Mrs. Brauner nodded. ``Heilig was up at half-past four this morning,'' she said. ``He cleans out every morning and he moves everything twice a week.'' She had a round, honest face that was an inspiring study in simplicity, sense and sentiment.
``What a worker!'' was her husband's comment. ``So unlike most of the young men nowadays. If August were only like him!''
``You'd think Heilig was a drone if he were your son,'' replied Mrs. Brauner. She knew that if any one else had dared thus to attack their boy, his father would have been growling and snapping like an angry bear.
``That's right!'' he retorted with mock scorn. ``Defend your children! You'll be excusing Hilda for putting off Heilig next.''
``She'll marry him--give her time,'' said Mrs. Brauner. ``She's romantic, but she's sensible, too--why, she was born to make a good wife to a hard-working man. Where's there another woman that knows the business as she does? You admit on her birthdays that she's the only real helper you ever had.''
``Except you,'' said her husband.
``Never mind me.'' Mrs. Brauner pretended to disdain the compliment.
Brauner understood, however. ``We have had the best, you and I,'' said he.
``Arbeit und Liebe und Heim. Nicht wahr?'' Otto Heilig appeared in his doorway and greeted them awkwardly. Nor did their cordiality lessen his embarrassment. His pink and white skin was rosy red and his frank blue-gray eyes shifted uneasily. But he was smiling with eager friendliness, showing even, sound, white teeth.
``You are coming to see us to-morrow?'' asked Mrs. Brauner--he always called on Sunday afternoons and stayed until five, when he had to open shop for the Sunday supper rush.
``Why--that is--not exactly--no,'' he stammered. Hilda had told him not to come, but he knew that if he admitted it to her parents they would be severe with her. He didn't like anybody to be severe with Hilda, and he felt that their way of helping his courtship was not suited to the modern ideas. ``They make her hate me,'' he often muttered. But if he resented it he would offend them and Hilda too; if he acquiesced he encouraged them and added to Hilda's exasperation.
Mrs. Brauner knew at once that Hilda was in some way the cause of the break in the custom. ``Oh, you must come,'' she said.
``We'd feel strange all week if we didn't see you on Sunday.''
``Yes--I must have my cards,'' insisted Brauner. He and Otto always played pinochle; Otto's eyes most of the time and his thoughts all the time were on Hilda, in the corner, at the zither, playing the maddest, most romantic music; her father therefore usually won, poor at the game though he was. It made him cross to lose, and Otto sometimes defeated his own luck deliberately when love refused to do it for him.
``Very well, then--that is--if I can-- I'll try to come.''
Several customers pushed past him into his shop and he had to rejoin his partner, Schwartz, behind the counters. Brauner and his wife walked slowly home--it was late and there would be more business than Hilda and August could attend to. As they crossed Third Street Brauner said: ``Hilda must go and tell him to come.
This is her doing.''
``But she can't do that,'' objected Mrs. Brauner. ``She'd say it was throwing herself at his head.''
``Not if I send her?'' Brauner frowned with a seeming of severity. ``Not if I, her father, send her--for two chickens, as we're out?'' Then he laughed. His fierceness was the family joke when Hilda was small she used to say, ``Now, get mad, father, and make little Hilda laugh!''
