And he was older.  He was not far from forty, and his youth was gone.  He did not care for the little dishes Martie so happily prepared, the salads and muffins, the eggs “en cocotte” and “suzette.”  He wanted thick broiled steak, and fried potatoes, and coffee, and nothing else.  He slept late in the mornings, coming out frowsy-headed in undershirt and trousers to breakfast at ten or eleven, reading the paper while he ate, and scenting the room with thick cigar smoke.

Martie waited on him, interrupting his reading with her chatter.  She would sit opposite him, watching the ham and eggs vanish, and the coffee go in deep, appreciative gulps.

“How d’you feel, Wallie?”

“Oh, rotten.  My head is the limit!”

“Too bad!  More coffee?”

“Nope.  Was that the kid banging this morning?”

“My dear, he was doing it just for the time it took me to snatch the hammer away!  I was so sorry!”

“Oh, that’s all right.”  He would yawn.  “Lord, I feel rotten!”

“Isn’t it perhaps—­drinking and smoking so much, Wallace?” Martie might venture timidly.

“That has nothing to do with it!”

“But, Wallie, how do you know it hasn’t?”

“Because I do know it!”

He would return to his paper, and Martie to her own thoughts.  She would yawn stupidly, when he yawned, in the warm, close air.  Sometimes she went into the tumbled bedrooms and put them in order, gathering up towels and scattered garments.  But usually Wallace did not bathe until after his breakfast, and nothing could be done until that was over.  Equally, Martie’s affairs kitchenward were delayed; sometimes Wallace’s rolls were still warming in the oven when she put in Teddy’s luncheon potato to bake.  The groceries ordered by telephone would arrive, and be piled over the unwashed dishes on the table, the frying pan burned dry over and over again.

After Teddy and his mother had lunched, if Wallace was free, they all went out together.  He was devoted to the boy, and broke ruthlessly into his little schedule of hours and meals for his own amusement.  Or he and Martie went alone to a matinee.  But when he was playing in vaudeville, even if he lived at home, he must be at the theatre at four and at nine.  Often on Sunday afternoons he went out to meet his friends, to drift about the theatrical clubs and hotels, and dine away from home.

Then Martie would take Teddy out, happy times for both.  They went to the library, to the museums, to the aquarium and the Zoo.  Martie came to love the second-hand book-stores, where she could get George Eliot’s novels for ten cents each, a complete Shakespeare for twenty-five.  She drank in the passing panorama of the streets:  the dripping “L” stations, the light of the chestnut dealer, a blowing flame in the cold and dark, the dirty powder of snow blowing along icy sidewalks, and the newspapers weighted down at corner stands with pennies lying here and there in informal exchange.  Cold, rosy faces poured into the subway hoods, warm, pale faces poured out, wet feet slipped on the frozen rubbish of the sidewalks, little salesgirls gossiped cheerfully as they dangled on straps in the packed cars.