Wild oats

Spring on East Broadway

Spring on East Broadway. The air is winey, the heavens are radiant blue and full of fire. A sparrow chirps on the window-sill, fluttering before the milk-glass sign: “Doctor Rast.” Down toward the East the wet pavement is golden with sun, and through the splendor wades an ancient people on their way to work. For it is early morning; early April; the waters of river and bay flash about that shining floating city of towers; and, though the great Earth is buried beneath paving stone and brick and steel and granite, her mighty yearning exhales through the cool white air, and four million human beings are dazzled and smelted in the fires of Spring.

The big dark Doctor was shaving before a tiny wall-mirror over the kitchen wash tub. He was in shirt and trousers, and his face was white with lather. Nell had the oatmeal cooking on the hot stove, and glided here and there singing snatches of song. Her eager olive-tinted face was flushed, her brown eyes afire. The little boy David, now nearly three, tugged at her skirts.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

She swung him up in her arms and laughed in his beautiful face; for he was a rosy new boy-god, straight and breathing health, overrunning with virility.

“Well!” she shook him. “Well, Blinkers!”

“I’m not Blinkers--I’m Davy,” he said indignantly.

“You’re Blinkers!” she shook him again.

“I’m not--_you’re_ Blinkers!”

“Then give me a kiss.”

“No--I can’t love you.”

“Whom do you love?”

“Daddy!”

The Doctor danced up and down with joy.

“Mother,” he cried, “the boy has genius!”

“No, I haven’t,” said Davy, “I’ve got a new nose.”

The Mother and Father laughed, and looked at each other.

“Where?” Nell gave him a squeeze.

“Here!” he delicately touched his nose with one finger.

“And where did you get it?”

“I bought it.”

“Where?”

“I bought it in the store.”

“With what?” cried the Doctor.

“A dollar,” said Davy calmly.

“And who gave you a dollar, you rascal?”

“Mother gave me a dollar.” The little imagination was set at work, and the little lips poured a wild stream of words, a breathless recitation: “I got a dollar and I went to the store and I said give me a new nose, and I gave the man a dollar and he gave me a nose. Isn’t that funny? And then I went to another store, and what do you think happened?”

“What?” cried his parents.

Three times he told his story, winding up, “Isn’t that funny? And then I went to another store, and what do you think happened?”

Nell and the Doctor laughed till the tears came, for they were the Mother and the Father and only they shared the secret of the miracle.

Then Nell put the boy down, and while he capered with excitement, put a wooden bowl on a chair, filled it with cut vegetables, and gave him a chopper. He set to work with a will, chopping the vegetables, a tiny mite laboring like a man. He looked up.

“I’m a helper, Mother, I’m a helper!”

“Look,” said Nell, “he does it just as I do--scrapes round the side and chops in toward the center. Isn’t it wonderful?”

Truly it was Springtime; joy was in the air, and new life; and the Earth had her way with the stone city. That little kitchen, with its shafts of bright light through the window, sang like a clearing in a wilderness. And even as the Earth enfolded with love and tenderness her young buds, her song-stricken birds, her singing waters, even so this man and woman enfolded their living child.

“He is like a little bird,” said the Doctor, “so full of song; so fresh; so sweet. And like a little blossom.”

He went on and finished his dressing, and the boy toiled and sang aloud, and the Mother prepared breakfast. Then the Doctor touched Nell on her shoulder.

“Shall I tell you a secret, Mother?”