K. looked rather dazed.
“I can’t imagine anything pleasanter;
but I wish you’d explain just how—”
Sidney smiled at him. As he stood on the lowest
step, their eyes were almost level.
“If I walk with you, they’ll know I’m
not engaged to Joe,” she said, with engaging
directness.
The house was quiet. He waited in the lower
hall until she had reached the top of the staircase.
For some curious reason, in the time to come, that
was the way Sidney always remembered K. Le Moyne—standing
in the little hall, one hand upstretched to shut off
the gas overhead, and his eyes on hers above.
“Good-night,” said K. Le Moyne.
And all the things he had put out of his life were
in his voice.
On the morning after Sidney had invited K. Le Moyne
to take her to walk, Max Wilson came down to breakfast
rather late. Dr. Ed had breakfasted an hour
before, and had already attended, with much profanity
on the part of the patient, to a boil on the back
of Mr. Rosenfeld’s neck.
“Better change your laundry,” cheerfully
advised Dr. Ed, cutting a strip of adhesive plaster.
“Your neck’s irritated from your white
collars.”
Rosenfeld eyed him suspiciously, but, possessing a
sense of humor also, he grinned.
“It ain’t my everyday things that bother
me,” he replied. “It’s my
blankety-blank dress suit. But if a man wants
to be tony—”
“Tony” was not of the Street, but of its
environs. Harriet was “tony” because
she walked with her elbows in and her head up.
Dr. Max was “tony” because he breakfasted
late, and had a man come once a week and take away
his clothes to be pressed. He was “tony,”
too, because he had brought back from Europe narrow-shouldered
English-cut clothes, when the Street was still padding
its shoulders. Even K. would have been classed
with these others, for the stick that he carried on
his walks, for the fact that his shabby gray coat
was as unmistakably foreign in cut as Dr. Max’s,
had the neighborhood so much as known him by sight.
But K., so far, had remained in humble obscurity,
and, outside of Mrs. McKee’s, was known only
as the Pages’ roomer.
Mr. Rosenfeld buttoned up the blue flannel shirt which,
with a pair of Dr. Ed’s cast-off trousers, was
his only wear; and fished in his pocket.
“How much, Doc?”
“Two dollars,” said Dr. Ed briskly.
“Holy cats! For one jab of a knife!
My old woman works a day and a half for two dollars.”
“I guess it’s worth two dollars to you
to be able to sleep on your back.” He was
imperturbably straightening his small glass table.
He knew Rosenfeld. “If you don’t
like my price, I’ll lend you the knife the next
time, and you can let your wife attend to you.”
Rosenfeld drew out a silver dollar, and followed it
reluctantly with a limp and dejected dollar bill.
