Her large eyes filled with pleading tears. She was generously minded to take the burden of their fate upon herself.
"You seem to have been making most of the success," he responded lightly. "The big world where Dresser is succeeding doesn't call me very hard. And it's a pretty bad thing if a sound-bodied, well-educated doctor can't support himself and a woman in this world," he added more gloomily. "I will, if I have to get a job over there."
He jerked his head in the direction of the South Chicago steel works. But the heavens seemed to repel his boast, for the usual cloud of smoke and flame that hung night and day above the blast furnaces was replaced by a brilliant, hard blue sky. The works were shut down. They had reached the end of Blue Grass Avenue at the south line of the park. It was a spot of semi-sylvan wildness that they were fond of. The carefully platted avenues and streets were mere lines in the rough turf. A little runnel of water, half ditch, half sewer, flowed beside the old plank walk.
They sat down to plan, to contrive in some way to get a shelter over their heads. From the plank walk where they sat nothing was visible for blocks around except a little stucco Grecian temple, one of those decorative contrivances that served as ticket booths or soda-water booths at the World's Fair. This one, larger and more pretentious than its fellows, had been bought by some speculator, wheeled outside the park, and dumped on a sandy knoll in this empty lot. It had an ambitious little portico with a cluster of columns. One of them was torn open, revealing the simple anatomy of its construction. The temple looked as if it might contain two rooms of generous size. Strange little product of some western architect's remembering pencil, it brought an air of distant shores and times, standing here in the waste of the prairie, above the bright blue waters of the lake!
"That's the place for us!" Sommers exclaimed, gazing intently at the time-stained temple. Alves looked at the building sceptically, for woman-wise she conceived of only conventional abiding-places. But she followed him submissively into the little stucco portico, and when he spoke buoyantly of the possibilities of the place, of the superb view of park and lake, her worn face gained color once more. The imitation bronze doors were ajar, and they made a thorough examination of the interior. With a few laths, some canvas, and a good cleaning, the place could be made possible—for the summer.
"That's four months," Sommers remarked. "And that is a long time for poor people to look ahead."
The same evening they hunted up the owner and made their terms, and the next day prepared to move from the Keystone. They had some regrets over leaving the Keystone Hotel. The last month Sommers had had one or two cases. The episode with Dr. Jelly had finally redounded to his credit, for the woman had died at Jelly's private hospital, and the nurse who had overheard the dispute between the two doctors had gossiped. The first swallow of success, however, was not enough to warrant any expenditure for office rent. He must make some arrangement with a drug store near the temple, where he could receive calls.
They invited Miss M'Gann, Webber, and Dresser to take supper with them their first Sunday in the temple. Alves had arranged a little kitchen in one corner of the smaller of the two rooms. This room received the pompous name of "the laboratory"; the other room—a kind of hall into which the portico opened—was bedroom and general living room.
"We will throw open the temple doors," she explained to Sommers, "and have supper on the portico between the pillars."
From that point the lake could be seen, a steely blue line on the horizon. But it rained on Sunday, and the visitors arrived so bedraggled by the storm that their feast seemed doomed. Sommers produced a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and they warmed and cheered themselves. The Baking Powder clerk grew loquacious first. The Baking Powder Trust was to be reorganized, he told them, as soon as good times came. There was to be a new trust, twice as big as the present one, capitalized for millions and millions. The chemist of the concern had told him that Carson was engineering the affair. The stock of the present company would be worth double, perhaps three times as much as at present. He confided the fact that he had put all his savings into the stock of the present company at its greatly depressed present value. The company was not paying dividends; he had bought at forty. His air of financial success, of shrewd speculative insight impressed them all. Miss M'Gann evidently knew all about this; she smiled as if the world were a pretty good place.