Every Soul Hath Its Song. Fannie Hurst
and that's what counts."
"That's why, when you say you can't line up alongside of me, it's no excuse."
"I—I mean it."
"Just because I got a head for designing doesn't make me a nine days' wonder. Why don't you—you come right out and say what you mean, Phonzie?"
"Why, I—I don't even know how to talk to a woman like you, madam. La-La girls have always been my pace."
"I know, Phonzie, and I—I ain't blaming you. A slick-looking fellow like you can skylark around as he pleases and don't need to have time for—the overworked, tired-out ones like me."
"Madam, I never dreamed—"
"Dreamed! Phonzie, I—I've got no shame if I tell you, but, God! how many nights I—I've lain right here on this couch dreaming of—of—"
"Well?"
"Of you and me, Phonzie, hitting it off together."
"Madam!"
Her head burrowed deeper in her arms, her voice muffed in their depth.
"Madam!"
"How many times I've dreamed, Phonzie. You and me, real partners in the business and—and in everything. Us in a little home together, one of the five-room flats down on the next floor, with a life-size kitchen and a life-size dining-room and—and a life-size—Aw, Phonzie, you—you'll think I'm crazy."
"Madam, why, madam, I just don't know."
"Them's the dreams a silly old thing like me, that never had nothing but work and—and nothing else in her life, can lay right here on this couch, night after night, and—Gawd! I—I bet you think I—I'm just crazy, Phonzie."
For answer he leaned over and took her small figure in his arms, wiping away with his sheer untried handkerchief the tears; but fresh ones sashayed down her face and flowed over her words.
"Phonzie, tell me, do you—do you—think—"
He held her closer. "Sure, madam, I do."
* * * * *
On the wings of a twelvemonth, spring had come around again and the taste of summer was like poppy-leaves between the teeth, and the perennial open shirtwaists and open street-cars bloomed, even as the distant larkspur in the distant field. At six o'clock with darkness came a spattering of rain, heavy single drops that fell each with its splotch, exuding from the asphalt the warming smell of thaw. Then came wind, right high-tempered, too, slanting the rain and scudding it and blowing pedestrians' skirts forward and their umbrellas inside outward. Mr. Alphonse Michelson fitted his hand like a vizor over his eyes and peered out into the wet dusk. Lights gleamed and were reflected in the dark pool of rain-swept asphalt. Passers-by hurried for shelter and bent into the wind.
In Madam Moores's establishment, enlarged during the twelvemonth to twice its floor space, the business day waned and died; in the workrooms the whir of machines sank into the quiet maw of darkness; in the showrooms the shower lights, all but a single cluster, blinked out. Alphonse Michelson slid into a tan, rain-proof coat, turning up the collar and buttoning across the flap, then fell to pacing the thick-nap carpet.
From a mauve-colored telephone-booth emerged Miss Gertie Dobriner, flushed from bad service and from bad air.
"Whew!"
"Get her?"
"Sure I got her. Is it such a stunt to get an address from a customer?"
"Good!"
"I says to her, I says, 'I seen it standing on the sidewalk next to your
French maid and I wanted to buy one like it for my little niece.'"
"Can we get it to-night?"
"Yes, proud papa! But listen; I wrote it down, 'Hinshaw, 2227 Casset
Street, Brooklyn.'"
"Brooklyn!"
"Yes, two blocks from the Bridge, and for a henpecked husband you got a large fat job on your hands if you want to make another getaway to-night. This man Hinshaw shows 'em right in his house."
"Brooklyn, of all places!"
"Right-oh!"
He snapped his fingers in a series of rapid clicks. "Ain't that the limit? If I'd only mentioned it to you this afternoon earlier, we could have been over and back by now."
"Wait until Monday then, Phonzie."
"Yes, but you ought to have heard her this morning, Gert; it's not often she gets her heart so set. To-morrow being Sunday, all of a sudden she gets a-wishing for one of the glass-top ones like she's seen around in the parks, to take him out in for the first time."
"Oh, I'm game! I'll go, but can you beat it! A trip to Brooklyn when I got a friend from Carson City waiting at his hotel to buy out Rector's for me to-night."
"You go on with him, Gert. What's the use you dragging over there, too, now that you got the address for me. I would never have mentioned it to you at all if I'd have known you couldn't just go buy the kind she wants in any department store. I'll go over there alone, Gert."
"Yes, and get stung on the shape and the hood and all. I bought just an ordinary one for my little niece once, and you got to get them shallow. Anyways, I'm going to chip in half on this. I want to get the little devil something, anyways."
"Aw no, Gert, this is my surprise."
"I guess I can chip in on a present for the kid's month-old birthday."
"Well, then, say I meet you in the Eighty-sixth Street Subway at seven, so we can catch a Brooklyn express and make it over in thirty minutes."
"Yes."
"But it's raining, Gert. Look out. Honest, I don't like to ask you to break your date to hike over there in the rain with me."
"Raining! Aw, then let's cut it, Phonzie. I got a new marcel and a cold on my chest that weighs a ton. She can't roll it on a wet Sunday, nohow."
"Paper says clear and warm to-morrow, Gert; but, honest, you don't need to go."
"You're a nice boy, Phonzie, and a proud father, but you can't spend my money for me. What you bet I get ten per cent. off for cash? Subway at seven. I'll be there."
"I may be a bit late, Gert. She ain't so strong yet, and after last night I don't want to get her nervous."
"I told you she'd be sore at me for taking you to the Ritz ball last night, and God knows it wasn't no pleasure in my life to go model-hunting with you, when I might have been joy-riding with my friend from Carson City."
"It's just because she ain't herself yet. I'm off, Gert. Till seven in the Subway!"
"Yes, till seven!"
* * * * *
When Mr. Alphonse Michelson unlocked the door of his second-floor five-room apartment, a lamp softly burning through a yellow silk lamp-shade met him with the soft radiance of home. Beside the door he divested himself of his rain-spotted mackintosh, inserted his dripping umbrella in a tall china stand, shook a little rivulet from his hat and hung it on a pair of wall antlers.
"That you, Phonzie?"
"Yes, hon, it's me."
'"Sh-h-h-h!"
He tiptoed down the aisle of hallway and into the soft-lighted front room. From a mound of pillows and sleepy from their luxury Millie Moores rose to his approach, her forefinger placed across her lips and a pale mist of chiffon falling backward from her arms.
What a masseuse is Love! The lines had faded from Millie's face and in their place the grace of tenderness and a roundness where the chin had softened. Years had folded back like petals, revealing the heart and the unwithered bosom of her.
He kissed her, pressing