too lively a bunch for her, ma. Ushin'
in a theayter is next to bein' in the chorus--only--"

"Jimmie!"

"Sure it is--only it ain't so good one way, and it ain't so bad another.
This new-fangled girl ushin' gets my goat, anyways. It ain't doin' her
any good."

"Oh, Gawd, Jimmie, don't I know it? I hated to see her take it--her so
little and cute and pretty and all! Night-work ain't nothin' for our
Essie."

"Sure it ain't!"

"But what could we do, Jimmie? After I gave out, her six a week in the
notions wasn't a drop in the bucket. What else could we do, Jimmie?"

"Just you wait, ma! This time next year life'll be one long ice-cream
soda for you and her. Wait till my dynamo gets to charging like I want
her to--I'll be runnin' this whole shebang with a bang!"

"You're a good boy, Jimmie; but a kid of seventeen ain't expected to
have shoulders for three."

"Just the samey, I showed a draft of my dynamo to the head operator, ma,
and he's comin' up Sunday to have a look. Leave it here on the table
just like it is, ma. You'll be ridin' in your Birdsong self-charging
electric automobile yet!"

She let her fingers wander up and down his cheek and across his
shoulders and into his uneven nappy hair.

"Poor Jimmie! If only you had the trainin'! Miss Maisie was up from the
store to-day in her noon-hour and seen it standing here next to my bed;
and she thought it was such a pretty-lookin' dynamo, with its copper
wires and all."

"You didn't let her--"

"No--honest, Jimmie! See--it ain't been touched; I didn't even let her
go near the table's edge. She wanted to know when I was comin' back to
the store--she says the corsets have run down since they got the new
head saleslady, Jimmie."

"If I'd 'a' been here I'd 'a' told her you ain't going back."

"Sometimes I--I think I ain't, neither, Jimmie."

"What?"

"Nothin'."

"When you get well, ma, then I--"

"Then I'm going back on my job, Jimmie. Eighteen years--not countin' the
three years your papa lived--at doing one thing sort of makes you
married to it. I got my heart as set as always, Jimmie, on gettin' you
in at the Electric Training School next door. If I hadn't broke down--"

"Nix for mine, ma!"

"Every day I sit by the window, Jimmie, and see the young engineers and
electricians who board there goin' to work; and it breaks my heart to
think of you, with your mind for inventions, runnin' the streets--a
messenger boy--just when I was beginnin' to get wh