as up, and her hand where it hooked into Mr. Batch's elbow, was in
a vise that tightened with each block.

You who will mete out no other approval than that vouched for by the
stamp of time and whose contempt for the contemporary is from behind the
easy refuge of the classics, suffer you the shuddering analogy that
between Aspasia who inspired Pericles, Theodora who suggested the
Justinian code, and Gertie Slayback who commandeered Jimmie Batch, is a
sistership which rounds them, like a lasso thrown back into time, into
one and the same petticoat dynasty behind the throne.

True, Gertie Slayback's _mise en scene_ was a two-room kitchenette
apartment situated in the Bronx at a surveyor's farthest point between
two Subway stations, and her present state one of frequent red-faced
forays down into a packing-case. But there was that in her eyes which
witchingly bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. Hers was
actually the titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its
wings, that surrender can be so sweet.

Once she sat on the edge of the packing-case, dallying with a hammer,
then laid it aside suddenly, to cross the littered room and place the
side of her head to the immaculate waistcoat of Mr. Jimmie Batch,
red-faced, too, over wrenching up with hatchet-edge a barrel-top.

"Jimmie darling, I--I just never will get over your finding this place
for us."

Mr. Batch wiped his forearm across his brow, his voice jerking between
the squeak of nails extracted from wood.

"It was you, honey. You give me the to let ad. and I came to look,
that's all."

"Just the samey, it was my boy found it. If you hadn't come to look we
might have been forced into taking that old dark coop over on Simpson
Street."

"What's all this junk in this barrel?"

"Them's kitchen utensils, honey."

"Kitchen what?"

"Kitchen things that you don't know nothing about except to eat good
things out of."

"What's this?"

"Don't bend it! That's a celery-brush. Ain't it cute?"

"A celery-brush! Why didn't you get it a comb, too?"

"Ah, now, honey-bee, don't go trying to be funny and picking through
these things you don't know nothing about! They're just cute things I'm
going to cook something grand suppers in, for my something awful bad
boy."

He leaned down to kiss her at that. "Gee!"

She was standing, her shoulder to him and head thrown back against his
chest. She looked up to stroke his cheek, her face foreshortened.