§ 2
Mr. Schwirtz seemed to know everybody at the farm. He had been there only thirty-six hours, but already he called Mr. Cannon “Sam,” and knew that Miss Vincent’s married sister’s youngest child had recently passed away with a severe and quite unexpected attack of cholera morbus. Mr. Schwirtz introduced Una to the others so fulsomely that she was immediately taken into the inner political ring. He gave her a first lesson in auction pinochle also. They had music and recitations at ten, and Una’s shyness was so warmed away that she found herself reciting, “I’m Only Mammy’s Pickaninny Coon.”
She went candle-lighted up to a four-poster bed. As she lay awake, her job-branded mind could not keep entirely away from the office, the work she would have to do when she returned, the familiar series of indefinite worries and disconnected office pictures. But mostly she let the rustle of the breathing land inspirit her while she thought of Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz.
She knew that he was ungrammatical, but she denied that he was uncouth. His deep voice had been very kindly; his clipped mustache was trim; his nails, which had been ragged at that commercial-college lunch, were manicured now; he was sure of himself, while Walter Babson doubted and thrashed about. All of which meant that the tired office-woman was touchily defensive of the man who liked her.
She couldn’t remember just where she had learned it, but she knew that Mr. Schwirtz was a widower.