The sound of voices having called Lizzie from her work, she stood on the threshold of the pantry, drying her hands on the corner of her ap.r.o.n.
Before he said a word she knew that the calamity which forever threatens those dependent on a weekly wage had fallen on the family.
"Lizzie, I"m fired."
She had never had to take a blow like this, not even when the three who came before Jennie had died in babyhood. This was the worst and hardest thing her imagination could conjure up, because it meant not only the sweeping away of their meager income, but her husband"s defeat as a man.
Going to him, she laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to look into the eyes that avoided hers in shame.
"We"ll meet it, Jo," she said, quietly. "We"ve been through other things. I"ve saved a little money ahead-nearly a hundred dollars. Don"t feel badly. I"m glad you"re out of Collingham & Law"s, where you"ve said yourself that your desk was in a draught. You"ll get another job, with bigger pay, and perhaps"-she sprang to the great glorious hope she was always cherishing-"and perhaps Teddy will earn more money and be a great success."
"_Hel_-lo, ma!"
Teddy himself was swinging down the room, Pansy capering round him with her silvery bark. Having tossed his cap on the sofa, he caught his mother in a bearish hug. Fresh from his bath, gleaming, ruddy, clear-eyed, stocky rather than short, he was a Herculean cub, the makings of a man, but as yet with no soul beyond play. No one had ever seen him serious. It was a drawback to him at Collingham & Law"s, where he skylarked his way through everything. "You must knock the song-and-dance out of that young blood," was Mr. Bickley"s report on him, "or he"ll never earn his pay."
Before his mother could say anything he was tickling her under the chin with little "clks!" of the tongue, Pansy a.s.sisting by springing halfway to his shoulder. The sport ended, he held her out at his strong arm"s length, laughing down into her eyes.
"Good old ma!-the best ever! What have you got for supper?"
She told him, as nearly as possible as if nothing else was on her mind.
Then she added:
"You"ve got to know, Teddy darling. They"ve discharged your father from Collingham & Law"s."
Confusedly, Teddy Follett knew he had received a summons, the call to be a man. Hitherto he had been a boy; he had thought himself a boy; he had called himself a boy. Even in the navy he had been with boys who were treated as boys. The pang of agony he felt now was that he was a boy still-with a man"s part to play.
He did his best to play it on the instant.
"Oh, is he? Then that"s all right. I"ll be making more money soon and be able to swing the whole thing."
Gussie was here the discordant element.
"You"ve got to make it pretty quick, then, and be smarter than you"ve ever been before."
He turned away from the group in which his mother watched him with adoring eyes while his father stood with gaze cast down like a criminal.
"I"m sorry to put the burden on you at your age, my boy," he said, brokenly, "but perhaps I may get another job, after all, and one that"ll pay better."
Teddy didn"t hear this, not that he was so far away, but because he was listening to that call which seemed so impossible to respond to. He would _have_ to be a man; he would _have_ to earn big money, and at present he didn"t see how. Fifty bucks a week, he was saying to himself, was hardly enough to run the family, and he had only eighteen!
He was standing with his back to them all, his hands in his pockets, when the front door opened again. Jennie came in all aglow and abloom after her walk from the street cars.
"Well, what"s the pose?" she asked, briskly, of Teddy, beginning to take off her jacket. "You ought to be model to a sculptor."
"Jen," he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely, before she could join the others, "pa"s fired."
To take this information in, Jennie paused with her arms still outstretched in the act of taking off her jacket.
"Do you mean they don"t want him any more at Collingham & Law"s?"
"That"s the right number."
"But-but what are we going to do?"
"That"s for you and me to say. It"s up to us, Jen. Pa"ll never get another job, not on your life, unless it"s running a lift. We"ve got to shoulder it-you and me between us."
Jennie pa.s.sed on into the room and down to the group round the table.
The glow had gone out of her cheeks, but she was free from her brother"s dismay. To begin with, she was a woman, and he was only a man. All his adventures would have to be dull ones in the line of work whereas hers.... She could hear Wray saying, as he had said only two hours ago, "You could marry Bob Collingham if you wanted to."
She didn"t want to-as far as that went; but if the worst were to come to the worst and they should be in need of bread....
"h.e.l.lo, mother! h.e.l.lo, daddy!" Jennie was quite self-possessed. "Teddy"s been telling me. Too bad, isn"t "t? But something will turn up. What is there for supper, Gus?"
Gussie minced round the table, putting on the salt cellars.
"There"s pickled humming birds for princesses," she said, witheringly.
"After that there"ll be honey-dew jam."
"Then I"ll go up and take my hat off."
This coolness had the inspiriting effect of an officer"s calm on a sinking ship. It was an indication that life could go on as usual; and if life could go on as usual, all wasn"t lost.
"And for mercy"s sake," Jennie added, turning to leave them, "don"t everybody look so glum. Why, if you knew what I could tell you you"d all be ordering champagne."
So they were tided over the dreadful minute, which meant that they found power to go on with the preparations for supper and to sit down to supper itself. There the old man cheered up sufficiently to be able to tell what had pa.s.sed between him and the head of the firm. He was still doing this when Teddy sprang to his feet, striking the table with a blow that made the dishes jump.
"G.o.d d.a.m.n Bradley Collingham!" he cried, with his mouth full. "I"ll do something to get even with him yet-if I have to go to the chair for it."
"Sit down, you great gump-talking like that!" Gussie pulled her brother by the coat till he sank back into his seat. "Momma, you should send him away from the table."
"That"s a very wicked thing to say, my boy-" Josiah was beginning.
"Let him talk as he likes," the mother broke in, calmly. "Going to the chair can"t be so terrible-if you have a reason."
She went on carving as if she had said nothing strange.
"Well, ma, I call that the limit," Jennie commented.
"Oh no, it isn"t," the mother returned, with the new strength which seemed to have come to her within half an hour. "I"m ready to say a good deal more."
She looked adoringly toward Teddy, who after his outburst had returned sheepishly to his plate, while Pansy stood apart from them all, wise, yearning, and yet implacable, a little doggy Fate.
CHAPTER V
No difference of standard in the Collingham household was so obvious as that between Dauphin, the Irish setter, and Max, the police dog. The situation was specially hard on Dauphin. To have owned Collingham Lodge and its occupants during all his conscious life, and then one day to find himself obliged to share this dominion with a stranger had given him in his declining years a pessimistic point of view. It had made him proud, cold, withdrawn, like a crusty old aristocrat forced in among base company. To the best of his ability he ignored the police dog, though it was difficult not to be aware of the presence of a being too exuberant to appreciate disdain.