Torchy, Private Sec.

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Aunty shrugs her shoulders. "Please remember," says she, "that I am not
making social distinctions. I merely recognize those which exist. You
must not hold me responsible for----"

"Oh, Aunty," breaks in Vee, trippin' into our corner impulsive, "we've
forgotten the tea things. I must go out and find a store and get them at
once. Mayn't Torchy come to carry the bundles?"

"Yes," says Aunty; "but I think I will go also, to be sure you order the
right things."

Think of carryin' round a disposition like that! She trails right along
with us too, and just to make the trip int'restin' for her I strikes for
Eighth-ave. through one of them messy cross streets where last week's
snow piles and garbage cans was mixed careless along the curb.

"What a wretched district!" complains Aunty.

"I thought you wanted to get to the nearest grocery," says I. "Hello!
Here's one of the Wiggins chain. How about patronizin' this?"

It's one of them cheap, cut-rate joints, you know, with the windows
plastered all over with daily bargain hints,--"Three pounds of
Wiggins's best creamery butter for 97 cents--to-day only," "Canned
corn, 6 cents--our big Monday special," and so on. Aunty sniffs a bit,
but fin'lly decides to take a chance and sails in in all her grandeur.
The one visible clerk was busy waitin' on lady customers, one with a
shawl over her head and the other luggin' a baby on her hip. So Aunty
raps impatient on the counter.

At that out from behind a stack of Wiggins's breakfast food boxes
appears a middle-aged gent strugglin' into a blue jumper three sizes too
small for him. He's kind of heavy built and slow movin' for an average
grocery clerk, and he's wearin' gold-rimmed specs; but when Aunty
proceeds to cross-examine him about his stock of tea he sure showed he
was onto his job. He seems to know about every kind of tea ever grown,
and produces samples of the best he has in the shop.

Aunty was watchin' him casual as he weighs out a couple of pounds, when
all of a sudden she unlimbers her long-handled glasses and takes a
closer look. "My good man," says she, "haven't I seen you somewhere
before?"

"Oh, yes," says he, scoopin' a pinch off the scales so they'd register
exactly to the quarter ounce.

"In some other store, perhaps?" says she.

"I think not," says he.

"Then where?" asks Aunty.

"Cooperstown," says he, reachin' for a paper bag and shootin' the tea in
skillful. "Anything more, Madam?"

"Cooperstown!" echoes Aunty. "Why, I haven't been there since I was a
girl."

"Yes, I know," says he. "You didn't even finish at high school. Cut
sugar, did you say, Madam?"

"A box," says Aunty, starin' puzzled. "Perhaps you attended the same
school?"

He nods.

"Oh, I seem to remember now," says she. "Aren't you the one they
called--er---- What was it you were called?"

"Woodie," says he. "Will you have lemons too? Fresh Floridas."

"Two dozen," says Aunty. "Well, well! You used to ask me to skate with
you on the lake, didn't you?"

"When my courage was running high," says he. "Sometimes you would; but
more often you wouldn't. I lived at the wrong end of town, you know."

"In the Hollow, wasn't it?" says she. "And there was something queer
about--about your family, wasn't there?"

He looks her straight in the eye at that, Woodie does. "Yes," says he.
"Mother went out sewing. She was a widow."

"Oh!" says Aunty. "I recall your skates--those funny old wooden-topped
ones, weren't they?"

"I was lucky to have those," says he.

"Hm-m-m!" muses Aunty. "But you could skate very well. You taught me the
Dutch roll. I remember now. Then there was the night we had the big
bonfire on the ice."

Woodie lets on not to hear this last, but grabs a sales slip and gets
busy jottin' down items.

I nudges Vee, and she smothers a snicker. We was enjoyin' this little
peek into their past. Could you have guessed it? Aunty! She orders six
loaves of sandwich bread and asks to see the canned caviar.

"You've never found anything better to do," she goes on, "than--than
this?"

"No," says Woodie, on his way down from the top shelf.

Once more Aunty levels her lorgnette and gives him the cold, curious
look over. "Hm-m-mff!" says she through her aristocratic nose. "I must
say that as a boy you were presuming enough."

"I got over that," says he.

"So I should hope," says she. "You manage to make a living at this sort
of thing, I suppose?"

"In a way," says he.

"You've no family, I trust?" says Aunty.

"There are six of us all told," admits Woodie humble.

"Good heavens!" she gasps. "But I presume some of them are able to help
you?"

"A little," says Woodie.

"Think of it!" says Aunty. "Six! And on such wages! Are any of them
girls?"

"Two," says he.

"I must send you some of my niece's discarded gowns," says Aunty
impulsive. "You are not a drinking man, are you?"

"Not to excess, Madam," says Woodie.

"How you can afford to drink at all is beyond me," says she. "Or even
eat! Yet you are rather stout. I've no doubt, though, that plain food is
best. But you show your age."

"I know," says he, smoothin' one hand over his bald spot. "Anything else
to-day?"

There's just a hint of an amused flicker behind the glasses that makes
Aunty glare at him suspicious for a second. "No," says she. "Put all
those things in two stout bags and tie them carefully."

"Yes, Madam," says Woodie.

He was doin' it too, when the other clerk steps up, salutes him polite,
and says: "You're wanted at the telephone, Sir."

"Tell them to hold the wire," says Woodie.

We was still tryin' to dope that out when a big limousine rolls up in
front of the store, out hops a footman in livery, walks in to Woodie
with his cap in his hand, and holds out a bunch of telegrams.

"From the office, Sir," says he.

"Wait," says Woodie, wavin' him one side.

Now was them any proper motions for a grocery clerk to be goin' through?
I leave it to you. Vee is watchin' with her nose wrinkled up, like she
always does when anything stumps her; and me, I was just starin'
open-faced and foolish. I couldn't get the connection at all. But Aunty
ain't one to stand gaspin' over a mystery while her tongue's still
workin'.

"Whose car is that?" she demands.

Woodie slips the string from between his front teeth, puts a double knot
scientific on the end of the package, and peers over his glasses out
through the door. "That?" says he. "Oh, that's mine."

"Yours!" comes back Aunty. "And--and this store too?"

"Oh, yes," says he.

"Then--then your name is Wiggins?" she goes on.

"Yes," says he. "Don't you remember,--Woodie Wiggins?"

"I'd forgotten," says Aunty. "And all the other stores like this--how
many of them have you?"

"Something less than a hundred," says he. "Ninety-six or seven, I
think."

Most got Aunty's breath, that did; but in a jiffy she's recovered.
"Perhaps," says she, "you don't mind telling me the reason for this
masquerade?"

"It's not quite that," says Wiggins. "I try to keep in touch with all my
places. In making my rounds to-day I found my local manager here too ill
to be at work. Bad case of grip. So I sent him home, telephoned for a
substitute, and while waiting took off my coat and filled in. Fortunate
coincidence, wasn't it?--for it gave me the pleasure of serving you."

"You mean," cuts in Aunty, "that it gave you the opportunity of making
me appear absurd. Those gowns I promised to send!"

Wiggins grins good natured. "Is this the niece you mentioned?" says he.

Aunty admits that it is, and introduces Vee.

Then Wiggins looks inquirin' at me. "Your son?" he asks.

And you should have seen Aunty's face pink up at that. "Certainly not!"
says she.

"Oh!" says Woodie, screwin' up one corner of his mouth and tippin' me
the wink.

I knew if I got a look at Vee I'd have to haw-haw; so I backs around
with one hand behind me and we swaps a finger squeeze.

Then Aunty jumps in with the quick shift. She asks him patronizin' if
he finds the grocery business int'restin'. He admits that he does.

"How odd!" says Aunty. "But I presume that you hope to retire very
soon?"

"Eh?" says he. "Quit the one thing I can do best? Why?"

"But surely," she goes on, "you can hardly find such a business
congenial. It is so--so--well, so petty and sordid?"

"Is it, though?" says Wiggins. "With more than five thousand employees
on my payroll and a daily expense bill running well over thirty
thousand, I find it far from petty. Anyway, it keeps me hustling. I used
to think I was a hard worker too, when I had my one little general store
at Smiths Corners."

"And now you've nearly a hundred stores!" says Aunty. "How did you do
it?"

"I was kicked into doing it, I guess," says Wiggins, smilin' grim. "The
manufacturers and jobbers, you know. They weren't willing to allow me a
fair profit. So I had to go under or spread out. Well, I've
spread,--flour mills in Minnesota, canning factories from Portland,
Oregon, to Bridgeton, Maine, potato farms in Michigan and the Aroostook,
cracker and bread bakeries, creameries, raisin and prune
plantations,--all that sort of thing,--until gradually I've weeded out
most of the greedy middlemen who stood between me and my customers.
They're poor folks, most of 'em, and when they trade with me their slim
wages go further than in most stores. My ambition is to give them honest
goods at a five per cent. profit.

"If they all knew what was best for them, the Wiggins stores would soon
become a national institution, and I could hand it over to the federal
government; but they don't. If they did, I suppose they wouldn't be
working for wages. So my chain grows slowly, at the rate of two or three
stores a year. But every Wiggins store is a center for economic and
scientific distribution of pure food products. That's my job, and I find
it neither petty nor sordid. I can even get a certain satisfaction and
pride from it. Incidentally there is my five per cent. profit to be
made, which makes the game fascinating. Retire? Not until I've found
something better to do, and up to date I haven't."

Havin' got this off his mind and the parcels done up, Mr. Wiggins walks
back to answer the 'phone.

When he comes out again, in a minute or so, he's shucked the jumper and
is buttonin' himself into a mink-lined overcoat.

"As a rule," says he, "we do not deliver goods; but in this instance I
beg leave to make an exception. Permit me," and he waves toward the
limousine.

It's the first time too that I ever saw Aunty stunned for more than a
second or two at a stretch. She acts sort of dazed as he leads her out
to the car and helps stow Vee and me and the bundles before gettin' in
himself. Only when we pulls up in front of the studio buildin' does she
come to. She revives enough to tell Wiggins all about this noble young
Belgian sculptor and his wonderful work.

"Sculpture!" says Wiggins. "I'd like to see it."

And inside of three minutes Woodruff T. Wiggins, the chain grocery
magnate, is right where we'd been schemin' to get him. He inspects the
various groups of plaster stuff ranged around the studio, squintin' at
'em critical like he was a judge of such junk, and now and then he makes
notes on the back of an envelope.

Meanwhile Aunty explains all about the tea, namin' over some of the
swell dowagers that was goin' to act as patronesses, and invites him
cordial to drop around on the big day.

"Thanks," says he; "but I guess I'd better not. I'm still from the wrong
end of the town, you know. But here's a memorandum of four pieces I
should like done in bronze for my country house. And suppose I leave Mr.
Djickyns a check for five thousand on account. Will that do?"

Would it? Say, Aunty almost pats him fond on the cheek as she follows
him to the door.

Must have been something romantic about that bonfire episode back in
Cooperstown too; for she mellows up a lot durin' the next few minutes,
and when I fin'lly calls a taxi and tucks 'em all in she comes near
beamin' on me.

"Remember, young man," says she, "promptly at five on Wednesday."

"Wha-a-at?" says I.

"And be sure to wear your best frock coat," she adds as a partin' shot.

Do you wonder I stands gaspin' on the curb until after they've turned
the corner? Think of that from Aunty!

"Well?" says Mr. Robert, as I blows in about quittin' time. "Any new
quotations in sculpture?"

"If you think that's a merry jest," says I, "call up Aunty. Why, say,
before we get through with this tea stunt of hers that Djickyns party
will be runnin' his studio works day and night shifts and rebuildin'
Belgium! We're a great team, me and dear old Aunty. We've just found it
out."

CHAPTER XII

ZENOBIA DIGS UP A LATE ONE

And first off I had him listed in the joke column. Think of that! But
when I caught my first glimpse of him, there in the Corrugated gen'ral
offices that mornin', there was more or less comedy idea to his get-up;
the high-sided, flat-topped derby, for instance. Once in a while you run
across an old sport who still sticks to that type of hard-boiled lid.
Gen'rally they're short-stemmed old ginks who seem to think the high
crown makes 'em loom up taller. Maybe so; but where they find
back-number hats like that is beyond me.

Then there was the buff-cochin spats and the wide ribbon to his
eyeglasses. Beyond that I don't know as there was anything real freaky
about him. A rich-colored old gent he is, the pink in his cheeks shadin'
off into a deep mahogany tint back of his ears, makin' his frosted hair
and mustache stand out some prominent.

He'd been shown into the private office on a call for Mr. Robert; but as
I was well heeled with work of my own I didn't even glance up from the
desk until I hears this scrappy openin' of his.

"Bob Ellins, you young scoundrel, what the blighted beatitudes does this
mean!" he demands.

Naturally that gets me stretchin' my neck, and I turns just in time to
watch the gaspy expression on Mr. Robert's face fade out and turn into a
chuckle.

"Why, Mr. Ballard!" says he, extendin' the cordial palm. "I had no idea
you were on this side. Really! I understood, you know, that you were
settled over there for good, and that----"

"So you take advantage of the fact, do you, to make me president of one
of your fool companies?" says Ballard. "My imbecile attorney just let it
leak out. What do you mean, eh?"

Mr. Robert pushes him into a chair and shrugs his shoulders. "It was
rather a liberty, I admit," says he; "one of the exigencies of business,
however. When a meddlesome administration insists on dissolving into its
component parts such an extensive organization as ours--well, we had to
have a lot of presidents in a hurry. Really, we didn't think you'd mind,
Mr. Ballard, and we had no intention of bothering you with the details."

"Huh!" snorts Mr. Ballard. "And what is this precious corporation of
which I'm supposed to be the head?"

"Why, Mutual Funding," says Mr. Robert.

"Funding, eh?" comes back Ballard snappy. "What tommyrot! Bob Ellins,
you ought to know that I haven't the vaguest notion as to what funding
is,--never did,--and at my time of life, Sir, I don't propose to learn!"

"Of course, of course," says Mr. Robert, soothin'. "Quite unnecessary
too. You are adequately and efficiently represented, Mr. Ballard, by a
private secretary who has mastered the art of funding, mutual and
otherwise, until he can do it backward with one hand tied behind him.
Torchy, will you step here a moment?"

I was comin' too; but Mr. Ballard waves me off.

"Stop!" says he. "I'll not listen to a word of it. I'd have you know,
Bob Ellins, that I have worried along for sixty-two years without having
been criminally implicated in business affairs. The worst I've done has
been to pose as a dummy director on your rascally board and to see that
my letter of credit was renewed every three months. Use my name if you
must; but allow me to keep a clear conscience. I'm going in now for a
chat with your father, Bob, and if he mentions funding I shall stuff my
fingers in my ears and run. He won't, though. Old Hickory knows me
better. This his door? All right. Thanks. Hah, you old freebooter! In
your den, are you? Well, well!"

At which he stalks into the other office and leaves Mr. Robert and me
grinnin' at each other.

"Listened like you was in Dutch for a minute or so there," says I. "Case
of the cat comin' back, eh?"

"From Kyrle Ballard," says he, "one expects the unexpected. Only we need
not worry about his wanting to become the acting head of your
department. To-morrow or next week he is quite likely to be off again,
bound for some remote corner of the earth, to hobnob with the native
rulers thereof, participate in their games of chance, and invent a new
punch especially suitable for that particular climate."

"Gee!" says I. "That's my idea of a perfectly good boss,--one that gives
his job absent treatment."

I thought too that Mr. Robert had doped out his motions correct; for a
week goes by and no Mr. Ballard shows up to take the rubber stamp away
from me, or even ask fool questions. I was hopin' too that Ballard had
gone a long ways from here, accordin' to custom. Then one night--well,
it was at the theater, one of them highbrow Shaw plays that I was
chucklin' through with Aunt Zenobia.

Eh? Remember her, don't you? Why, she's one of the pair of aunts that I
got half adopted by, 'way back when I first started in with the
Corrugated. Yep, I've been stayin' on with 'em. Why not? Course our
little side street is 'way down in an old-fashioned part of the town;
the upper edge of old Greenwich village, in fact, if you know where that
is.

The house is one of a row that sports about the only survivin' specimens
of the cast-iron grapevine school of architecture. Honest, we got a
double-decked veranda built of foundry work that was meant to look like
leaves and vines, I expect. Cute idea, eh? Bein' all painted brick red,
though, it ain't so convincing but stragglin' over ours is a wistaria
that has a few sickly-lookin' blossoms on it every spring and manages to
carry a sprinklin' of dusty leaves through the summer. Also there's a
nine-by-twelve lawn, that costs a dollar a square foot to keep in shape,
I'll bet.

From that description maybe you'd judge that the place where I hang out
is a little antique. It is. But inside it's mighty comf'table, and it's
the best imitation of a home I've ever carried a latch-key to. As for
the near-aunts, Zenobia and Martha, take it from me they're the real
things in that line, even if they did let me in off the street without
askin' who or what! The best of it is they never have asked, which
makes it convenient. I couldn't tell 'em much, if they did.

There's Martha--well, she's the pious one. It ain't any case of sudden
spasms with her. It's a settled habit. She's just as pious Monday
mornin' as she is Sunday afternoon, and it lasts her all through the
week. You know how she started in by readin' them Delilah and Jona yarns
to me. She's kept it up. About twice a week she corners me and pumps in
a slice of Scripture readin', until I guess we must be more 'n half
through the Book. Course there's a lot of it I don't see any percentage
in at all; but I've got so I don't mind it, and it seems to give Aunt
Martha a lot of satisfaction. She's a lumpy, heavy-set old girl, Martha,
and a little slow; but the only thing that ain't genuine about her is
the yellowish white frontispiece she pins on over her own hair when she
dolls up for dinner.

But Zenobia--say, she's a diff'rent party! A few years younger than
Martha, Zenobia is,--in the early sixties, I should say,--and she's just
as active and up to date and foxy as Martha is logy and antique and
dull. While Martha is sayin' grace Zenobia is gen'rally pourin' herself
out a glass of port.

About once a week Martha loads herself into an old horse cab and goes
off to a meetin' of the foreign mission society, or something like
that; but almost every afternoon Zenobia goes whizzin' off in a taxi,
maybe to hear some long-haired violinist, maybe to sit on the platform
with Emma Goldman and Bouck White and applaud enthusiastic when the
established order gets another jolt. Just as likely as not too, she'll
bring some of 'em home to dinner with her.

Zenobia never shoves any advice on me, good or otherwise, and never asks
nosey questions; but she's the one who sees that my socks are kept
mended and has my suits sent to the presser. She don't read things to
me, or expound any of her fads. She just talks to me like she does to
anyone else--minor poets or social reformers--about anything she happens
to be int'rested in at the time,--music, plays, Mother Jones, the war,
or how suffrage is comin' on,--and never seems to notice when I make
breaks or get over my head.

A good sport Zenobia is, and so busy sizin' up to-day that she ain't got
time for reminiscin' about the days before Brooklyn Bridge was built.
And the most chronic kidder you ever saw. Say, what we don't do to Aunt
Martha when both of us gets her on a string is a caution! That's what
makes so many of our meals such cheerful events.

You might think, from a casual glance at Zenobia, with her gray hair and
the lines around her eyes, that she'd be kind of slow comp'ny for me,
especially to chase around to plays with and so on. But, believe me,
there's nothin' dull about her, and when she suggests that she's got an
extra ticket to anything I don't stop to ask what it is, but just gets
into the proper evenin' uniform and trots along willin'!

So that's how I happens to be with her at this Shaw play, and discussin'
between the acts what Barney was really tryin' to put over on us. The
first intermission was most over too before I discovers this ruddy-faced
old party in the back of Box A with his opera glasses trained steady in
our direction. I glances along the row to see if anyone's gazin' back;
but I can't spot a soul lookin' his way. After he's kept it up a minute
or two I nudges Aunt Zenobia.

"Looks like we was bein' inspected from the box seats," says I.

"How flatterin'!" says she. "Where?"

I points him out. "Must be you," says I, grinnin'.

"I hope so," says Zenobia. "If I'm really being flirted with, I shall
boast of it to Sister Martha."

But just then the lights go out and the second act begins. We got so
busy followin' the nutty scheme of this conversation expert who plots to
pass off a flower-girl for a Duchess that the next wait is well under
way before I remembers the gent in the box.

"Say, he's at it again," says I. "You must be makin' a hit for fair."

"Precisely what I've always hoped might happen,--to be stared at in
public," says Zenobia. "I'm greatly obliged to him, I'm sure. You are
quite certain, though, that it isn't someone just behind me?"

I whispers that there's no one behind her but a fat woman munchin'
chocolates and rubberin' back to see if Hubby ain't through gettin' his
drink.

"There! He's takin' his glasses down," says I. "Know the party, do you?"

"Not at this distance," says Zenobia. "No, I shall insist that he is an
unknown admirer."

By that time, though, I'd got a better view myself. And--say, hadn't I
seen them ruddy cheeks and that gray hair and them droopy eyes before?
Why, sure! It's what's-his-name, the old guy who blew into the
Corrugated awhile ago, my absentee boss--Ballard!

Maybe I'd have told Zenobia all about him if there'd been time; but
there wa'n't. Another flash of the lights, and we was watchin' the last
act, where this gutter-bred Pygmalion sprouts a soul. And when it's all
over of course we're swept out with the ebb tide, make a scramble for
our taxi, and are off for home. Then as we gets to the door I has the
sudden hunch about eats.

"There's a joint around on Sixth-ave.," says I, lettin' Aunt Zenobia in,
"where they sell hot dog sandwiches with sauerkraut trimmin's. I believe
I could just do with one about now."

"What an atrocious suggestion at this hour of the night!" says she.
"Torchy, don't you dare bring one of those abominations into the
house--unless you have enough to divide with me. About four, I should
say."

"With mustard?" says I.

"Heaps!" says she.

Three minutes later I'm hurryin' back with both hands full, when I
notices another taxi standin' out front. Then who should step out but
this Ballard party, in a silk hat and a swell fur-lined overcoat.

"Young man," says he, "haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

"Uh-huh," says I. "I'm your private sec."

"Wha-a-at?" says he. "My--oh, yes! I remember. I saw you at the
Corrugated."

"And then again at the show to-night," says I.

"To be sure," says he. "With a lady, eh?"

I nods.

"Lives here, doesn't she?" asks Ballard.

"Right again," says I. "Goin' to call?"

"Why," says he, "the fact is, young man, I--er--see here, it's Zenobia
Hadley, isn't it?"

"Preble," says I. "Mrs. Zenobia Preble."

"Hang the Preble part!" says he. "He's dead years ago. What I want to
know is, who else lives here?"

"Only her and Sister Martha and me," says I.

"Martha, eh?" says he. "Still alive, is she? Well, well! And Zenobia
now, is she--er--a good deal like her sister?"

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