One Basket | Page 6

bed and you can rest----"
"I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll sit up here
in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed. I'll watch and see that
everything's all right. Have you got something I can read out
here--something kind of lively--with a love story in it?"
So the night went by. Snooky slept in her white bed. The Very Young
Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the hall, her stout
figure looming grotesque in wall shadows, sat Blanche Devine,
pretending to read. Now and then she rose and tiptoed into the bedroom
with miraculous quiet, and stooped over the little bed and listened and

looked--and tiptoed away again, satisfied.
The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with
tales of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed a sigh
of relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She watched the
house now with a sort of proprietary eye. She wondered about Snooky;
but she knew better than to ask. So she waited. The Young Wife next
door had told her husband all about that awful night--had told him with
tears and sobs. The Very Young Husband had been very, very angry
with her-- angry, he said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been
so sick! Look at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a
woman! Well, he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that
she must never speak to the woman again. Never!
So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the
Young Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room
window, and she made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in order to
go to the door. She stood in the doorway and the Very Young Wife
went by on the arm of her husband. She went by--rather
white-faced--without a look or a word or a sign!
And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a look
that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly,
narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It
was the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled--if having one's
lips curl away from one's teeth can be called smiling.
Two days later there was great news of the white cottage on the corner.
The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the rugs were rolled.
The wagons came and backed up to the house and took those things
that had made a home for Blanche Devine. And when we heard that she
had bought back her interest in the House with the Closed Shutters,
near the freight depot, we sniffed.
"I knew she wouldn't last!" we said.
"They never do!" said we.

The Gay Old Dog [1917]
Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago, Illinois,
are familiar with the region known as the Loop. For those others of you
to whom Chicago is a transfer point between New York and California
there is presented this brief explanation:
The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron
arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would
be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from
Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete
circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels, the
theaters, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue and the Broadway of
Chicago.
And he who frequents it by night in search of amusement and cheer is
known, vulgarly, as a Loop-hound.
Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights
granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third
row, aisle, left. When a new Loop cafe' was opened, Jo's table always
commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing. On
entering he was wont to say, "Hello, Gus," with careless cordiality to
the headwaiter, the while his eye roved expertly from table to table as
he removed his gloves. He ordered things under glass, so that his table,
at midnight or thereabouts, resembled a hotbed that favors the bell
system. The waiters fought for him. He was the kind of man who mixes
his own salad dressing. He liked to call for a bowl, some cracked ice,
lemon, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil and make a rite of
it. People at near-by tables would lay down their knives and forks to
watch, fascinated. The secret of it seemed to lie in using all the oil in
sight and calling for more.
That was Jo--a plump and lonely bachelor of fifty. A plethoric, roving-
eyed, and