Just Around the Corner Part 29

Silence.

"Say--Birdie! Say--"

"What?"

"I didn't say anything."

"Oh!" The red in her face ran down into the square-shape neck of her dress.

Silence.

"Aw, look what you did, Marcus! You burnt the toe of your shoe!"

"Say, Birdie, what I started to say when your mamma and papa come in--er--"

"Yes?"

"What I started to say was, so long as a fellow's got intentions it's all right for him to call on a girl--er--regular, like this." Her soft breathing answered him. "But--well, I mustn't--I ain't got the right to come round here any more."

She looked at him like a startled nymph.

"What is it?"

"So long as I had intentions it was all right, I say; but--well, now I ain't."

"Ain't what?" Her breath came more rapidly between her lips.

"I was starting to say before they came in, Birdie--I came here straight from the office to tell you--even maw don't know it yet--_I've lost out!_ Loeb's daughter is engaged, and he's going to put his new son-in-law from Cleveland in the Newark factory."

"Marcus!"

"Yes! You can't be so sore as I am--a twenty-eight-hundred-dollar job almost in my hand, and then this had to happen! The little raise I get now don't help. I can't ask a girl to marry me on fifteen hundred when I expected twice that much--not a girl like you!"

Birdie placed the palm of her hand flat against her cheek; the stars in her eyes had vanished in the light of understanding.

"Such a mean trick!" she gasped. "How you've built up their trade for them--and now such a mean trick!"

"I was so sure all along, after what Loeb told me last month. Only last week I says to maw I'll ask you this week right after I know for certain. That sure I--was."

His voice trailed off at the end. She sat watching the flames, her shoulders slightly stooped and her eyes quiet.

"You ain't so sorry as I am, Birdie. Believe me, I could die right now!

With you it ain't so bad--you got plenty good chances yet. But if you knew what feelings I got for you! With me there ain't no more Birdies."

She turned her head slowly toward him; her throat throbbing and a delicate pink under her skin.

"I should care, Marcus!" she said, softly.

"What?"

"I should care!" she repeated. "We should live little then, if we can't live big--live little."

"What do you mean, Birdie?"

She regarded and invited him with her eyes, and he stood away from her like a tired traveler trying to shut out the song of the Lorelei!

"Birdie, I ain't got the right! I--I--you been used to so much. With you it ain't like with most girls--your mamma and your papa they--"

Even as he spoke they were somehow in their first embrace, and round their heads came cras.h.i.+ng various castles in Spain, and they sat among the ruins and smiled into each other's radiant eyes and whispered, with their warm hands touching:

"I don't deserve such a prize as you, Birdie!"

"Such a scare as you gave me, Marcus! I thought first you meant--you--meant it was me you didn't want."

He refuted the thought with a kiss.

"I ain't good enough for you, Birdie."

"I ain't good enough for you, Marcus."

"You can believe me, Birdie, when he told me to-day it was just like I had died inside."

"It shows it don't pay to work too hard for such people, Marcus--they don't appreciate it."

"I can get the same money as now at Lowen-Felsenthal's; they were after me last year."

"You go, Marcus. You can work up with them; besides, I like the ready-to-wear business better than boys' pants and neckwear."

"I wanted to start out with giving you more than you got already, Birdie."

"Believe me, mamma and papa had no such start as we got. We can afford maybe one of those three-rooms-and-bath apartments in Harlem--Flossie Marks says they're just perfect; and mamma and papa lived right in back of the factory--I remember it myself. Which is worse?"

"That's why I hate it for them, Birdie; your mamma wants you to have the best like she didn't have--I hate it for her."

"You come to-morrow night, and we'll tell them. Just you do like I tell you, and I can fix it."

He placed his hand against her forehead, tilted her head backward and kissed her twice on the lips.

"You're my little Birdie, ain't you--a little birdie like flies in the woods!"

The evening petered out and too soon waned to its finish. They parted with thrice-told good-nights, reluctant to break the weft of their enchantment. She closed the door after him and stood with her back against it; her lips were curved in a perfect smile.

A door creaked, and footsteps padded down the hall.

"Birdie! Birdie!"

"Yes, mamma!" was all she said, going toward her parent and hiding her pink face in the flannel folds of the maternal wrapper.

"G.o.d bless you, Birdie! Such happiness I should wish every mother. Go in, baby, and tell papa. For an engagement present you get--like Ray--two hundred dollars."