Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

670 there is room for. It’s a kind of a hole- in-the-wall mind where a thing edges in and edges out before any other thing can enter. “ Well,” I says, “‘ I ought to be surprised at myself, I guess. you something for the house, something that will last through your lifetime and al- ways be solid and satisfactory and give you a. lot of comfort. A nice big chair, mebbe, one of these here deep leather chairs, I'd euess.’ “ Oh, Mr. Tom Hill, how silly you are!” she sort of cooed. “ It wasn’t anything like that. I don’t believe you’d ever guess what it was. You see, I’ve been sending our washing to the Jaundry, and it was quite an expense. So for my birthday - Jimmie bought me an electric washing machine. He said it cost a heap of money, but would pay for itself in the end. I haven’t used it yet, but I must hurry right home and do so. Won’t I take a lot of pleasure in hear- ing it whir as it washes out the Fraser duds? Won’t I though, Mr. Tom Hill? Well, rather!” She whirls away from me in that quick, light, graceful way she had and goes on down the street. dashed, so to speak; _slow in the other direction. As I passed the store I see Jimmie inside, hustling around like he always done, smiling and chatting with the customers while his hands flew. Good clerk, that boy, I says to my- self. None better any wheres. Well, now, with Elizabeth sitting beside me, waiting for me to come out of my trance and say something to her, them two incidents growed and growed till they was as big as mountains. -And when a thing gets to be as big as a mountain ‘most any man can see it with his naked eye or with and I walked along a new suit of clothes on his eye, far as that goes. J discovered what Sadie had meant when she had said that Jimmie was workin’ too hard in the store. She had meant that he was workin’-too long hours; and now that L thought of it, I knew that that was a fact. When I was up that early I often seen him go by my house at half past six in the morning. At noon he would go toward ee ee art st ee Of course Jimmie got I was kind of haber- - of that, ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, his house on his way to lunch. In twenty minutes he would be headed back to the store. I could picture what he done. He rushed into the house, tossed down his cap, snatched a kiss from Sadie, stowed his vit- ‘tles away fast and furious, snatched an- other kiss, mebbe wiping his lips with the back of his hand before he done so, and rushed out of the house. Same way with his supper.. Then he got home about eight o ‘clock. Oh, Jimmie didn’t keep no union hours. Fourteen or so hours a day, and the stipend he.got from old ’Lije Brown ean embar- rass him none. Well, you can see how it was: ‘plenty hours for old "Lije and the store; few hours for Sadie and home. And Sadie, fun lover that she was, growin’ weary about that there. Shunned: by her mother-in-law, cut off from the other young. chaps by her marriage, liked none too well by the girls that had cast hodks. into the matrimonial stream in the hope of pullin’ Jimmie ashore —well, nobody would have said she was’> having a hilarious tifme out of it all. If folks are ever born to be bright and happy, she was- so born, and here she was stuck away in the shadow at the angle of the wall of life. Tough? Well, I sh’d kiss a pig. And I got that washing machine matter full force now. I could imagine her all of a twitter over her approaching birthday. Prob’ly she had had a vision of a box of long-stemmed flowers lying on a bed of ‘green ferns in a tissue lined box, and some- _thing to clasp about her-neck™as she stood before her mirror. .Anything! Any kind of a doodaddle that would be vain and fool- ish and silly and speak vainly and foolish- ly. and sillily of l-o-v-e, Zove/ And instead a couple of big huskies had probly lugged in that washing machine and asked her in voices like them from the tomb where they would set it up. Now, I ain’t knocking washing machines. They are good implements. Must be. I knowl get a kink in my back if I have to wash out two. three pairs of white socks and a.few handkerchiefs if the laundry man happens to be late; but I think when a man has a wife like Sadie a good time to bestow a washing niachine on her would be exactly COMmiclbo®