“I do,” repeated Kim, patiently, as one speaks to an irritating child.
Magnolia was conscious of a sinking sense of disappointment. She had hoped, perversely enough, that Kim would stamp her feet, throw herself screaming on the floor, and demand to be carried out of the bare clean orderly place back to the delightful welter of Clark Street. She could not overcome the feeling that in thus bestowing upon Kim a ladylike education and background she was depriving her of something rich and precious and colourful. She thought of her own childhood. She shut her eyes so as to see more clearly the pictures passing in her mind. Deep rivers. Wide rivers. Willows by the water’s edge trailing gray-green. Dogwood in fairy bloom. Darkies on the landing. Plinketty-plunk-plunk-plunk, plinketty-plunk-plunk-plunk. Cotton bales. Sweating black bodies. Sue, ef he loves yuh, go with him. To-morrow night, ladies and gentlemen, that magnificent comedy-drama, Honest Hearts and Willing Hands. The band, red-coated, its brass screaming defiance at the noonday sun.
The steely blue eyes in the pink face surrounded by the white wimple and the black coif seemed to be boring into her own eyes. “If you yourself would rather not have her here with us we would prefer not to take her.”
“Oh, but I would! I do!” Magnolia cried hastily.
So it was arranged. Next week. Monday. Half a dozen woollen this. Half a dozen cotton that.
Descending the great broad flight of outside steps Magnolia said, like a child, “From now until Monday we’ll do things, shall we? Fun. What would you like to do?”
“Oh, a matinée on Saturday——” began Kim eagerly. Magnolia was enormously relieved. She had been afraid that this brief glimpse into the more spiritual life might already have had a chastening effect upon the cosmopolitan Kim.
Thus the child was removed from the pernicious atmosphere of the Chicago Levee just when the Levee itself began to feel the chastening hand of reform. Suddenly, overnight, Chicago went civic. For a quarter of a century she had been a strident, ample-bosomed, loud-mouthed Rabelaisian giantess in red satin and diamonds, who kept open house day and night and welcomed all comers. There were food and drink and cheer. Her great muscular arms embraced ranchers from Montana and farmers from Indiana and bankers from New York. At Bath House John’s Workingmen’s Exchange you got a tub of beer for a nickel; the stubble-faced bums lined the curb outside his ceaselessly swinging door on Clark Street. The visiting ranchers and farmers and bankers were told to go over to the Palmer House and see the real silver dollars sunk in the tiled floor of that hostelry’s barroom. The garrulous Coughlin, known as The Bath, and the silent little Hinky Dink Mike Kenna were Chicago’s First Ward aldermen and her favourite naughty sons. The roulette wheels in Gamblers’ Alley spun merrily by day and by night. The Mayor of the city called a genial, “Hope you’re all winning, boys!” as he dropped in for a sociable drink and a look at the play; or even to take a hand. “What’ll you have?” was Chicago’s greeting, and “Don’t care if I do,” her catch phrase. Hetty Chilson was the recognized leader of her sinister world, and that this world happened to be prefaced by the qualifying word, “under” made little difference in Chicago’s eyes. Pawnshops, saloons, dives, and gambling houses lined Clark Street from Twelfth to the river, and dotted the near-by streets for blocks around. The wind-burned ranchmen in bearskin coats and sombreros at Polk and Clark were as common a sight as the suave white-fingered gentry in Prince Alberts and diamonds at Clark and Madison. It was all one to Chicago. “Game upstairs, gentlemen! Game upstairs!”
New York, eyeing her Western cousin through disapproving lorgnettes, said, “What a crude and vulgar person!”
“Me!” blustered Chicago, dabbing futilely at the food and wine spots on her broad satin bosom. “Me! I’ll learn you I’m a lady.”