you’re through talking there’s not enough left of the conversation to bury.”

There were red spots in Barbara’s cheeks, and her lips, never too full at best, disappeared almost completely in the sharp, determined line that was her mouth. There was no question of the earnestness behind this lecture. But then, as Barbara would have been the first to explain, this was not a dinner-party. This was merely the opening round of the evening bout, which would continue, aecording to the endurance of the contestants, until one, two or three o’clock, when exhaustion and tears would ring the final bell.

“ I am sorry, Barbara,” Mrs. Collingwood was saying. “ But I can’t help my convictions.”

“ You don’t understand. It isn’t your convictions. It’s the way you hit people on the head with them.”

Perfectly absurd ! ”

“ Not a bit. You do. You don’t leave a hair. You’re a perfect gloom.”

Mrs. Collingwood twisted her lips, and bit them. There were tears in her eyes, and she did not answer at once for fear lest her voice should quaver. At heart, Mrs. Collingwood was apprehensive of the judgment this modern, self-possessed, young lady might pronounce on her own old-fashioned and not always controllable emotions. When she spoke, her voice was colder than she meant to make it.

“ You know I don’t approve of a good many of the things you insist on doing. The shallowness and futility of the life we have been leading these past two years seem absolutely immoral to me.”

‘‘ You’re extreme. You see things just your way. You’re not broad-minded. You see everything from the standpoint of a moral problem. But nine times out of ten there’s no question of morality, either way. You just make yourself miserable. You were brought up horribly strictly, so you don’t understand. Going around the way I do isn’t futile, it’s just the opposite. It’s broadening — and — and it’s giving me the kind of a good time I want.” She lifted her chin sharply.

If you call this evening — a good time — ” exclaimed Mrs. Collingwood, starting to ascend the stairs.

“ I don’t,” Barbara retorted quickly. But it might have been.”

The door-bell rang.

‘‘For heaven’s sake! It’s after midnight. Who can it be? ” This from the younger lady.

The older, true to form, lost no time in speculations, but crossed swiftly to the door, and opened it.

“ Why — ” she ejaculated, frankly amazed.

Barbara, behind the door, turned to peek through the crack of the hinges.

“ I hope I didn’t scare you,” said the familiar voice. “ I think I left my gloves — ”

Barbara felt her knees suddenly weaken and a hot tidal wave rush to her head.

“ Why, it’s too bad you had to bother to come back,” said Mrs. Collingwood, sympathetically. She would have given the Devil himself the benefit of the doubt.

“ I knew you wouldn’t have gone up yet, so I thought — ”

Young Lochinvar was in the hall now, with the frosty night shut out behind him. Speaking in the loose jargon of the street, he was emphatically a handsome man, and even the critical — Tom Paraway, for instance — found difficulty in proving that he was anything else. He had heigh th and breadth (and possibly thickness, but that is irrelevant here) ; great physical strength, without question; hair, without stint, dark straight hair; a heavy neck; and a reposeful, challenging face that gave women the creeps and made them say and do foolish things in spite of resolutions. From which feature the Devil operated most effectively was a question debated not infrequently by the victims within and among themselves. The mouth, slightly drooping to almost imperceptible depressions at the corners, was arresting in its unobtrusive insolence ; the eyes, deep-set and heavily shaded by the thick eyebrows, were curiously unforgettable. They had the glossy brightness and impersonal lure a painter might put into the eyes of a faun to give him the final mark of the species.

And looking into this perilous face with undisguised, eager delight, was little Barbara CoUingwood, a good foot shorter than Young Lochinvar, bright-haired, brighteyed, bright-cheeked, the mouth a little hard and sharp, the chin small but unquestionably obstinate; no great wealth of hair, but what there was, exquisite as the gold spun glass of the Venetians — damp-defying curls, incited to careful riot, and not half controlled by the band of turquoise velvet pretending to keep them where they belonged. Her blue eyes were not large, but vivid and clear. If eyes are really windows, giving a suggestion of the inside of the house, a careful observer might have concluded that behind these well-washed panes were pleasant rooms, furnished with individual taste. A glance at the lips might have made him modify his conclusion so far as to admit that for the moment, the floors and walls were probably littered with garish fandangoes out of harmony with the rest of the furniture; and that there were evidences of hasty comings and goings ; but, on the whole, the house was worth inspection. Cleve Winsor evidently thought so.

Barbara turned ostensibly to hunt for the gloves, but actually to hide what she feared her cheeks and eyes were too frankly revealing. A little revelation was alluring; too much was vulgar and, incidentally, poor tactics. She did not reason that out ; she knew it by that same old intuition, which science, the stony-hearted, calls something else. She did not find the gloves. She would not have found them if they had been there ; and they were in the pocket of Cleve Winsor’s overcoat, as that gentleman knew very well. Barbara more than suspected that the gloves were merely an excuse. She thought them a rather poor one until her critical powers an instant later were overwhelmed by admiration for the boldness of a lover not ashamed to look ridiculous. Through this emotion came a flash of regret that Cleve Winsor’s intellectual resources were not quite as limitless as his beauty; through this again, a hasty flinging out of first-line defenses.

They all hunted dutifully but without enthusiasm for the gloves, Barbara watching her mother furtively, wondering what she was thinking about Cleve Winsor and his excuse to achieve the last word, unattended by the glowering eyes of two other suitors. Mrs. Collingwood gave no sign, but her lips were compressed in a way that Barbara knew of old, and that meant that there were many things which might at the moment be profitably said if Barbara were the sort whom anybody’s words could impress ; since, however, Barbara seemed able to learn only by her own experience, by that experience she must learn. Silence might be painful to her mother, but silent she would be.

Mrs. Collingwood was emphatically silent.

Cleve Winsor began to wish he were back on Fifth Avenue with his rivals. In despair, Barbara threw out the tentative suggestion that the Second Butler, being a recent addition to the household, was not above suspicion.

It happened that Young Lochinvar knew the dramatic value of self-sacrifice.

I won’t let you blame the butler,” he cried, pulling the gloves from his pocket. “ Here they are ! ”

Barbara felt the blood rush to her face again. She wondered whether any^ one would ever break the silence that followed. It never occurred to her to break it herself.

Why — ” exclaimed Mrs. Collingwood, helplessly. Then she laughed a little, mirthless laugh which said to Barbara, more clearly than words, What do you think of your friend now? ”

Winsor divined what lay behind the laugh. “ Forgive me, Mrs. Collingwood,” he said, with charming contrition. “ I just had to come back to say good night. I’ve come all the way from Minnesota, you know, to see Barbara, and seeing her in a crowd doesn’t seem like really seeing her. You will forgive me, won’t you? ”

Mrs. Collingwood looked at him, and felt something in her draw back in loathing. She detested smooth words always, but behind Cleve Winsor’s was a subtle wooing that made her want to scream.

“ Forgive ! ” she cried, as though the matter were absurdly out of her domain. “ Don’t ask me to forgive ! Barbara’s grown up. She must solve her own problems. I try to keep hands off.”

Barbara looked at her with tight lips and steady, cool eyes. “ Do you, though? ” she said to herself.

The intruder smiled, ingratiatingly. “ Do I constitute a problem? ” he asked.

Mrs. Collingwood looked at him straightly, not unconscious of the veiled insolence of his manner. Don’t ask me,” she said. Barbara will have to settle that.”

Barbara side-stepped the responsibility with the mendacious assertion that she was ravenously hungry; and suggested an invasion of the pantry. Young Lochinvar remarked that he did not want to keep the ladies up, to which Barbara replied that two in the morning was her conservative bedtime, calling on Mrs. Collingwood for corroboration.

‘‘ Come on,” she cried, leading the way to the stronghold of the First and Second Butler. Cleve Winsor followed her through the delicately furnished gray and ivory drawing-room, through the dining-room, all mahogany, except the floor, into the sequestered pantry.

Mrs. Collingwood stood motionless a second or two, biting her lips in her effort to keep back the tears. As usual, the tears were forced to subside even before they had reached the rims of her eyes. She turned quickly and went upstairs, for fear of making it appear that she thought chaperonage necessary; and, being old-fashioned, sat down and read again and again all that David, King of Israel, had to say concerning the snare of the fowler and the noisome pestilence.

Cleve Winsor, meanwhile, happily unconscious that the forces of the Lord were being mustered against him on the floor above, proceeded to make love by the directest method he knew. He took Barbara into his arms and kissed her more times than any one need ever know. She gasped and trembled, deliriously happy. He whispered her name over and over again, kissing her until her face seemed to burn ; and a sudden revulsion of feeling brought a spring deluge of tears. She struggled to free herself, but he would not let her go, whispering that he loved her, and that she must marry him and that all his life should be hers.

“ Please let me go,” she said in a voice so quiet, so controlled that he was deceived into believing that the storm was over.

‘‘ I can’t, I can’t,” he whispered. ‘‘ I’ve just won you. How can I let you go ? ”

He heard her draw in her breath sharply, and a second later her hands, which had hung limply at her side, seemed to shoot upward between them. He felt the small fists pounding against his chest. There was a savage flare in her eyes, an uncanny jungle light. He expected any instant to feel her fingers on his throat. He released her.

She staggered backward a step on two against the sink, and for what seemed a long time, they stood staring at each other, breathing heavily. The light feU fuU on her face, and he was struck by the ravages their moment of wild impulse had made there. It was not only that her hair was all at sixes and sevens and her cheeks were scarlet and her bosom rising and falling tumultuously ; there was actual tragedy in her eyes. Cleve, looking at her, troubled and helpless in the presence of a spiritual struggle he did not remotely understand, cursed himself only for botching a situation that had promised so well. He had gone ahead too fast, he said to himself, and she was frightened.

He felt a sudden ache at the pathetic picture she made, and took a step toward her, holding out his hand, friendlywise.

She laid her own on it an instant limply, and let it fall again; for the fellowship of it started the tears, and she did not dare yield to tears just then. He continued to look at her, altogether helpless now. It seemed to Barbara that he was far more handsome than she had supposed. The aggressiveness and covert insolence were gone ; the lines were all softened by a tenderness that was new to her in that face. She stared at him in mute appeal — for what, she did not know. She was only dimly conscious that she, who had been merrily disporting herself in the front yard of the house of life, found herself suddenly on the very threshold of the mysteries.

At last, without a word, she turned, snapped out the light in the pantry and proceeded back to the hall with Young Lochinvar at her heels. At the doorway between the dining-room and living-room, she hesitated, clutching at the hangings and turning half toward him.

“ I forgot — all about the eatables,” she said. “ Don’t you want some cookies and ginger-ale? ”

No, thank you,” he said quietly.

Without further speech they walked to the front door. He drew on his coat and, with a whimsical, contrite smile, pulled the memorable gloves from his pocket and looked at them for an instant.

Barbara smiled faintly, and again, for some reason or other, the tears threatened her composure.

“ Suppose we divvy? ” said he, holding out one of the gloves.

She took it, dreamily. The front door opened and shut. Cleve Winsor was gone. Mechanically she thrust the white glove into the bosom of her dress and sat down on the lower step of the stairs and wept convulsively.

Mrs. Collingwood, struggling, not with perfect success, to concentrate on David, King of Israel, heard the closing of the door, and closed the book, awaiting with what composure she eould muster, Barbara’s ascent and the argument that was sure to follow. She did not hear the expected step on the stair. Instead, she heard the sound of sobbing. In a moment she was kneeling at Barbara’s side, holding the cold, lifeless hand. Without a word, she began to rub it, but Barbara withdrew it almost fiercely, and like a flash was on her feet, and running up the stairs.

Mrs. Collingwood heard a door closed sharply and the turning of a key. Her own face was like carved stone as she slowly ascended to her bedroom.

IV

C HESTER HOWELL shared Tom Paraway’s vigil for ten minutes, and then, unable to endure the prospect of thirty-five more, hailed a taxi, returning from uptown, and departed for that green oasis near the Grand Central over which the ghost of Eli Yale presides. There was no time for farewells. There was a tooting three blocks away, a dash, and Tom Faraway was on guard by himself. He walked slowly up and down, with eyes fixed on the Collingwood stoop, a hundred or more yards away on the farther side of the street, five paces north, five paces south, between the tall wrought-iron grating at the comer and the curb. A fresh wind rose soon after midnight and came down the Avenue with all the imps of March whistling and whining in its wake. There was a flurry of snow and for a moment a whirling as of thousands of moths around the arclights. A night watchman inquired gruffly what he was waiting for.

Tom told him frankly. A young fellow’s calling on my girl,” he said.

Quick as a flash, the man clapped his hands over every pocket, front and rear, where a handsome society man, jealous of a rival, might possibly hide a weapon. The speed of the operation was extraordinary.

Tom laughed softly. “ Fooled again, old man,” he remarked.

‘‘ Show me your hands 1 ”

Tom did so.

“ Thought you might be out for a shoot-up,” said the watchman, almost genially.

I might, if it would do any good,” answered Tom Paraway. ‘‘ But it wouldn’t.

No. It don’t do any good to get mixed up with the law. A lot of young fellows like you think they can put it over, and once or twice, if they’re lucky, maybe they can. But sooner or later they get it, and up they go. Not bad fellows either.”

“ I wasn’t thinking of the police,” said Tom, with eyes still fixed on the CoUingwood stoop, ‘‘ when I said it wouldn’t do any good; I was thinking of the girl.”

“ That’s right,” remarked the watchman thoughtfully. “ You can’t get a girl by any knock-out game, not if she’s worth getting.” He paused a moment, looking skyward and rubbing his chin. He was a keen-faced man of the mechanic type, beardless and wiry. “ I buried my wife three months ago,” he continued in matter of fact tones. “ She was a good girl. We was married nineteen years. Ran away when we were fifteen and sixteen. What do ye know about that.? I’m a draughtsman by profession. Only took up this job after my wife died, ’cause I was lonely and I didn’t want to get running with the boys. I won’t stick at this work forever. I’m thinking of getting married again. My wife’s kid sister. Say ! Courting her’s no Sunday afternoon picnic, let me tell you. My brain just gets tired out talking back to her and arguing with her why being married is better than being single, and why a good time isn’t the whole o’ life, nor independence neither. She reads everything you ever saw, and what she don’t know isn’t worth talkin’ about. I like it. It’s not good for a man to marry a little me-too. The trouble is she knows a bit about pretty near everything and nothing thorough. That’s not her fault either. But it makes her spin on her ear about things like socialism, an’ religion, an’ birth control — What do ye know about that.? — an’ politics. Now I’m a strict organization man myself — Tammany, y’ understand — I believe in it. I know the papers say Tammany’s corrupt, an’ all that, but the papers are all for the rich fellers, an’ Tammany plays square by the poor man pretty nearly always. But, d’ ye know, she wouldn’t talk to me for a week because I refused to knife the ticket at the last election. She was all wrong, but I respected her for it. A woman like that’s a proposition to court, but once she’s married she gets over the funny business, and say ! spunk before marriage makes a good home afterwards. Take that from me.”