The Auction Block | Page 2

worked hard you'd have had an interest in the drug store
now."
"Rats!"
At this juncture Mrs. Knight, having finished the supper dishes and set
her bread to rise, entered the shoddy parlor. Jim turned to her,
shrugging his shoulders with an air of washing his hands of a
disagreeable subject. "Pa's weakened again," he explained. "He won't
go."
"Me, a clerk--at my age!" mumbled Peter.
"I've been trying to tell him that he'd get a half-Nelson on Tammany
inside of a year. He squeezed the sheriff's office till it squealed, and if
he can pinch a dollar out of this burg he can--"
"You shut up! I don't like your way of saying things," snarled Mr.
Knight.
His wife spoke for the first time, with brief conclusiveness.
"I wrote and thanked Senator Fogarty for his offer and told him you'd

accept."
"You--what?" Peter was dumfounded.
"Yes"--Mrs. Knight seemed oblivious of his wrath--"we're going to
make a change."
Mrs. Knight was a large woman well advanced beyond that indefinite
turning-point of middle age; in her unattractive face was none of the
easy good nature so unmistakably stamped upon her husband's. Peter J.
was inherently optimistic; his head was forever hidden in a roseate aura
of hopefulness and expectation. Under easy living he had grayed and
fattened; his eyes were small and colorless, his cheeks full and veined
with tiny sprays Of purple, his hands soft and limber. What had once
been a measure of good looks was hidden now behind a flabby,
indefinite mediocrity which an unusual carefulness in dress could not
disguise. He was big-hearted in little things; in big things he was small.
He told an excellent story, but never imagined one, and his laugh was
hearty though insincere. Men who knew him well laughed with him,
but did not indorse his notes.
His wife was of a totally different stamp, showing evidence of unusual
force. Her thin lips, her clean-cut nose betokened purpose; a pair of
alert, unpleasant eyes spoke of a mental activity that was entirely
lacking in her mate, and she was generally recognized as the source of
what little prominence he had attained.
"Yes, we're going to make a change," she repeated. "I'm glad, too, for
I'm tired of housework."
"You don't have to do your own work. There's Lorelei to help."
"You know I wouldn't let her do it."
"Afraid it would spoil her hands, eh?" Mr. Knight snorted, disdainfully.
"What are hands made for, anyhow? Honest work never hurt mine."
Jim stirred and smiled; the retort upon his lips was only too obvious.

"She's too pretty," said the mother. "You don't realize it; none of us do,
but--she's beautiful. Where she gets her good looks from I don't know."
"What's the difference? It won't hurt her to wash dishes. She wouldn't
have to keep it up forever, anyhow; she can have any fellow in the
county."
"Yes, and she'll marry, sure, if we stay here."
Knight's colorless eyes opened. "Then what are you talking about going
away to a strange place for? It ain't every girl that can have her pick."
Mrs. Knight began slowly, musingly: "You need some plain talk, Peter.
I don't often tell you just what I think, but I'm going to now. You're past
fifty; you've spent twenty years puttering around at politics, with
business as a side issue, and what have you got to show for it? Nothing.
The reformers are in at last, and you're out for good. You had your
chance and you missed it. You were always expecting something big,
some fat office with big profits, but it never came. Do you know why?
Because YOU aren't big, that's why. You're little, Peter; you know it,
and so does the party."
The object of this address swelled pompously; his cheeks deepened in
hue and distended; but while he was summoning words for a defense
his wife ran on evenly:
"The party used you just as long as you could deliver something, but
you're down and out now, and they've thrown you over. Fogarty offers
to pay his debt, and I'm not going to refuse his help."
"I suppose you think you could have done better if you'd been in my
place," Peter grumbled. He was angry, yet the undeniable truth of his
wife's words struck home. "That's the woman of it. You kick because
we're poor, and then want me to take a fifteen-hundred- dollar job."
"Bother the salary! It will keep us going as long as necessary"
"Eh?" Mr. Knight looked blank.

"I'm thinking of Lorelei. She's going to give us our chance."
"Lorelei?"
"Yes. You wonder why I've never let her spoil her hands--why I've
scrimped to give her pretty clothes, and taught her to take care of her
figure, and made her go out