"
"She is quiet and hard to get acquainted with at first, but that is
reserve. She's not forward like most young girls nowadays. She's the
kind of a child that would rather sit upstairs evenings with a book or
her sewing than here in the lobby. She's there now."
"Give me that kind every time, in preference to all these gay young
chickens that know more they oughtn't to know about life before they
start than my little mother did when she finished."
"But do you think that girl will go to bed before I come up? Not a bit
of it. She's been my comforter and my salvation in my troubles. More
like the mother, I sometimes tell her, and me the child. If you want me,
Louis, it's got to be with her too. I couldn't give up my baby--not my
baby."
"Why, Carrie, have your baby to your heart's content. She's got to be a
fine girl to have you for a mother and now it will be my duty to please
her as a father. Carrie will you have me?"
"Oh, Louis--Loo!"
"Carrie, my dear!"
And so it was that Carrie Samstag and Louis Latz came into their
betrothal.
None the less, it was with some misgivings and red lights burning high
on her cheek-bones that Mrs. Samstag, at just after ten that evening,
turned the knob of the door that entered into her little sitting-room,
but in this case, a room redeemed by an upright piano with a green silk
and gold-lace shaded floor lamp glowing by it.
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