Free Back STreet by Fannie Hurst Page B

family within range. Marriage.
    “Ray, would you like to be married?”
    “Of course I would, to Mr. Right.”
    “How do you get Mr. Right?”
    “How do I know, not having got him?”
    “Why not Kurt? Or are you out for a big gun, or if you had a good chance would you just—just—live—”
    “Freda!”
    “I want to be married more than anything, and I’m not ashamed to say it.”
    “And so you should, honey. If you are as sweet on Hugo as he seems to be on you.…”
    “Last night he took Sadie Kisterwell to the Music Festival. He can’t get away from me that way. He can’t get away from me a-tall.”
    The flaxen little Freda, lying there beside her, sent a quiver through the bed then, of the movement of her body. The quiver of a woman whose fury is beginning to be stirred.…

7
    One Sunday evening during this same month, which was a humid May of premature heat, Ray, who had dined with a drummer at Mecklenburg’s Summer Garden, a popular family resort out on Highland Avenue, found herself being importuned to accompany him to the station where he was to take a C. H. and D. train for Dayton.
    “Come as far as the depot with me, Ray. It will cheer me on my way.”
    “But, Bakeless, it’s so hot, and I hate the smell of train smoke.”
    “Yes, but think what you will be doing for a poor wretch who has to take the trip in this heat.”
    As a matter of fact, there was an additional reason for Ray’s disinclination to accompany Bakeless to the station. Kurt, who had been away in Peoria for the greater part of a week, on a matter that had to do with going into partnership with a pair of brothers who had a patent on a gasoline-driven bicycle, was due at the house that evening at eight. Bakeless’s train left at eight-fifteen, so there would be nobody at home to receive Kurt. Tagenhorst had hired a surrey for the afternoon, and with Freda and Marshall and Hugo Hanck had driven up to Hamilton to visit a crony there. A deserted house would greet Kurt.
    “I have to get home, Bakeless.”
    “You’re the darnedest! You know a man wants to be with youmore than anything, and then you make him sit up on his hind legs and beg for every little thing.”
    They were standing on the sidewalk outside of Mecklenburg’s during this debate. In the heliotrope dusk, even the brick sidewalks gave off a faint heat-glow, and under her black sailor hat there was a film of moisture that not even the prepared chalk she used as face powder could keep under.
    True, as she had realized as she put it on, her black-and-white-check coat-suit was too warm for the day. But its nattiness was simply not to be withstood. She had made it herself at dressmaking-school. The skirt, shirred up slightly along a front gore, was the new smart suit-length of one inch from the ground in front and slight drag behind. The coat, tapering into a faultless eighteen inches at the waist, flared at the hips just sufficiently to reveal a gleam of red sateen lining. A high stock, held with a gold horseshoe, completed the stylish effect. Sporty, but not horsy, had been her estimate before her mirror.
    When she and Bakeless, who represented a New York buggy concern, had walked into Mecklenburg’s, along its gravel-floored garden to a table under an ailanthus-tree, the crowd of Sunday-evening patrons had noted her to the tips of her scalloped-topped shoes.
    The tony Ray Schmidt. Style.
    It had been worth the scratching sense of discomfort the heavy cloth entailed; but now, out on the heated sidewalk, it seemed to Ray she could scarcely wait to be home and free of the unseasonable weight of her clothing.
    “This weather takes it out of me, Bakeless.”
    “So you won’t come along as far as the depot?”
    He was a middle-aged, slightly rotund fellow, shiningly, too shiningly, groomed, from the tips of his toothpick shoes to the dyed mustache which he frequently attended with a pocket-comb. A valued territory man, of twenty-five years’ standing with his firm, and