“I kin work all right. I’m a good worker,” growled Bud with his mouth full.
“I’m tellin yez, that’s all,” said the redhaired man and turned back to his stove.
When Ed Thatcher climbed the marble steps of the wide hospital entry he was trembling. The smell of drugs caught at his throat. A woman with a starched face was looking at him over the top of a desk. He tried to steady his voice.
“Can you tell me how Mrs. Thatcher is?”
“Yes, you can go up.”
“But please, miss, is everything all right?”
“The nurse on the floor will know anything about the case. Stairs to the left, third floor, maternity ward.”
Ed Thatcher held a bunch of flowers wrapped in green waxed paper. The broad stairs swayed as he stumbled up, his toes kicking against the brass rods that held the fiber matting down. The closing of a door cut off a strangled shriek. He stopped a nurse.
“I want to see Mrs. Thatcher, please.”
“Go right ahead if you know where she is.”
“But they’ve moved her.”
“You’ll have to ask at the desk at the end of the hall.”
He gnawed his cold lips. At the end of the hall a redfaced woman looked at him, smiling.
“Everything’s fine. You’re the happy father of a bouncing baby girl.”
“You see it’s our first and Susie’s so delicate,” he stammered with blinking eyes.
“Oh yes, I understand, naturally you worried. … You can go in and talk to her when she wakes up. The baby was born two hours ago. Be sure not to tire her.”
Ed Thatcher was a little man with two blond wisps of mustache and washedout gray eyes. He seized the nurse’s hand and shook it showing all his uneven yellow teeth in a smile.
“You see it’s our first.”
“Congratulations,” said the nurse.
Rows of beds under bilious gaslight, a sick smell of restlessly stirring bedclothes, faces fat, lean, yellow, white; that’s her. Susie’s yellow hair lay in a loose coil round her little white face that looked shriveled and twisted. He unwrapped the roses and put them on the night table. Looking out the window was like looking down into water. The trees in the square were tangled in blue cobwebs. Down the avenue lamps were coming on marking off with green shimmer brickpurple blocks of houses; chimney pots and water tanks cut sharp into a sky flushed like flesh. The blue lids slipped back off her eyes.
“That you Ed? … Why Ed they are Jacks. How extravagant of you.”
“I couldn’t help it dearest. I knew you liked them.”
A nurse was hovering near the end of the bed.
“Couldn’t you let us see the baby, miss?”
The nurse nodded. She was a lanternjawed grayfaced woman with tight lips.
“I hate her,” whispered Susie. “She gives me the fidgets that woman does; she’s nothing but a mean old maid.”
“Never mind dear, it’s just for a day or two.” Susie closed her eyes.
“Do you still want to call her Ellen?”
The nurse brought back a basket and set it on the bed beside Susie.
“Oh isn’t she wonderful!” said Ed. “Look she’s breathing. … And they’ve oiled her.” He helped his wife to raise herself on her elbow; the yellow coil of her hair unrolled, fell over his hand and arm. “How can you tell them apart nurse?”
“Sometimes we cant,” said the nurse, stretching her mouth in a smile. Susie was looking querulously into the minute purple face. “You’re sure this is mine.”
“Of course.”
“But it hasnt any label on it.”
“I’ll label it right away.”
“But mine was dark.” Susie lay back on the pillow, gasping for breath.
“She has lovely little light fuzz just the color of your hair.”
Susie stretched her arms out above her head and shrieked: “It’s not mine. It’s not mine. Take it away. … That woman’s stolen my baby.”
“Dear, for Heaven’s sake! Dear, for Heaven’s sake!” He tried to tuck the covers about her.
“Too bad,” said the nurse, calmly, picking up the basket. “I’ll have to give her a sedative.”
Susie sat up stiff in bed. “Take it away,” she yelled and fell back in hysterics, letting out continuous frail moaning shrieks.
“O my God!” cried Ed Thatcher, clasping his hands.
“You’d better go away for this evening, Mr. Thatcher. … She’ll quiet down, once you’ve gone. … I’ll put the roses in water.”
On the last flight he caught up with a chubby man who was strolling down slowly, rubbing his hands as he went. Their eyes met.
“Everything all right, sir?” asked the chubby man.
“Oh yes, I guess so,” said Thatcher faintly.
The chubby man turned on him, delight bubbling through his thick voice. “Congradulade me, congradulade me; mein vife has giben birth to a poy.”
Thatcher shook a fat little hand. “Mine’s a girl,” he admitted, sheepishly.
“It is fif years yet and every year a girl, and now dink of it, a poy.”
“Yes,” said Ed Thatcher as they stepped out on the pavement, “it’s a great moment.”
“Vill yous allow me sir to invite you to drink a congradulation drink mit me?”
“Why with pleasure.”
The latticed halfdoors were swinging in the saloon at the corner of Third Avenue. Shuffling their feet politely they went through into the back room.
“Ach,” said the German as they sat down at a scarred brown table, “family life is full of vorries.”
“That it is sir; this is my first.”
“Vill you haf beer?”
“All right anything suits me.”
“Two pottles Culmbacher imported to drink to our little folk.” The bottles popped and the sepia-tinged foam rose in the glasses. “Here’s success. … Prosit,” said the German, and raised his glass. He rubbed the foam out of his mustache and pounded on the table with a pink fist. “Vould it be indiscreet meester … ?”
“Thatcher’s my name.”
“Vould it be indiscreet, Mr. Thatcher, to inquvire vat might your profession be?”
“Accountant. I hope before long to be a certified accountant.”
“I am a printer and my name
