When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he began to take an inventory of his mental stock.

One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look deepening in his face.

"Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to himself; "looks like I orter."

Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair repeated the sentences again and again to himself.

"That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git him."

"It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe.

"I know it," said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, "but I reckon you better go. The old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!"

"All right," said Joe with a resignation born of experience, "but don't you go and put no more of the kids in my bed. Jack and Gus kick the stuffin' out of me now."

And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night, giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with Bacchus.

The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence.

"It's a first-rate idea, Joe," said the boss, a big, capable fellow who had worked his way up from the bottom. "I could move you right along the line if you had a better education. I have a good offer up in Chicago next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you along."

"Where can I get it at?" asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power of achievement.

"Night school," said the boss. "I know a man that teaches in the Settlement over on Burk Street. I'll put you in there if you like."

Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a family for seven years, who had been the champion sc.r.a.pper of the South End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly humiliating. But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss's proposition.

"You're mighty stingy with yourself these days!" said Mittie Beaver one night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school.

Joe grinned somewhat foolishly. "I come every evenin'," he said.

"For 'bout ten minutes," said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous pompadour; "there's some wants more'n ten minutes."

"Ben Schenk?" asked Joe, alert with jealousy.

"I ain't sayin'," went on Mittie. "What do you do of nights, hang around the hall?"

"Naw," said Joe indignantly. "There ain't n.o.body can say they've sawn me around the hall sence I've went with you!"

"Well, where do you go?"

"I'm trainin'," said Joe evasively.

"I don't believe you like me as much as you used to," said Mittie plaintively.

Joe looked at her dumbly. His one thought from the time he cooked his own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and d.i.c.k, was of her.

The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour after hour over the machine; it made all the problems and hard words and new ideas at night school come straight at last; it made the whole sordid, ugly day swing round the glorious ten minutes that they spent together in the twilight.

"Yes, I like you all right," he said, twisting his big, grease-stained hands in embarra.s.sment. "You're the onliest girl I ever could care about. Besides, I couldn't go with no other girl if I wanted to, 'cause I don't know none."

Is it small wonder that Ben Schenk's glib protestations, reinforced by Mrs. Beaver's own zealous approval, should have in time outcla.s.sed the humble Joe? The blow fell just when the second term of night school was over, and Joe was looking forward to long summer evenings of unlimited joy.

He had bought two tickets for a river excursion, and was hurrying into the Beavers' when he encountered a stolid bulwark in the form of Mrs.

Beaver, whose portly person seemed permanently wedged into the narrow aperture of the front door. She sat in silent majesty, her hands just succeeding in clasping each other around her ample waist. Had she closed her eyes, she might have pa.s.sed for a placid, amiable person, whose angles of disposition had also become curves. But Mrs. Beaver did not close her eyes. She opened them as widely as the geography of her face would permit, and coldly surveyed Joe Ridder.

Mrs. Beaver was a born manager; she had managed her husband into an untimely grave, she had managed her daughter from the hour she was born, she had dismissed three preachers, induced two women to leave their husbands, and now dogmatically announced herself arbiter of fashions and conduct in Rear Ninth Street.

"No, she can't see you," she said firmly in reply to Joe's question.

"She's going out to a dance party with Mr. Schenk."

"Where at?" demanded Joe, who still trembled in her presence.

"Somewheres down town," said Mrs. Beaver, "to a real swell party."

"He oughtn't to take her to no down-town dance," said Joe, his indignation getting the better of his shyness. "I don't want her to go, and I'm going to tell her so."

"In-deed!" said Mrs. Beaver in scorn. "And what have you got to say about it? I guess Mr. Schenk's got the right to take her anywhere he wants to!"

"What right?" demanded Joe, getting suddenly a bit dizzy.

"'Cause he's got engaged to her. He's going to give her a real handsome turquoise ring, fourteen-carat gold."

"Didn't Mittie send me no word?" faltered Joe.

"No," said Mrs. Beaver unhesitatingly, though she had in her pocket a note for him from the unhappy Mittie.

Joe fumbled for his hat. "I guess I better be goin'," he said, a lump rising ominously in his throat. He got the gate open and made his way half dazed around the corner. As he did so, he saw a procession of small Ridders bearing joyously down upon him.

"Joe!" shrieked Lottie, arriving first, "Maw says hurry on home; we got another new baby to our house."

During the weeks that followed, Rear Ninth Street was greatly thrilled over the unusual event of a home wedding. The reticence of the groom was more than made up for by the bulletins of news issued daily by Mrs.

Beaver. To use that worthy lady's own words, "she was in her elements!"

She organised various committees--on decoration, on refreshment, and even on the bride's trousseau, tactfully permitting each a.s.sistant to contribute in some way to the general grandeur of the occasion.

"I am going to have this a real showy wedding," she said from her point of vantage by the parlour window, where she sat like a field-marshal and issued her orders. "Those paper fringes want to go clean across every one of the shelves, and you all must make enough paper roses to pin 'round the edges of all the curtains. Ever'thing's got to look gay and festive."

"Mittie don't look very gay," ventured one of the a.s.sistants. "I seen her in the kitchen cryin' a minute ago."

"Mittie's a fool!" announced Mrs. Beaver calmly. "She don't know a good thing when she sees it! Get them draperies up a little higher in the middle; I'm going to hang a silver horseshoe on to the loop."

The wedding night arrived, and the Beaver cottage was filled to suffocation with the _elite_ of Rear Ninth Street. The guests found it difficult to circulate freely in the room on account of the elaborate and aggressive decorations, so they stood in silent rows awaiting the approaching ceremony. As the appointed hour drew near, and none of the groom's family arrived, a few whispered comments were exchanged.

"It's 'most time to begin," whispered the preacher to Mrs. Beaver, whose keen black eyes had been watching the door with growing impatience.

"Well, we won't wait on n.o.body," she said positively, as she rose and left the room to give the signal.

In the kitchen she found great consternation: the bride, pale and dejected in all her finery, sat on the table, all the chairs being in the parlour.

"What's the matter?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.