“Pshaw!” said S. K. “You don’t mean those kids----” He didn’t finish his sentence, but he meant that Amy and Willy weren’t old enough to do anything but all the latest waltz and fox steps.
“I’m sure they’re going to throw into it,” I said. “Somehow--I feel it. They slam each other now, and disagree terribly, but he has unexpected moments of patience with her, and when he has those I can see that he likes her lots.”
“What sort?” asked S. K., looking at them. They were doing a one-step, and Amy said Willy did it all wrong, and Willy said no Northerner could dance. What with the victrola and their quarrelling, we could shout anything and not be heard.
I told him. “He is trying to explain baseball to her,” I said, “since you said you’d take us all to all the games. And after he finished yesterday she said: ‘I don’t think it’s polite or nice for the man with the stick to wave it in front of the man with the little thing like a dish-drain over his face!’ She saw a game last year, and that’s all she got out of it!” And I went on to explain how well Willy played and how he would usually greet that sort of a remark.
S. K. laughed and after a little more watching them agreed.
“Then,” I went on, “I asked her last night whether she was going to marry the broker, and she clasped her hands, stared ahead, and whispered: ‘What a child I was!’ ”
S. K. laughed some more. Then he sobered.
“So,” he said, “you like to see the ‘fellow get the girl’?”
I said I thought everyone was disappointed in books or life, if he didn’t.
Then he mentioned a subject that he hadn’t touched for ages and didn’t mean to then. I think it slipped out. And I found I didn’t mind, but really liked it.