Chapter 31

Martin had encountered his sister Gertrude by chance on Broadway — as it proved, a most propitious yet disconcerting chance. Waiting on the corner for a car, she had seen him first, and noted the eager, hungry lines of his face and the desperate, worried look of his eyes. In truth, he was desperate and worried. He had just come from a fruitless interview with the pawnbroker, from whom he had tried to wring an additional loan on his wheel. The muddy fall weather having come on, Martin had pledged his wheel some time since and retained his black suit.

“There’s the black suit,” the pawnbroker, who knew his every asset, had answered. “You needn’t tell me you’ve gone and pledged it with that Jew, Lipka. Because if you have — “

The man had looked the threat, and Martin hastened to cry:-

“No, no; I’ve got it. But I want to wear it on a matter of business.”

“All right,” the mollified usurer had replied. “And I want it on a matter of business before I can let you have any more money. You don’t think I’m in it for my health?”

“But it’s a forty-dollar wheel, in good condition,” Martin had argued. “And you’ve only let me have seven dollars on it. No, not even seven. Six and a quarter; you took the interest in advance.”

“If you want some more, bring the suit,” had been the reply that sent Martin out of the stuffy little den, so desperate at heart as to reflect it in his face and touch his sister to pity.

Scarcely had they met when the Telegraph Avenue car came along and stopped to take on a crowd of afternoon shoppers. Mrs. Higginbotham divined from the grip on her arm as he helped her on, that he was not going to follow her. She turned on the step and looked down upon him. His haggard face smote her to the heart again.

“Ain’t you comin’?” she asked

The next moment she had descended to his side.

“I’m walking — exercise, you know,” he explained.

“Then I’ll go along for a few blocks,” she announced. “Mebbe it’ll do me good. I ain’t ben feelin’ any too spry these last few days.”

Martin glanced at her and verified her statement in her general slovenly appearance, in the unhealthy fat, in the drooping shoulders, the tired face with the sagging lines, and in the heavy fall of her feet, without elasticity — a very caricature of the walk that belongs to a free and happy body.

“You’d better stop here,” he said, though she had already come to a halt at the first corner, “and take the next car.”

“My goodness! — if I ain’t all tired a’ready!” she panted. “But I’m just as able to walk as you in them soles. They’re that thin they’ll bu’st long before you git out to North Oakland.”

“I’ve a better pair at home,” was the answer.

“Come out to dinner to-morrow,” she invited irrelevantly. “Mr. Higginbotham won’t be there. He’s goin’ to San Leandro on business.”

Martin shook his head, but he had failed to keep back the wolfish, hungry look that leapt into his eyes at the suggestion of dinner.