The Fortune Hunter | Page 5

three thousand dollars they married and put into effect the plan which had been their chief subject of conversation every day and every evening for ten years-- they opened the ``delicatessen'' in Avenue A, near Second Street. They lived in two back rooms; they toiled early and late for twenty-three contented, cheerful years --she in the shop when she was not doing the housework or caring for the babies, he in the great clean cellar, where the cooking and cabbage-cutting and pickling and spicing were done. And now, owners of three houses that brought in eleven thousand a year clear, they were about to retire. They had fixed on a place in the Bronx, in the East Side, of course, with a big garden, where every kind of gay flower and good vegetable could be grown, and an arbor where there could be pinochle, beer and coffee on Sunday afternoons. In a sentence, they were honorable and exemplary members of that great mass of humanity which has the custody of the present and the future of the race--those who live by the sweat of their own brows or their own brains, and train their children to do likewise, those who maintain the true ideals of happiness and progress, those from whom spring all the workers and all the leaders of thought and action.
They walked slowly up the Avenue, speaking to their neighbors, pausing now and then for a joke or to pat a baby on the head, until they were within two blocks of Tompkins Square. They stopped before a five-story tenement, evidently the dwelling-place of substantial, intelligent, self-respecting artisans and their families, leading the natural life of busy usefulness. In its first floor was a delicatessen-- the sign read ``Schwartz and Heilig.'' Paul Brauner pointed with his long- stemmed pipe at the one show-window.
``Fine, isn't it? Beautiful!'' he exclaimed in Low-German--they and almost all their friends spoke Low-German, and used English only when they could not avoid it.
The window certainly was well arranged. Only a merchant who knew his business thoroughly--both his wares and his customers--could have thus displayed cooked chickens, hams and tongues, the imported sausages and fish, the jelly-inclosed paste of chicken livers, the bottles and jars of pickled or spiced meats and vegetables and fruits. The spectacle was adroitly arranged to move the hungry to yearning, the filled to regret, and the dyspeptic to rage and remorse. And behind the show-window lay a shop whose shelves, counters and floor were clean as toil could make and keep them, and whose air was saturated with the most delicious odors.
Mrs. Brauner nodded. ``Heilig was up at half-past four this morning,'' she said. ``He cleans out every morning and he moves everything twice a week.'' She had a round, honest face that was an inspiring study in simplicity, sense and sentiment.
``What a worker!'' was her husband's comment. ``So unlike most of the young men nowadays. If August were only like him!''
``You'd think Heilig was a drone if he were your son,'' replied Mrs. Brauner. She knew that if any one else had dared thus to attack their boy, his father would have been growling and snapping like an angry bear.
``That's right!'' he retorted with mock scorn. ``Defend your children! You'll be excusing Hilda for putting off Heilig next.''
``She'll marry him--give her time,'' said Mrs. Brauner. ``She's romantic, but she's sensible, too--why, she was born to make a good wife to a hard-working man. Where's there another woman that knows the business as she does? You admit on her birthdays that she's the only real helper you ever had.''
``Except you,'' said her husband.
``Never mind me.'' Mrs. Brauner pretended to disdain the compliment.
Brauner understood, however. ``We have had the best, you and I,'' said he.
``Arbeit und Liebe und Heim. Nicht wahr?'' Otto Heilig appeared in his doorway and greeted them awkwardly. Nor did their cordiality lessen his embarrassment. His pink and white skin was rosy red and his frank blue-gray eyes shifted uneasily. But he was smiling with eager friendliness, showing even, sound, white teeth.
``You are coming to see us to-morrow?'' asked Mrs. Brauner--he always called on Sunday afternoons and stayed until five, when he had to open shop for the Sunday supper rush.
``Why--that is--not exactly--no,'' he stammered. Hilda had told him not to come, but he knew that if he admitted it to her parents they would be severe with her. He didn't like anybody to be severe with Hilda, and he felt that their way of helping his courtship was not suited to the modern ideas. ``They make her hate me,'' he often muttered. But if he resented it he would offend them and Hilda too; if he acquiesced he encouraged them and added to Hilda's exasperation.
Mrs. Brauner knew at once that Hilda was in some way the cause