“Gee!” he was exulting to himself, “never thought I’d get anything like that. Twenty-nine-fifty! More ’n enough to marry on now! I’m going to get twenty-nine-fifty!”
“Married five months ago to-night, honey,” said Mr. Wrenn to Nelly, his wife, in their Bronx flat, and thus set down October 17, 1913, as a great date in history.
“Oh, I know it, Billy. I wondered if you’d remember. You just ought to see the dessert I’m making—but that’s a s’prise.”
“Remember! Should say I did! See what I’ve got for somebody!”
He opened a parcel and displayed a pair of red-worsted bed-slippers, a creation of one of the greatest red-worsted artists in the whole land. Yes, and he could afford them, too. Was he not making thirty-two dollars a week—he who had been poor! And his chances for the assistant managership “looked good.”
“Oh, they’ll be so comfy when it gets cold. You’re a dear! Oh, Billy, the janitress says the Jewish lady across the court in number seventy is so lazy she wears her corsets to bed!”
“Did the janitress get the coal put in, Nell?”
“Yes, but her husband is laid off again. I was talking to her quite a while this afternoon…. Oh, dear, I do get so lonely for you, sweetheart, with nothing to do. But I did read some Kim this afternoon. I liked it.”
“That’s fine!”
“But it’s kind of hard. Maybe I’ll—Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to read a lot.”