"That's more like it. Look at me, Beauty. Do you love me, eh?"

"Easy on that stuff, Hy. They might chain your wrists for ravin'."

"I'm ravin' crazy over you to-night, that's what I am. Love me, eh--do you, Beauty?"

She receded from his approaching face close back against the upholstery, and within the satin-down interior of her m.u.f.f her fingers clasped each other until the nails bit into her palms and broke the flesh.

"Don't make me sore to-night, Queenie. I ain't in the humor. Gowann, answer like a good girl. Love me?"

"Aw, Hy, quit your kiddin'."

"No, no; none of that; come on, Silver Queen. I'll give you six to answer--love me?"

"Aw, now--"

"One--two--three--four--five--"

"Yes."

THE GOOD PROVIDER

Like a suckling to the warmth of the mother, the township of Newton nestled pat against the flank of the city and drew from her through the arteries of electric trains and interurbans, elevated roads and motor-cars.

Such clots coagulate around the city in the form of Ferndales and Glencoves, Yorkvilles and Newtons, and from them have sprung full-grown the joke paper and the electric lawn-mower, the five-hundred-dollars-down bungalow, and the flower-seed catalogue.

The instinct to return to nature lies deep in men like music that slumbers in harp-strings, but the return to nature _via_ the five-forty-six accommodation is fraught with chance.

Nature cannot abide the haunts of men; she faints upon the asphalt bosom of the city. But to abide in the haunts of nature men's hearts bleed.

Behind that asphaltic bosom and behind faces too tired to smile, hearts bud and leafen when millinery and open street-cars announce the spring.

Behind that asphaltic bosom the murmur of the brook is like an insidious underground stream, and when for a moment it gushes to the surface men pay the five hundred dollars down and inclose return postage for the flower-seed catalogue.

The commuter lives with his head in the rarefied atmosphere of his thirty-fifth-story office, his heart in the five-hundred-dollars-down plot of improved soil, and one eye on the time-table.

For longer than its most unprogressive dared hope, the township of Newton lay comfortable enough without the pale, until one year the interurban reached out steel arms and scooped her to the bosom of the city.

Overnight, as it were, the inoculation was complete. Bungalows and one-story, vine-grown real-estate offices sprang up on large, light-brown tracts of improved property, traffic sold by the book. The new Banner Store, stirred by the heavy, three-trolley interurban cars and the new proximity of the city, swung a three-color electric sign across the sidewalk and inst.i.tuted a trading-stamp system. But in spite of the three-color electric sign and double the advertising s.p.a.ce in the Newton _Weekly Gazette_, Julius Binsw.a.n.ger felt the suction of the city drawing at his strength, and at the close of the second summer he took invoice and frowned at what he saw.

The frown remained an indelible furrow between his eyes. Mrs. Binsw.a.n.ger observed it across the family table one Sat.u.r.day, and paused in the epic rite of ladling soup out of a tureen, a slight pucker on her large, soft-fleshed face.

"Honest, Julius, when you come home from the store nights right away I get the blues."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger glanced up from his soup and regarded his wife above the bulging bib of his napkin. Late sunshine percolated into the dining-room through a vine that clambered up the screen door and flecked a design like coa.r.s.e lace across his inquiring features.

"Right away you get what, Becky?"

"Right away I get the blues. A long face you've had for so long I can't remember."

"Ya, ya, Becky, something you got to have to talk about. A long face she puts on me yet, children."

"Ain't I right, Poil; ain't I, Izzy? Ask your own children!"

Mr. Isadore Binsw.a.n.ger shrugged his custom-made shoulders until the padding bulged like the muscles of a heavy-weight champion, and tossed backward the mane of his black pompadour.

"Ma, I keep my mouth closed. Every time I open it I put my foot in it."

Mr. Binsw.a.n.ger waggled a rheumatic forefinger.

"A dude like you with a red-and-white shirt like I wouldn't keep in stock ain't--"

"See, ma, you started something."

"'Sh-h-h! Julius! For your own children I'm ashamed. Once a week Izzy comes out to supper, and like a funeral it is. For your own children to be afraid to open their mouths ain't nothing to be proud of. Right now your own daughter is afraid to begin to tell you something--something what's happened. Ain't it, Poil?"

Miss Pearl Binsw.a.n.ger tugged a dainty bite out of a slice of bread, and showed the oval of her teeth against the clear, gold-olive of her skin.

The same scarf of sunshine fell like a Spanish shawl across her shoulders, and lay warm on her little bosom and across her head, which was small and dark as Giaconda's.

"I ain't saying nothing, am I, mamma? The minute I try to talk to papa about--about moving to the city or anything, he gets excited like the store was on fire."

"Ya, ya, more as that I get excited over such nonsenses."

"No, to your papa you children say nothing. It's me that gets my head dinned full. Your children, Julius, think that for me you do anything what I ask you; but I don't see it. Pa.s.s your papa the dumplings, Poil.

Can I help it that he carries on him a face like a funeral?"

"Na, na, Becky; for why should I have a long face? To-morrow I buy me a false face like on Valentine's Day, and then you don't have to look at me no more."

"See! Right away mad he gets with me. Izzy, them noodles I made only on your account; in the city you don't get 'em like that, huh? Some more _Kartoffel Salad_, Julius?"

"Ya, but not so much! My face don't suit my wife and children yet, that's the latest."

"Three times a day all week, Izzy, I ask your papa if he don't feel right. 'Yes,' he says, always 'yes.' Like I says to Poil, what's got him since he's in the new store I don't know."

"_Ach_, you--the whole three of you make me sick! What you want me to do, walk the tight rope to show what a good humor I got?"

"No; we want, Julius, that you should come home every night with a long face on you till for the neighbors I'm ashamed."

"A little more _Kartoffel Salad_, Becky? Not so much!"

"Like they don't talk enough about us already. With a young lady in the house we live out here where the dogs won't bark at us."

"I only wish all girls had just so good a home as Pearlie."

"Aw, papa, that ain't no argument! I'd rather live in a coop in the city, where a girl can have some life, than in a palace out in this hole."

"Hole, she calls a room like this! A dining-room set she sits on what her grandfather made with his own hands out of the finest cherry wood--"