"Father's just over to Kriegler's, getting his glass of beer and his lunch," she observed as he shook hands warmly with her. Sometimes she wished that he were not quite so meaninglessly cordial; that he could be either a bit more shy or a bit more bold in his greeting of her.
"I might have known that," he laughed, looking at his watch. "Half-past ten. I'll hurry right over there," and he was gone.
Ella stood in the doorway and looked after him until he had turned the corner of the house; then she sighed and went back to her baking. A moment later she was singing cheerfully.
It was a sort of morning lunch club of elderly men, all of the one lodge, the one building association, the one manner of life, which met over at Kriegler's, and "Eddy" was compelled to sit with them for nearly an hour of slow beer, while politics, municipal, state and national, was thoroughly thrashed out, before he could get his friend David to himself.
"Well, what brings you out so early, Eddy?" asked the old harness maker on the walk home. "Got a new gold-mining scheme again to put us all in the poorhouse?"
Eddy laughed.
"You don't remember of the kid-glove miner taking anybody's money away, do you?" he demanded. "I guess your old chum Eddy saw through the grindstone that time, eh?"
Mr. Jasper laughed and pounded him a sledge-hammer blow upon the shoulder. It was intended as a mere pat of approval.
"You're all right, Eddy. The only trouble with you is that you don't get married. You'll be an old bachelor before you know it."
"So you've said before," laughed Eddy, "but I can't find the girl that will have me."