All He Knew | Page 3

was a child with a thin, sallow, dirty,
precocious face and with a cat in her arms. The child stared at the
intruder, who stopped and pushed his hat to the back of his head.
"Pop!" exclaimed the child, suddenly, without moving.
"Mary!" exclaimed the man, dropping upon his knees and kissing the
dirty face again and again. "What are you doin' here?"
"Playin' house," said the child, as impassively as if to have had her
father absent two years was so common an experience that his return
did not call for any manifestation of surprise or affection.
"Stand up a minute, dear, and let me look at you. Let's see,--you're
twelve years old now, ain't you? You don't seem to have growed a bit.
How's the rest?"
"Mam's crosser an' crosser," said the child; "Joe's run away, 'cause the
constable was after him for stealin' meat from--"
"My boy a thief! Oh, Lord!"
"Well, we didn't have nothin' to eat; he had to do it."
The father dropped his head and shuddered. The child continued:
"Billy's goin' to school now; Jane's servant-gal at the hotel; Tom plays
hookey all the time, an' the baby squalls so much that nobody likes her

but Billy."
The man looked sad, then thoughtful; finally he put his arm around his
child, and said, as he kissed and caressed her,--
"You're to have a better dad after this, darlin'; then maybe the mother'll
feel pleasanter, an' the baby'll be happier, an' Tom'll be a good boy, an'
we'll get Joe back somehow."
"How's you goin' to be better?" asked the child.
"Goin' to give us money to buy candy an' go to all the circuses?"
"Maybe," said the father. "I must go see the mother now."
The child followed her father to the house; there was not much
excitement in the life of the Kimper family, except when there was a
quarrel, and Mary seemed to anticipate some now, for she drawled, as
she walked along,--
"Mam's got it in for you; I heerd her say so many a time sence you war
took away."
"The poor thing's had reason enough to say it, the Lord knows," said
the man. "An'," he continued, after a moment, "I guess I've learned to
take whatever I'm deservin' of."
As Sam entered his house, a shabbily dressed, unkempt, forlorn looking
woman sat at a bare pine table, handling some dirty cards. When she
looked up, startled by the heavy tread upon the floor, she exclaimed,--
"I declare! I didn't expect you till--"
"Wife!" shouted Sam, snatching the woman into his arms and covering
her face with kisses. "Wife," he murmured, bursting into tears and
pressing the unsightly head to his breast,--"wife, wife, wife, I'm goin' to
make you proud of bein' my wife, now that I'm a man once more."
The woman did not return any of the caresses that had been showered

upon her; neither did she repel them. Finally she said,--
"You do appear to think somethin' of me, Sam."
"Think somethin' of you? I always did, Nan, though I didn't show it like
I ought. I've had lots of time to think since then, though, an' I've had
somethin' else, too, that I want to tell you about. Things is goin' to be
different, the Lord willin', Nan, dear--wife."
Mrs. Kimper was human; she was a woman, and she finally rose to the
occasion to the extent of kissing her husband, though immediately
afterward she said, apparently by way of apology,--
"I don't know how I come to do that."
"Neither do I, Nan; I don't know how you can do anythin' but hate me.
But you ain't goin' to have no new reason for doin' it. I'm goin' to be
different ev'ry way from what I was."
"I hope so," said Mrs. Kimper, releasing herself from her husband's
arms and taking up the cards again. "I was just tellin' my fortune by the
keerds, havin' nothin' else to do, an' they showed a new man an' some
money,--though not much."
"They showed right both times, though keerds ain't been friends to this
family, confound 'em, when I've fooled with 'em at the saloon. Where's
the baby, though, that I ain't ever seen?"
"There," said the woman, pointing to a corner of the room. Sam looked,
and saw on the floor a bundle of dingy clothes from one end of which
protruded a head of which the face, eyes, and hair were of the same tint
as the clothing. The little object was regarding the new arrival in a
listless way, and she howled and averted her head as her father stooped
to pick her up.
"She's afraid you're goin' to hit her, like most ev'ry one does when they
go nigh her," said the mother.