With a cheerfulness that was only conversation deep, we waited for Casey and finally ate supper without him.-The evening was enlivened somewhat by Babe's chatter of kindergarten doings; and was punctuated by certain pauses while steps on the sidewalk passed on or ended with the closing of another door than the Ryans'.-I fought the impulse to call up the police station, and I caught the eyes of the Little Woman straying unconsciously to the telephone in the hall while she talked of things remote from our inner thoughts.-Margaret Ryan is game, I'll say that.-We played cribbage for an hour or two, and the Little Woman beat me until finally I threw up my hands and quit.
"I can't stand it any longer, Mrs. Casey.-Do you think he's in jail, or just sulking at a movie somewhere?" I blurted.-"Forgive my butting in, but I wish you'd talk about it.-You know you can, to me.-Casey Ryan is a friend and more than a friend: he's a pet theory of mine-- a fad, if you prefer to call him that.
"I consider him a perfect example of human nature in its unhampered, unbiased state, going straight through life without deviating a hair's breadth from the viewpoint of youth.-A fighter and a castle builder; a sort of rough-edged Peter Pan.
Till he gums soft food and hobbles with a stick because the years have warped his back and his legs, Casey Ryan will keep that indefinable, bubbling optimism of spiritual youth.-So tell me all about him.-I want to know who has licked, so far; luxury or Casey Ryan."
The Little Woman laughed and picked up the cards, evening their edges with sensitive fingers that had not been manicured so beautifully when first I saw them.
"Well-sir," she drawled, making one word of the two and failing to keep a little twitching from her lips, "I think it's been about a tie, so far.-As a husband--Casey's a darned good bachelor."-Her chuckle robbed that statement of anything approaching criticism.-"Aside from his insisting on cooking breakfast every morning and feeding me in bed, forcing me to eat fried eggs and sour-dough hotcakes swimming in butter and honey--when I crave grapefruit and thin toast and one French lamb chop with a white paper frill on the handle and garnished with fresh parsley--he's the soul of consideration.-He wants four kinds of jam on the table every meal, when fresh fruit is going to waste.-He's bullied the laundryman until the poor fellow's reached the point where he won't stop if the car's parked in front and Casey's liable to be home; but aside from that, Casey's all right.
"After serving time in the desert and rustling my own wood and living on bacon and beans and sour-dough bread,-I'm perfectly willing to spend the rest of my life doing painless housekeeping with all the modern built-in features ever invented; and buying my bread and cakes and salads from the delicatessen around the corner.-I never want to see a sagebush again as long as I live, or feel the crunch of gravel under my feet.-I expect to die in French-heeled pumps and embroidered silk stockings and the finest, silliest silk things ever put in a show window to tempt the soul of a woman.-But it took just two weeks and three days to drive Casey back to his sour-dough can."
"He craved luxury more than you seemed to do," I remembered aloud.
"He did, yes.-But his idea of luxury is sitting down in the kitchen to a real meal of beans and biscuits and all the known varieties of jam and those horrible whitewashed store cookies and having the noise of the phonograph drowned every five minutes by a passing street car. Casey wants four movies a day, and he wants them all funny.-He brings home silk shirts with the stripes fairly shrieking when he unwraps them--and he has to be thrown and tied to get a collar on him.
"He will get up at any hour of the night to chase after a fire engine, and every whipstitch he gets pinched for doing something which is perfectly lawful and right in the desert and perfectly awful in the city.-You saw him," said the Little Woman, "to-day."-And she added wistfully, "It's the first time since we were married that he has ever talked back--to me.
"And you know," she went on, shuffling the cards and stopping to regard the joker attentively (though I am sure she didn't know what card she was looking at), "just chasing around town and doing nothing but square yourself for not playing according to the rules costs money without getting you anywhere.-Fifty-five thousand dollars isn't so much just to play with, in this town.
Casey's highest ambition now seems to be nickel disk wheels on a new racing car that can make the speed cops go some to catch him.
His idea of economy is to put six or seven thousand dollars into a car that will enable him to outrun a twenty-dollar fine!
"We have some money invested," she went on.-"We own this apartment house--and fortunately it's in my name.-So long as the housing problem continues critical, I think I can keep Casey going without spending our last cent."
"He did one good stroke of business," I ventured, "when he bought this place.-Apartment houses are good as gold mines these days."
