We Cant Have Everything | Page 7

Chicago lest she never get to New
York, or find it inferior. She begged to be left there. It was plenty good
enough for her.
But once aboard the sleeping-car she was blissful again, and
embarrassed her mother and father with her adoration. In all sincerity,
Kedzie mechanically worshiped people who got things for her, and
loathed people who forbade things or took them away.

She horrified the porter by calling him "Mister"--almost as much as her
parents scandalized him the next day by eating their meals out of a
filing-cabinet of shoe-boxes compiled by Mrs. Thropp. But it was all
picnic to Kedzie. Fortunately for her repose, she never knew that there
was a dining-car attached.
The ordeal of a night in a sleeping-car coffin was to Kedzie an
experience of faery. She laughed aloud when she bumped her head, and
getting out of and into her clothes was a fascinating exercise in
contortion. She was entranced by the wash-room with its hot and cold
water and its basin of apparent silver, whose contents did not have to be
lifted and splashed into a slop-jar, but magically emptied themselves at
the raising of a medallion.
She had not worn herself out with enthusiasm by the time the first night
was spent and half the next day. She pressed her nose against the
window and ached with regret at the hurry with which towns and cities
were whipped away from her eyes.
She did not care for grass and trees and cows and dull villages, but she
thrilled at the beauty of big, dark railroad stations and noble street-cars
and avenues paved with exquisite asphalt.
The train was late in arriving at New York, and it was nearer ten than
eight when it roared across the Harlem River. Kedzie was glad of the
display, for she saw the town first as one great light-spangled banner.
The car seemed to be drawn right through people's rooms. Everybody
lived up-stairs. She caught glimpses of kitchens on the fourth floor and
she thought this adorable, except that it would be a job carrying the
wood all the way up.
The streets went by like the glistening spokes of a swift wheel. They
were packed with interesting sights. No wonder most of the inhabitants
were either in the streets or leaning out of the windows looking down.
Here it was ten o'clock, and not a sign of anybody's having thought of
going to bed. New York was a sensible place. She liked New York.

But the train seemed to quicken its pace out of mere spitefulness just as
they reached wonderful market streets with flaring lights over little
carts all filled with things to buy.
When the wonder world was blotted from view by the tunnel it
frightened her at first with its long, dark noise and the flip-flops of light.
Then a brief glimpse of towers and walls. Then the dark station. And
they were There!

CHAPTER IV
Jim Dyckman had always loved Charity Coe, but he let another man
marry her--a handsomer, livelier, more entertaining man with whom
Dyckman was afraid to compete. A mingling of laziness and of
modesty disarmed him.
As soon as he saw how tempestuously Peter Cheever began his
courtship, Dyckman withdrew from Miss Coe's entourage. When she
asked him why, he said, frankly:
"Pete Cheever's got me beat. I know when I'm licked."
Pete's courtship was what the politicians call a whirlwind campaign.
Charity was Mrs. Cheever before she knew it. Her friends continued to
call her Charity Coe, but she was very much married.
Cheever was a man of shifting ardors. His soul was filled with
automatic fire-extinguishers. He flared up quickly, but when his
temperature reached a certain degree, sprinklers of cold water opened
in his ceiling and doused the blaze, leaving him unharmed and hardly
scorched. It had been so with his loves.
After a brief and blissful honeymoon, Peter Cheever's capricious soul
kindled at the thought of an exploration of war-filled Europe. His
blushing bride was a hurdle-rider, too, and loved a risk-neck venture.
She insisted on going with him.

He accepted the steering-wheel of a motor-ambulance and left his bride
to her own devices while he shot along the poplar-plumed roads of
France at lightning speed.
Charity drifted into hospital service. Her first soldier, the tortured
victim of a gas-attack, was bewailing the fate of his motherless child.
Charity brought a smile to what lips he had by whispering:
"I am rich. I will adopt your little girl."
It was the first time she had ever boasted of being rich. The man died,
whispering: "Merci, Madame! Merci, Madame!" Another father was
writhing in the premature hell of leaving a shy little unprotected boy to
starve. Charity promised to care for him, too.
At a