Why not again? Not for years had he tried it. Grim
poverty and mutual hatred had killed all that. But Ragsy and Kidd
were waiting for him to bring the dollar!
Mr. Peters took a surreptitiously keen look at his wife. Her formless
bulk overflowed the chair. She kept her eyes fixed out the window in
a strange kind of trance. Her eyes showed that she had been recently
weeping.
"I wonder," said Mr. Peters to himself, "if there'd be anything in
it."
The window was open upon its outlook of brick walls and drab, barren
back yards. Except for the mildness of the air that entered it might
have been midwinter yet in the city that turns such a frowning face
to besieging spring. But spring doesn't come with the thunder of
cannon. She is a sapper and a miner, and you must capitulate.
"I'll try it," said Mr. Peters to himself, making a wry face.
He went up to his wife and put his arm across her shoulders.
"Clara, darling," he said in tones that shouldn't have fooled a
baby seal, "why should we have hard words? Ain't you my own tootsum
wootsum?"
A black mark against you, Mr. Peters, in the sacred ledger of Cupid.
Charges of attempted graft are filed against you, and of forgery and
utterance of two of Love's holiest of appellations.
But the miracle of spring was wrought. Into the back room over the
back alley between the black walls had crept the Harbinger. It was
ridiculous, and yet-- Well, it is a rat trap, and you, madam and sir
and all of us, are in it.
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