THE CALLERS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 50

THE CALLERS.

The Difficulties of Love-Making in a Flat.

By

MARY HEATON VORSE.

Author of “jimsie’s Afternoon Off.”

I HAVE told you before how Uncle Solon’s flat is arranged, so if you can remember about it you can skip the first part of this. I have to repeat it because the arrangement of my uncle’s flat has everything to do with this story. That is the trouble with the city—every little thing matters. Now you can t imagine the arrangement of a house in the country having an effect on your whole life, cau you? So naturally I wasn’t prepared to have Uncle Solon’s flat “get up and ewat me one,” as Bob would say. I wouldn’t have dreamed of using an expression like that when 1 first came here. But now my whole life has been modified, as one’s life must be if one loses a very dear friend, and 1 feel perfectly sure that David would still be my friend to-day if 1 had lived in a house. You see, the rooms in my uncle’s flat tire threaded onto a long hall like beads on a piece of black string. In front there is a front parlour and back parlour, and off the front parlour is an alcove. Now Aunt Matilda and Uncle Solon (he’s in the insurance business) sleep in the back parlour, which is divided from the front parlour only by rather rickety folding door's, over the top of which is a wouldIbe ornamental wooden grating, and there isn’t a sound in the next room one can.’t hear; of course Uncle Solon and Aunt Matilda can hear every word being said,in the parlour. When I first came, Pauline explained everything to me about that parlour. “You'll just have to get used to it, Daisy,” she told me, “for you never can tell when a word happens to penetrate to them and when it won’t. I shall never forget the time when Charlie Shafter tried to get'fresh, -and Father bawled out, ‘Young man!’ and 1 am perfectly sure that he had been asleep only a minute before It made me feel small, I can tell you, and I told Father next day just what I thought about it. ‘When the day comes that I can’t sit on a fresh young man without a parent bawling out “Young man,” I shall give up having callers altogether,’ was what 1 said to Father. ‘lf I’ve got any sense you’d better trust me, and if I haven’t ’tlie sooner you lock me up in a nunnery the better!’ ”

I must say I don’t blame Pauline for the way she felt, and I blamed her still less after a time when. I had been through'* the pain of receiving callers in that awful back parlour. When Pauline twas explaining to me about the disadvantages of the parlour she had other things in her mind, as I soon found out by her asking me; “Daisy, which nights would you rather have for your callers?” “Why,” said I, “I haven’t anyone I especially want to have call on me here an New" York, and I haven’t the least idea —” “We’d better decide right in the beginning. I don’t mind how much you come in when the boys are there; I’d leather have you come; but you'll see, you’ll be sure to have people that you’d rather see alone just as I have. There’s Will Mason—when he comes to see me it’s usually Thursday, only not all the time; because it looks so soft and silly to have a man come exactly the same evening every week, and Will is much too much a real man of the world to do n Hoboken trick like that, still he manages to let me know about when to expect him; but I’d hate awfully, wouldn’t you, to have a man come regularly every Thursday evening? It would make me feel as if he were cornbeef and cabbage in a boarding house—-and so provincial!” Pauline is very particular about a lot of things, and Bob says is always throwing a “bunch of side,” and about other things she isn’t partioular at all. Of course when Pauline first spoke to me about the matter of callers I did not understand the seriousness of the situation and when it came to giving me delieate hints to keep out of the room when Will Mason camo to call I wished like everything I had been Gladys. If I had

been, I would have told her in plain terms that I didn’t want to meet her tiresome old admirers. It’s when Pauline talks like this that I understand why Gladys, who is only twelve, is so cynical. It didn’t make me feel any more comfortable to have Gladys in the room, for when Pauline -was through Gladys said in biting tones: “Be sure, Daisy, and leave Pauline’s little strawberry lamb alone, or you’ll get hurt, my dear. Pauline gets him in a corner and growls over him like a dog over a bone.” “That’ll do, miss!” cried Pauline. “You know,” said Gladys to me as we went into my room, “you are a real comfort to me, Daisy. I always was afraid I’d have to grow up to be like Pauline, and you can imagine how that made me feel.” When I didn't find anything to reply to this surprising remark Gladys sailed on in that wise, serene way of hers: “You know, I thought all girls got to that boy age sooner or later, and I tell you, Daisy, when I thought of myself running after anything in pants it made me have a sinking feeling right here,” said Gladys, putting her hand on what

I suppose she thought was her heart but was really her diaphragm. “But since I’ve seen you I’ve taken hope again. I don’t mean I'm a man-hater, but where I don’t respect I cannot love, and how anyone can respect a long-legged, widemouthed, long-eared, dropped-egg-on-toast-eyed, purple-socked clothes-pin is what I can’t understand, and that's what boys seem to me! Now you don’t seem to have gotten to the boy age at all.” Someway this appreciation from Gladys didn’t make me feel as happy as it was intended to. While 1 hope 1 am not vain, still I’m very fastidious about whom I know, and I don’t pretend I've ever been a wall-flower, so Gladys' words made me feel lonely all at onee for some of my friends at home. >So that was why I suppose I was so glad to see David Sterrit when I met him on the street shortly after. As it was late in the afternoon he walked home with me and everything was very nice. Aunt Matilda spoke a few words to him and went away, and as everyone hadn’t come home I had a comfortable cosy visit with him. David had not been long in New York, and we compared notes. Both of us had found that the noise and dis-

traction of the city life had taken the edge -off our finer feelings. He felt, as I did, that one has to have space about one to allow the soul to groyv. It was so long since I had had a chance to talk to anyone about the things that I think most deeply about-I had alinost'forgottenthem. Of course I feel very deeply about' ! my painting—l told David- so. and it. , made me tlrink hard when he asked me if I didn’t think I was paying too great a' ' price for it. “But,” I objected, “we have to pay a price for everything we get.” “Oh, Daisy,” he said at that, “be careful what price you pay. There are some things much more beautiful than paintings, and excuse me for saying something which may seem to doubt your talent, which I know is great. You may pay a big price and not get what you expect in return. Oh. be sure it is worth it before you pay.” I hadn’t heard a single word like this, not even in the art school, since I left home, and, while I heard a noise, something like what I suppose Gladys would call a “snort," coming from Aunt Matilda's room. I didn’t pay any attention to it, for I wasn’t on the lookout for sounds as I grew to be later. After David left I sat a while in the gathering gloom—even the city cannot quite spoil the twilight hour, and it had done me good to talk with David, But my thoughts, that were soaring upwards, were brought to the earth with a thump, for a head reared itself up from behind the divan in the corner of the alcove off the front parlour where Bob sleeps, and Glady’s voice came out to me. “I’ve just got to get up from here, Daisy, I meant to stay here until you went away, for I know how embarrassed I should feel if all my deepest thoughts had been overheard! It was all right so long as my left leg was asleep, but

now as my other leg and left hand have gone to sleep something's got to happen, and you may feel lucky it didn't happen while he was here. My! but he handed you out a bunch of talk! He is a straight high-brow, isn’t he?” I was going to say something dignified, when Bob peered anxiously in. “Oh, he’s gone, has he? So now I ean get some of my clothes out of my bureau. Say, Daisy, he is pretty long on the soul talk, isn’t he? I thought you’d be getting the soul kiss next, so I lit out. I thought he was some of Pauline’s hay.” I’m sorry to say I flared out just as Pauline does. “I think you perfectly mean to listen!” “Listen nothing!” said Bob. “Do you suppose I’d listen to rubbish like that even if I were paid to do it? I tell you I wanted to change my pants, and I just peeped through the key-hole in Mother’s room. I heard him say ‘soul’ three times and I slid, that’s all.” “Bob, which had you rather have, the kind Pauline has or the kind Daisy has?” asked Gladys, perfectly serious. But Bob muttered something like “dead ones” and went into hi* alcove and drew the

portieres. Then I heard a little sqweal and the voice of my little cousin Molly, and then Bob’s voice:

‘.‘Well, keep out of my room if youdon’t want to get stepped on. Oh, I wish my room had a door; I tell you I’d. keep it locked!. First I have to wAit for Daisy’s’ Soul kiss to go home before I can change my .trousers and then I step on a kid.” , , “She’ll spoil her eyes sewing in that light, but I couldn’t tell her so because of your high-brow. She wasn’t listening to anything,’’ said Gladys consolingly, “and I didn’t listen to any more than I could help. He’s quite nice lookihg for a high-brow, isn’t he,' Daisy 1 But you’d better not let Pauline lay her eyes on him, I can tell you those!” I couldn’t help but think how precocious flat life makes a child. If Gladys were in a house in the country she would not notice her sister’s doings, but as it is she is as’ wise as any little owl at twelve. She looks at me the way she does at Pauline sometimes. “I thought you were different from Pauline,” she said. “I don’t mean, Daisy dear, that you are horrid like she is, but about men. and only you do it in a different way! ” I told her that I thought she was very vulgar, and I wanted very much to ask her “do what ” but I didn’t, for I was very much afraid of what she would answer. Afterwards I felt sorry that I had been so pusillanimous. When we went to dinner Pauline asked me what I was looking so blue about. “She isn’t blue,” answered Bob, “she’s cross just like you are when you have anyone came within twenty miles of you when you’re got a Candy Kid calling. I don’t see why having callers makes a girl’s temper so fierce. Daisy almost snapped my head off because I happened

to let my eye light on that Soul Kiss of hers.” “Oh, I didn’t know you had a caller,” said Pauline. “I don’t think it is very nipe to refer to your cousin’s callers as Soul Kisses,” Aunt Matilda broke in. “He’ll be all right when he gets city broke,” Bob told me consolingly. “Is he nice looking?” asked Pauline. “Say, Daisy, you ought to tell him to get his collars in New York instead of Hoboken! ” This from Bob. “Children,” Aunt Matilda broke in, “I think you are very rude, and you mortify me. Can't Daisy have a caller without your acting this way?” I’ve told you all they said, so you can imagine the bad taste it left in my mouth. I felt as if my nice little call with my old friend had been dragged in the mud. The lack of privacy was simply indecent. Of course, in the country everyone notices who goes in and out of the house, but your conversation isn’t overheard by everybody to the youngest babe, and the family do not nickname your caller the “Soul Kiss,” for this nickname of Bob’s stuck. The next time

David called in the evening, little Molly ran to me calling: “It’s your Soul Kiss, Daisy!” She Was so innocent about it that I couldn’t scold her, and I was too proud to tell my other cousins how repulsive such a name was to me when applied to David. However, I was very glad to see him again, in spite of all 'the talk that had Cone on, which had left me the feeling of having my spirit stripped naked, because it’s awful not to have any privacy for your thoughts. I soon forgot all about the unpleasant things that had happened and felt freer with David than I ever had before. But as he said, “Finding one of one's own intellectual kindred in a city like New York gives one a rare sense of fellowship.” So with Pauline and Uncle Solon and Aunt Matilda in the end of the flat I had a feeling of tranquillity that I never expected to have after David's first call. The place was quiet, and altogether there was an aspect about it that made David say, “How restful it is to be with you, Daisy!” I gave myself up to the charm of being with someone I understood and that understood me. I remember we were talking about how long we had known each other and how this meeting had caused Our friendship to flower, when the door bell rang. The little burr of the electric bell sounding far oft', made my heart feel queer. David, not knowing the sounds of the flat as I did, went right on talking, but I could hardly answer him. I heard someone asking in New York tones if Miss Shoemaker was in. Then it flashed over me that it was Thursday night and it was Will Mason come to call on Pauline!

I could hear him taking his things off in the hall, and the maid telling him to go in and be seated. I am sorry to say that both David and I were provincial enough to let a silence fall on us and it made me feel angry at David. It’s a man’s place to help one out in an uncomfortable situation. I was so cross at David that I couldn’t gather my wits tibout me to break the awful silence—you know that silence creeps about you sometimes when you feel as if you had been doing something wrong. After a long time something made me glance at Will, Mr. Mason 1 suppose I ought to call liim. As I peeped up he was looking at me and there passed between us one of those looks that sometimes you can’t help giving to strangers, a quick glance of comprehension which made me feel more uncomfortable and more angry at David, and also made me wonder if I ought to bow to Mr. Mason and speak, even though he hadn't been introduced, end altogether I felt like a little country jay; and in the bottom of my heart 1 Ibid a funny little triumphant feeling, I knew just as well as anything that M ill Mason would like me whether I was a country jay or not, and perhaps all the better because I was. There! I can’t tell how long we three sat there without speaking, and while we sat there it flashed through my mind that I ought to have known Will Mason was coming, because Pauline was all dressed up. I kept getting angrier at David and angry at myself, because I couldn’t help looking sideways at Will Mason sitting perfectly serf-possessed in his chair waiting, I knew, for me to look at him. After an age Paulino appeared, and In a moment more we were all then to my

surprise I saw David staring at Pauline as if he thought she was extremely good looking. I am the least jealous person in the world, but I felt surprised that anyone of Pauline’s type should appeal to him. I would be the first one to deny that Pauline isn’t a very pretty girl—but under the bloom of her youth she is just as hard as an iron saucepan. There isn’t a gleam of sympathy about her. I don’t mean this in criticism any more than if I said her eyes were large and blue, which they are. Pauline had no intention of keeping the conversation general. Very soon she and Mr. Mason were chaffing each other along, each one handing out more slang, every minute, just as if we weren’t in the room at all. The talking with David was for me like walking in a ploughed field. We have always talked of Real Things, and simply hadn’t any small talk whatever to fall back on; so for the first time in my life I respected small talk and realized its value. I would have given ten years of my life to have been able to chat along as Pauline did. To tell the truth, we both got more self-conscious every moment until our conversation sounded more like conversation in a German grammar than anything else. Beside that, the light fell upon Pauline and made her look to her best advantage, and David’s glance kept falling on her in an absent-minded way. Just as things began to get a little better I heard Aunt Matilda and Uncle Solon going to bed. For some reason I felt awfully embarrassed. Pauline didn’t

appear to notice and chatted on as if we weren’t sitting talking like two stone bottles on one hand, and her mother going to bed on the other. Just then there came a pause in the conversation, and I heard Aunt Matilda’s voice saying with awful distinctness: “I don’t believe your last year’s flannels are warm enough, Father! Seems to me they washed awful thin last year.” If I'd had anything to say this would have taken it from my mouth, but Pauline was quite equal to the occasion. She rose to her feet and said, “Let’s all go out and make a rarebit,” but Mr. Mason proposed we all go out with him and get a lobster, and, as if he hadn’t heard Aunt Matilda going to bed, asked if Mrs. Shoemaker wouldn’t go with us. He came over and began talking to us so we wouldn’t hear Pauline talking in the other room. For the first time in my life I realized what the meaning of savoir faire was. Of course. Aunt Matilda couldn’t go, so Bob was fished out of the cellar, where he was talking with the janitor, to go as chaperon in her place. By some chance I found myself walking with Mr. Mason, while Bob and David and Pauline walked on ahead a few steps. I found Mr. Mason surprisingly easy to talk to. I wanted awfully to tell him that he semed to me like a nice, frank boy with a lot of tact, but of course I couldn’t. AVe had a very good time, except that David’s conversation died as soon as we were all together. On the way home David walked with me, and he surprised and pained me by saying right away, “You seem to like Mr. Mason very

much—for a man you’ve met for the first time.” “Why, yes,” I replied eoldlv. “Don’t you?” “No,” he answered, “I don’t. He’s too smooth ami too glib. He’s not the kind of fellow I’d want hanging around my sister. You can’t tell what that sort of man is like under his veneer of good fellowship.” Now there’s nothing I hate more than injustice and suspicion unless it’s jeal ousy, and I saw right away that David’s dislike of Mr. Mason was founded on this unworthy emotion. I had no idea before that he had such things in his dis position. “I notice,” I said, “that it didn’t pre ■vent your accepting his hospitality.” “No,” he answered gloomily, “I didn't know how to get out of it.” “You can be sure,” said I, pretty exasperated by this time, “he would have known how to get out of accepting yours.” “Oh, he, he’d know how to get out of anything.” I said something sharp in answer but David only replied with a queer note of pathos. “I don’t know how to do things like that, and neither do you, Daisy.” I felt softened toward him, when he spoiled it all by saying: “I’m sorry a nice girl like your cousin does.” Well, I suppose we got very near a quarrel, for David didn’t make, me feel any pleasanter by saying that Pauline was “so natural and so full of the joy of life.” I wanted to answer, “So is a cat,” but refrained for fear of being misunder-

stood. So by the time we said goodnight I felt perfectly wretched. David and Mr. Mason walked off together, and as we climbed the stairs (the elevator had just stopped), Bob said, “Look out for storms, Daisy, you’ve made a hit with Pauline’s best young man,” which vulgar word sent me to bed still more unhappy. Why couldn’t I have a pleasant time with Mr. Mason without .Bob’s saying such things, and why need Pauline mind? I went to bed feeling that 1 had offended everybody, and that David would never come to see me again, and that I didn’t much care if he didn’t, which made things awfully desolate. You see how soon that miserable flat had made trouble between old and dear friends. That Pauline put it gently to me that she would see I had an evening all to myself if I would see she had an evening clear, only made me furious. “Well, you’ll never have any fun if you’re as stuffy as that,” Pauline told me. “I don’t want any,” said I, but I did want fun and companionship—and—and everything jdst like any girl, and wished awfully that I didn’t have something in me that wouldn’t let me accept Pauline’s suggestion, but I just couldn’t, it seemed so awfully eold-blooded to arrange like that to be alone with David. So I have to confess that I was glad enough when Pauline took matters in her own hands. She happened to be at home one afternoon when David came to call on me, and told him that she thought I would be there the next evening. “And I can tell you one thing; Daisy dear,” aaid she, “I may not be a high-

brow like you, but I can settle this fam. ily a lot better than if I were. I’ll tut ’em so you won’t see one of ’em.’* “Well,” asked Bob, “what you goin* to de about me, Daisy ? You needn’t say to me, ‘lt’s the coal bin for yours,’ becana* two of the fellers are coming down tomorrow night. They’re coming from awfully far.” “Your Uncle Solon and I,” Aunt Matilda suggested, “can jest sit in our own room, and you needn’t be afraid, my dear, that we will make a sound. 1 have had to do it for Pauline more than once.” I said nothing, but I saw that Pauline would have to sit in there, too, with Bob and his friends in the dining-room, and the children in the bedroom. Still, by that time I had gotten so I wanted to see David awfullly, and I was glad enough to have him come even under those unfavourable circumstances. I think David had wanted to see me, too, for there was a different expression in his face from any 1 had ever seen, and as soon as he came in he said in a voice that seemed to me loud, “Oh, Daisy, I can’t tell you how I have been looking forward to to-night! Seeing you has brought me back to myself! I did not know how far away I had been drifting from what’s real.” ■Someway I wished he had not said it just that way. I knew Pauline couldn’t help hearing everything, so I answered; in a very low tone. He did not take the hint and it seemed to me that he fairly yelled, “It’s strange how the isolation of al great city throws people together.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said I, rather nervously. “W hat’s that book you have in your hand?” “It’s a play of Yeats that I brought to ■read. It’s got some beautiful passages ” “What’s the matter, Daisy,” he broke off. “You don’t seem yourself. Are you nervous?” An awful desire to laugh came over me. Not myself? I would like to know what girl would feel herself when her Uncle Solon and Aunt Matilda were separated from her by only the thinnest kind of folding doors and. a grating over them, and besides that, her eousin Pauline. I grew hot all over, for I could just sco Pauline’s puffs shaking at the things David was saying. I cannot explain it, but I felt as if I was Pauline myself, and the things David said sounded silly to me, and yet they were just the sort of things I always liked to talk about. “I’m all right,” I answered, “I’m just a little tired. It would rest me to hear you read.” For anything, I felt, would be better than having them listen to David’s tender speeches. “Have I done anything you don’t like, Daisy,” he asked, “You seem so different someway.” “Oh no, of course you haven’t, David,” I answered rather shortly. “Do read, please.” “Poor little girl,” said David, “this big city has gotten on your nerves.” He began to read and soon looked up to me for appreciation, but I had not heard what he Baid; I was listening to some stealthy noises in the other room, followed by two little thuds. I knew what it was; it was Uncle Solon removing his shoes with great care, and I don’t

care how much you care for poetry, you can’t listen to it when your Unele Solon is taking off his shoes a few feet away. I made up iny mind I- would pay more attention, when the most awful racket broke out down at the other end. of the hall. It was Bob and his friends singing “It Looks to Me Like a Big Time Tonight.” David struggled on for awhile, but pretty soon he laid down the book and said gently, “What if. I should wait until they’re through, Daisy.” I saw one of those awfu-t silences creeping over us, so I said desperately, “Tell me about) your work, David. Yon have never told me what you are doing.” "Oh, I’m just in business,” said he, “my real work, as you know, is writing, but in the meantime I must live.” I hoped Uncle Solon wasn't listening, for it flashed across me what he had been saying that day about "those young nincompoops too good for their job” like he had in his office. “Are you happy here, Daisy,” David asked me. “There is something quaint and 1830 about your aunt. She makes me think of a great, high black walnut chest of drawers with a marble top, you know, and pointed crystal bottles on each side.” I sat there abashed, and wished I had had the presence of mind to knock over something, for I knew Aunt Matilda would not a bit like to hear herself compared to a black walnut chest of drawers; nobody would. “They’ve stopped singing now. Let's Toad some more,” I suggested. But just

as we were in one of the most poetic passages, they burst out again with “Home Was Never Like This, Yoop-ti-ah-di-di.” “That is a song that I have always particularly detested. It put me entirely out of the humour of Yeats,” said David, “Jet’s just talk.” I made up my mind that I mustn’t be silly, so I did my best to try and forget that those three people were sitting there just behind the doors, and hoped to goodness that they could not hear David talking bo me intimately about his ambitions for the future, and the sympathy he bad always felt for me; and yet all the time I listened, as it were, with Pauline’s ears, and oil, how I wished that David eould talk small talk like Will Mason, who, perhaps under the surface, had high aims and ambitions just as much as David, although of a different sort, and certainly it was a little more comfortable to have him talking to one. The boys went home early, and as soon as they had gone, I heard a door open and shut, and I knew that Pauline, faithful to her promise, had gone to settle Bob, and I heard her door open and shut and knew she had gone to bed. And now curious little sounds came to me from the next room, and the low hissing voice of Aunt Matilda, saying “Shh ——,” and I knew it was she and Uncle Solon going to bed quietly, and I knew that Pauline-must have sat on the poor things for making so much noise the other night and talking about their winter flannels. I thought things would be bettor now, but someway I eould not got into key with David, and when he said, “It seems to me, Daisy, that our souls have lost step,” I wanted to say rudely, “Oh, ent it out!” And yet I liked David. I liked him most, awfully. Looking back at it now, it weenie to me as if

I was struggling to get to him all the evening, struggling to. put out my hand to keep him, and yet I couldn't. Even later on I might have, ’except for what happened. Finally he rose to.his feet and stood in front of me. “D<#sy,” he said, earnestly, “tell me •what’s the matter. Let’s be frank. What’s come between us?” And just then from Uncle Solon’s room, there came a noise that I do not know how to spell,—a long, low rumble that ended with a snort. “What’s that?” said David. It came again and again, and I answered, “As you might know perfectly well, David Sterrit, that is Uncle Solon snoring.” The snorts and groans grew louder. David made another attempt. “Tell me, Daisy, what’s the matter?” He looked at me with soft, kind eyes and I do not know what mightn’t have happened if Uncle Solon hadn’t kept on snoring. I suppose my nerves were on edge. I did not want to have sentimental things said to me when a noise like a battlefield was going on in the next room, for I. nele Solon snored as though he were the charge of the troops and the shrieks of the dying and the rumble of musketry all in one. So just as Uncle gave an awful groan, my self-control broke down. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter, David,” said I. “It’s that Uncle Solon and Aunt Matilda and Pauline have been sitting behind that door listening to every word you’ve said all the evening. When you first came in I knew they heard every thing you said about wanting to see me. That’s why. I asked you to read. I didn’t care a bit about hearing you read. When you were talking first I was listening to Uncle Solon taking off his shoes. “They heard everything you said about your being too good for yoirr job and about Aunt Matilda’s looking like a piece of black walnut furniture, and about Pauline's wearing puffs that she pins on. She doesn’t; it’s all her own hair, every bit of it! “And then I heard them all going to bed just like mice, and Pauline going out to keep them quiet, and I cannot bear it, —there! Now listen!” I did mot have to tell him 'to listen, for a perfectly deaf perSon”eould have heard Uncle Solon. ' , I hadn’t been looking at David while I was talking; now I raised my eyes to his and saw he had a look of perfectly frozen horror on hie face. All he could say was: “Oh! How awful, Daisy, how awful!” And then, “Good-bye.” He did not need to tell me it was “Good-bye” for good; I knew it perfectly well. Of course after what I had told him he couldn’t come back. And so you see how it came about that Uncle Solon's flat has affected my whole life, for I felt more congenial to David than I ever have to anybody else, and I know he liked me. I sat after he left staring ahead of me just as people do in books when they are deeply moved, and I don’t know how long I might have sat there if Bob hadn’t come in. ‘•'Well,” he yawned, “your ‘Soul Kiss’ is a sticker, isn't he, Daisy? Gee! I thought he’d never go. It’s pretty fierce when a fellow can’t go to bed until all the girls’ beaus have cleared out.” “Yes,” I said, “it is fierce.” And that is just the Word for it. I don’t care if it’s slang or not.