"Who wants to know?"
"I do. I'm the girl he's engaged to."
"Oh, no. He won't work here no more. I fired him this morning for robbing the cash register."
Here was humor. Dot recognized but did not welcome it.
"Did he leave?" she inquired.
"No, I'm telling you I fired him."
Dot hung up the receiver after having said thank you. One would never discover from this feeble wit whether Eddie had quit his job or was still there. This was the sort of man who is convulsed at the mention of twins and who slips castor oil into his friends' coffee cups.
Dot went back to Edna's. She had left the door unlatched, and quietly she walked down the hall to the living-room. In the kitchen, Edna was chastising her son.
"And if you ever do it again I'll give you another slap. The idea! A whole pound of butter! Do you think butter grows on trees? I told you to put a piece of butter in the frying-pan."
"Well, that was a piece, Ma."
"And no back talk either. The idea!"
In fact it seemed that the idea was the thing which irritated Edna more than anything else, the principle of the thing, as it were.
In pursuit of a tablecloth, she came into the living-room. Dot was sitting at the window staring out at the clothes lines heavy with frolicsome white shapes.
"Can you beat that?" demanded Edna. "A whole pound of butter the kid throws into the frying-pan."
Dot had gathered as much. She turned and offered a horrified shake of her head in comment.
"The whole pound. I wasn't watching him, and before I knew it, it's all melted. Did you get Eddie?"
"No."
