“It’s Bras!” the children cried. “Hi, Bras! Hey, Bras!” In a moment they were pressing round him in a swarming horde, deafening the ears with their shrill cries, begging, shouting, tugging at his sleeves, doing everything they could to attract his attention, holding dirty little scraps of paper towards him, stubs of pencils, battered little note-books, asking him to sign his autograph.
He behaved with the spontaneous warmth and kindliness of his character. He scrawled his name out rapidly on a dozen grimy bits of paper, skilfully working his way along through the yelling, pushing, jumping group, and all the time keeping up a rapid fire of banter, badinage, and good-natured reproof:
“All right—give it here, then!...Why don’t you fellahs pick on somebody else once in a while?...Say, boy!” he said suddenly, turning to look down at one unfortunate child, and pointing an accusing finger at him—“What you doin’ aroun’ here again, to-day? I signed my name fer you at least a dozen times!”
“No sir, Misteh Crane!” the urchin earnestly replied. “Honest—not me!”
“Ain’t that right?” Nebraska said, appealing to the other children. “Don’t this boy keep comin’ back here every day?”
They grinned, delighted at the chagrin of their fellow petitioner. “Dat’s right, Misteh Crane! Dat guy’s got a whole book wit’ nuttin’ but yoeh name in it!”
“Ah-h!” the victim cried, and turned upon his betrayers bitterly. “What youse guys tryin’ to do—get wise or somep’n? Honest, Misteh Crane!”—he looked up earnestly again at Nebraska—“Don’t believe ‘em! I jest want yoeh ottygraph! Please, Misteh Crane, it’ll only take a minute!”
For a moment more Nebraska stood looking down at the child with an expression of mock sternness; at last he took the outstretched note-book, rapidly scratched his name across a page, and handed it back. And as he did so, he put his big paw on the urchin’s head and gave it a clumsy pat; then, gently and playfully, he shoved it from him, and walked off down the street.
The apartment where Nebraska lived was like a hundred thousand others in the Bronx. The ugly yellow brick building had a false front, with meaningless little turrets at the corners of the roof, and a general air of spurious luxury about it. The rooms were rather small and cramped, and were made even more so by the heavy, over-stuffed Grand Rapids furniture. The walls of the living-room, painted a mottled, rusty cream, were bare except for a couple of sentimental coloured prints, while the place of honour over the mantel was reserved for an enlarged and garishly tinted photograph of Nebraska’s little son at the age of two, looking straight and solemnly out at all comers from a gilded oval frame.
Myrtle, Nebraska’s wife, was small and plump, and pretty in a doll-like way. Her corn-silk hair was frizzled in a halo about her face, and her chubby features were heavily accented by rouge and lipstick. But she was simple and natural in her talk and bearing, and George liked her at once. She welcomed him with a warm and friendly smile and said she had heard a lot about him.
They all sat down. The child, who was three or four years old by this time, and who had been shy, holding on to his mother’s dress and peeping out from behind her, now ran across the room to his father and began climbing all over him. Nebraska and Myrtle asked George a lot of questions about himself, what he had been doing, where he had been, and especially what countries he had visited in Europe. They seemed to think of Europe as a place so far away that anyone who had actually been there was touched with an unbelievable aura of strangeness and romance.
“Whereall did you go over there, anyway?” asked Nebraska.
“Oh, everywhere, Bras,” George said—“France, England, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Italy—all over the place.”
“Well I’ll be dogged!”—in frank astonishment. “You sure do git aroun’, don’t you?”
“Not the way you do, Bras. You’re travelling most of the time.”
“Who—me? Oh, hell, I don’t git anywhere—just the same ole places. Chicago, St. Looie, Philly—I seen ‘em all so often I could find my way blindfolded!” He waved them aside with a gesture of his hand. Then, suddenly, he looked at George as though he were just seeing him for the first time, and he reached over and slapped him on the knee and exclaimed: “Well I’ll be dogged! Hot+ you doin’, anyway, Monkus?”
“Oh, can’t complain. How about you? But I don’t need to ask that. I’ve been reading all about you in the papers.”
“Yes, Monkus,” he said. “I been havin’ a good year. But, boy!”—he shook his head suddenly and grinned—“Do the ole dogs feel it!” He was silent a moment, then he went on quietly:
“I been up here since 1919—that’s seven years, and it’s a long time in this game. Not many of ‘em stay much longer. When you been shaggin’ flies as long as that you may lose count, but you don’t need to count—your legs’ll tell you.”