It sounded fierce; but Mary apparently knew her Abey;
also, she saw that Maw was starting to cry. “There’s
no use trying to bluff me, Abey. You know as
well as I do there are hungry people in this city,
and no fault of theirs. You know, too, you eat
twice what you ought to, because I’ve heard
the doctor tell you. I’m not blaming you
a bit more than I do myself—me, with two
automobiles, and a whole show-window on my back.”
And suddenly she turned to Carpenter. “What
can we do?”
He answered: “Here, men gorge themselves;
in Russia they are eating their dead.”
T-S dropped his knife and fork, and Maw gave a gulp.
“Oh, my Gawd!”
“There are ten million people doomed to starve.
Their children eat grass, and their bellies swell
up and their legs dwindle to broom-sticks; they stagger
and fall into the ditches, and other children tear
their flesh and devour it.”
“O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oh!” wailed Maw; and
the diners at Prince’s began to stare.
“Now looka here!” cried T-S, wildly.
“I say dis ain’t no decent way to behave
at a party. I say it ain’t on de level to
be a feller’s guest, and den jump on him and
spoil his dinner. See here, Mr. Carpenter, I
tell you vot I do. You be good and eat your grub,
so it don’t git vasted, and I promise you, tomorrow
I go and hunt up strike headquarters, and give dem
a check fer a tousand dollars, and if de damn graftin’
leaders don’t hog it, dey all git someting to
eat. And vot’s more, I send a check fer
five tousand to de Russian relief. Now ain’t
dat square? Vot you say?”
“What I say is, Mr. T-S, I cannot be the keeper
of another man’s conscience. But I’ll
try to eat, so as not to be rude.”
And T-S grunted, and went back to his feeding; and
the stranger made a pretense of eating, and we did
the same.
It happens that I was brought up in a highly conscientious
family. To my dear mother, and to her worthy
sisters, there is nothing in the world more painful
than what they call a “scene”—unless
possibly it is what they call a “situation.”
And here we had certainly had a “scene,”
and still had a “situation.” So I
sat, racking my brains to think of something safe
to talk about. I recalled that T-S had had pretty
good success with his “Tale of Two Cities”
as a topic of Conversation, so I began:
“Mr. Carpenter, the spectacle you are going
to see this evening is rather remarkable from the
artistic point of view. One of the greatest scenic
artists of Paris has designed the set, and the best
judges consider it a real achievement, a landmark in
moving picture work.”
“Tell me about it,” said Carpenter; and
I was grateful for his tone of interest.
“Well, I don’t know how much you know
about picture making—”
“You had better explain everything.”
“Well, Mr. T-S has built a large set, representing
a street scene in Paris over a century ago. He
has hired a thousand men—”
