she clean forgot to change his studs to a fresh shirt?  And, to make it worse, hadn’t she laid out a wrong color of socks with his lavender tie?  But had he been cross to her, as most men would of been?  Not for one second!  He’d simply joked her about it when she brought up his breakfast tray, just as he’d joked her to-night about her hands getting rough from the kitchen work.  And so forth and so forth!

The poor thing had got so dead for sleep by this time that she was merely babbling.  She’d probably of fallen over in her clothes if I hadn’t been there.  Anyway, I got her undressed and into bed.  She said Clyde’s goodnight song always rung in her ears till she slept.  It didn’t ring long this night.  She was off before I got out the door.  Darned if I hadn’t been kind of embarrassed by her talk, knowing it would never do for me to bust in with anything bordering on the vicious, such as suggesting that if Clyde now and then went into the kitchen and helped Baby Girl with the dishes it would make a very attractive difference in him.  I took another good look at his pictures in the parlour before I let myself out of the house.  He still looked good—­but hell!

I wrote Aunt Esther the same evening not to worry one minute about Vida’s happiness, because I wished we could all be as happy as she was.  All the same I took pains to go round to that boarding house a couple times more because it seemed like the girl’s happiness might have a bum foundation.  Darling Clyde was as merry and attentive as ever and Vida was still joyous.  I guess she kept joyous at her work all day by looking forward to that golden moment after dinner when her boy would sing Good night, good night, beloved—­he’d come to watch o’er her!  How that song did light her face up!

She confided to me one of these times that the funny men are always making jokes about how much it costs a woman for clothes, and she wondered why they didn’t make some of their old jokes about how much it costs for men’s clothes too.  She said I wouldn’t believe how much they had to lay out on Clyde’s clothes so he’d be sure to look right when a suitable opening occurred.  I could take the item of shirts alone that had to be made to order and cost seven-fifty each, to say nothing of collars and ties and suits from what Clyde said was the only tailor in New York that could dress a gentleman so he looked like one.  She said if these funny humourists could see what they spent on her clothes and what they had to spend on Clyde’s, she bet they’d feel mighty cheap.  She laughed like she had a bully joke on the poor things.

She was glad, too, for Clyde’s sake that a suitable opening was just about to occur any moment, because the poor chap said himself it was a dog’s life he was leading, with nothing much to do every day but go to the club and set round.  And how thankful she’d ought to be that he never drank—­the least bit of liquor made him ill—­and so many young men of his class nowadays drank to excess.