The Innocents: A Story for Lovers

er good suit-case as insurance, Mr. and Mrs. Seth Appleby established themselves in a "furnished housekeeping room" on Avenue B, an

halls and furtive people who have lost ambition. The genus "furnished housekeeping room" is a filthy box with a stove, a table, a bed, a few seats, many cockroaches, and from one to twenty peo

gazines, which he bought at two for five cents on Fourteenth Street. One of them was a chromo of a child playing with kittens, which reminded him of the picture they had had in more prosperous days. Mother furiously polished the

th music energetically performed by Father on the mouth-organ. Also they ventured to go out to dinner, in a real restaurant of the great city, their city. On Fourteenth Street was a noble inn where the menu was printed in English and Hungarian, where for thirty-five cent

," declared Father. "Pretty fine to see people again, heh? An

aminess in her face as she listened to the violin that lik

a ten-cent movie and watched the extreme heroism of a young district

es, Father edged shyly into his old ha

out of an old stock of hunting-boots which P

between the eyes. He looked at Fath

didn't hear from you again-been waiting-thought maybe I'd ge

realized that Edward P

ved and muttered, "The old gentleman

a blow to me, a very great blow. I was w

-uh-

't send a letter or some flower

uce do you think you're trying to do? There, that's a little better. Try to show some sense about

go so very well. I guess my forty, like the fellow says, is sticking to selling shoes. Mrs. Appleby

sal. It was evident that Mr. Edw

now your father promised t

f reorganizing the business. I sort of feel the establishment ought to have a little more pep in it, and so

applicants for jobs disposed of with

in and see you again some day. Goo

the clerks. They were cordial, but th

outside it was rather chilly for a man with no overcoat-or job. It seemed

ce," the shoe-men said when he mentioned his experience with Pilkings &

oliday rush had begun. Holly was in the windows; Salvation

yness disappeared as he found a long line of applicants filling out blanks. Here he did not have to plead with some one man for the chance to work. He was h

young again, for some one did actually want him. He had a temporary ho

ases, music-rolls; learn leathers which he had never handled-cobra-seal, walrus, écrasé, monkey-skin. He had to appear placidly official, almost pontifical, when vague ladies appeared, poked clippings from holiday magazines at him, and demanded, "I want something like that." "That" usually depicted articles of whose use he had the most in

arn something about the new leathers, still it was difficult for him to remember the Long Island Railroad time-table w

of their wrists to their tastes in bill-folds. They haggled and pushed and crowded; they wanted it to be less expensive, as well as more blessed, to give than to receive. He spent twenty minutes in showing the entire line of diaries to one

that he couldn't keep up the holiday pace of the younger clerks-and that the assistant buyer of the department had been watching him. He walked home with strained, weary shoulders, but as he tu

middle of the floor, in a dream. In the dimness of the room the coal fire shone through the front draught of the stove, and threw a faint rose on he

ou look so happ

b, too! In the toy-department at Regalberg's. And they are going t

ace was in the home whether or not there was a home in which to have a place. Then the new Father, the

-night, instead of you taking me. T

he Roman pleasures of the little tinsel restaurant. And like two lovers, like the telephone-girl in your office and the clerk

usy, unself-conscious look of the woman who can compete with men. Her cheeks were flushed with walking. Her eyes were you

I ever did have all the children to talk to that I wanted. And the sweet toys! Think of me gadding around like this, and enjoying it! I sw

ully back to her job, while Father plodded wearily away, speculating as to whether he could keep bust

the department at all, that afternoon, though in

and humbly informed Father that his services wouldn't be needed after that day. Would he, if it was quite convenien

ecause the department was overstocked with younger, liver men. "I'm mighty sorry, and I w

im and proving herself a business woman-succeeding in a nine-dollar job while Father, who had once been worth twenty-two good dollars a week, hadn't been able to keep an eight-dollar job. Being quite hum

as only with a dry gasp that she could say: "Never mind, Seth, you'll find something else. I'm glad yo

ink I'm entir

een you for years? Why, I depend on you like-it sounds li

be absolutely certain of being on

lessly, asking with more and more diffidence for work, any kind of work. His shoes were ground down at the heel, now, and cracked open on one side. In such footgear he dared not enter a shoe-store, his own realm, to ask for work that he really could do. As his December drifted towa

en; he even got down on protesting sore knees and sloshed around in an attempt at scrubbing the knotty, splintery floor. He tried to cook dinner and breakfast, but his repertoire consisted of frying-fried eggs, fried bacon, fried bread, fried p

hour he washed dishes in soapy water that quickly changed from white to grease-filmed black. For this he received fifty cents a day and his lunch. He hid the depressing fact of such employment from Mother, but religiously saved the daily fifty cents to give t

ork. After Christmas-something would happen, he didn't know what. Anyway, the

rned up and secured with a safety-pin, he poked through Tompkins Square, on sunny days, or talked for hours to hoboes w

hours he turned over the pages of magazines on whose text he could concentrate less each day that he was an outcast accepting his fate. When he came out, the cold took him like the pain of neuralgia, and through streets that were a smear

world, he sank down among the spotted, the shiftle

ed her as the master of the house, and she unconsciously took the r?le. She petted him and comforted him and worked for him. She announced, with the gaiety that one u

to co