JIMMIE BECOMES A PARENT
The entrance into the dining-room of the curly headed young man and
his pretty little niece, who had a suite on the eighth floor, as the
room clerk informed all inquirers, was always a matter of interest to
the residents of the Hotel Winchester. They were an extremely
picturesque pair to the eye seeking for romance and color. The child
had the pure, clear cut features of the cameo type of New England
maidenhood. She was always dressed in some striking combination of
blue, deep blue like her eyes, with blue hair ribbons. Her
good-looking young relative, with hair almost as near the color of the
sun as her own, seemed to be entirely devoted to her, which,
considering the charm of the child and the radiant and magnetic spirit
of the young man himself, was a delightfully natural manifestation.
But one morning near the close of the second week of their stay, the
usual radiation of resilient youth was conspicuously absent from the
young man's demeanor, and the child's face reflected the gloom that
sat so incongruously on the contour of an optimist. The little girl
fumbled her menu card, but the waitress--the usual aging pedagogic
type of the small residential hotel--stood unnoticed at the young
man's elbow for some minutes before he was sufficiently aroused from
his gloomy meditations to address her. When he turned to her at last,
however, it was with the grin that she had grown to associate with
him,--the grin, the absence of which had kept her waiting behind his
chair with a patience that she was, except in a case where her
affections were involved, entirely incapable of. Jimmie's
protestations of inability to make headway with the ladies were not
entirely sincere.
"Bring me everything on the menu," he said, with a wave of his hand in
the direction of that painstaking pasteboard. "Coffee, tea, fruit,
marmalade, breakfast food, ham and eggs. Bring my niece here the same.
That's all." With another wave of the hand he dismissed her.
"You can't eat it all, Uncle Jimmie," Eleanor protested.
"I'll make a bet with you," Jimmie declared. "I'll bet you a dollar
to a doughnut that if she brings it all, I'll eat it."
"Oh! Uncle Jimmie, you know she won't bring it. You never bet so I can
get the dollar,--you never do."
"I never bet so I can get my doughnut, if it comes to that."
"I don't know where to buy any doughnuts," Eleanor said; "besides,
Uncle Jimmie, I don't really consider that I owe them. I never really
say that I'm betting, and you tell me I've lost before I've made up my
mind anything about it."
"Speaking of doughnuts," Jimmie said, his face still wearing the look
of dejection under a grin worn awry, "can you cook, Eleanor? Can you
roast a steak, and saute baked beans, and stew sausages, and fry out a
breakfast muffin? Does she look like a cook to you?" he suddenly
demanded of the waitress, who was serving him, with an apologetic eye
on the menu, the invariable toast-coffee-and-three-minute-egg
breakfast that he had eaten every morning since his arrival.
The waitress smiled toothily. "She looks like a capable one," she
pronounced.
"I _can_ cook, Uncle Jimmie," Eleanor giggled, "but not the way you
said. You don't roast steak, or--or--"
"Don't you?" Jimmie asked with the expression of pained surprise that
never failed to make his ward wriggle with delight. There were links
in the educational scheme that Jimmie forged better than any of the
cooperative guardians. Not even Jimmie realized the value of the
giggle as a developing factor in Eleanor's existence. He took three
swallows of coffee and frowned into his cup. "I can make coffee," he
added. "Good coffee. Well, we may as well look the facts in the face,
Eleanor. The jig's up. We're moving away from this elegant hostelry
to-morrow."
"Are we?" Eleanor asked.
"Yes, Kiddo. Apologies to Aunt Beulah (mustn't call you Kiddo) and the
reason is, that I'm broke. I haven't got any money at all, Eleanor,
and I don't know where I am going to get any. You see, it is this way.
I lost my job six weeks ago."
"But you go to work every morning, Uncle Jimmie?"
"I leave the house, that is. I go looking for work, but so far no nice
juicy job has come rolling down into my lap. I haven't told you this
before because,--well--when Aunt Beulah comes down every day to give
you your lessons I wanted it to look all O. K. I thought if you didn't
know, you couldn't forget sometime and tell her."
"I don't tattle tale," Eleanor said.
"I know you don't, Eleanor. It's only my doggone pride that makes me
want to keep up the bluff, but you're a game kid,--you--know. I tried
to get you switched off to one of the others till I could get on my
feet, but--no, they just thought I had stage fright. I couldn't
insist. It would be pretty humiliating to me to admit that I couldn't
support one-sixth of a child that I'd given my solemn oath to
be-parent."
"To--to what?"
"Be-parent, if it isn't a word, I invent it. It's awfully tough luck
for you, and if you want me to I'll own up to the crowd that I can't
swing you, but if you are willing to stick, why, we'll fix up some
kind of a way to cut down expenses and bluff it out."
Eleanor considered the prospect. Jimmie watched her apparent
hesitation with some dismay.
"Say the word," he declared, "and I'll tell 'em."
"Oh! I don't want you to tell 'em," Eleanor cried. "I was just
thinking. If you could get me a place, you know, I could go out to
work. You don't eat very much for a man, and I might get my meals
thrown in--"
"Don't, Eleanor, don't," Jimmie agonized. "I've got a scheme for us
all right. This--this embarrassment is only temporary. The day will
come when I can provide you with Pol Roge and diamonds. My father is
rich, you know, but he swore to me that I couldn't support myself, and
I swore to him that I could, and if I don't do it, I'm damned. I am
really, and that isn't swearing."
"I know it isn't, when you mean it the way they say in the Bible."
"I don't want the crowd to know. I don't want Gertrude to know. She
hasn't got much idea of me anyway. I'll get another job, if I can only
hold out."
"I can go to work in a store," Eleanor cried. "I can be one of those
little girls in black dresses that runs between counters."
"Do you want to break your poor Uncle James' heart, Eleanor,--do
you?"
"No, Uncle Jimmie."
"Then listen to me. I've borrowed a studio, a large barnlike studio on
Washington Square, suitably equipped with pots and pans and kettles.
Also, I am going to borrow the wherewithal to keep us going. It isn't
a bad kind of place if anybody likes it. There's one dinky little
bedroom for you and a cot bed for me, choked in bagdad. If you could
kind of engineer the cooking end of it, with me to do the dirty work,
of course, I think we could be quite snug and cozy."
"I know we could, Uncle Jimmie," Eleanor said. "Will Uncle Peter come
to see us just the same?"
It thus befell that on the fourteenth day of the third month of her
residence in New York, Eleanor descended into Bohemia. Having no least
suspicion of the real state of affairs--for Jimmie, like most
apparently expansive people who are given to rattling nonsense, was
actually very reticent about his own business--the other members of
the sextette did not hesitate to show their chagrin and disapproval at
the change in his manner of living.
"The Winchester was an ideal place for Eleanor," Beulah wailed. "It's
deadly respectable and middle class, but it was just the kind of
atmosphere for her to accustom herself to. She was learning to manage
herself so prettily. This morning when I went to the studio--I wanted
to get the lessons over early, and take Eleanor to see that exhibition
of Bavarian dolls at Kuhner's--I found her washing up a trail of
dishes in that closet behind the screen--you've seen it,
Gertrude?--like some poor little scullery maid. She said that Jimmie
had made an omelet for breakfast. If he'd made fifty omelets there
couldn't have been a greater assortment of dirty dishes and kettles."
Gertrude smiled.
"Jimmie made an omelet for me once for which he used two dozen eggs.
He kept breaking them until he found the yolks of a color to suit him.
He said pale yolks made poor omelets, so he threw all the pale ones
away."
"I suppose that you sat by and let him," Beulah said. "You would let
Jimmie do anything. You're as bad as Margaret is about David."
"Or as bad as you are about Peter."
"There we go, just like any silly, brainless girls, whose chief object
in life is the--the other sex," Beulah cried inconsistently. "Oh! I
hate that kind of thing."
"So do I--in theory--" Gertrude answered, a little dreamily. "Where do
Jimmie and Eleanor get the rest of their meals?"
"I can't seem to find out," Beulah said. "I asked Eleanor point-blank
this morning what they had to eat last night and where they had it,
and she said, 'That's a secret, Aunt Beulah.' When I asked her why it
was a secret and who it was a secret with, she only looked worried,
and said she guessed she wouldn't talk about it at all because that
was the only way to be safe about tattling. You know what I think--I
think Jimmie is taking her around to the cafés and all the shady
extravagant restaurants. He thinks it's sport and it keeps him from
getting bored with the child."
"Well, that's one way of educating the young," Gertrude said, "but I
think you are wrong, Beulah."