So they had stayed.  Gradually they had added an improvement here, a convenience there, as Chug’s prosperity grew, until now the cottage by the tracks was newly painted, bathroomed, electric-lighted, with a cement walk front and back and a porch with a wicker swing and flower baskets.  Chug gave his mother more housekeeping money than she needed, though she, in turn, served him meals that would have threatened the waist-line of an older and less active man.  There was a banana pie, for instance (it sounds sickish, but wait!) which she baked in a deep pan, and over which she poured a golden-brown custard all flecked with crusty melted sugar.  You took a bite and lo! it had vanished like a sweet dewdrop, leaving in your mouth a taste as of nectar, and clover-honey, and velvet cream.

Mrs. Scaritt learned to gauge Chug’s plans for the evening by his ablutions.  Elaborate enough at any time, on dance nights they amounted to a rite.  In the old days Chug’s father had always made a brief enough business of the process he called washing up.  A hand-basin in the kitchen sink or on the back-porch bench sufficed.  The noises he made were out of all proportion to the results obtained.  His snufflings, and snortings, and splashings were like those of a grampus at play.  When he emerged from them you were surprised to find that he had merely washed his face.

Chug had grease to fight.  He had learned how in his first days at the garage.  His teacher had been old Rudie, a mechanic who had tinkered around automobiles since their kerosene days, and who knew more about them than their inventor.  Soap and water alone were powerless against the grease and carbon and dust that ground themselves into Chug’s skin.  First, he lathered himself with warm, soapy water.  Then, while arms, neck, and face were still wet, he covered them with oil—­preferably lubricating oil, medium.  Finally he rubbed sawdust over all; great handfuls of it.  The grease rolled out then, magically, leaving his skin smooth and white.  Old Rudie, while advocating this process, made little use of it.  He dispatched the whole grimy business by the simple method of washing in gasoline guaranteed to take the varnish off a car fender.  It seemed to leave Rudie’s tough hide undevastated.

At twenty-four Chug Scaritt was an upstanding, level-headed, and successful young fellow who worked hard all day and found himself restless and almost irritable toward evening.  He could stay home and read, or go back to the garage, though after eight things were very quiet.  For amusement there were the pool shack, the cheap dances, the street corner, the Y.M.C.A.  This last had proved a boon.  The swimming pool, the gym, the reading room, had given Chug many happy, healthful hours.  But, after all, there was something—­

Chug didn’t know it was girls—­girls you could talk to, and be with, and take around.  But it was.  After an hour in the pool, or around the reading table, or talking and smoking, he usually drifted out into the quiet street.  He could go home.  Or there was Wanda.  If he went home he found himself snapping rather irritably at his mother, for no reason at all.  Ashamed of doing it.  Powerless, somehow, to stop.