“Have you your bird?” asked the waitress, laying aside her apron and folding the copy of
“I’m very fond of
“My father went to Eton with Gladstone,” the elderly waitress said. “And now I am ready.”
She had donned a coat and stood ready, her apron, her steel-rimmed spectacles in their worn black morocco case, her copy of
“Have you no hat?” asked Scripps.
“No.”
“Then I will buy you one,” Scripps said tenderly.
“It will be your wedding gift,” the elderly waitress said. Again there were tears shone in her eyes.
“And now let us go,” Scripps said.
The elderly waitress came out from behind the counter, and together, hand in hand, they strode out into the night.
Inside the beanery the black cook pushed up the wicket and looked through from the kitchen. “Dey’ve gone off,” he chuckled. “Gone off into de night. Well, well, well.” He closed the wicket softly. Even he was a little impressed.
Half an hour later Scripps O’Neil and the elderly waitress returned to the beanery as man and wife. The beanery looked much the same. There was the long counter, the salt cellars, the sugar containers, the catsup bottle, the Worcestershire Sauce bottle. There was the wicket that led into the kitchen. Behind the counter was the relief waitress. She was a buxom, jolly-looking girl, and she wore a white apron. At the counter, reading a Detroit paper, sat a drummer. The drummer was eating a T-bone steak and hashed-brown potatoes. Something very beautiful had happened to Scripps and the elderly waitress. Now they were hungry. They wished to eat.
The elderly waitress looking at Scripps. Scripps looking at the elderly waitress. The drummer reading his paper and occasionally putting a little catsup on his hashed-brown potatoes. The other waitress, Mandy, back of the counter in her freshly starched white apron. The frost on the windows. The warmth inside. The cold outside. Scripps’s bird, rather rumpled now, sitting on the counter and preening his feathers.
“So you’ve come back,” Mandy the waitress said. “The cook said you had gone out into the night.”
The elderly waitress looked at Mandy, her eyes brightened, her voice calm and now of a deeper, richer timbre.
“We are man and wife now,” she said kindly. “We have just been married. What would you like to eat for supper, Scripps, dear?”
“I don’t know,” Scripps said. He felt vaguely uneasy. Something was stirring within him.
“Perhaps you have eaten enough of the beans, dear Scripps,” the elderly waitress, now his wife, said. The drummer looked up from his paper. Scripps noticed that it was the Detroit
“That’s a fine paper you’re reading,” Scripps said to the drummer.
“It’s a good paper, the
“Yes,” Mrs. Scripps said; “we are man and wife now.”
“Well,” said the drummer, “that’s a mighty fine thing to be. I’m a married man myself.”
“Are you?” said Scripps. “My wife left me. It was in Mancelona. “
“Don’t let’s talk of that any more, Scripps, dear,” Mrs. Scripps said. “You’ve told that story so many times.”
“Yes, dear,” Scripps agreed. He felt vaguely mistrustful of himself. Something, somewhere was stirring inside of him. He looked at the waitress called Mandy, standing robust and vigorously lovely in her newly starched white apron. He watched her hands, healthy, calm, capable hands, doing the duties of her waitresshood.
“Try one of these T-bones with hashed-brown potatoes,” the drummer suggested. “They got a nice T-bone here.”
“Would you like one, dear?” Scripps asked his wife.
“I’ll just take a bowl of milk and crackers,” the elderly Mrs. Scripps said. “You have whatever you want, dear.”
“Here’s your crackers and milk, Diana,” Mandy said, placing them on the counter. “Do you want a T-bone, sir?”
“Yes,” Scripps said. Something stirred again within him.
“Well done or rare?”
“Rare, please.”
The waitress turned and called into the wicket: “Tea for one. Let it go raw!”