Every Soul Hath Its Song | Page 8

ten weeks, so help me!"
"Papa!"
With a cry that broke on its highest note Miss Binswanger sprang to her feet, her arms clasping about her father's neck.
"Oh, papa! Papa! Mamma!"
"'Sh-h-h-h! the door-bell! Go to the door, Izzy; I guess maybe that's Ray back or your friend. Ach, such excitement! Already I feel like we're on the boat."
"Oh, mamma, mamma!" Her words came too rapidly for coherence and her heart would dance against her breast. "I--I'm just as happy!" Kissing her mother once on each eye, she danced across to her brother, tagging him playfully. "Lazy! I'll go to the door. Lazy! Lazy! Tra-la-la, tra-la-la!" and danced to the door, flinging it wide.
Enter Mr. Irving Shapiro, his soft campus hat pressed against his striped waistcoat in a slight bow, and a row of even teeth flashed beneath a neat hedge of mustache.
"Mr. Izzy Binswanger live here?"
"Hello, Irv! That you? Come in!"
She dropped a courtesy. "That sounds like he lives here, don't it? That's him calling."
And because her new exuberance sent the blood fizzing through her veins with the bite and sparkle of Vichy, a smile danced across her face, now in her eyes, now quick upon her lips.
"Come right in the dining-room, Mr.--Mr.--"
"Shapiro."
"--Shapiro; he's expecting you." She drew back the porti��res, quirking her head as he passed through. Isadore Binswanger rose from his couch, pressing his friend's hand and passing him round the little circle.
"Pa, meet Irving Shapiro, city man for the Empire Waist Company. Irv, meet my father and mother and my sister."
A round of handshaking.
"We're as excited as a barnyard round here, Irv; the governor and the family just decided to light out for Europe for two months."
"Europe!"
"Ja, my children they drag a old man like me where they want."
Mrs. Binswanger leaned forward smiling in her chair. "You see, we want papa should have a good rest, Mr. Shapiro. You know yourself I guess shirtwaists ain't no easy business. We don't know yet if we can get berths on the twentieth this month, but--"
"State-rooms, mamma."
"State-rooms, then. What's that boat we sail on, Miriam?"
"Roumania, mamma."
Mr. Shapiro sat suddenly forward in his chair, his eager face thrust forward. "Say, I'm your man!"
"You!"
"Before you get your reservations let me steer you. I got a cousin works down at the White Flag offices--Harry Mansbach. He'll fix you up if there ain't a room left on the boat. He's the greatest little fixer you ever seen."
"Ach, Mr. Shapiro, how grand! To-morrow, Miriam, maybe when you get the berths--"
"State-rooms, mamma."
"State-rooms, maybe Mr. Shapiro will--will go mit."
"Aw, mamma, he--"
"Will I! Well, I guess!"
Across the table their eyes met and held.
* * * * *
Even into the granite ca?on of lower Broadway spring can find a way. In the fifty-first story of the latest triumph in skyscraping a six-dollar-a-week stenographer filled her drinking-tumbler with water and placed it, with two pansies floating atop, beside her typewriting machine. In Wall Street an apple-woman with the most ancient face in the world leaned out of her doorway with a new offering, forced but firm strawberries that caught a backward glance from the passing tide of finders and keepers, losers and weepers. Two sparrows hopped in and out among the stone gargoyles of a municipal building. A dray-driver cursed at the snarl of traffic and flecked the first sweat from his horse's flanks. A gaily striped awning drooped across the front of the White Flag steamship offices, and out from its entrance, spring in her face, emerged Miss Miriam Binswanger; at her shoulder Irving Shapiro attended.
"Honest, Mr. Shapiro, I--I just don't know what I would have done except for you."
"I told you Harry Mansbach would fix you up."
She clasped her wrist-bag carefully over the bulk of a thick envelope and turned her shining face full upon him.
"On deck A, too, right with the best!"
He steered her by a light pressure of her arm into the up-town flux of the sidewalk. "If I was a right smart kind of a fellow I never would have helped you to get those cabins."
"Oh, Mr. Shapiro!"
"But that's me every time, always working against myself."
"Well, of all the nerve!" And her voice would belie that she knew his delicate portent.
"If not for me, maybe you couldn't have gotten those reservations and you would have to stay at home. That's where I would come in, see?"
"Well, of all things!"
"But that's me every time. Meet a girl one day, take a fancy to her, and off she sails for Europe the next."
"Honest, Mr. Shapiro, you're just the limit!" She would have no more hold of his arm, but at the next Subway hood paused in the act of descending and held out her hand. "I'm just so much obliged, Mr. Shapiro."
He removed his hat, standing there holding it in the crook of his arm, the bright sunlight on