"Did the janitress get the coal put in, Nell?"
"Yes, but her husband is laid off again. I was talking to her quite a while this afternoon.... Oh, dear, I do get so lonely for you, sweetheart, with nothing to do. But I did read some _Kim_ this afternoon. I liked it."
"That"s fine!"
"But it"s kind of hard. Maybe I"ll--Oh, I don"t know.
I guess I"ll have to read a lot."
He patted her back softly, and hoped: "Maybe some day we can get a little house out of town, and then you can garden.... Sorry old Siddons is laid off again.... Is the gas-stove working all right now?"
"Um-huh, honey. I fixed it."
"Say, let me make the coffee, Nell. You"ll have enough to do with setting the table and watching the sausages."
"All rightee, hun. But, oh, Billy, I"m so, shamed. I was going to get some potato salad, and I"ve just remembered I forgot."
She hung her head, with a fingertip to her pretty lips, and pretended to look dreadfully ashamed. "Would you mind so ver-ee much skipping down to Bachmeyer"s for some? Ah-h, is it just fearful neglected when it comes home all tired out?"
"No, indeedy. But you got to kiss me first, else I won"t go at all."
Nelly turned to him and, as he held her, her head bent far back.
She lay tremblingly inert against his arms, staring up at him, panting. With her head on his shoulder--a soft burden of love that his shoulder rejoiced to bear--they stood gazing out of the narrow kitchen window of their sixth-story flat and noticed for the hundredth time that the trees in a vacant lot across were quite as red and yellow as the millionaire trees in Central Park along Fifth Avenue.
"Sometime," mused Mr. Wrenn, "we"ll live in Jersey, where there"s trees and trees and trees--and maybe there"ll be kiddies to play under them, and then you won"t be lonely, honey; they"ll keep you some busy!"
"You skip along now, and don"t be talking nonsense, or I"ll not give you one single wee bit of dinner!" Then she blushed adorably, with infinite hope.
He hastened out of the kitchen, with the happy glance he never failed to give the living-room--its red-papered walls with shiny imitation-oak woodwork; the rows of steins on the plate-rack; the imitation-oak dining-table, with a vase of newly dusted paper roses; the Morris chair, with Nelly"s sewing on a tiny wicker table beside it; the large gilt-framed oleograph of "Pike"s Peak by Moonlight."
He clattered down the slate treads of the stairs. He fairly vaulted out of doors. He stopped, startled.
Across the ragged vacant lots to the west a vast sunset processional marched down the sky. It had not been visible from their flat, which looked across East River to the tame gra.s.sy sh.o.r.e of a real-estate boomer"s suburb. "Gee!" he mourned, "it"s the first time I"ve noticed a sunset for a month! I used to see knights" flags and Mandalay and all sorts of stuff in sunsets!"
Wistfully the exile gazed at his lost kingdom, till the October chill aroused him.
But he learned a new way to cook eggs from the proprietor of the delicatessen store; and his plans for spending the evening playing pinochle with Nelly, and reading the evening paper aloud, set him chuckling softly to himself as he hurried home through the brisk autumn breeze with seven cents" worth of potato salad.
THE END