"Jimmie, wasn't you glad to carry her a message like that?"
"It's a paying business, ma, if you're lucky enough to deal only in good news."
A chair squealed on its castors, a patch of light sprang through the transom, and the chocolate-ocher bedroom and its chocolate-ocher furniture emerged into a chocolate-ocher half-light.
"Jimmie?"
"Huh?"
"I'm--I wish--Oh, nothin'!"
"Ain't you feelin' right, in there, ma?"
"Yes, Jimmie; but--but come in and talk to your old mother awhile, my boy."
"Surest thing you know! Say, these are some sandwiches! You must 'a' struck pay-dirt in your sardine-mine, ma."
"They're for her gen'l'man friend, Jimmie."
The door flung open and threw an island of light pat on the bed. In the gauzy stream the face on the pillow, with the skin drawn over the cheeks tight as a vellum on a snare-drum, was vague as a head by Carriere after he had begun to paint through the sad film of his growing blindness.
"Jimmie, my boy!"
"Hello, ma!"
"Ain't your cheeks cold, though, Jimmie? It's right sharp out, ain't it? And Essie in her thin coat! You--you're a little late to-night, ain't you, Jimmie?"
He drew his loose-jointed figure up from over the bedside; and his features, half-formed as a sculptor's head just emerging from the marble, took on the easy petulance of youth, and he wiped the moist lips' print off his downy cheek with the back of his hand.
"Ah, there you go again! You been layin' here frettin' and countin' the minutes again, ain't you? Gee, it makes a fellow sore when he just can't get home no sooner!"
"No, no, Jimmie; I been layin' here sleepin' sound ever since I went to bed. I woke up for the first time just now. I'm all right, Jimmie, only--only--"
"Honest, ma, you ought to ask the company to put me in short-pants uniform, day duty, carrying telegrams of the day's catechism to Sunday-school classes."
"I--Don't fuss at me, Jimmie! I--I guess I must 'a' had one of them smothering spells, and I didn't wait up for Essie and Joe to-night. I'm all right now, Jimmie--all right."
He placed his heavy hand on her brow in half-understanding sympathy.
"Geewhillikins, why don't you tell a fellow? You want some of that black medicine, ma. You--gee!--you ain't lookin' kinda blue-like round the gills, are you? Old man Gibbs said we should send for him right away if--"
"No, no, Jimmie; I'm all right now."
"Look! I brought you a carnation one of the operators gimme--one swell little queen, too. You want some of that black medicine, ma?"
"I'm all right now, Jimmie. It was just earlier in the evening I kinda had a spell. Ain't that pink pretty, though! Here, put it in the glass, and gimme a French kiss. Always ashamed like a big baby when it comes to kissin', ain't you? Ashamed to even kiss your old ma!"
"Aw!" He shuffled his feet and bent over her, with the red mounting above the gold collar of his uniform.
"And such a mamma-boy you used to be before you had to get out and hustle--such a mamma-boy, and now ashamed to give your old ma a kiss!"
"Ashamed nothin'! Here, ma, I'll smooth your hair for you the wrong way like Essie used to do when you came home from the store dead after the semiannual clearings."
"No, no, Jimmie; these days I ain't got no more hair left to smooth."
"You look good to me."
"Aw, Jimmie, quit stringing your old ma. How can a stack o' bones look good to anybody?"
"You do."
"Your papa used to say so, too, Jimmie; but in them days my hair was natural curly--little cute, springy curls like Essie's. The first day he seen me he fell for 'em; and the night before he died, Jimmie, with you and Essie asleep in your folding-cribs and me little thinkin' that the next week I'd be back in the department clerking again, he took me in his arms and--"
"Yes, yes; I know, ma--but didn't old man Gibbs say not to get excited? Lay back and don't talk, ma. I can feel your heart beatin' way down in your hands."
"You're all tired out, ain't you, Jimmie?--too tired to listen to my talk; but you're going to wait up for your sister's young man to-night, ain't you, my boy? Go wet your hair and smooth it down. You'll wanna see him, Jimmie."
"Fine chance."
"Sure he's coming to-night, Jimmie. I got their supper all waitin'; and, see, there's my flowered wrapper at the foot of the bed, so I can get up and go in when--"
"Aw, cut out the comedy, ma! She ain't comin' straight home after the show any more'n a crooked road; and if she does he ain't coming with her."
"Jimmie, she promised sure to-night."
"Didn't she promise last night and the night before and the night before that?"
"But this afternoon when she left for the matinee, Jimmie, I wasn't feelin' so well, and she promised so sure."
"Them girl ushers down there is too lively a bunch for her, ma. Ushin' in a theayter is next to bein' in the chorus--only--"
"Jimmie!"
"Sure it is--only it ain't so good one way, and it ain't so bad another. This new-fangled girl ushin' gets my goat, anyways. It ain't doin' her any good."
"Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, don't I know it? I hated to see her take it--her so little and cute and pretty and all! Night-work ain't nothin' for our Essie."
"Sure it ain't!"
"But what could we do, Jimmie? After I gave out, her six a week in the notions wasn't a drop in the bucket. What else could we do, Jimmie?"
"Just you wait, ma! This time next year life'll be one long ice-cream soda for you and her. Wait till my dynamo gets to charging like I want her to--I'll be runnin' this whole shebang with a bang!"
"You're a good boy, Jimmie; but a kid of seventeen ain't expected to have shoulders for three."
"Just the samey, I showed a draft of my dynamo to the head operator, ma, and he's comin' up Sunday to have a look. Leave it here on the table just like it is, ma. You'll be ridin' in your Birdsong self-charging electric automobile yet!"
She let her fingers wander up and down his cheek and across his shoulders and into his uneven nappy hair.
"Poor Jimmie! If only you had the trainin'! Miss Maisie was up from the store to-day in her noon-hour and seen it standing here next to my bed; and she thought it was such a pretty-lookin' dynamo, with its copper wires and all."
"You didn't let her--"
"No--honest, Jimmie! See--it ain't been touched; I didn't even let her go near the table's edge. She wanted to know when I was comin' back to the store--she says the corsets have run down since they got the new head saleslady, Jimmie."
"If I'd 'a' been here I'd 'a' told her you ain't going back."
"Sometimes I--I think I ain't, neither, Jimmie."
"What?"
"Nothin'."
"When you get well, ma, then I--"
"Then I'm going back on my job, Jimmie. Eighteen years--not countin' the three years your papa lived--at doing one thing sort of makes you married to it. I got my heart as set as always, Jimmie, on gettin' you in at the Electric Training School next door. If I hadn't broke down--"
"Nix for mine, ma!"
"Every day I sit by the window, Jimmie, and see the young engineers and electricians who board there goin' to work; and it breaks my heart to think of you, with your mind for inventions, runnin' the streets--a messenger boy--just when I was beginnin' to get where I could do for you."
"Aw, cut that, ma! Don't I work round on my dynamo every morning till I go on duty? Wouldn't I look swell with an electricity book under my arm? I'd feel like Battling John drinking tea out of an egg-shell."
"The trainin'-school's the place for you, Jimmie. If you'd only take the dynamo over to the superintendent and show him where you're stuck he'd help you, Jimmie. I been beggin' you so long, and if only you wasn't so stubborn!"
"I ain't got the nerve buttin' in over there; it's for fellows who got swell jobs already."
"There's classes for boys, too, Jimmie; the janitor told me. Just go to-morrow and show your dynamo. It won't hurt nothin', and maybe they'll know just what the trouble is--it's only a little thing, Jimmie--three times in succession it worked last night, didn't it? It won't hurt to go, Jimmie--just to go and show it."
"Nix; I ain't got the nerve. You just wait! I ain't got the trainin'; but didn't I sell my double lens the day after I got the patent? Didn't I make that twenty-five just like battin' your eye?"
"The janitor says you was robbed in it, Jimmie."
"We should worry! Didn't we get a rockin'-chair and a string of beads and a tool-chest out of it?"
"It ain't you worries me so much, Jimmie. Here, put your head here on the pillow next to me, Jimmie. My heart's actin' up to-night. It ain't you worries me you're a man like your papa was and can hit back; but Essie--if only Essie--"
"You don't handle her right, ma; you're too easy-going with her. Since she went on her new job she's gettin' too gay--too gay!"
"Jimmie!"
"Sure she is. Like I told her last night when she came in all hours from dancing--if she didn't take that war-paint off her face I'd get her in a corner and rub it off till--"
"I've begged her and begged her, Jimmie, just as hard as I ever begged you about the dynamo, to wash her face of it. It's eatin' me, Jimmie--eatin' me! There wasn't a girl in the store that didn't envy that girl her complexion. Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, it ain't paint alone--it's where it can lead to."