FullReads

To-night’s six-thirty stampede was noticeably subdued on the part of Pa and Al. It had been a day of sudden and enervating heat, and the city had done its worst to them. Pa’s pink gills showed a hint of purple. Al’s flimsy silk shirt stuck to his back, and his glittering pompadour was many degrees less submissive than was its wont. But Floss came in late, breathless, and radiant, a large and significant paper bag in her hand. Rose, in the kitchen, was transferring the smoking supper from pot to platter. Pa, in the doorway of the sick woman’s little room, had just put his fourteen-year-old question with his usual assumption of heartiness and cheer: “Well, well! And how’s the old girl to-night? Feel like you could get up and punish a little supper, eh?” Al engaged at the telephone with some one whom he addressed proprietorially as Kid, was deep in his plans for the evening’s diversion. Upon this accustomed scene Floss burst with havoc.

“Rose! Rose, did you iron my Georgette crepe? Listen! Guess what!” All this as she was rushing down the hall, paper hat-bag still in hand. “Guess who was in the store to-day!”

Rose, at the oven, turned a flushed and interested face toward Floss.

“Who? What’s that? A hat?”

“Yes. But listen–“

“Let’s see it.”

Floss whipped it out of its bag, defiantly. “There! But wait a minute! Let me tell you–“

“How much?”

Floss hesitated just a second. Her wage was nine dollars a week. Then, “Seven-fifty, trimmed.” The hat was one of those tiny, head-hugging absurdities that only the Flosses can wear.

“Trimmed is right!” jeered Al, from the doorway.

Rose, thin-lipped with disapproval, turned to her stove again.

“Well, but I had to have it. I’m going to the theatre to-night. And guess who with! Henry Selz!”

Henry Selz was the unromantic name of the commonplace man over whose fifteen-year-old letters Rose had glowed and dreamed an hour before. It was a name that had become mythical in that household–to all but one. Rose heard it spoken now with a sense of unreality. She smiled a little uncertainly, and went on stirring the flour thickening for the gravy. But she was dimly aware that something inside her had suspended action for a moment, during which moment she felt strangely light and disembodied, and that directly afterward the thing began to work madly, so that there was a choked feeling in her chest and a hot pounding in her head.

“What’s the joke?” she said, stirring the gravy in the pan.

“Joke nothing! Honest to God! I was standing back of the counter at about ten. The rush hadn’t really begun yet. Glove trade usually starts late. I was standing there kidding Herb, the stock boy, when down the aisle comes a man in a big hat, like you see in the western pictures, hair a little grey at the temples, and everything, just like a movie actor. I said to Herb, ‘Is it real?’ I hadn’t got the words out of my mouth when the fellow sees me, stands stock still in the middle of the aisle with his mouth open and his eyes sticking out. ‘Register surprise,’ I said to Herb, and looked around for the camera. And that minute he took two jumps over to where I was standing, grabbed my hands and says, ‘Rose! Rose!’ kind of choky. ‘Not by about twenty years,’ I said. ‘I’m Floss, Rose’s sister. Let go my hands!'”

Rose–a transfigured Rose, glowing, trembling, radiant–repeated, vibrantly, “You said, ‘I’m Floss, Rose’s sister. Let go my hands!’ And–?”

“He looked kind of stunned, for just a minute. His face was a scream, honestly. Then he said, ‘But of course. Fifteen years. But I had always thought of her as just the same.’ And he kind of laughed, ashamed, like a kid. And the whitest teeth!”

“Yes, they were–white,” said Rose. “Well?”

“Well, I said, ‘Won’t I do instead?’ ‘You bet you’ll do!’ he said. And then he told me his name, and how he was living out in Spokane, and his wife was dead, and he had made a lot of money–fruit, or real estate, or something. He talked a lot about it at lunch, but I didn’t pay any attention, as long as he really has it a lot I care how–“