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Updated: May 2, 2025
The toothpicks had to be asked for. All three Thropps wanted them. While Thropp was fishing in his pocket for a quarter, and finding only half a dollar which he did not want to reveal, the waiter placed before him a closely written manuscript, face down, with a lead-pencil on top of it. "What's this?" said Thropp. "Will you please to sign your name and room number, sir?" the waiter suggested.
Some of them were very startling; some of them were stupid old ladies who rocked, or children who flattened their noses against the windows, or Pekingese doglets who were born with their noses against a pane, apparently. But some of the neighbors were fascinatingly careless of inspection and they always promised to be more careless than they were. Mrs. Thropp came rushing in from the kitchen.
"Do you see anything in what's happened to prevent your getting married?" "No, Mrs. Thropp." "Then I don't see much use wastin' time, do you? Life's too uncertain to go postponin' happiness when it's right within your reach. Kedzie's father and I ought to be gettin' back home, and I'd feel a heap more comfortable if I could know my poor little chick was safe in the care of a good man."
Dyckman was in the depths of the blues, and a note to the effect that he had been suspended from his club, to await action looking toward his expulsion, left him quite alone in the world. In such a mood Kedzie Thropp called him up, with a cheery hail that rejoiced him like the first cheep of the first robin after a miserable winter.
He'd abandoned her, and when he came back it was only to try to get money out of her. I can't see that she has any call to worry about decency's sake. He's done her harm enough. She can't do him any good by keepin' you waitin'." "Just as you think best, Mrs. Thropp," said Dyckman. He began to smile in spite of himself.
Yet Jim understood that he could not long prevent the encounter of his wife and her relatives with his mother and her relatives. He could not be so boorishly insolent as to forbid the meeting, and he could not be so blind as to expect success. Mrs. Thropp could not imagine why a rich woman should be busy, but she held her whist.
"They've got us ditched, honey, for a while, but we'll get righted soon and then life will be as smooth as smooth." She tried to smile for his sake, but she had finished with hope. While Jim and Charity sat by the roadside the Marchioness of Strathdene, nee Kedzie Thropp, of Nimrim, sat on a fine cushion and salted with her tears the toasted English crumpet she was having with her tea.
She had been trying in vain to make a friend of Kedzie's one servant. But this maid, like a self-respectful employee or a good soldier, resented the familiarity of an official superior as an indecency and an insult. She made up her mind to quit. After Mrs. Thropp had expressed her wonderment at seeing her children return, she turned the full power of her hospitality on poor Jim Dyckman.
For that reason Ma Thropp did the cooking, baked the "light bread," and made the clothes and washed them and mended them till they vanished. She cut the boys' hair; she schooled the girls to help her in the kitchen and at the sewing-machine and with the preserve-jars. Her day's work ended when she could no longer see her darning-needle.
Kedzie stared after her and her beautiful gown, and said: "Say, Jim, who were the Coes, anyway? Did they make their money in trade?" Jim said that he would be divinely condemned, or words to that effect. And now Kedzie Thropp was satisfied at last at least for the time being. She was a plump kitten, replete and purr-full, and the world was her catnip-ball.
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