She was even wearier than she had been when she occupied
the outdoor apartment under the park bench where she spent her second
night in New York. She called that an "aparkment" and liked the pun
so well that she longed to tell her husband. But that would have
compelled the telling of her real name, and she did not know him
well enough for that yet. She found that she did not know him
well enough yet for an increasing number of things. She began to be
afraid to have him come home. What would he be like as a husband?
What would she be like as a wife? Those are all-important facts that
one is permitted to learn after the vows of perfection are sealed.
When Kedzie had rested awhile she grew braver and lonelier. She would
welcome almost any husband for companionship's sake. She resolved to
have Tom's dinner ready for him. She dragged herself down the stairs
and up the hill to the grocer's and the butcher's and bought the raw
material for dinner and breakfast.
She telephoned Gilfoyle at his office, gave him the address and
invited him to dine with "Mrs. Gilfoyle." She chuckled over the
romance of it, but he was harrowed with office troubles. Her ardor
was a trifle dampened by his voice, but she found new thrills in
the gas-stove, a most dramatic instrument to play. It frightened
her with every manifestation. She turned the wrong handles and got
bad odors from it, and explosions. She burned her fingers and
the chops.
She stared in dismay at the charred first banquet and then marched
her weary feet down the stairs again and up the hill again to
a delicatessen shop.
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