“You seem mighty struck on Dave Hosmer, all of a sudden,” remarked Mrs. Worthington to her friend, as the two crossed over the street. “A feller without any more feelings than a stick; it’s what I always said about him.”
“Oh, I always did like Hosmer,” replied Mrs. Dawson. “But I thought he had more sense than to tie himself to that little gump again, after he’d had the luck to get rid of her.”
A few days later Jack came home. His return was made palpable to the entire neighborhood; for no cab ever announced itself with quite the dash and clatter and bang of door that Jack’s cabs did.
The driver had staggered behind him under the weight of the huge yellow valise, and had been liberally paid for the service.
Immediately the windows were thrown wide open, and the lace curtains drawn aside until no smallest vestige of them remained visible from the street. A condition of things which Mrs. Worthington upstairs bitterly resented, and naturally, spoiling as it necessarily did, the general coup d’œil of the flat to passers-by. But Mrs. Dawson had won her husband’s esteem by just such acts as this one of amiable permission to ventilate the house according to methods of his own and essentially masculine; regardless of dust that might be flying, or sun that might be shining with disastrous results to the parlor carpet.
Clouds of tobacco smoke were seen to issue from the open windows. Those neighbors whose openings commanded a view of the Dawson’s alley-gate might have noted the hired girl starting for the grocery with unusual animation of step, and returning with her basket well stocked with beer and soda bottles—a provision made against a need for “dutch-cocktails,” likely to assail Jack during his hours of domesticity.
In the evening the same hired girl, breathless from the multiplicity of errands which she had accomplished during the day, appeared at the Hosmers with a message that Mrs. Dawson wanted them to “come over.”
They were preparing to leave on the morrow, but concluded that they could spare a few moments in which to bid adieu to their friends.
Jack met them at the very threshold, with warm and hearty hand-shaking, and loud protest when he learned that they had not come to spend the evening and that they were going away next day.
“Great Scott! you’re not leaving to-morrow? And I ain’t going to have a chance to get even with Mrs. Hosmer on that last deal? By Jove, she knows how to do it,” he said, addressing Hosmer and holding Fanny familiarly by the elbow. “Drew to the middle, sir, and hang me, if she didn’t fill. Takes a woman to do that sort o’ thing; and me a laying for her with three aces. Hello there, girls! here’s Hosmer and Fanny,” in response to which summons his wife and Mrs. Worthington issued from the depths of the dining-room, where they had been engaged in preparing certain refreshments for the expected guests.