Our Mr Wrenn | Page 9

stairs in a bunchy Mother Hubbard, groaning:
"Mist' Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you wouldn't just
make all the noise you can. Ah don't see why Ah should have to be kept
awake all night. Ah suppose it's the will of the Lord that whenever Ah
go out to see Mrs. Muzzy and just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get
insomina, but Ah don't see why anybody that tries to be a gennulman
should have to go and bang the door and just rack mah nerves."
He slunk up-stairs behind Mrs. Zapp's lumbering gloom.
"There's something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zapp--something that's
happened to me. That's why I was out celebrating last evening and got
in so late." Mr. Wrenn was diffidently sitting in the basement.
"Yes," dryly, "Ah noticed you was out late, Mist' Wrenn."
"You see, Mrs. Zapp, I--uh--my father left me some land, and it's been
sold for about one thousand plunks."
" Ah'm awful' glad, Mist' Wrenn," she said, funereally. "Maybe you'd
like to take that hall room beside yours now. The two rooms'd make a
nice apartment." (She really said "nahs 'pahtmun', "you understand.)
"Why, I hadn't thought much about that yet." He felt guilty, and was
profusely cordial to Lee Theresa Zapp, the factory forewoman, who
had just thumped down-stairs.
Miss Theresa was a large young lady with a bust, much black hair, and
a handsome disdainful discontented face. She waited till he had
finished greeting her, then sniffed, and at her mother she snarled:
"Ma, they went and kept us late again to-night. I'm getting just about
tired of having a bunch of Jews and Yankees think I'm a nigger. Uff! I
hate them!"
"T'resa, Mist' Wrenn's just inherited two thousand dollars, and he's
going to take that upper hall room." Mrs. Zapp beamed with maternal
fondness at the timid lodger.
But the gallant friend of Pinkertons faced her--for the first time. "Waste
his travel-money?" he was inwardly exclaiming as he said:
"But I thought you had some one in that room. I heard som--"
"That fellow! Oh, he ain't going to be perm'nent. And he promised
me--So you can have--"
"I'm awful sorry, Mrs. Zapp, but I'm afraid I can't take it. Fact is, I may

go traveling for a while."
"Co'se you'll keep your room if you do, Mist' Wrenn?"
"Why, I'm afraid I'll have to give it up, but--Oh, I may not be going for
a long long while yet; and of course I'll be glad to come--I'll want to
come back here when I get back to New York. I won't be gone for more
than, oh, probably not more than a year anyway, and--"
"And Ah thought you said you was going to be perm'nent!" Mrs. Zapp
began quietly, prefatory to working herself up into hysterics. "And here
Ah've gone and had your room fixed up just for you, and new paper put
in, and you've always been talking such a lot about how you wanted
your furniture arranged, and Ah've gone and made all mah plans--"
Mr. Wrenn had been a shyly paying guest of the Zapps for four years.
That famous new paper had been put up two years before. So he
spluttered: "Oh, I'm awfully sorry. I wish--uh--I don't--"
"Ah'd thank you, Mist' Wrenn, if you could conveniently let me know
before you go running off and leaving me with empty rooms, with the
landlord after the rent, and me turning away people that 'd pay more for
the room, because Ah wanted to keep it for you. And people always
coming to see you and making me answer the door and--"
Even the rooming-house worm was making small worm-like sounds
that presaged turning. Lee Theresa snapped just in time, "Oh, cut it out,
Ma, will you!" She had been staring at the worm, for he had suddenly
become interesting and adorable and, incidentally, an heir. "I don't see
why Mr. Wrenn ain't giving us all the notice we can expect. He said he
mightn't be going for a long time."
"Oh!" grunted Mrs. Zapp. "So mah own flesh and blood is going to turn
against me!"
She rose. Her appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by the
creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She
said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs with a train of
sighs.
Mr. Wrenn looked as though sudden illness had overpowered him. But
Theresa laughed, and remarked: "You don't want to let Ma get on her
high horse, Mr. Wrenn. She's a bluff."
With much billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her garments, she
sailed to the cloudy mirror over the magazine-filled bookcase and
inspected her cap of false curls, with