"Uh-huh, fishing for compliments!"

"No, I am _not_, so there!" Una's cheeks burned delightfully. She was back in Panama again--in Panama, where for endless hours on dark porches young men tease young women and tell them that they are beautiful....

Mr. Schwirtz was direct and "jolly," like Panama people; but he was so much more active and forceful than Henry Carson; so much more hearty than Charlie Martindale; so distinguished by that knowledge of New York streets and cafes and local heroes which, to Una, the recent convert to New York, seemed the one great science.

Their rockers creaked in complete sympathy.

The perfect summer man took up his shepherd's tale:

"There's a whole lot of things she'd certainly oughta have admired in you, lemme tell you. I suppose probably Maxine Elliott is better-looking than what you are, maybe, but I always was crazy over your kind of girl--blond hair and nice, clear eyes and just shoulder-high--kind of a girl that could snuggle down beside a fireplace and look like she grew there--not one of these domineerin' sufferin' cats females. No, nor one of these overdressed New-York chickens, neither, but cute and bright--"

"Oh, you're just flattering me, Mr. Schwirtz. Mr. Hunt told me I should watch out for you."

"No, no; you got me wrong there. 'I dwell on what-is-it mountain, and my name is Truthful James,' like the poet says! Believe me, I may be a rough-neck drummer, but I notice these things."

"Oh!... Oh, do you like poetry?"

Without knowing precisely what she was trying to do, Una was testing Mr.

Schwirtz according to the somewhat contradictory standards of culture which she had acquired from Walter Babson, Mamie Magen, Esther Lawrence, Mr. Wilkins's books on architecture, and stray copies of _The Outlook_, _The Literary Digest_, _Current Opinion_, _The Nation_, _The Independent_, _The Review of Reviews_, _The World's Work_, _Collier's_, and _The Atlantic Monthly_, which she had been glancing over in the Home Club library. She hadn't learned much of the technique of the arts, but she had acquired an uneasy conscience of the sort which rather discredits any book or music or picture which it easily enjoys. She was, for a moment, apologetic to these insistent new standards, because she had given herself up to Mr. Schwirtz's low conversation.... She was not vastly different from a young lady just back in Panama from a term in the normal school, with new lights derived from a gentlemanly young English teacher with poetic interests and a curly mustache.

"Sure," affirmed Mr. Schwirtz, "I like poetry fine. Used to read it myself when I was traveling out of St. Paul and got kind of stuck on a waitress at Eau Claire." This did not perfectly satisfy Una, but she was more satisfied that he had heard the gospel of culture after he had described, with much detail, his enjoyment of a "fella from Boston, perfessional reciter; they say he writes swell poetry himself; gave us a program of Kipling and Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x before the Elks--real poetic fella."

"Do you go to concerts, symphonies, and so on, much?" Una next catechized.

"Well, no; that's where I fall down. Just between you and I, I never did have much time for these high-brows that try to make out they're so darn much better than common folks by talking about motifs and symphony poems and all that long-haired stuff. Fellow that's in music goods took me to a Philharmonic concert once, and I couldn't make head or tail of the stuff--conductor batting a poor musician over the ear with his swagger-stick (and him a union man, oughta kicked to his union about the way the conductor treated him) and him coming back with a yawp on the fiddle and getting two laps ahead of the bra.s.s band, and they all blowing their stuffings out trying to catch up. Music they call that!

And once I went to grand opera--lot of fat Dutchmen all singing together like they was selling old rags. Aw nix, give me one of the good old songs like 'The Last Rose of Summer.'... I bet _you_ could sing that so that even a sporting-goods drummer would cry and think about the sweetheart he had when he was a kid."

"No, I couldn't--I can't sing a note," Una said, delightedly.... She had laughed very much at Mr. Schwirtz's humor. She slid down in her chair and felt more expansively peaceful than she ever had been in the stress of Walter Babson.

"Straight, now, little sister. Own up. Don't you get more fun out of hearing Raymond Hitchc.o.c.k sing than you do out of a bunch of fiddles and flutes fighting out a piece by Vaugner like they was Kilkenny cats?

'Fess up, now; don't you get more downright amus.e.m.e.nt?"

"Well, maybe I do, sometimes; but that doesn't mean that all this cheap musical comedy music is as good as opera, and so on, if we had our--had musical educations--"

"Oh yes; that's what they all say! But I notice that Hitchc.o.c.k and George M. Cohan go on drawing big audiences every night--yes, and the swellest, best-dressed, smartest people in New York and Brooklyn, too--it's in the gallery at the opera that you find all these Wops and Swedes and Lord knows what-all. And when a bunch of people are out at a lake, say, you don't ever catch 'em singing Vaugner or Lits or Gryge or any of them guys. If they don't sing, 'In the Good Old Summer-Time,'

it's 'Old Black Joe,' or 'Nelly Was a Lady,' or something that's really got some _melody_ to it."

The neophyte was lured from her new-won altar. Cold to her knees was the barren stone of the shrine; and she feebly recanted, "Yes, that's so."

Mr. Schwirtz cheerfully took out a cigar, smelled it, bit it, luxuriously removed the band, requested permission to smoke, lighted the cigar without waiting for an answer to that request, sighed happily, and dived again:

"Not that I'm knocking the high-brows, y' understand. This dress-suit music is all right for them that likes it. But what I object to is their trying to stuff it down _my_ throat! I let 'em alone, and if I want to be a poor old low-brow and like reg'lar music, I don't see where they get off to be telling me I got to go to concerts. Honest now, ain't that the truth?"

"Oh yes, _that_ way--"

"All these here critics telling what low-brows us American business men are! Just between you and I, I bet I knock down more good, big, round, iron men every week than nine-tenths of these high-brow fiddlers--yes, and college professors and authors, too!"

"Yes, but you shouldn't make money your standard," said Una, in company with the invisible chorus of Mamie Magen and Walter Babson.

"Well, then, what _are_ you going to make a standard?" asked Mr.

Schwirtz, triumphantly.

"Well--" said Una.

"Understan' me; I'm a high-brow myself some ways. I never could stand these cheap magazines. I'd stop the circulation of every last one of them; pa.s.s an act of Congress to make every voter read some A-1, high-cla.s.s, intellectual stuff. I read Rev. Henry van d.y.k.e and Newell Dwight Hillis and Herbert Kaufman and Billy Sunday, and all these brainy, inspirational fellows, and let me tell you I get a lot of talking-points for selling my trade out of their spiels, too. I don't _believe_ in all this cheap fiction--these nasty realistic stories (like all the author could see in life was just the bad side of things--I tell you life's bad enough without emphasizing the rotten side, all these unhappy marriages and poverty and everything--I believe if you can't write bright, optimistic, _cheerful_ things, better not write at all).

And all these s.e.x stories! Don't believe in 'em! Sensational! Don't believe in cheap literature of _no_ sort.... Oh, of course it's all right to read a coupla detective stories or a nice, bright, clean love-story just to pa.s.s the time away. But me, I like real, cla.s.sy, high-grade writers, with none of this slangy dialogue or vulgar stuff.

'Specially I like essays on strenuous, modern American life, about not being in a rut, but putting a punch in life. Yes, _sir_!"

"I'm glad," said Una. "I do like improving books."

"You've said it, little sister.... Say, gee! you don't know what a luxury it is for me to talk about books and literature with an educated, cultured girl like you. Now take the rest of these people here at the farm--nice folks, you understand, mighty well-traveled, broad-gauged, intelligent folks, and all that. There's a Mr. and Mrs. Cannon; he's some kind of an executive in the Chicago stock-yards--nice, fat, responsible job. And he was saying to me, 'Mr. Schwirtz,' he says, 'Mrs. C. and I had never been to New England till this summer, but we'd toured every other part of the country, and we've done Europe thoroughly and put in a month doing Florida, and now,' he says, 'I think we can say we've seen every point of interest that's worth an American's time.' They're good American people like that, well-traveled and nice folks. But _books_--Lord!

they can't talk about books no more than a Jersey City bartender. So you can imagine how pleased I was to find you here.... World's pretty small, all right. Say, I just got here yesterday, so I suppose we'll be here about the same length o' time. If you wouldn't think I was presumptuous, I'd like mighty well to show you some of the country around here. We could get up a picnic party, ten or a dozen of us, and go up on Bald k.n.o.b and see the scenery and have a real jolly time. And I'd be glad to take you down to Lesterhampton--there's a real old-fashioned inn down there, they say, where Paul Revere stayed one time; they say you can get the best kind of fried chicken and corn on cob and real old-fashioned New England blueberry pie. Would you like to?"

"Why, I should be very pleased to," said Una.

- 2

Mr. Schwirtz seemed to know everybody at the farm. He had been there only thirty-six hours, but already he called Mr. Cannon "Sam," and knew that Miss Vincent's married sister's youngest child had recently pa.s.sed away with a severe and quite unexpected attack of cholera morbus. Mr.

Schwirtz introduced Una to the others so fulsomely that she was immediately taken into the inner political ring. He gave her a first lesson in auction pinochle also. They had music and recitations at ten, and Una's shyness was so warmed away that she found herself reciting, "I'm Only Mammy's Pickaninny c.o.o.n."

She went candle-lighted up to a four-poster bed. As she lay awake, her job-branded mind could not keep entirely away from the office, the work she would have to do when she returned, the familiar series of indefinite worries and disconnected office pictures. But mostly she let the rustle of the breathing land inspirit her while she thought of Mr.

Julius Edward Schwirtz.

She knew that he was ungrammatical, but she denied that he was uncouth.

His deep voice had been very kindly; his clipped mustache was trim; his nails, which had been ragged at that commercial-college lunch, were manicured now; he was sure of himself, while Walter Babson doubted and thrashed about. All of which meant that the tired office-woman was touchily defensive of the man who liked her.

She couldn't remember just where she had learned it, but she knew that Mr. Schwirtz was a widower.

- 3

The fact that she did not have to get up and go to the office was Una's chief impression at awakening, but she was not entirely obtuse to the morning, to the chirp of a robin, the cluck of the hens, the creak of a hay-wagon, and the sweet smell of cattle. When she arose she looked down a slope of fields so far away that they seemed smooth as a lawn.

Solitary, majestic trees cast long shadows over a hilly pasture of crisp gra.s.s worn to inviting paths by the cropping cattle. Beyond the valley was a range of the Berkshires with every tree distinct.

Una was tired, but the morning's radiance inspired her. "My America--so beautiful! Why do we turn you into stuffy offices and ugly towns?" she marveled while she was dressing.

But as breakfast was not ready, her sudden wish to do something magnificent for America turned into what she called a "before-coffee grouch," and she sat on the porch waiting for the bell, and hoping that the conversational Mr. Schwirtz wouldn't come and converse. It was to his glory that he didn't. He appeared in masterful white-flannel trousers and a pressed blue coat and a new Panama, which looked well on his fleshy but trim head. He said, "Mornin'," cheerfully, and went to prowl about the farm.

All through the breakfast Una caught the effulgence of Mr. Schwirtz's prosperous-looking solidness, and almost persuaded herself that his jowls and the slabs of fat along his neck were powerful muscles.

He asked her to play croquet. Una played a game which had been respected in the smartest croqueting circles of Panama; she defeated him; and while she blushed and insisted that he ought to have won, Mr. Schwirtz chuckled about his defeat and boasted of it to the group on the porch.

"I was afraid," he told her, "I was going to find this farm kinda tame.

Usually expect a few more good fellows and highb.a.l.l.s in mine, but thanks to you, little sister, looks like I'll have a bigger time than a high-line poker Party."

He seemed deeply to respect her, and Una, who had never had the debutante's privilege of ordering men about, who had avoided Henry Carson and responded to Walter Babson and obeyed chiefs in offices, was now at last demanding that privilege. She developed feminine whims and desires. She asked Mr. Schwirtz to look for her handkerchief, and bring her magazine, and arrange her chair cushions, and take her for a walk to "the Glade."

He obeyed breathlessly.