Star-Dust | Page 4

across the strong breast of the
Mississippi, flinging roads of commerce westward ho.
For one rapidly transitional moment street-car traffic in St. Louis stood
in three simultaneous stages of its lepidopterous development: a
caterpillar horse-car system crawled north and south along Jefferson
Avenue, glass coin box and the backward glance of the driver, in lieu of
conductor. A cable-car system ready to burst its chrysalis purred the
length of Olive Street, and a first electric car, brightly painted, and with
a proud antenna of trolley, had already whizzed out Washington
Avenue.
When Lilly was twelve years old her walk to school was across quite an
intricacy of electric-car tracks, and on rainy days, out of a small fund of
children's car tickets laid by in Mrs. Becker's glove box for just that
contingency, she would ride to and from school, changing cars with a
drilled precision at Vandaventer and Finney Avenues.
For the first few of these adventures Mrs. Becker wrote tiny notes, to be
handed out by Lilly along with her street-car ticket:
Conductor, please let this little girl off at Jefferson Avenue: she wants
to change cars for the Pope School.
One day by some mischievous mischance Mrs. Schum's board receipt
found its way into Lilly's little pocketbook:
Received of Mrs. Ben Becker, forty-five dollars for one month's board
for three.

"Aw," said the conductor, thrusting it back at her, "ask your mamma to
tell her troubles to a policeman, little girl."
From that day Lilly rebelled.
"Guess I can find my way to school without having to carry a note like
a baby."
"But, Lilly, you might get mixed up."
"Nit."
"Don't sass me that way or I'll tell your father when he comes home
to-night."
A never quite bursting cloud which hung over the entire of Lilly's
girlhood was this ever-impending threat which even in its rare
execution brought forth no more than a mild and rather sad rebuke from
a mild and rather sad father, and yet which was certain to quell any
rising rebellion.
"I notice you never get sassy or ugly to your father, Lilly. I do all the
stinting and make all the sacrifices and your father gets all the respect."
"Mamma, how can you say that!"
"Because it's a fact. To him it is always, 'Yes, sir, no, sir.' I'm going to
tell him a few things when he comes home to-night of what I go
through with all day in his absence. Elocution lessons! Just you ask him
for them yourself."
"Oh, mamma, you promised!"
"Well, I will, but I oughtn't."
Every evening until long after Lilly's dresses had descended to her shoe
tops and until the ritual came to have a distinctly ridiculous aspect,
there took place the one pleasantry in which Lilly and her father ever
indulged.

About fifteen minutes before seven, three staccato rings would come at
the front-door bell. At her sewing or what not, Mrs. Becker would
glance up with birdlike quickness.
"That's papa!" And Lilly, almost invariably curled over a book, would
jump up and take stand tensely against the wall so that when the room
door opened it would swing back, concealing her.
In the frame of that open doorway Mrs. Becker and her husband would
kiss, the unexcited matrimonial peck of the taken-for-granted which is
as sane to the taste as egg, and as flat, and then the
night-in-and-night-out question that for Lilly, rigid there behind the
door, never failed to thrill through her in little darts.
"Where is Lilly, Carrie?"
MRS. BECKER (assuming an immediate mask of vacuity): "Why, I
don't know, Ben. She was here a minute ago."
"Well, well, well!" looking under the bed, under the little cot drawn
across its baseboard and into a V of a back space created by a
catacorner bureau. "Well, well, well! What could have happened to
her?"
At this juncture Lilly, fairly titillating, would burst out and before his
carefully averted glance fling wide her arms in self-revelation.
"Here I am, papa!"
"Well, I'll declare, so she is!" lifting her by the armpits for a kiss. "Well,
well, well!"
"Papa, I got ninety in arithmetic. I'd have got a hundred, but I got the
wrong common denominator."
"That's right, Lilly. Keep up well in your studies. Remember,
knowledge is power."
"Get your father's velveteen coat, Lilly."

"Papa, Ella McBride kisses boys."
"Then don't ever let me hear of your associating with her. The little girl
that doesn't keep her own self-respect cannot expect others to respect
her."
"And you ought to see, papa, she always rides her tricycle down past
Eddie Posner's house on Delmar just to show herself off to him."
"Lilly, go wash your hands for supper. How is business, Ben?"
"Nothing extra, Carrie."
"Oh, I get so tired hearing a poor mouth.