"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Gump.
"I'm in no hurry," said Birdie.
"I don't say that, neither. When a girl meets the right one it's different. Look at Ray—two hours before she was engaged she didn't know it was going to happen!"
"Come right in, papa. Mr. Gump is here—so tired he is he hates to come in."
There are a few epics waiting to be dug out of remote corners. One day an American drama will be born in a Western shack or under some East Side stairway; one day a prophet will look within the dingy temple of a Mr. Katzenstein at the warm red heart beating beneath a hairy chest, and there find a classic rune to the men who moil and toil, and pay millinery bills with a three-figure check; another day an elegiac will be written to the men who slip the shoes off their aching feet in the merciful seclusion of their alternate Wednesday-night subscription boxes and sit through four hours of Wagner—facing an underdressed daughter, two notes due on the morrow, and a remote stageful of vocalizing figures especially designed for his alternate and inquisitional Wednesday nights.
Life had whacked hard at Mr. Katzenstein, writ across his face in a thousand welts and wrinkles, bent his knees and fingers, and calloused his hands.
"Good evening, Mr. Gump—good evening! I say to mamma the young folks got no time for us in here. I'm right?"
"The more the merrier!" said Mr. Gump, reseating himself.
"Mr. Katzenstein says he used to know your father, Mr. Gump."
"Rudolph Gump! I should say so—yes. Believe me, I wish I had half a dollar for every shirtwaist I bought off him in my life! Your father and me played side by each down on Cedar Street before you was born. I knew him longer as you—he was a good silk man, was Rudolph Gump. Have a cigar, young man?"