So Kerner
disinherited his father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived
on sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner. Farroni had the
artistic soul and a line of credit for painters and poets, nicely
adjusted. Sometimes Kerner sold a picture and bought some new
tapestry, a ring and a dozen silk cravats, and paid Farroni two
dollars on account.
One evening Kerner had me to dinner with himself and the factory
girl. They were to be married as soon as Kerner could slosh paint
profitably. As for the ex-father's two millions--pouf!
She was a wonder. Small and half-way pretty, and as much at her ease
in that cheap cafe as though she were only in the Palmer House,
Chicago, with a souvenir spoon already safely hidden in her shirt
waist. She was natural. Two things I noticed about her especially.
Her belt buckle was exactly in the middle of her back, and she didn't
tell us that a large man with a ruby stick-pin had followed her
up all the way from Fourteenth Street. Was Kerner such a fool? I
wondered. And then I thought of the quantity of striped cuffs and
blue glass beads that $2,000,000 can buy for the heathen, and I said
to myself that he was. And then Elise--certainly that was her name--
told us, merrily, that the brown spot on her waist was caused by
her landlady knocking at the door while she (the girl--confound the
English language) was heating an iron over the gas jet, and she hid
the iron under the bedclothes until the coast was clear, and there
was the piece of chewing gum stuck to it when she began to iron the
waist, and--well, I wondered how in the world the chewing gum came to
be there--don't they ever stop chewing it?
A while after that--don't be impatient, the absinthe drip is coming
now--Kerner and I were dining at Farroni's.
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