Edith and John Part 48

"I suppose he refers to the street paving proposition," responded Peter.

"Which one? Where the wooden blocks were used?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, Mr. Dieman, we might as well be honest now and say the truth sometimes; but that was a very bad piece of jobbery for all connected with it--even for the wood blocks, as you will see when a year has pa.s.sed."

"How?"

"In it, the city got its worst job, the contractors worser jobbed, the grafters got jobbed good and plenty, and the wood blocks will be so jobbed that you will not be able to find any in another turn of the sun around the seasons."

"But how will he connect me with it?"

"He can't, Peter; he can't. I can swear that none of the money came to you by the way of our office. It all went through Cobb's hands, and I have the receipts."

"Bully, boy! Bully for you! When I die, I will leave you the old shop and all it holds. You have a slick head, Eli, for such things. Who'd thought Jacob would have given his receipt?"

"I forced it out of him. Told him: no receipt, no money."

"I knew you'd fix it all right when I left it all to you. Why, boy, you don't blame me for having confidence in you?--But Jim Dalls?"

"Oh, he's to keep you out, as agreed, and is to go free on making his confession, and sticking to it at the trial. I tell you, he'll fix a lot of them high-ups and others who've been in the game so long they can't believe but what they're honest and upright citizens."

"Bully! Then all danger for me is over?" asked Peter, chuckling in such a whimsical manner that Eli felt moved himself to get up and hammer him on the back for fear he was choking on his good humor.

"Over," returned Eli, decisively.

"Good! Say Eli, I was only running a bluff on Cobb at first, when I said they couldn't get me--I hear Monroe's dead?"

"Deader'n a fried oyster since he jumped into the Hudson."

"Poor Monroe, I always thought he would hang himself, if given enough rope."

"I am told Mr. Jarney has cleaned out the gang that helped Monroe in his dirty work--that's what becomes of not being faithful to your job, like I've always been, Mr. Dieman," moralized Eli. "Say, did I tell you about seeing May's sister at the Jarneys?"

"No; do tell me about it?"

"Well, I saw her, that's all; and spoke to her, that's all--and my!

she's poorty; but I'll stick to May."

"If I let you," said Peter, squinting his eyes, with a funny little twinkle mixed in their movements.

"Why, I came this very night to ask you, Mr. Dieman," said Eli, as an opener to his subject.

"Really, Eli? Impossible!"

"What's impossible?" asked Eli, disheartened at the word "impossible."

"That you came for that purpose," said Peter with a smile.

"I did, sir; indeed, I did, Mr. Dieman," responded Eli, with much feeling.

"Well?" said Peter, with a bearish look.

"May I have her?" blurted out Eli, as he snapped a piece of imaginary lint from his angled knee with the index finger of his right hand.

"Is she willin', Eli?" asked Peter, changing his tone.

"She is," he responded, firmly.

"You've made fine progress, my boy; but you'll have to ask her moth--Kate--" turning his head as he shouted her name for his voice to carry to where that lady sat in the parlor, in the distance, surrounded by her squirming herd of youngsters--"come here!"

Kate came, looking like a queen--in her "rags"--still bearing some of her old sorrows in her lean face, now reduced to a pleasanter tone by the artful hand of plenty.

"This young man wants May; can you spare her?" said Peter, not giving Eli a show at performing that part of his simple playing in courts.h.i.+p.

"I'll speak for him, Kate. He's a mighty good boy, and May might do a thousand times worse."

Eli sat like a docile lamb before the altar of matrimonial sacrifice, humbly waiting his fate. Kate looked at him. He looked at Kate. Peter looked at both. All silent. Intense was Eli's emotions--so tense that he was like a pine board in the hot sun ready to warp with the intensity of the heat that perforated the skin on his brow, sending forth scalding globes of perspiration.

"I re--I gu--how did you tell me to say it?" she said, turning to Peter for intelligence on the right word.

"May," answered Peter, rubbing.

"I may--no, that's not it," she said, appealing to him.

"You may!" suggested Peter again.

"You may, Mr. Jerey," she said, finally hitting upon the proper phrase that would express her answer.

She had no more than uttered the word, than Eli leaped to his feet, dropped his cane, and caught Mrs. Dieman in his sweeping arms, and hugged her powerfully. It could not be told whether he exercised a son's indubitable right to kiss her, for the very momentous reason that his plug hat fell off at the critical moment when he appeared to be performing that gracious act. But, in any event, his future mother-in-law grunted from the grateful embracing that she underwent in the clasp of Eli. Finding his prized and fas.h.i.+onable hat had toppled off with imminent danger of being crushed by ruthless feet, he hastily released her, picked up his hat, put it on his head again, with such grandiloquent precipitation that he made things in the room look as if they were going up in a whirlwind.

After catching his breath, he glanced inquiringly toward the parlor.

There he saw May sitting in a very deep and richly decorated chair perusing a novel, which she, since her coming out, had been taught was a beautiful source of pastime for young ladies of n.o.ble families. But Eli saw not the novel; neither did he see the pencil and tablet on May's lap, with which she had been instructed to provide herself to jot down the things that impressed her most when reading; nor did he see with what beautiful material she was dressed. All that he saw was the plump little face of May, a face that had no equal, to him; and all that she saw was the tall Eli racing toward her, like a galloping giraffe, with love-lit eyes, with grinning teeth, with plug hat on his head. Then--

"May! May! May!"

The world turned upside-down, and he plunged headlong with May in his arms, into the laughing stars that flecked his heaven of delight.

In the sudden onrush, May dropped her novel, dropped her pencil, dropped her note book; and Eli dropped his hat, which the youngest child momentarily toddled to, and took his seat within it as contentedly as if it had been placed there for his especial enjoyment. Eli minded nothing, not even the cloud of children that rose around him like fairies in astonishment at a bogie man come among them.

But the whirlwind that Eli started soon abated, and its wreck and ruin was more noticeable upon May than any one else; for, in his awkwardness, he had loosened her hair, till it fell down around her waist, and mussed her pink messaline till it needed ironing afresh, and caused a burning place on the one cheek which he pressed so closely to the rough twill of his coat collar, that she seemed to be aflame with indignation. She was not indignant, however. Her little pout was only a sign of shame-faced happiness brought about by the astonis.h.i.+ng behavior of Eli in the presence of her family; which she declared was shameful familiarity.

"Why, May," said Eli, in support of his actions, "your mother says yes, and your daddy says yes, and I say yes; now, what do you say--I don't care who knows!"

"I don't care what they say, you had no business to do it," she answered, looking black at him, as she was brus.h.i.+ng out some of the wrinkle marks in her dress.

"Is it yes, or no, May? Tell me quick, before I go hang myself!" he cried in his anguish.