"Now."
"But, Hosey! Pinky--this flat--until June--"
"Now! Unless you want to stay. Unless you like it here in this--this
make-believe, double-barrelled, duplex do-funny of a studio thing. Let's
go home, mother. Let's go home--and breathe."
In Wisconsin you are likely to find snow in April--snow or slush. The
Brewsters found both. Yet on their way up from the station in 'Gene
Buck's flivver taxi they beamed out at it as if it were a carpet of
daisies.
At the corner of Elm and Jackson streets Hosey Brewster stuck his head
out of the window. "Stop here a minute, will you, 'Gene?"
They stopped in front of Hengel's meat market, and Hosey went in. Mrs.
Brewster leaned back without comment.
Inside the shop. "Well, I see you're back from the East," said Aug
Hengel.
"Yep."
"We thought you'd given us the go-by, you stayed away so long."
"No, sir-ree! Say, Aug, give me that piece of bacon--the big piece. And
send me up some corned beef to-morrow for corned beef and cabbage. I'll
take a steak along for to-night. Oh, about four pounds. That's right."
It seemed to him that nothing less than a side of beef could take out of
his mouth the taste of those fiddling little lamb chops and the
restaurant fare of the past six months.
* * * * *
All through the winter Fred had kept up a little heat in the house, with
an eye to frozen water pipes. But there was a chill upon the place as
they opened the door now. It was late afternoon. The house was very
still, with the stillness of a dwelling that has long been uninhabited.
The two stood there a moment, peering into the darkened rooms. Then
Hosea Brewster strode forward, jerked up this curtain, that curtain
with a sharp snap, flap! He stamped his feet to rid them of slush. He
took off his hat and threw it high in the air and opened his arms wide
and emitted a whoop of sheer joy and relief.
"Welcome home! Home!"
She clung to him. "Oh, Hosey, isn't it wonderful? How big it looks!
Huge!"
"Land, yes." He strode from hall to dining room, from kitchen to
library. "I know how a jack-in-the-box feels when the lid's opened. No
wonder it grins and throws out its arms."
They did little talking after that. By five o'clock he was down in the
cellar. She heard him making a great sound of rattling and bumping and
shaking and pounding and shovelling. She smelled the acrid odour of his
stubby black pipe.
"Hosey!"--from the top of the cellar stairs. "Hosey, bring up a can of
preserves when you come."
"What?"
"Can of preserves."
"What kind?"
"Any kind you like."
"Can I have two kinds?"
He brought up quince marmalade and her choicest damson plums. He put
them down on the kitchen table and looked around, spatting his hands
together briskly to rid them of dust. "Sh's burning pretty good now.
That Fred! Don't any more know how to handle a boiler than a baby does.
Is the house getting warmer?"
He clumped into the dining room, through the butler's pantry, but he was
back again in a wink, his eyes round. "Why, say, mother! You've got out
the best dishes, and the silver, and the candles, and all. And the
tablecloth with the do-dads on it. Why--"
"I know it." She opened the oven door, took out a pan of biscuits and
slid it deftly to one side. "It seems as if I can't spread enough. I'm
going to use the biggest platters, and I've put two extra boards in the
table. It's big enough to seat ten. I want everything big, somehow. I've
cooked enough potatoes for a regiment, and I know it's wasteful, and I
don't care. I'll eat in my kitchen apron, if you'll keep on your
overalls. Come on."
He cut into the steak--a great, thick slice. He knew she could never eat
it, and she knew she could never eat it. But she did eat it all,
ecstatically. And in a sort of ecstatic Nirvana the quiet and vastness
and peace of the big old frame house settled down upon them.
The telephone in the hall rang startlingly, unexpectedly.
"Let me go, Milly."
"But who in the world! Nobody knows we're--"
He was at the telephone. "Who? Who? Oh." He turned: "It's Miz' Merz. She
says her little Minnie went by at six and saw a light in the house.
She--Hello! What?... She says she wants to know if she's to save time
for you at the end of the month for the April cleaning."
Mrs. Brewster took the receiver from him: "The twenty-fifth, as usual,
Miz' Merz. The twenty-fifth, as usual. The attic must be a sight."