The Innocents: A Story for Lovers

ether in corners, and Father was a person of stubborn youthfulness. For something over forty years Mother had been trying to make him stop smoking, yet every

like a young smart Aleck, but he would mere

air that puffed out round Father's crab-apple face, and an

on Sixth Avenue, and Pilkings was so much older than Father that he still called him, "Hey you, Seth!" and still gave him advice about handling lady customers. For three or four years, some ten years b

e, doing the city's work and forgotten by the city they have built, belonged the Applebys. They lived in a brown and dusky flat, with a tortoise-shell tabby, and a canary, and a china hen which held their breakfast boiled eggs. Every Thursday Mother wrote to her daughter, who had married a prosperous and severely respectable druggist of Saserkopee, New York, and during the rest of her daytimes she

ch of a cough, merely a small, polite noise, like a mouse begging pardon of an irate bee, yet enough to talk about and win him a two weeks' leave. Every year he schemed for this leave, and almost ruined his throat by sniffing snuff to make him sneeze. Every

ad been solemnly reading the picture-captions in the Eternity Filmco's Album of Funny Film Favorites. The statuettes of General Lafayette and Mozart on

for me you'd never have a vacation. You trust old dad to handle

ather's vocabulary. "And it would be a just judgment on you for your high mightiness if you didn't

ot it right

s think you kno

put his lips at her ear, and blew a tremendous "Zzzzzzz

n sense, what with scaring me into conniption fits, and as I was just going to say, and I only say it for your own good, if you haven't

d peacefully down and forgot

d happy together, but by and by they would get tired and look affectionately across the table and purr. Father tinkered away at a broken lamp-shade till suddenly, without warning, he declared that Mother scolded him merely to conceal her faith in hi

e usual leave of absence, and they prepared to start for West Skipsit, Cape Cod

ellow wrapper-which had both faded to approximately the same shade of gray, but which were to her trusting mind still interestingly different. Each year she had to impress Mrs. Tubbs of West Skipsit with new metropolitan finery, and this year Father had no peace nor comfort in the ménage till she had selected a smart new hat, i

and Father suddenly came to the front in his true capacity as boss and leader. He announced, lou

successfully through the mysteries of purchasing transportation clear to Cape Cod, Mother looked i

ve a banana split, and I'm going to carry my cane and smoke a s

was kept to impress West Skipsit, Massachusetts-and as she trotted to the movies beside him, the two of them like sole

to co