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George Departs for Business

The Tale of a Suburbanite

By Charles Batell Loomis
(Author of "Cheerful Americans," "Minerva's Manoeuvres," Etc.)
(Copyright 1906 by Joseph B. Bowles.)

Cranfield is a pretty little park-like hamlet about 30 miles out of New York on the New Jersey & Suburban road.

Not very far from the station on one of the side streets is a smallish but comfortable white house, and in that white house with its honeysuckle completely covering the walls lives George Harlis, his wife Ellen Harlis, and their two children, Harry and Eleanor, whose ages are somewhere between 8 and 12.

George is in business in New York, and he is a good average American.

Ellen, his wife, is slight and pleasing-looking, and mentally she is more than a match for her well-meaning but irascible husband.

It is George's custom to take the 8:02 train for New York, and it is that habit that is one of the causes of the three gray hairs in the head of Ellen, his wife.

Behold the bedroom in which George and his wife are sleeping.
Outside the sky is dark and lowering, and it bids fair to be a rainy day.

A little silver traveling clock is ticking on the bureau.

It evidently has no alarm attachment, for it is 25 minutes past seven by it, and George and his wife are still peacefully sleeping, lulled thereto by the darkness and the heaviness of the autumn air.

The clock strikes the half-hour, and Mrs. Harlis wakes and looks at it.

"George! George!" she cries. "Hurry and get up! It is half-past seven. You'll miss your train."

A snore is the only response. George was up late the night before at the house of their next-door neighbors, the Chivvinses, and he is compressing eight hours' sleep into six.

"George! Breakfast must be ready. Get up."

Mrs. Harlis nudges George, and he rises wildly up to a sitting posture.

"What's happened?"

"You've overslept. That's all. Don't talk, but get dressed, unless you want to be sensible and take the 8:30."

"And have the old man sarcastic at my expense?" says George, jumping out of bed and emptying half the contents of the pitcher on the washstand and the rest on the floor.

"You might think you were office boy, instead of junior partner."

"If you're talking to me, I don't hear you," says George, vigorously splashing water into his ears and eyes.

"Where's that confounded towel?"

"Right in front of you, as usual."

George, his eyes full of water, snatches at the towel and pulls down the splasher.

"Oh, if you aren't a bull in a china shop when you're late," says Ellen.

"Why in the world didn't you call me at seven, anyhow? I'll have to get an alarm clock like I used to when I was a clerk."

HE SPRINTS ALONG.

"Like you used to is good. As you used to is better."

"Well, look here, if you think I have time for one of your grammar lessons, I haven't.

Where's my toothbrush?

Confound it all, there's never anything in place where I want it!"

"Take it out of the cup like a good little boy, and don't get blind because you're late."

"Whose fault is it I'm late?"

"Fault of the weather, dear. Really, bridge isn't good for your temper."

"Oh, I know I'm cross, but I haven't time to be anything different.

Good temper takes time.

Where's my collar button?"

"Now, George, do be original. Even if you are a suburbanite, don't go hunting for a collar button.

Here it is, where you put it.

I have to be head and hands and feet for you when you're late."

"Well, it's lucky you have the head and hands and feet.

I'm not kicking at you, but I wish I could get up at a seasonable hour for once in my life, and not have to gobble my breakfast and rush for the train like a man in a comic paper.

It's undignified."

"That's what I always say, dear. But if you'd talk less, you could hurry more.

It's twenty minutes to eight now, and the breakfast bell has rung."

"Well, that's a wonder. It would be just like Ann to have breakfast late, and make me miss my train in spite of my hurry. Makes me sick, the way she has of delaying breakfast."

"Well, but she hasn't done it this morning. There, now, here I am ready, and you're not. As it's Saturday day. I'm going to let the children sleep. It's a pity I'm not taking the train instead of you. I'll go down and get your coffee ready."

"That's all I'll have time for this morning. First thing you know I'll be down with dyspepsia. If only we had an alarm clock."

"I've been asking you to get one ever since we moved out here. Be sure to get one to-day."

"Well, run along, and don't delay me. Oh, hang it all."

"What's the matter now?"

"I didn't shave yesterday, and I've got to shave to-day. I look like the devil."

"No, dear, your eyebrows are too straight for that."

"Huh! Where's my razor?"

"In the usual place, my dear. I put it there every day."

"Oh, you're a wonder, aren't you?

That's what it is to be well brought up."

George is already lathering his face and rubbing it in, and while his wife goes down to expedite matters he begins to shave.

"Ellen! Ellen!

Never mind that train.

I've cut myself."

Ellen from downstairs says:

"I'm sorry, dear; but do you want me to go and tell them they needn't stop at Cranfield this morning?

There'll be others to take it, you know."

"By jipps, ten minutes of eight! But I will take it." (He looks at himself in the glass.) "Bleed! Go on bleeding.

Where's the absorbent cotton? Ellen, where's that confounded absorbent cotton? What are you doing downstairs, anyhow?"

"It's in the bathroom. Hurry, dear. I've broken your eggs in a cup and peeled your orange, and your coffee's getting cold."

George prances into the bathroom and upsets a bottle of arnica while he's getting the cotton.

"Can't you keep that coffee hot?

What do I want of a lot of cold coffee? I look fine now. Say, Ellen, I look fine with that absorbent cotton on."

Silence for two minutes, and then George rushes downstairs, three steps at a time, and, stepping over the back of his chair, seats himself.

"That's elegant, dear."

George has filled his mouth so he cannot speak, but he pantomimes eloquently, and looks at his watch.

"By jipps, I'll make it yet!"

He tastes his eggs and makes a face.

"These eggs are cold as a stone."

"They were warm when Ann brought them in, dear."

"Well, how many times have I told her not to bring them in till she hears my foot on the stairs? Breakfast ought to be something to look forward to, and it's a nightmare."

Ellen draws a long breath and says:

"If you got up at seven, you'd have time, dear."

"Suppose I need the sleep?"

"Take it at the other end."

"Well, when is a man to have a good time? Working all day in the city, evening's my only chance."

Ellen pushes her hands out at him.

"Eat, eat, dear. I want you to catch that train."

"Glad to get rid of me, eh?"

"Well, you're not lovely when you're in a hurry, you know."

George elevates his eyebrows and shrugs his shoulders. He looks narrowly at his wife.

"That coffee would have been all right, Ellen, if you hadn't poured it out so long ago. Well, good-by."

"Good-by, dear. Aren't you going to kiss me?"

"Not this morning, unless you catch me on the way to the train. Remind me to-night. Hold you in my lap, and kiss you—"

"Don't talk so.

Ann will hear you."

George laughs, leaves his napkin for his wife to fold, and rushes from the house with two minutes in which to make the equivalent of four city blocks. His hat in his hand, he sprints along, overtaking two other sprinters whose wives are throwing kisses to them from the front door.

Hurried as he is, he yet reflects that Ellen threw him no kiss, and he comes to the conclusion that he must be a bear.

As the three men make the two platforms of the last car, George pulls out his note book and writes down these items:

"One alarm clock.

One pound best chocolate mixed."

And then he slews and melts through the beautiful country to New York, and the office boy knows as well as if he had been told that George Harlis overslept.