started.”
“I hate it,” he objected gloomily.
“Well,” she replied emphatically, “your salary wouldn’t keep us in a tenement. Don’t think I want to be public—I don’t. I want to be yours. But I’d be a half-wit to sit in one room and count the sunflowers on the wall-paper while I waited for you. When you pull down three hundred a month I’ll quit.”
And much as it hurt his pride, Horace had to admit that hers was the wiser course.
March mellowed into April. May read a gorgeous riot act to the parks and waters of Manhattan, and they were very happy. Horace, who had no habits whatsoever—he had never had time to form any—proved the most adaptable of husbands, and as Marcia entirely lacked opinions on the subjects that engrossed him there were very few joltings and bumpings. Their minds moved in different spheres. Marcia acted as practical factotum, and Horace lived either in his old world of abstract ideas or in a sort of triumphantly earthy worship and adoration of his wife. She was a continual source of astonishment to him—the freshness and originality of her mind, her dynamic, clear-headed energy, and her unfailing good humor.
And Marcia’s co-workers in the nine-o’clock show, whither she had transferred her talents, were impressed with her tremendous pride in her husband’s mental powers. Horace they knew only as a very slim, tight-lipped, and immature-looking young man, who waited every night to take her home.
“Horace,” said Marcia one evening when she met him as usual at eleven, “you looked like a ghost standing there against the street lights. You losing weight?”
He shook his head vaguely.
“I don’t know. They raised me to a hundred and thirty-five dollars to-day, and——”
“I don’t care,” said Marcia severely. “You’re killing yourself working at night. You read those big books on economy——”
“Economics,” corrected Horace.
“Well, you read ’em every night long after I’m asleep. And you’re getting all stooped over like you were before we were married.”
“But, Marcia, I’ve got to——”
“No, you haven’t, dear. I guess I’m running this shop for the present, and I won’t let my fella ruin his health and eyes. You got to get some exercise.”
“I do. Every morning I——”
“Oh, I know! But those dumb-bells of yours wouldn’t give a consumptive two degrees of fever. I mean real exercise. You’ve got to join a gymnasium. ’Member you told me you were such a trick gymnast once that they tried to get you out for the team in college and they couldn’t because you had a standing date with Herb Spencer?”
“I used to enjoy it,” mused Horace, “but it would take up too much time now.”
“All right,” said Marcia. “I’ll make a bargain with you. You join a gym and I’ll read one of those books from the brown row of ’em.”
“‘Pepys’ Diary’? Why, that ought to be enjoyable. He’s very light.”
“Not for me—he isn’t. It’ll be like digesting plate glass. But you been telling me how much it’d broaden my lookout. Well, you go to a gym three nights a week and I’ll take one big dose of Sammy.”
Horace hesitated.
“Well——”
“Come on, now! You do some giant swings for me and I’ll chase some culture for you.”
So Horace finally consented, and all through a baking summer he spent three and sometimes four evenings a week experimenting on the trapeze in Skipper’s Gymnasium. And in August he admitted to Marcia that it made him capable of more mental work during the day.
“Mens sana in corpore sano ,” he said.
“Don’t believe in it,” replied Marcia. “I tried one of those patent medicines once and they’re all bunk. You stick to gymnastics.”
One night in early September while he was going through one of his contortions on the rings in the nearly deserted room he was addressed by a meditative fat man whom he had noticed watching him for several nights.
“Say, lad, do that stunt you were doin’ last night.”
Horace grinned at him from his perch.
“I invented it,” he said. “I got the idea from the fourth proposition of Euclid.”
“What circus he with?”
“He’s dead.”
“Well, he must of broke his neck doin’ that stunt. I set here last night thinkin’ sure you was goin’ to break yours.”
“Like this!” said Horace, and swinging onto the trapeze he did his stunt.
“Don’t it kill your neck an’ shoulder muscles?”
“It did at first, but inside of a week I wrote the quod erat demonstrandum on it.”
“Hm!”
Horace swung idly on the trapeze.
“Ever think of takin’ it up professionally?” asked the fat man.
“Not I.”
“Good money in it if you’re willin’ to do stunts like ’at an’ can get away with it.”
“Here’s another,” chirped Horace eagerly, and the fat man’s mouth dropped suddenly agape as he watched this pink-jerseyed Prometheus again defy the gods and Isaac Newton.
The night following this encounter Horace got home from work to find a rather pale Marcia stretched out on the sofa waiting for him.
“I fainted twice to-day,” she began without preliminaries.
“What?”
“Yep. You see baby’s due in four months now. Doctor says I ought to have quit dancing two weeks ago.”
Horace sat down and thought it over.
“I’m glad, of course,” he said pensively—“I mean glad that we’re going to have a baby. But this means a lot of expense.”
“I’ve got two hundred and fifty in the bank,” said Marcia hopefully, “and two weeks’ pay coming.”
Horace computed quickly.
“Including my salary, that’ll give us nearly fourteen hundred for the next six months.”
Marcia looked blue.
“That all? Course I can get a job singing somewhere this month. And I can go to work again in March.”
“Of course nothing!” said Horace gruffly. “You’ll stay right here. Let’s see now—there’ll
