Our Mr. Wrenn: The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man Part 3

"'Me?' I says to her. 'Me? I'd pinch the harp and p.a.w.n it for ten growlers of Dutch beer and some man-sized rum!'"

"Hee, hee hee!" grinned Mr. Wrenn.

"Ha, ha, ha!" grumbled the bartender.

"Well-l-l," yawned the ticket-taker, "the old woman'll be chasing me best pants around the flat, if she don't have me to chase, pretty soon. Guess I'd better beat it. Much obliged for the drink, Mr. Uh. So long, Jimmy."

Mr. Wrenn set off for home in a high state of exhilaration which, he noticed, exactly resembled driving an aeroplane, and went briskly up the steps of the Zapps' genteel but unexciting residence. He was much nearer to heaven than West Sixteenth Street appears to be to the outsider. For he was an explorer of the Arctic, a trusted man on the job, an a.s.sociate of witty Bohemians. He was an army lieutenant who had, with his friend the hawk-faced Pinkerton man, stood off bandits in an attack on a train. He opened and closed the door gaily.

He was an apologetic little Mr. Wrenn. His landlady stood on the bottom step of the hall stairs in a bunchy Mother Hubbard, groaning:

"Mist' Wrenn, if you got to come in so late, Ah wish you wouldn't just make all the noise you can. Ah don't see why Ah should have to be kept awake all night. Ah suppose it's the will of the Lord that whenever Ah go out to see Mrs. Muzzy and just drink a drop of coffee Ah must get insomina, but Ah don't see why anybody that tries to be a gennulman should have to go and bang the door and just rack mah nerves."

He slunk up-stairs behind Mrs. Zapp's lumbering gloom.

"There's something I wanted to tell you, Mrs. Zapp--something that's happened to me. That's why I was out celebrating last evening and got in so late." Mr. Wrenn was diffidently sitting in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Yes," dryly, "Ah noticed you was out late, Mist' Wrenn."

"You see, Mrs. Zapp, I--uh--my father left me some land, and it's been sold for about one thousand plunks."

" Ah'm awful' glad, Mist' Wrenn," she said, funereally. "Maybe you'd like to take that hall room beside yours now. The two rooms'd make a nice apartment." (She really said "nahs 'pahtmun', "you understand.)

"Why, I hadn't thought much about that yet." He felt guilty, and was profusely cordial to Lee Theresa Zapp, the factory forewoman, who had just thumped down-stairs.

Miss Theresa was a large young lady with a bust, much black hair, and a handsome disdainful discontented face. She waited till he had finished greeting her, then sniffed, and at her mother she snarled:

"Ma, they went and kept us late again to-night. I'm getting just about tired of having a bunch of Jews and Yankees think I'm a n.i.g.g.e.r. Uff! I hate them!"

"T'resa, Mist' Wrenn's just inherited two thousand dollars, and he's going to take that upper hall room." Mrs. Zapp beamed with maternal fondness at the timid lodger.

But the gallant friend of Pinkertons faced her--for the first time. "Waste his travel-money?" he was inwardly exclaiming as he said:

"But I thought you had some one in that room. I heard som--"

"That fellow! Oh, he ain't going to be perm'nent. And he promised me--So you can have--"

"I'm _awful_ sorry, Mrs. Zapp, but I'm afraid I can't take it.

Fact is, I may go traveling for a while."

"Co'se you'll keep your room if you do, Mist' Wrenn?"

"Why, I'm afraid I'll have to give it up, but--Oh, I may not be going for a long long while yet; and of course I'll be glad to come--I'll want to come back here when I get back to New York.

I won't be gone for more than, oh, probably not more than a year anyway, and--"

"And Ah thought you said you was going to be perm'nent!" Mrs.

Zapp began quietly, prefatory to working herself up into hysterics. "And here Ah've gone and had your room fixed up just for you, and new paper put in, and you've always been talking such a lot about how you wanted your furniture arranged, and Ah've gone and made all mah plans--"

Mr. Wrenn had been a shyly paying guest of the Zapps for four years. That famous new paper had been put up two years before.

So he spluttered: "Oh, I'm _awfully_ sorry. I wish--uh--I don't--"

"Ah'd _thank_ you, Mist' Wrenn, if you could _conveniently_ let me _know_ before you go running off and leaving me with empty rooms, with the landlord after the rent, and me turning away people that 'd pay more for the room, because Ah wanted to keep it for you. And people always coming to see you and making me answer the door and--"

Even the rooming-house worm was making small worm-like sounds that presaged turning. Lee Theresa snapped just in time, "Oh, cut it out, Ma, will you!" She had been staring at the worm, for he had suddenly become interesting and adorable and, incidentally, an heir. "I don't see why Mr. Wrenn ain't giving us all the notice we can expect. He said he mightn't be going for a long time."

"Oh!" grunted Mrs. Zapp. "So mah own flesh and blood is going to turn against me!"

She rose. Her appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs with a train of sighs.

Mr. Wrenn looked as though sudden illness had overpowered him.

But Theresa laughed, and remarked: "You don't want to let Ma get on her high horse, Mr. Wrenn. She's a bluff."

With much billowing of the lower, less stiff part of her garments, she sailed to the cloudy mirror over the magazine-filled bookcase and inspected her cap of false curls, with many prods of her large firm hands which flashed with Brazilian diamonds. Though he had heard the word "puffs,"

he did not know that half her hair was false. He stared at it. Though in disgrace, he felt the honor of knowing so ample and rustling a woman as Miss Lee Theresa.

"But, say, I wish I could 've let her know I was going earlier, Miss Zapp. I didn't know it myself, but it does seem like a mean trick. I s'pose I ought to pay her something extra."

"Why, child, you won't do anything of the sort. Ma hasn't got a bit of kick coming. You've always been awful nice, far as I can see." She smiled lavishly. "I went for a walk to-night....

I wish all those men wouldn't stare at a girl so. I'm sure I don't see why they should stare at me."

Mr. Wrenn nodded, but that didn't seem to be the right comment, so he shook his head, then looked frightfully embarra.s.sed.

"I went by that Armenian restaurant you were telling me about, Mr. Wrenn. Some time I believe I'll go dine there." Again she paused.

He said only, "Yes, it is a nice place."

Remarking to herself that there was no question about it, after all, he _was_ a little fool, Theresa continued the siege.

"Do you dine there often?"

"Oh yes. It is a nice place."

"Could a lady go there?"

"Why, yes, I--"

"Yes!"

"I should think so," he finished.

"Oh!... I do get so awfully tired of the greasy stuff Ma and Goaty dish up. They think a big stew that tastes like dish-water is a dinner, and if they do have anything I like they keep on having the same thing every day till I throw it in the sink. I wish I could go to a restaurant once in a while for a change, but of course--I dunno's it would be proper for a lady to go alone even there. What do you think? Oh dear!"

She sat brooding sadly.

He had an inspiration. Perhaps Miss Theresa could be persuaded to go out to dinner with him some time. He begged:

"Gee, I wish you'd let me take you up there some evening, Miss Zapp."

"Now, didn't I tell you to call me 'Miss Theresa'? Well, I suppose you just don't want to be friends with me. n.o.body does." She brooded again.