The Innocents: A Story for Lovers

t all the way home. He made figures on the last leaf of his little pocket account

hs of summer to keep them the rest of the year. If they were located on Cape Cod, perhaps they could spend the winter with the Tubbses. They would have a garden; they would keep chickens, dogs, pussies, yes, a cow; they wo

uch a man for running on. You go on like a house afire. You ought to kn

ain't practical and hatching chickens, and all, but let me tell you, Sarah Jane Appleby, I'm a business man and I've been trained, and I tell you as Pilkings has often said to me, it's overhead that makes or breaks a business, that's what it is, just like he says, yes, sir, overhead! So say we'll allow-now let me see, ten plus ten is twenty, and one six-hundredth of twenty would be-six in two is-no, two in six is-well, anyway, to mak

though in some dim confused way she rather associated "overhead" with the rafters of the tea-room. She emerged gasping from the shower, and all she could sa

h! Safe's

figures on the backs of laundry-bills. But they had been fated the moment Father had seen Mother and himself as de

a tea-room if they did decide to do so. They said good-by to the Tubbses and return

s, take their few hundred dollars from the bank, and, the coming summer, op

t things as they had been partners in working to acquire little luxuries. They went to the movies only once a month-that made the movies only the more thrilling! On the

fall into sinful ways and smoke up three or four cigarettes while engaged in an enthralling conversation regarding Mr. Pilkings's meanness with fellow-clerks at lunc

ss, am I? I declare, I'm disgusted with myself when I think of your going wit

n one side of their house and moors on the other, with the State road and its motorists only two hundred feet from their door. Though they should live in that sentinel house for years, never would they enjoy it more than they now

took it for granted that only women could know about tea and tea-cups, decorations and paper napkins and art and the disposal of garbage. He

ea. Why not have neat, inexpensive china, good but not exorbitant tea, and charge only

ipment. It was not an easy problem for him. This gallant traveler, who wore his cap so cockily and paid

ich was not a tavern, though it was consciously, painstakingly, seriously quaint; and he cautiously made inquiry of her regarding tea and china. During his lunch-hours he frequented auction sales on Sixth Avenue, and became so sophisticated in the matter of second-hand goods that the youngest clerk at Pilkings & Son

ished on Twenty-sixth Street, just off Sixth Avenue. The Hungarian and one girl assistant were trying by futile garish window-decorations to draw trade from the great department stores and the five-and-ten-cent stores on one side of them and the smart shops on the other side. But the Hungarian was clever, too clever. He first found out all of Father's plans, then won Father's sympathy. He coughed a little, and with a touching smile which was intended to rouse admiration, declared that his lungs were bad, but never mind, he

the labor of buying for the tea-room. So far she had done nothing but crochet

buy odd cups-also cheaper, as thus they could take advantage of broken lots and closing-out sales. Fascinated, Fathe

ady done, knowing that the f

look so bad, not so very b

ng-tables that may have been suitable to card-playing, if you didn't play anything more exciting than casino. Flat silver that was heavily plated except where it was likely to wear. Tea-pots of mottled glaze, and cream-jugs with knobs of gilt, and square china ash-trays on which one instinctively expected to find the legend "Souvenir of Niagara Fal

would stand for it; the whole collection looked impressively new to a man accustomed to a shab

ung her eyes, the dissonant grumble of a million hurrying noises dizzied her, and she would stand on a street-corner for five minutes before daring to cross. When Father told her that all the buying was done, and awaiting her

elt that she was giving up ever so many metropolitan advantages by leaving New York so prematurely. Why, she'd never been inside Grant's Tomb! She'd miss her second cousin-not that she'd seen the cousin for a year or t

the Cape, when the spring breeze gave life to her faded hair

debonairly sticking his thumbs into his lower waistcoat pockets. "The easy li

nd out the way you have to wash dishes and all.

ea. I know what we'll call the tea-room- 'The T

to co