“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“Shucks! What’s a dollar? You can pay me back some time. I’ll give you my address. It’s all right. I’m married. Three kids. And say, if you send me back the dollar, which you needn’t do, you know—but if you must—sign a man’s name to the letter, because my wife—well, she’s all right, but if––”
Letty escaped the necessity of accepting the dollar by assuring him that if he would tell her the way to the nearest subway station she would use a portion of her fifty cents.
“I’ll go with you,” he declared, with breezy fraternity. “No distance. They’re expecting me on a job up there in Waddle Street, but they’ll wait. Pipe burst—floodin’ a loft where they’ve stored a lot of jute—but why worry?”
As they threaded the broken series of streets toward the subway he aired the matrimonial question.
“Some think as two can live on the same wages as 277 one. All bunk, I’ll say. My wife used to be in the hair line. Some little earner too. Had an electric machine that’d make hair grow like hay on a marsh. Two dollars a visit she got. When we was married she had nine hunderd saved. I had over five hunderd myself. We took a weddin’ tour; Atlantic City. Gettin’ married’s a cinch; but stayin’ married—she’s all right, my wife is, only she’s kind o’ nervous like if I look sideways at any other woman—which I hardly ever do intentional—only my wife’s got it into her head that....”
At the entrance to the subway Letty shook hands with him and thanked him.
“Say,” he responded, “I wish I could do something more for you; but I got to hike it back to Waddle Street. Look-a-here! You stick to the subway and the stations, and don’t you be in a hurry to get to your address in Red Point till after daylight. They can’t be killin’ nobody over there, that you’d need to be in such a rush, and in the stations you’d be safe.”
To a degree that was disconcerting Letty found this so. Having descended the stairs, purchased a ticket, and cast it into the receptacle appointed for that purpose, she saw herself examined by the colored man guarding the entry to the platform. He sat with his chair tilted back, his feet resting on the chain which protected part of the entrance, picking a set of brilliant teeth. Letty, trembling, nervous, and only partly comforted by the cavalier who was now on his way to Waddle Street, shrank from the colored man’s gaze and was going down the platform where she could be away from it. Her progress was arrested by the sight 278 of two men, also waiting for the train, who on perceiving her started in her direction.
The colored man lifted his feet lazily from the chain, brought his chair down to four legs, put his toothpick in his waistcoat pocket, and dragged himself up.