“Yeah,” said John dryly.
From the beginning the old man’s tone had been touched with this note of dry disgust, yet somehow he gave the impression that he was secretly amused by Herbert’s chatter. For one thing, he made no move to depart. Instead, he had propped himself against the side of the open elevator door, and, his old arms folded loosely into the sleeves of the worn grey alpaca coat which was his “uniform”, he was waiting there with the stubborn little grin round his mouth as if he was enjoying the debate and was willing to prolong it indefinitely.
“So that’s the kind of guy you are?” said Herbert, stepping out of his neatly-pressed trousers and arranging them carefully on one of the hangers which he had taken from the locker. He hung the coat over the trousers and buttoned it. “Here I go and get you all fixed up and you run out on me. O.K., Pop.” His voice was now shaded with resignation. “I thought you was a real guy, but if you’re goin’ to walk out on a party after I’ve gone to all the trouble, I’ll have to look for somebody else.”
“Oh yeah?” said old John.
“Yeah,” said Herbert in the accent proper to this type of repartee. “I had you all doped out for a live number, but I see I picked a dead one.”
John let this pass without comment. Herbert stood for a moment in his socks and underwear, stiffening his shoulders, twisting, stretching, bending his arms upwards with tense muscular effort, and ending by scratching his head.
“Where’s old Organisin’ Hank?” Herbert said presently. “Seen him to-night?”
“Who?” said John, looking at him with a somewhat bewildered expression.
“Henry. He wasn’t at the door when I come in, and he ain’t down here. He’s gonna be late.”
“Oh!” The word was small but it carried a heavy accent of disapproval. “Say!” The old man waved a gnarled hand stiffly in a downward gesture of dismissal. “That guy’s a pain in the neck!” He spoke the words with the dry precision old men have when they try to “keep up with” a younger man by talking unaccustomed slang. “A pain in the neck!” he repeated. “No, I ain’t seen him to-night.”
“Oh, Hank’s all right when you get to know him,” said Herbert cheerfully. “You know how a guy is when he gets all burned up about somethin’—he gets too serious about it—he thinks everybody else in the world ought to be like he is. But he’s O.K. He’s not a bad guy when you get him talkin’ about somethin’ else.”
“Yeah!” cried John suddenly and excitedly, not in agreement, but by way of introduction to something he had just remembered. “You know what he says to me the other day? ‘I wonder what all the rich mugs in this house would do,’ he says, ‘if they had to get down and do a hard day’s work for a livin’ once in a while.’ That’s what he says to me! ‘And these old bitches’—yeah!” cried John, nodding his head angrily—“‘these old bitches,’ he says, ‘that I got to help in and out of cars all night long, and can’t walk up a flight of stairs by themselves—what if they had to get down on their hands and knees and scrub floors like your mother and my mother did?’ That’s the way he goes on all the time!” cried John indignantly—“and him a-gettin’ his livin’ from the people in this house, and takin’ tips from them—and then talkin’ about them like he does!—Nah-h!” John muttered to himself and rapped his fingers on the wall. “I don’t like that way of talkin’! If he feels that way, let him get out! I don’t like that fellow.”
“Oh,” said Herbert easily and indifferently, “Hank’s not a bad guy, Pop. He don’t mean half of it. He’s just a grouch.”
By this time, with the speed and deftness born of long experience, he was putting on the starched shirt-front which was a part of his uniform on duty, and buttoning the studs. Stooping and squinting in the small mirror that was hung absurdly low on the wall, he said half-absently:
“So you’re goin’ to run out on me and the two blondes? You can’t take it, hunh?”
“Ah-h,” said old John with a return to his surly dryness, “you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I had more girls in my day than you ever thought of.”
“Yeah?” said Herbert.
“Yeah,” said John. “I had blondes and brunettes and every other kind.”
“Never had any red-heads, did you, Pop?” said Herbert, grinning. “Yeah, I had red-heads, too,” said John sourly. “More than you had, anyway.”
“Just a rounder, hunh?” said Herbert. “Just an old petticoat-chaser.”
“Nah-h, I ain’t no rounder or no petticoat-chaser. Hm!” John grunted contemptuously. “I’ve been a married man for forty years. I got grown-up children older’n you are!”