"The way you get on to a thing just in three words!" he said. "Daniel Webster ain"t in it."
"I dare say if you let the people in the shops know that you come from a newspaper, it"ll be a help," she went on with ingenuous worldly wisdom. "They"ll think it"ll be a kind of advertis.e.m.e.nt. And so it will. You get some neat cards printed with your name and Sunday Earth on them."
"Gee!" Tembarom e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, slapping his knee, "there"s another! You think of every darned thing, don"t you?"
She stopped a moment to look at him.
"You"d have thought of it all yourself after a bit," she said. She was not of those unseemly women whose intention it is manifestly to instruct the superior man. She had been born in a small Manchester street and trained by her mother, whose own training had evolved through affectionately discreet conjugal management of Mr. Hutchinson.
"Never you let a man feel set down when you want him to see a thing reasonable, Ann," she had said. "You never get on with them if you do.
They can"t stand it. The Almighty seemed to make "em that way.
They"ve always been masters, and it don"t hurt any woman to let "em be, if she can help "em to think reasonable. Just you make a man feel comfortable in his mind and push him the reasonable way. But never you shove him, Ann. If you do, he"ll just get all upset-like. Me and your father have been right-down happy together, but we never should have been if I hadn"t thought that out before we was married two weeks. Perhaps it"s the Almighty"s will, though I never was as sure of the Almighty"s way of thinking as some are."
Of course Tembarom felt soothed and encouraged, though he belonged to the male development which is not automatically infuriated at a suspicion of female readiness of logic.
"Well, I might have got on to it in time," he answered, still trying not to look affectionate, "but I"ve no time to spare. Gee! but I"m glad you"re here!"
"I sha"n"t be here very long." There was a shade of patient regret in her voice. "Father"s got tired of trying America. He"s been disappointed too often. He"s going back to England."
"Back to England!" Tembarom cried out forlornly, "Oh Lord! What shall we all do without you, Ann?"
"You"ll do as you did before we came," said Little Ann.
"No, we sha"n"t. We can"t. I can"t anyhow." He actually got up from his chair and began to walk about, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
Little Ann began to put her first st.i.tches into a red B. No human being could have told what she thought.
"We mustn"t waste time talking about that," she said. "Let us talk about the page. There are dressmakers, you know. If you could make friends with a dressmaker or two they"d tell you what the wedding things were really made of. Women do like their clothes to be described right."
CHAPTER III
His work upon the page began the following week. When the first morning of his campaign opened with a tumultuous blizzard, Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger privately sympathized with him as they dressed in company, but they heard him whistling in his own hall bedroom as he put on his clothes, and to none of the three did it occur that time could be lost because the weather was inhuman. Blinding snow was being whirled through the air by a wind which had bellowed across the bay, and torn its way howling through the streets, maltreating people as it went, s.n.a.t.c.hing their breath out of them, and leaving them gaspingly clutching at hats and bending their bodies before it.
Street-cars went by loaded from front to back platform, and were forced from want of room to whizz heartlessly by groups waiting anxiously at street corners.
Tembarom saw two or three of them pa.s.s in this way, leaving the waiting ones desperately huddled together behind them. He braced himself and whistled louder as he b.u.t.toned his celluloid collar.
"I"m going to get up to Harlem all the same," he said. "The "L" will be just as jammed, but there"ll be a place somewhere, and I"ll get it."
His clothes were the outwardly decent ones of a young man who must perforce seek cheap clothing-stores, and to whom a ten-dollar "hand- me-down" is a source of exultant rejoicing. With the aid of great care and a straight, well-formed young body, he managed to make the best of them; but they were not to be counted upon for warmth even in ordinarily cold weather. His overcoat was a specious covering, and was not infrequently odorous of naphtha.
"You"ve got to know something about first aid to the wounded if you live on ten per," he had said once to Little Ann. "A suit of clothes gets to be an emergency-case mighty often if it lasts three years."
"Going up to Harlem to-day, T. T.?" his neighbor at table asked him as he sat down to breakfast.
"Right there," he answered. "I"ve ordered the limousine round, with the foot-warmer and fur rugs."
"I guess a day wouldn"t really matter much," said Mrs. Bowse, good- naturedly. "Perhaps it might be better to-morrow."
"And perhaps it mightn"t," said Tembarom, eating "break-fast-food"
with a cheerful appet.i.te. "What you can"t be stone-cold sure of to- morrow you drive a nail in to-day."
He ate a tremendous breakfast as a discreet precautionary measure.
The dark dining-room was warm, and the food was substantial. It was comfortable in its way.
"You"d better hold the hall door pretty tight when you go out, and don"t open it far," said Mrs. Bowse as he got up to go. "There"s wind enough to upset things."
Tembarom went out in the hall, and put on his insufficient overcoat.
He b.u.t.toned it across his chest, and turned its collar up to his ears.
Then he bent down to turn up the bottoms of his trousers.
"A pair of arctics would be all to the merry right here," he said, and then he stood upright and saw Little Ann coming down the staircase holding in her hand a particularly ugly tar-tan-plaid woolen neck-scarf of the kind known in England as a "comforter."
"If you are going out in this kind of weather," she said in her serene, decided little voice, "you"d better wrap this comforter right round your neck, Mr. Tembarom. It"s one of Father"s, and he can spare it because he"s got another, and, besides, he"s not going out."
Tembarom took it with a sudden emotional perception of the fact that he was being taken care of in an abnormally luxurious manner.
"Now, I appreciate that," he said. "The thing about you. Little Ann, is that you never make a wrong guess about what a fellow needs, do you?"
"I"m too used to taking care of Father not to see things," she answered.
"What you get on to is how to take care of the whole world --initials on a fellow"s socks and m.u.f.flers round his neck." His eyes looked remarkably bright.
"If a person were taking care of the whole world, he"d have a lot to do," was her sedate reception of the remark. "You"d better put that twice round your neck, Mr. Tembarom."
She put up her hand to draw the end of the scarf over his shoulder, and Tembarom stood still at once, as though he were a little boy being dressed for school. He looked down at her round cheek, and watched one of the unexpected dimples reveal itself in a place where dimples are not usually antic.i.p.ated. It was coming out because she was smiling a small, observing smile. It was an almost exciting thing to look at, and he stood very still indeed. A fellow who did not own two pairs of boots would be a fool not to keep quiet.
"You haven"t told me I oughtn"t to go out till the blizzard lets up,"
he said presently.
"No, I haven"t, Mr. Tembarom," she answered. "You"re one of the kind that mean to do a thing when they"ve made up their minds. It"ll be a nice bit of money if you can keep the page."
"Galton said he"d give me a chance to try to make good," said Tembarom. "And if it"s the hit he thinks it ought to be, he"ll raise me ten. Thirty per. Vanas...o...b..lts won"t be in it. I think I"ll get married," he added, showing all his attractive teeth at once.
"I wouldn"t do that," she said. "It wouldn"t be enough to depend on.
New York"s an expensive place."
She drew back and looked him over. "That"ll keep you much warmer,"
she decided. "Now you can go. I"ve been looking in the telephone-book for confectioners, and I"ve written down these addresses." She handed him a slip of paper.
Tembarom caught his breath.
"Hully gee!" he exclaimed, "there never were TWO of you made! One used up all there was of it. How am I going to thank you, anyhow!"
"I do hope you"ll be able to keep the page," she said. "I do that, Mr.