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Una had been anxious lest Mr. Schwirtz "pay her too marked attentions; make them as conspicuous as Mr. Starr and Miss Vincent"; for in the morning he had hung about, waiting for a game of croquet with her. But Mr. Schwirtz was equally pleasant to her, to Miss Vincent, and to Mrs. Cannon; and he was attractively ardent regarding the scenery. "This cer'nly beats New York, eh?
She grieved for the sunset-colored ideals of Mamie Magen, for the fine, strained, hysterical enthusiasms of Walter Babson, as an enchantment of thought which she was dispelling in her effort to become a "good, sound, practical business woman." Mr. Fein's drab opportunist philosophy disappointed her. Yet, in contrast to Mr. Schwirtz, Mr.
"Then look here," said Mr. Schwirtz. "Take yourself. S'pose you like to work eight hours a day? Course you don't. Neither do I. I always thought I'd like to be a gentleman farmer and take it easy.
Nor after her extensive experience with Messrs. Schwirtz, Sanderson, and McCullough, did even the noisiest of the salesmen offend her. She laughed at the small signs they were always bringing in and displaying: "Oh, forget it! I've got troubles of my own!" or, "Is that you again? Another half hour gone to hell!"
Lawrence liked him; in his presence she abandoned her pretense of being interested in Mamie Magen's arid intellectualism, and Una's quivering anxieties. Mr. Schwirtz was ready for any party, whenever he was "in off the road." Una began to depend on him for amusements. Mrs. Lawrence encouraged her to appear at her best before him. When he or one of Mrs.
Why, she tried to hold up my vacation money, because she said I'd overdrawn " "Oh, but Mr. Schwirtz, what can a poor girl do, if you high and mighty men don't want to marry her?" "Pshaw. There ain't no trouble like that in your case, I'll gamble!" "Oh, but there is. If I were pretty, like Rose Larsen she's a girl that stays where I live oh!
Schwirtz spent an hour telephoning to various acquaintances, trying to raise another hundred dollars. He got the promise of fifty. He shaved, put on a collar that for all practical purposes was quite clean, and went out to collect his fifty as proudly as though he had earned it. Una stared at herself in the mirror over the bureau, and said, aloud: "I don't believe it!
Schwirtz contrived to keep his position in the retail paint-store, Una was busy at home, copying documents and specifications and form-letters for a stenographic agency and trying to make a science of quick and careful housework. She suspected that, now he had a little money again, Mr.
As furnished housekeeping-rooms go, theirs was highly superior. Most of them are carpetless, rusty and small of coal-stove, and filled with cockroaches and the smell of carbolic acid. But the maison Schwirtz was almost clean. It had an impassioned green carpet, a bedspring which scarcely sagged at all, a gas-range, and at least a dozen vases with rococo handles and blobs of gilt.
Starr and Miss Vincent must have walked down to the village together that afternoon, as she had distinctly seen them coming back up the road. Yet Una did not feel Panama-ized. She was a grown-up person, accepted as one, not as Mrs. Golden's daughter; and her own gossip now passed at par. And all evening she was certain that Mr. Schwirtz was watching her. §
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