"He's going to be a newspaper man," cut in Peter sharply.

"Oh, I see. Got it all fixed. If he begins to bust out singing or playing the piano or something you won't let him. That's it, isn't it?"

"I'm going to shape him in that direction."

"Just shape him, hey? Boy, didn't you ever bust bang into the artistic temperament? I played a season once with William Faversham. Shape him?

You can't beat him out of it with a club. I don't know yet what way he's going to jump but I want to put down a little bet this kid of yours is going to be some kind of an artist."

"Don't keep saying that. I tell you he's coming on the Bulletin. His name's Peter Neale."

"You could name him Rosenberg and that wouldn't make him a p.a.w.nbroker."

"But this is in his blood just like in mine. He can't help himself. He's just got to be a newspaper man."

"All right we won't fight about it. You say he's going to be a newspaper man and I tell you he's going to be an artist. Maybe he won't be anything but a moving picture actor."

Peter saw Vonnie frequently throughout the summer. She went to the ball games with him almost every afternoon except matinee days. The dispute about George Browne and Sandow Mertes persisted. There could be no question but that Browne had the speed. Even when he hit straight to an infielder it took a fast throw to nail him at first. But Peter didn't like him because his cap almost always fell off whenever he beat out a slow roller. Somebody would have to carry it down to first for him and while Browne was waiting he had a trick of bending his head back and shaking his long hair out of his eyes.

"He looks like a G.o.dd.a.m.n violinist," said Peter.

"Yes," replied Vonnie, "and your friend Mertes looks like a piccolo player. Do you know the story about the piccolo player?"

"Not in the press box," interrupted Peter fearfully. He felt obliged to interrupt Vonnie a good deal. She was much given to tantalizing him by beginning in a loud clear voice, "It seems there was a travelling salesman came to a hotel," or "This fellow, you see, started to take his girl out for a ride."

"I don't want to hear it," Peter would say half in jest and half hoping to be effectual.

"But it's a nice story."

"It isn't a nice story or it wouldn't begin that way" was the agreed formula for Peter's reply, whereupon Vonnie would disturb his gravity and dignity by digging him in the ribs with her elbow. Another favorite device of hers was sedulously to brush an imaginary spot on Peter's coat lapel and when he looked down bring up her hand and flip him under the nose. Peter never seemed to remember not to look down. Perhaps he liked to have his nose flipped.

"It isn't necessary," he would object, "for everybody around here to know you're a chorus girl."

"Chorus girl, nothing. I got the song hit of the piece. 'Any little thing for you dear, any little thing for you,'" Vonnie indicated the tempo by scruffing her feet against the concrete floor of the press box.

"Cut it out. Pay attention to the game."

Sometimes the admonition was unnecessary. The day George Browne took a real cut at the ball and banged it over the ropes in right field Vonnie hopped into a chair and shouted, "The blessed lamb! Oh, you Georgie boy!

Watch that kid go. Look at him, Peter, he runs just like my Michael."

Michael was Vonnie's white dog, said to be a Highland terrier. When Peter took Vonnie home to One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Street it had become the custom for him to wait down in the street while she got Michael and took him a turn around the block before saying good night to Peter. Vonnie had a good deal to say about Michael from time to time, which was calculated to embarra.s.s Peter. "You got to get me a book for Michael," she told Peter.

"What sort of a book?"

"Well, I guess it's called 'What a Young Dog Ought to Know.' He don't know any of the facts about life. I can take that dog past a million lamp-posts and ten minutes after I get him back in the flat I've got to lick him. Maybe you could give him a little plain talk, Peter. Coming from a man, you know, it'd carry more weight with him."

After Peter had known Vonnie for two months she did move to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street. Peter took her out to supper a week later and made the long journey up town. She was more subdued than usual as they stood at the door of the apartment house. He put both hands on her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her good night.

"Don't you like me, Peter?" she said.

"Of course I do. You know that."

"I don't want you to go away, now. I don't want you to go away tonight."

"I've got to."

"Why have you got to?"

"I think I ought to go."

"Oh, if it's just morals, forget it. There's nothing to be afraid of.

You're not in love with me and I'm not in love with you. I just like you. And I'm lonely. They won't let me keep Michael in this place, but I guess I can sneak you in if you don't bark as we go up the stairs."

"Maybe this'll spoil everything," said Peter. "It's been so nice and easy and pleasant going around with you, Vonnie. If I get in love with you something will happen to me sure. I can't stand anything like that again. I do like you a lot. That's the trouble."

"Oh, h.e.l.l! nothing like that's going to happen. I'm a tough bird. I'll make you a promise, Peter. The minute I see you're falling in love with me any I'll tell you that story about the tattooed man and the girl from Oshkosh and shock it right out of you. Don't make any noise, Peter. I've found the janitor's a light sleeper. And don't be so awful solemn. Try and think up something worse that could have happened to you."

Still when Vonnie kissed him again after they had tiptoed up two flights and into her flat, Peter noticed that this time she did not laugh.

CHAPTER XV

I

Peter worried a good deal over Vonnie's predictions as to Pat's future.

The doubt which she had cast upon the feasibility of his scheme heightened after the victrola was introduced into the flat. The man on the floor below happened to be moving and meeting Peter in the hall one night he struck up a bargain to sell his phonograph and all the records.

After the bargain was made and the machine duly delivered, Peter looked over the repertoire and found it queer stuff according to his notions.

"Werther--Ah! non mi ridestar!" sung by Mattia Battistini; "Siegfried's Funeral March;" "The Funeral March of a Marionette." It seemed morbid to Peter. "Minuet in G, No. 2" played by Ysaye; "Lucia--il dolce suono (mad scene)." "Merry old bird," thought Peter. "Invitation to the Waltz--Weber." That was a tune he knew, but it could hardly be cla.s.sed as cheerful.

Peter went out and purchased a few of the latest song hits--"The s.e.xtette from Floradora," "Under the Shade of the Sheltering Palm," and to his delight he found "Any Little Thing for You, Dear." Unfortunately the phonograph company had chosen another voice instead of Vonnie's for the record. Nevertheless, Peter bought it and some more.

Pat was now a year and a half old, but he manifested the most violent interest in the phonograph. That pleased Peter but he did not like it quite so well when Kate reported to him, "'Tis a queer child, Mr. Neale.

It's them red records he does be playing all the time. He wants the one about somebody's funeral all the time. Would you believe it he cries when I put on a nice tune for him."

The report was not exaggerated. Pat liked the song from Werther, but the Siegfried record was his favorite, with Gounod a close second. Indeed his pa.s.sion to have his own particular favorites played and no others seemed to be the compelling influence which brought him to language.

Almost his first articulate words were "Boom-Boom" which Peter eventually and regretfully identified as an attempt to designate the Siegfried Funeral March. When more words were developed The Funeral March of a Marionette became "the other Boom-Boom."

Before Pat was quite two he could mess about in the cabinet of the victrola and pick out a dozen records in response to Peter's request.

"Go get the red Bat," Peter would say and Pat would gravely pull out a handful of records and return with Battistini's Werther. For that matter he knew Floradora well enough to pick it out of the pile but he never held it out to Peter with an imperious, "I want" as he did whenever he got his hands on "Siegfried" or "The Funeral March of a Marionette." It was still more thrilling, a little later, when he abandoned his descriptive "Boom-Boom" for "Siegfried's Funeral March" and began to call it, "Go to Bed Tired." Peter never knew just how Pat could identify the records by looking at them. He supposed that some of the t.i.tles were longer than others and that the child was able to bear in mind the picture created by some certain series of signs.

But a still more shocking discovery came when Peter learned that his tiny son could identify by sound as well as sight. Peter, for instance, was never quite certain whether the record being played was the Mad Scene from Lucia or the Floradora s.e.xtette. At any rate not until it had gone along about to "On bended knee--on bended knee." But there was no fooling Pat. He never needed more than a few notes before he was able to exclaim with a well justified a.s.surance that the piece in question was "Chi-Chi" or "Floor" as the case might be. The Weber waltz was never played much and Pat had no name for it, but he evidently knew it well enough for no sooner was it started than he would get up and swing slowly from side to side. Peter finally got a hammer and broke that record. He would have liked to pa.s.s the victrola on to somebody else but Kate would have protested as well as Pat. Music had solved for her the problem of what to do with Pat on rainy days. Outside of a little cranking these once difficult experiences had now become practically painless.

On Pat's second birthday Peter was startled to receive at the office of the Bulletin a package directed in the handwriting of Maria Algarez.

Peter had travelled a little of the way toward forgetting Maria Algarez.

Time had done something, but Vonnie had done more. It was almost seven months now since Peter first went to Two Hundred and Forty-second Street. In the package he found a letter and a phonograph record. On the disc he read "Chanson de Solveig--Maria Algarez." The letter said--"Dear Peter--I send to your son a present for his second birthday.