So when I stepped from the bus, and Fred came lurching toward me, I simply had not the heart to break away from him. All the girls were watching us, and some of the men tried to draw Fred aside by the arm.
He became wildly excited, and said he could "lick any son of a gun in the Union Stock-Yards."
One of the men told me to "beat it" while they took care of Fred; but Fred did look so helpless and so inexpressibly childish as he cried out his defiance, and as I was mortally afraid that they might get fighting among themselves, and, anyhow, though drunk, he was not offensive, I said:
"I'll take him home. I'm not afraid of him."
Some of them laughed, and some protested; but I didn't care anything about any of them except Fred, and I helped him on an open car that went near our house.
I took him to our rooms, and there Lolly tried to sober him by making him black coffee, and Hermann, who came, too,—he had kept right up with Fred and me,—said he'd take care of Fred while Lolly and I got our dinner. We took our meals out.
When we got back,—it was about eight then,—there was Fred sitting on the door-step. Hermann was trying to drag him to his feet, but he wouldn't move, and he kept saying: "Nora's going to take care of me. S-she's m' stenographer, you know."
Hermann explained that our landlady had ordered them out, as Fred had begun to sing after we went. Hermann wanted Lolly and me to go into the house, and he said he'd take care of Fred, even if he had to "land him in a cell" to do it. He said that in such a nasty way that poor Fred began to cry that he hadn't a friend in the world, and that made me feel so badly that I told him that I was his friend, and that I'd take good care that Hermann didn't put him in a cell. Then I had an inspiration.
I suggested that we all take a long street-car ride and that the open air might clear his head, and if it didn't, we could get off at some park and walk around. Fred exclaimed that walking was the one thing that always "woke" him up.
Lolly said: