Pearlie was pinning on her hat, and she spoke succinctly, her
hatpins between her teeth: "You've been here two days now, and I
notice you dictate all your letters except the longest one, and
you write that one off in a corner of the writing-room all by
yourself, with your cigar just glowing like a live coal, and you
squint up through the smoke, and grin to yourself."
"Say, would you mind if I walked home with you?" asked Sam.
If Pearlie was surprised, she was woman enough not to show it.
She picked up her gloves and handbag, locked her drawer with a
click, and smiled her acquiescence. And when Pearlie smiled she
was awful. It was a glorious evening in the early summer,
moonless, velvety, and warm. As they strolled homeward, Sam told
her all about the Girl, as is the way of traveling men the world
over. He told her about the tiny apartment they had taken, and
how he would be on the road only a couple of years more, as this
was just a try-out that the firm always insisted on. And they
stopped under an arc light while Sam showed her the picture in
his watch as is also the way of traveling men since time
immemorial.
Pearlie made an excellent listener. He was so boyish and so much
in love and so pathetically eager to make good with the firm, and
so happy to have someone in whom to confide.
"But it's a dog's life, after all," reflected Sam, again after
the fashion of all traveling men. "Any fellow on the road earns
his salary these days, you bet. I used to think it was all
getting up when you felt like it, and sitting in the big front
window of the hotel, smoking a cigar and watching the pretty
girls go by. I wasn't wise to the packing, and the unpacking, and
the rotten train service, and the grouchy customers, and the
canceled bills, and the grub."
Pearlie nodded understandingly. "A man told me once that twice a
week regularly he dreamed of the way his wife cooked
noodle-soup."
"My folks are German," explained Sam. "And my mother--can she
cook! Well, I just don't seem able to get her potato pancakes out
of my mind. And her roast beef tasted and looked like roast beef,
and not like a wet red flannel rag."
At this moment Pearlie was seized with a brilliant idea.
"To-morrow's Sunday. You're going to Sunday here, aren't you?
Come over and eat your dinner with us. If you have forgotten the
taste of real food, I can give you a dinner that'll jog your
memory."
"Oh, really," protested Sam. "You're awfully good, but I couldn't
think of it. I----"
"You needn't be afraid. I'm not letting you in for anything. I
may be homelier than an English suffragette, and I know my lines
are all bumps, but there's one thing you can't take away from me,
and that's my cooking hand. I can cook, boy, in a way to make
your mother's Sunday dinner, with company expected look like Mrs.
Newly-wed's first attempt at `riz' biscuits. And I don't mean any
disrespect to your mother when I say it. I'm going to have
noodle-soup, and fried chicken, and hot biscuits, and creamed
beans from our own garden, and strawberry shortcake with
real----"
"Hush!" shouted Sam. "If I ain't there, you'll know that I passed
away during the night, and you can telephone the clerk to break
in my door."
The Grim Reaper spared him, and Sam came, and was introduced to
the family, and ate. He put himself in a class with Dr. Johnson,
and Ben Brust, and Gargantua, only that his table manners were
better. He almost forgot to talk during the soup, and he came
back three times for chicken, and by the time the strawberry
shortcake was half consumed he was looking at Pearlie with a sort
of awe in his eyes.
That night he came over to say good-by before taking his train
out for Ishpeming. He and Pearlie strolled down as far as the
park and back again.
"I didn't eat any supper," said Sam. "It would have been
sacrilege, after that dinner of yours. Honestly, I don't know how
to thank you, being so good to a stranger like me. When I come
back next trip, I expect to have the Kid with me, and I want her
to meet you, by George! She's a winner and a pippin, but she
wouldn't know whether a porterhouse was stewed or frapped. I'll
tell her about you, you bet. In the meantime, if there's anything
I can do for you, I'm yours to command."
Pearlie turned to him, suddenly. "You see that clump of thick
shadows ahead of us, where those big trees stand in front of our
house?"
"Sure," replied Sam.
"Well, when we step into that deepest, blackest shadow, right in
front of our porch, I want you to reach up, and put your arm
around me and kiss me on the mouth, just once. And when you get
back to New York you can tell your girl I asked you to."
There broke from him a little involuntary exclamation. It might
have been of pity, and it might have been of surprise. It had in
it something of both, but nothing of mirth. And as they stepped
into the depths of the soft black shadows he took off his smart
straw sailor, which was so different from the sailors that the
boys in our town wear. And there was in the gesture something of
reverence.
Millie Whitcomb didn't like the story of the homely heroine,
after all. She says that a steady diet of such literary fare
would give her blue indigestion. Also she objects on the ground
that no one got married--that is, the heroine didn't. And she
says that a heroine who does not get married isn't a heroine at
all. She thinks she prefers the pink-cheeked, goddess kind, in
the end.
----