The wrangle was insufferable. And the idea
came to Kedzie and Gilfoyle that children were one of the liabilities
of their own marriage. They were afraid of each other, now, as well
as of the world. If only they had not been in such haste to be
married! If only they could recall those hasty words!
Gilfoyle put out the lights--"because they draw the insects," he
said, but Kedzie thought that he was beginning to economize. He
was. Across the street they could see other heat-victims miserably
preparing for the night. They were careless of appearances.
In the back of the parlor was a window opening into a narrow
air-shaft. The one bedroom's one window opened on the same cleft.
If the curtain were not kept down the neighbors across the area
could see and be seen. If the window were left open they could be
heard; and when the curtain flapped in the occasional little puffs
of hot air, it gave brief glimpses of family life next door. That
family had a squalling child, too. Somewhere above, a rickety
phonograph was at work; and somewhere below, a piano was being
mauled; and somewhere else a ukelele was being thumped and a
doleful singer was snarling "The Beach at Waikiki." This racket
was their only epithalamium. It was more like the "chivaree" with
which ironic crowds tormented bridal couples back in Nimrim, Mo.
Gilfoyle was poet enough to enjoy a little extra doldrums at what
might have made a longshoreman peevish. He mopped sweat and fanned
himself with a newspaper till he grew frantic.
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