Chapter XXXI

CHAPTER XXXI

Martin had encountered his sister Gertrude by chance on Broadway -
as it proved, a most propitious yet disconcerting chance. Waiting
on the corner for a car, she had seen him first, and noted the
eager, hungry lines of his face and the desperate, worried look of
his eyes. In truth, he was desperate and worried. He had just
come from a fruitless interview with the pawnbroker, from whom he
had tried to wring an additional loan on his wheel. The muddy fall
weather having come on, Martin had pledged his wheel some time
since and retained his black suit.

"There's the black suit," the pawnbroker, who knew his every asset,
had answered. "You needn't tell me you've gone and pledged it with
that Jew, Lipka. Because if you have - "

The man had looked the threat, and Martin hastened to cry:-

"No, no; I've got it. But I want to wear it on a matter of
business."

"All right," the mollified usurer had replied. "And I want it on a
matter of business before I can let you have any more money. You
don't think I'm in it for my health?"

"But it's a forty-dollar wheel, in good condition," Martin had
argued. "And you've only let me have seven dollars on it. No, not
even seven. Six and a quarter; you took the interest in advance."

"If you want some more, bring the suit," had been the reply that
sent Martin out of the stuffy little den, so desperate at heart as
to reflect it in his face and touch his sister to pity.

Scarcely had they met when the Telegraph Avenue car came along and
stopped to take on a crowd of afternoon shoppers. Mrs.
Higginbotham divined from the grip on her arm as he helped her on,
that he was not going to follow her. She turned on the step and
looked down upon him. His haggard face smote her to the heart
again.

"Ain't you comin'?" she asked

The next moment she had descended to his side.

"I'm walking - exercise, you know," he explained.

"Then I'll go along for a few blocks," she announced. "Mebbe it'll
do me good. I ain't ben feelin' any too spry these last few days."

Martin glanced at her and verified her statement in her general
slovenly appearance, in the unhealthy fat, in the drooping
shoulders, the tired face with the sagging lines, and in the heavy
fall of her feet, without elasticity - a very caricature of the
walk that belongs to a free and happy body.

"You'd better stop here," he said, though she had already come to a
halt at the first corner, "and take the next car."

"My goodness! - if I ain't all tired a'ready!" she panted. "But
I'm just as able to walk as you in them soles. They're that thin
they'll bu'st long before you git out to North Oakland."

"I've a better pair at home,"