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“l was out with my friend, Mr. Marks, last evening. We went to Rector’s after the show. Oh, well, it takes a New Yorker to know how. Honestly, I feel like a queen when I go out with him. H’m? Oh, nothing like that, girlie. I never could see that marriage thing. Just good friends.”

Gabe had been coming to Chicago four times a year for six years. Six times four are twenty-four. And one is twenty-five. Gabe’s last visit made the twenty-fifth.

“Well, Effie,” Gabe said when the evening’s entertainment had reached the restaurant stage, “this is our twenty-fifth anniversary. It’s our silver wedding, without the silver and the wedding. We’ll have a bottle of champagne. That makes it almost legal. And then suppose we finish up by having the wedding. The silver can be omitted.”

Effie had been humming with the orchestra, holding a lobster claw in one hand and wielding the little two-pronged fork with the other. She dropped claw, fork, and popular air to stare open-mouthed at Gabe. Then a slow, uncertain smile crept about her lips, although her eyes were still unsmiling.

“Stop your joking, Gabie,” she said. “Some day you’ll say those things to the wrong lady, and then you’ll have a breach-of-promise suit on your hands.”

“This ain’t no joke, Effie,” Gabe had replied. “Not with me it ain’t. As long as my mother selig lived I wouldn’t ever marry a Goy. It would have broken her heart. I was a good son to her, and good sons make good husbands, they say. Well, Effie, you want to try it out?”

There was something almost solemn in Effie’s tone and expression. “Gabie,” she said slowly, “you’re the first man that’s ever asked me to marry him.”

“That goes double,” answered Gabe.

“Thanks,” said Effie. “That makes it all the nicer.”

“Then—- Gabe’s face was radiant. But Effie shook her head quickly.

“You’re just twenty years late,” she said.

“Late!” expostulated Gabe. “I ain’t no dead one yet.”

Effie pushed her plate away with a little air of decision, folded her plump arms on the table, and, leaning forward, looked Gabe I. Marks squarely in the eyes.

“Gabie,” she said gently, “I’ll bet you haven’t got a hundred dollars in the bank—-“

“But—-” interrupted Gabe.

“Wait a minute. I know you boys on the road. Besides your diamond scarf pin and your ring and watch, have you got a cent over your salary? Nix. You carry just about enough insurance to bury you, don’t you? You’re fifty years old if you’re a minute, Gabie, and if I ain’t mistaken you’d have a pretty hard time of it getting ten thousand dollars’ insurance after the doctors got through with you. Twenty-five years of pinochle and poker and the fat of the land haven’t added up any bumps in the old stocking under the mattress.”

“Say, looka here,” objected Gabe, more red-faced than usual, “I didn’t know was proposing to no Senatorial investigating committee. Say, you talk about them foreign noblemen being mercenary! Why, they ain’t in it with you girls to-day. A feller is got to propose to you with his bank book in one hand and a bunch of life-insurance policies in the other. You’re right; I ain’t saved much. But Ma selig always had everything she wanted. Say, when a man marries it’s different. He begins to save.”

“There!” said Effie quickly. “That’s just it. Twenty years ago I’d have been glad and willing to start like that, saving and scrimping and loving a man, and looking forward to the time when four figures showed up in the bank account where but three bloomed before. I’ve got what they call the home instinct. Give me a yard or so of cretonne, and a photo of my married sister down in Iowa, and I can make even a boarding-house inside bedroom look like a place where a human being could live. If I had been as wise at twenty as I am now, Gabie, I could have married any man I pleased. But I was what they call capable. And men aren’t marrying capable girls. They pick little yellow-headed, blue-eyed idiots that don’t know a lamb stew from
a soup bone when they see it. Well, Mr. Man didn’t show up, and I started in to clerk at six per. I’m earning as much as you are now. More. Now, don’t misunderstand me, Gabe. I’m not throwing bouquets at myself. I’m not that kind of a girl. But I could sell a style 743 Slimshape to the Venus de Milo herself. The Lord knows she needed one, with those hips of hers. I worked my way up, alone. I’m used to it. I like the excitement down at the store. I’m used to luxuries. I guess if I was a man I’d be the kind thy call a good provider–the kind that opens wine every time there’s half an excuse for it, and when he dies his widow has to take in boarders. And, Gabe, after you’ve worn tai- lored suits every year for a dozen years, you can’t go back to twenty-five-dollar ready-mades and be happy.”