Back to the Woods | Page 2

squeezes into our little flat the walls act like they are bow-legged.
Uncle Peter always goes through the folding doors sideways and every time he sits down the man in the flat below kicks because we move the piano so often.
Tacks was also present.
Tacks is my youthful brother-in-law with a mind like a walking delegate because he's always looking for trouble and when he finds it he passes it up to somebody who doesn't need it.
"Evening, John!" gurgled Uncle Peter; "late, aren't you?"
"Cars blocked, delayed me," I sighed.
"New York will be a nice place when they get it finished, won't it?" chirped Tacks.
Just then Aunt Martha squeezed in from a shopping excursion and I went out in the hall while she counted up and dragged out the day's spoils for Clara J. to look at.
Aunt Martha is Uncle Peter's wife only she weighs more and breathes oftener.
When the two of them visit our bird cage at the same time the janitor has to go out and stand in front of the building with a view to catching it if it falls.
That night I waded into all the sporting papers and burned dream pipes till the smoke made me dizzy.
The next day I hit the track with three sure-fires and a couple of perhapses.
There was nothing to it. All I had to do was to keep my nerve and not get side-tracked and I'd have enough coin to make Andrew Carnegie's check book look like a punched meal ticket.
I played them--and when the Angelus was ringing Moses O'Brien and three other Bookbinders were out buying meal tickets with my money.
Things went along this way for about a week and I was all to the bad.
One evening Clara J. said to me, "John, I looked through your check book to-day and I've had a cold on my chest ever since. At first I thought I had opened the refrigerator by mistake."
At last the blow had fallen!
I had promised her faithfully before we were married that I'd never play the ponies again and I fell and broke my word.
The accident was painful, and I'd be a sad scamp to put her wise at this late day, especially after being fried to a finish.
I simply didn't dare confess that my money had gone into a fund to furnish a home for Incurable Bookmakers--what to do? What to do?
She had me lashed to the mast.
"May I inquire," my wife continued with the breath of winter in her tones, "why it's all going out and nothing coming in? Have you begun so soon to lead a double life?"
Mother, call your baby boy back home! If Uncle Peter would only drop in, or Tacks or Aunt Martha or even the janitor!
Suddenly it occurred to me:
"Dearie," I said, "you have surprised my secret, and now nothing remains but the pleasure of telling you everything."
A thaw set in.
"As you have stated, not incorrectly, my dear, large bundles of Green Fellows have severed their home ties and tiptoed into the elsewhere," I continued, gradually getting my nerve back.
The thermometer continued to go up.
"Clara J., on several occasions you have expressed a desire to leave this torn-up city and retire to the woodlands, haven't you?" I asked.
She nodded and the weather grew warmer.
"Once you said to me, 'Oh, John, if they'd only take New York off the operating table and give the poor city a chance to get well, how nice it would be!'--didn't you?"
Another nod.
"Well," I said, backing Munchausen in a corner and dragging his medals away from him, "that's the answer, You for the Burbs! You for the chateau up the track! Henceforth, you for the cage in the country where the daffydowndillys sing in the treetops and buttercups chirp from bough to bough!"
"Oh, John!" she exclaimed, faint with delight; "do you really mean you've bought a home in the country? How perfectly lovely! You, dear, dear, old John! And that's what you've been doing with all your money, just to surprise me! Bless your dear good heart! Oh! I'm so glad, and so delighted. Won't it be simply grand?"
I could feel the cold, spectral form of Sapphira leaning over my left shoulder, urging me on.
"What is it like? How many rooms? Where is it?" she inquired, all in one breath.
Where was the blamed thing? What did it look like? How did I know? She could search me. I could feel my ears getting red. Presently I braced and mumbled, "No more details till the castle is completed, then I'll coax you out there and let you revel."
"How soon will that be?" she asked, "To-morrow? Yes, John, to-morrow?"
"No," I whispered croupily, "in--in about a week."
I wanted time to arrange my earthly affairs.
"Oh! lovely!" she said, and kissing me rushed away to break the news to mother.
I felt like a rain