A Top-Floor Idyl | Page 7

am afraid. It will be a little vampire, pretending to feed on milk but really gorging itself on a heart's blood.
My cogitations were interrupted by the rattle of a thousand milk cans, more or less, clattering through the street, on top of a huge, white motor truck. I took off my coat, instinctively thinking that it was time to go to bed, and put it on again because my door was open and it behooved me to keep awake, since I might be required to run other errands. The question of sleep thus disposed of, I brought out my percolator.
For a wonder there was alcohol in the lamp, and I found the coffee in a can I discovered in my cardboard hat-box. Two months before, my sister Jane had told me that a silk hat was proper for the following of one's mother to the grave, and I obeyed her. Poor darling! It was the least and last thing I could do for her.
The lamp was alight and the steam coming, when the doctor came out, looking rather spectral in a white gown.
"Thank goodness!" I exclaimed, dropping some pulverized bean on the floor. "So it is all over!"
"Not yet," he informed me, smiling, "but so far everything goes well. The big, fat Providence in gig-lamps is sitting by the patient. Sometimes three make poor company. The solid dame came in and called her 'my dear' and rummaged things out of the trunk and fixed up the bed, and tears began to flow. It must be a wonderful thing for a woman, who feels abandoned of God and man, to have such a big brave creature come in to pound the pillows and make one feel that there is yet corn in Egypt. I left them with their heads together. The poor thing was crying a bit and beginning to tell the story of her past life. Yes, thanks! I'll be glad of a cup, with three lumps of sugar. Great little machine, that! And so I thought I'd walk in here for a minute. Some things a woman tells another must be pretty sacred, don't you think?"
I poured out the coffee appreciatively.
"The person whom you call the solid dame," I told him, "is no less a woman than Frieda Long, the poet in pigments."
"Keeps a Beauty Shop?" he inquired.
"If you mean to ask whether she shampoos and manicures females and supplies them with hair," I answered, "your guess is utterly wrong. She paints women, and men too, on canvas, and any ordinary individual, such as you and I, ought to grovel before her."
"Just say the word," he answered, "and I'll make a start. She's the best old girl I've come across in many a long day."
"Frieda Long is hardly thirty-eight," I told him, "and, to change the subject for a moment, I will acknowledge that I deemed such cases best attended by the sere and ancient. I rang you up because your sign suggested long experience."
"Not half bad, is it?" he replied. "I aged it by setting it up in the backyard and firing brickbats at it. Old Cummerly, next door to me, had his replated."
He swallowed his coffee, without winking, though I thought it was boiling hot, and left me hurriedly again. I took greater leisure in my own beverage and leaned back in my chair. This young fellow appealed to me. The man of tact is born, not made. What serves him for a soul possesses refinement to dictate his leaving, for a few minutes, while one woman poured out her heart to another. I think he is considerate and kindly; he is probably destined to make many friends and little money.
I rose and looked out of the window. The dawn was beginning and promised another stifling, red-hot day. A very decollete baker had come out of a cave beneath the bread and cake shop, opposite, and sponged off his forehead with the back of his hand. An Italian woman, clad in violent colors, passed with a hundredweight or so of broken laths poised on her head. At the corner the policeman was conversing with a low-browed individual, issued from the saloon with a mop. New York was awakening, and I decided I might as well shave, to pass away the time. Taking my strop and razor I sat down to give the latter a thorough overhauling. I suppose I fell asleep during the process.
"Contemplating suicide?" I heard Frieda ask suddenly.
I jumped up, startled, with the weapon in my hand.
"Put that thing down," she ordered me. "It makes me nervous. She's sleeping quietly, and the doctor's gone. An awfully nice fellow. It's a boy with brown hair."
"Not the doctor," I objected, somewhat dazed.
"No, the baby, you silly! The doctor is very nice. I am going out to get