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“Oh, I was just wondering.”

“Look what good money he’s getting now! If I was you, I wouldn’t stick around no old garage for what they give you. You could get a good job in the works with Pa; first thing you know you’d be pulling down big money. You’re smart like that with engines…. Takes a lot of money nowadays for feller to get married.”

“You tell ’em,” agreed Nick. He looked up at her, having finished eating. His glance was almost tender. “How’d you come to marry Pa, anyway? You and him’s so different.”

The nymph in Ma leaped to the surface and stayed there a moment, sparkling, laughing, dimpling. “Oh, I dunno. I kept running away and he kept running after. Like that.”

He looked up again quickly at that. “Yeh. That’s it. Fella don’t like to have no girl chasing him all the time. Say, he likes to do the chasing himself. Ain’t that the truth?”

“You tell ’em!” agreed Ma. A great jovial laugh shook her. Heavy-footed now, but light of heart.

Suddenly: “I’m thinking of going to night school. Learn something. I don’t know nothing.”

“You do, too, Dewey!”

“Aw, wha’d I know? I never had enough schooling. Wished I had.”

“Who’s doings was it? You wouldn’t stay. Wouldn’t go no more than sixth reader and quit. Nothing wouldn’t get you to go.”

He agreed gloomily. “I know it. I don’t know what nothing is. Uh–Arcadia–or–now–vitality or nothing.”

“Oh, that comes easy,” she encouraged him, “when you begin once.”

He reached for her hand gratefully. “You’re a swell cook, Ma.” He had a sudden burst of generosity, of tenderness. “Soon’s the bus is fixed I’ll take you joy-riding over to the lake.”

Ma always wore a boudoir cap of draggled lace and ribbon for motoring. Nick almost never offered her a ride. She did not expect him to.

She pushed him playfully. “Go on! You got plenty young girls to take riding, not your ma.”

“Oh, girls!” he said, scornfully. Then in another tone: “Girls.”

He was off. It was almost seven. Pa was late. He caught a car back to Fifty-third Street. Elmer was lounging in the cool doorway of the garage. Nick, in sheer exuberance of spirits, squared off, doubled his fists, and danced about Elmer in a semicircle, working his arms as a prizefighter does, warily. He jabbed at Elmer’s jaw playfully.

“What you been doing,” inquired that long-suffering gentleman, “makes you feel so good? Where you been?”

“Oh, nowheres. Bumming round. Park.”

He turned in the direction of the stairway. Elmer lounged after him. “Oh, say, dame’s been calling you for the last hour and a half. Like to busted the phone. Makes me sick.”

“Aw, Bauers.”

“No, that wasn’t the name. Name’s Mary or Berry, or something like that. A dozen times, I betcha. Says you was to call her as soon as you come in. Drexel 47–wait a min’t’–yeh–that’s right–Drexel 473—-“

“Swell chanst,” said Nick. Suddenly his buoyancy was gone. His shoulders drooped. His cigarette dangled limp. Disappointment curved his lips, burdened his eyes. “Swell chanst!”