Adna made the apologies—glad tidings being manifestly out of place.
“Hope we 'ain't put you out, daughter. We thought we'd s'prise you. We went to the fact'ry. Man at the door says you wasn't workin' there no more. Give us this address. Right nice place here, ain't it? Looks like a nice class of folks lived here.”
Kedzie heard the rounded “r” and the flat “a” which she had discarded and scorned the more because she had once practised them. Children are generally disappointed in their parents, since they cherish ideals to which few parents may conform from lack of time, birth, breeding, or money. Kedzie was not in any mood for parents that night, anyway, but if she had to have parents, she would have chosen an earl and a countess with a Piccadilly accent and a concert-grand manner. Such parents it would have given her pleasure and pride to exhibit to Dyckman. They would awe-inspire him and arrange the marriage settlement, whatever that was.
But these poor old shabby dubs in their shabby duds—a couple who were plebeian even in Jayville! If there had not been such a popular prejudice against mauling one's innocent parents about, Kedzie would probably have taken her father and mother to the dumb-waiter and sent them down to the ash-can.
As she hung between despair and anxiety the telephone-bell rang. Jim Dyckman called her up to say that he was delayed for half an hour. Kedzie came back and invited her parents in. It made her sick to see their awkwardness among the furniture. They went like scows adrift. They priced everything with their eyes, and the beauty was spoiled by the estimated cost.
Mrs. Thropp asked Kedzie how she was half a dozen times, and, before Kedzie could answer, went on to tell about her own pains. Mr. Thropp was freshly alive to the fact that New York's population is divided into two classes—innocent visitors and resident pirates.
While they asked Kedzie questions that she did not care to answer, and answered questions she had not cared to ask, Kedzie kept wondering how she could get rid of them before Dyckman came. She thanked Heaven that there was no guest-room in her apartment. They could not live with her, at least.
Suddenly it came over the pretty, bewildered little thing with her previous riddle of how to get rid of a last-year's husband so that she might get a new model—suddenly it came over Kedzie that she had a tremendous necessity for help, advice, parentage. The crying need for a father and a mother enhanced the importance of the two she had on hand.
She broke right into her mother's description of a harrowing lumbago she had suffered from: it was that bad she couldn't neither lay nor set—that is to say, comfortable. Kedzie's own new-fangled pronunciations and phrases fell from her mind, and she spoke in purest Nimrim:
“Listen, momma and poppa. I'm in a peck of trouble, and maybe you can help me out.”