CHAPTER XI

A week after Bobs proposed to Sunny, Jinx, shining like the rising sun by an especially careful grooming administered by his valet, a flower adorning his lapel, and a silk hat topping his head, with a box of chocolates large enough to hold an Easter bonnet in his hand, and a smaller box of another kind in his vest pocket, presented himself at Jerry Hammond's studio. Flowers preceded and followed this last of Sunny's ardent suitors.

He was received by a young person arrayed in a pink pongee smock, sleeves rolled up, revealing a pair of dimpled arms, hair in distracting disorder, and a little nose on which seductively perched a blotch of flour, which the infatuated Jinx was requested to waft away with his silken handkerchief.

Sunny's cheeks were flushed from close proximity to that gas stove, and her eyes were bright with the warfare which she waged incessantly upon the aforesaid honourable stove. In the early days of her appearance at the studio--by the way, she had been domiciled there a whole month--Sunny's operations at the gas stove had had disastrous results. Her attempt to boil water by the simple device of turning on the gas, as she did the electric light was alarming in its odorous effects, but her efforts to blow out the oven was almost calamitous, and caused no end of excitement, for it singed her hair and eyebrows and scorched an arm that required the persistent and solicitous attention of her four friends, a doctor and the thoroughly agitated Hatton, on whose head poured the full vials of Jerry's wrath and blame. In fact, this accident almost drove Hatton to desert what he explained to Sunny was the "water wagon."

After that Sunny was strictly ordered by Jerry to keep out of the kitchen. Realising, however, that she could not be trusted on that score, he took half a day off from the office, and gave her a full course of instruction in the mysteries and works of said gas stove. It should be assumed therefore that by this time Sunny should have acquired at least a primary knowledge of the stove. Not so, however. She never lit the oven but she threw salt about to propitiate the oni (goblin) which she was sure had its home somewhere in that strange fire, and she hesitated to touch any of the levers once the fire was lit.

Most of the dishes created by Sunny were more or less under the eye of Hatton, but on this day Hatton had stepped out to the butcher's. Therefore Jinx's arrival was hailed by Sunny with appreciation and relief, and she promptly lead the happy fellow to the kitchen and solicited his advice. Now Jinx, the son of the plutocratic rich, had never been inside a kitchen since his small boyhood, and then his recollection of said portion of the house was of a vast white place, where tiles and marble and white capped cooks prevailed, and small boys were chuckled over or stared at and whispered about.

The dimensions of Sunny's kitchen were about seven by nine feet, and it is well to mention at this moment that the room registered 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Jinx weighed two hundred and forty-five pounds, stripped. His emotions, his preparations, his hurry to enter the presence of his charmer, to say nothing of a volcanic heart, all contributed to add to the heat and discomfort of the fat young man down whose ruddy cheeks the perspiration rolled. Jinx had come upon a mission that in all times in the history of the world, subsequent to cave days, has called for coolness, tact, and as attractive a physical seeming as it is possible to attain.

Sunny drew her friend along to that gas stove, kneeled on the floor, making room for him to kneel beside her--no easy "stunt" for a fat man--opened the lower door and revealed to him the jets on full blaze. Jinx shook his head. The problem was beyond him, but even as his head shook he sniffed a certain fragrant odour that stole directly to a certain point in Jinx's anatomy that Sunny would quaintly have designated as his "honourable insides." The little kitchen, despite its heat, contained in that oven, Jinx knew, that which was more attractive than anything the cool studio could offer. Seating himself heavily on a frail kitchen chair, which creaked ominously under his weight, Jinx awaited hopefully what he felt sure was soon to follow.

In due time Sunny opened the upper door of the oven, withdrew two luscious looking pans of the crispest brown rice cakes, plentifully besprinkled with dates and nuts and over which she dusted powdered sugar, and passing by the really suffering Jinx she transferred the pans to the window ledge, saying with a smile:

"When he are cool, I giving you one, Jinx."

Wiping her hands on the roller towel, she had Jinx pull the smock over her head, and revealed her small person in blue taffeta frock, which Jinx himself had had the honour of choosing for her. Unwillingly, and with one longing backward look at those cakes, Jinx followed Sunny into the studio. Here, removed from the intoxicating effects of that kitchen, Sunny having his full attention again, he came to the object of his call. Jinx sat forward on the edge of his chair, and his round, fat face looked so comically like the man in the moon's that Sunny could not forbear smiling at him affectionately.

"Ho! Jinx, how you are going to lig' those cake when he is getting cold."

Jinx liked them hot just as well. However, he was not such a gourmand that mere rice and date cakes could divert him from the purpose of his call. He sighed so deeply and his expression revealed such a condition of melancholy appeal that Sunny, alarmed, moved over and took his face up in her hand, examining it like a little doctor, head cocked on one side.

"Jinx, you are sick? What you are eat? Show me those tongue!"

"Aw, it's nothing, Sunny--nothing to do with my tongue. It's--it's--just a little heart trouble, Sunny."

"Heart! That are bad place be sick! You are ache on him, Mr. dear Jinx?"

"Ye-eh--some."

"I sawry! How I are sawry! You have see doctor."

"You're the only doctor I need."

Which was true enough. It was surprising the healing effects upon Jinx's aching heart of the solicitous and sympathetic hovering about him of Sunny.

"Oh, Jinx, I go at those telephone ride away, get him Mr. Doctor here come. I 'fraid mebbe you more sick than mebbe you know."

"No, no--never mind a doctor." Jinx held her back by force. "Look-a-here, Sunny, I'll tell you just what's the matter with my heart. I'm--I'm--in love!"

"Oh--love. I have hear those word bi-fore, but I have never feel him," said Sunny wistfully.

"You'll feel it some day all right," groaned Jinx. "And you'll know it too when you've got it."

"Ad Japan nobody--love. Thas not nize word speag ad Japan."

"Gosh! it's the nicest word in the language in America. You can't help speaking it. You can't help feeling it. When you're in love, Sunny, you think day and night and every hour and minute and second of the day of the same person. That's love, Sunny."

"Ah!" whispered Sunny, her eyes very bright and dewey, "I are _know_ him then!" And she stood with that rapt look, scarcely hearing Jinx, and brought back to earth only when he took her hand, and clung to it with both his own somewhat flabby ones.

"Sunny, I'm head over heels in love with you. Put me out of my misery. Say you'll be Mrs. Crawford, and you'll see how quickly this old bunged up heart of mine will heal."

"Oh, Jinx, you are ask _me_ to make marry wiz you?"

"You bet your life I am. Gosh! I've got an awful case on you, Sunny."

"Ho! I sawry I kinnod do thad to-day. I am not good ad my healt'. Axscuse me. Mebbe some odder day I do so."

"Any day will do. Any day that suits you, if you'll just give me your promise--if you'll just be engaged to me."

"Engaged?" Bobs had already explained to her what that meant, but she repeated it to gain time.

"Why, yes--don't they have engagements in Japan?"

"No. Marriage broker go ad girl's father and boy's father and make those marriage."

"Well, this is a civilised land. We do things right here. You're a lucky girl to have escaped from Japan. Here, in this land, we first get engaged, say for a week or month or even a year--only a short time will do for you and me, Sunny--and then, well, we marry. How about it?"

Sunny considered the question from several serious angles, very thoughtful, very much impressed.

"Jinx, I do nod like to make marriage, bi-cause thas tie me up wiz jos one frien' for hosban'."

"But you don't want more than one husband?"

Jinx remembered hearing somewhere that the Japanese were a polygamous nation, but he thought that only applied to the favoured males of the race.

"No--O thas very nize for Mormon man I am hear of, bud----"

"Not fit for a woman," warmly declared Jinx. "All I ask of you, Sunny, is that you'll promise to marry me. If you'll do that, you'll make me the happiest bug in these United States. I'll be all but looney, and that's a fact."

"I sawry, Jinx, but me? I kinnod do so."

Jinx relapsed into a state of the darkest gloom. Looking out from the depths of the big, soft overstuffed chair, he could see not a gleam of light, and presently groaned:

"I suppose if I weren't such a mass of flesh and fat, I might stand a show with you. It's hell to be fat, I'll tell the world."

"Jinx, I lig' those fat. It grow nize on you. And _pleass_ do not loog so sad on you face. Wait, I go get you something thas goin' make you look smile again."

She disappeared into the kitchen, returning with the whole platter of cookies, still quite warm, and irresistibly odorous and toothsome looking. Jinx, endeavouring to refuse, had to close his eyes to steady him in his resolve, but he could not close his nose, nor his mouth either, when Sunny thrust one of the delicious pieces into his mouth. She wooed him back to a semi-normal condition by feeding him crisp morsels of his favourite confection, nor was it possible to resist something that pushed against one's mouth, and once having entered that orifice revealed qualities that appealed to the very best in one's nature.

Jinx was not made of the Spartan stuff of heroes, and who shall blame him if nature chose to endow him with a form of rich proportions that included "honourable insides" whose capacity was unlimited. So, till the very last cooky, and a sense of well being and fulness, the sad side of life pushed aside _pro tem_, Jinx was actually able to smile indulgently at the solicitous Sunny. She clapped her hands delightedly over her success. Jinx's fingers found their way to his vest pocket. He withdrew a small velvet box, and snapped back the lid. Silently he held it toward Sunny. Her eyes wide, she stared at it with excited rapture.

"Oh-h! Thas mos' beautifullest thing I are ever see."

Never, in fact, had her eyes beheld anything half so lovely as that shining platinum work of art with its immense diamond.

"Just think," said Jinx huskily, "if you say the word, you can have stones like that covering you all over."

"All over!" She made an expressive motion of her hands which took in all of her small person.

Melancholy again clouded Jinx's face. After all, he did not want Sunny to marry him for jewelry.

"I tell you what you do, Sunny. Wear this for me, will you? Wear it for a while, anyway, and then when you decide finally whether you'll have me or not, keep it or send it back, as you like."

He had slipped the ring onto the third finger of Sunny's left hand, and holding that had made him a bit bolder. Sunny, unsuspecting and sympathetic, let her hand rest in his, the ring up, where she could admire it to her heart's content.

"Look a here, Sunny, will you give me a kiss, then--just one. The ring's worth that, isn't it?"

Sunny retreated hurriedly, almost panically?

"Oh, Jinx, please you excuse me to-day, bi-cause I _lig'_ do so, but Mr. Hatton he are stand ad those door and loog on you."

"Damn Hatty!" groaned Jinx bitterly, and with a sigh that heaved his big breast aloft, he picked up his hat and cane, and ponderously moved toward the door.

In the lower hall of the studio apartment, who should the crestfallen Jinx encounter but his old-time friend, Jerry Hammond, returning from his eight hours' work at the office. His friend's greeting was both curt and cold, and there was no mistaking that look of dislike and disapproval that the frowning face made no effort to disguise.

"Here again, Jinx. Better move in," was Jerry's greeting.

Jinx muttered something inarticulate and furious, and for a fat man he made quick time across the hall and out into the street, where he climbed with a heavy heart into the great roadster, which he had fondly hoped might also carry Sunny with him upon a prolonged honeymoon.