A short story "Between Rounds" by O. Henry.

In "Between Rounds," O. Henry presents a vivid tableau of life in a bustling urban boarding house during a serene May evening. The story centers on the McCaskeys, a quarrelsome couple, and their fellow boarders at Mrs. Murphy's establishment. Through sharp wit and rich characterizations, O. Henry explores themes of domestic strife, community dynamics, and the contrast between farce and genuine concern. As the narrative unfolds, the mundane activities and interactions of the boarders are interrupted by a minor crisis, bringing the complexities of human relationships and communal life into sharp focus.

                                Between Rounds

THE MAY MOON SHONE BRIGHT upon the private boarding house of Mrs. Murphy. By referencing the almanac, one could discover a large amount of territory upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in full swing, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and bustling with buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were everywhere, the air was growing milder, and hand-organs, trains, and pinochles were in full swing.

The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding house were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high stoop on round, flat mats resembling German pancakes.

In one of the second-floor front windows, Mrs. McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table, its heat emanating through Mrs. McCaskey.

At nine o'clock, Mr. McCaskey arrived. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth, apologizing for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he carefully selected spots of stone between them to set his size 9, width Ds.

Upon opening the door to his room, Mr. McCaskey received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-lid or potato-masher to dodge, he was greeted only with words.

Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened his spouse's heart.

'I heard you,' came the oral substitute for kitchenware. ' Ye can apologize to the riff-raff of the streets for stepping on the tails of their frocks, but you'd walk on your wife's neck without so much as a "Kiss me foot," and I'm sure it's as long as a clothesline from peeking out the window for you with the victuals cold, such as there's money to buy after drinking up your wages at Gallegher's every Saturday evening, and the gas man here twice today.'

'Woman!' said Mr. McCaskey, tossing his coat and hat onto a chair, 'the noise you make is an insult to my appetite. When you run down politeness, you're removing the mortar between the bricks of the foundation of society. 'It is no more than exercising the acrimony of a gentleman when you ask the dissent of ladies blocking the way. Will you bring the pig's face out of the window and see to the food?'

Mrs. McCaskey rose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth suddenly drooped, like a barometer, it usually foretold a fall in crockery and tinware.

'Pig's face, is it?' said Mrs. McCaskey, and she hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at her lord.

Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this and drew the appropriate response of bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below the eye. When she replied with a well-aimed coffee pot full of hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid, the dinner, according to courses, should have ended.

But Mr. McCaskey was no 50-cent table d'hôte. Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make.

That faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy, but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly, he sent the granite-ware washbasin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flat iron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary armistice.

On the sidewalk at the corner of the house, Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.

"'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missus at it again," meditated the policeman. "I wonder, shall I go up and stop the row? I will not. Married folks they are, and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure, they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up."

And just then came the loud scream below the stairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. "'Tis probably the cat," said the policeman.

Cleary walked hastily in the other direction.

The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and an investigator by profession, went inside to analyze the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy, Mike, was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy—two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly, but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, Milliner, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Miss Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.

Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. "The little one lost!" he exclaimed. "I will scour the city." His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said, "Go, Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." "Give me some thirty or sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need car fares."                         

Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up on the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: "Oh, ar-r-Mike, for Gawd's sake, where is my little bitty boy?"

"When'd you see him last?" asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the Building Trades League.

"Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, "it was yesterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno. But he's lost—my little boy, Mike. He was playin' on the sidewalk only this morning—or was it Wednesday? I'm so busy with work that it's hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from top to bottom, and he's gone. Oh, for the love of heaven!"

Silent, grim, and colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster is a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. Still, nobody should take offense. We would call no lobster a lobster without good and sufficient claws.

No calamity touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble. The paths are so steep and strange.

Major Griggs hurried down to the corner and up the avenue into Billy's place. "Gimme a rye-high," he said to the servitor. "Haven't seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around here anywhere, have you?"

Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. "Think of that dear little babe," said Miss Purdy, "lost from his mother's side, perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds. Oh, isn't it dreadful?"

"Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say, I will start out and help look for him!"

"Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing—so reckless—supposing in your enthusiasm some accident should befall you, then what?"

Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement with one finger on the lines.

On the second floor, Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to recover their second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below and thrust their heads out of the window.

"'Tis little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey in a hushed voice, "the beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!"

"The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the window. "Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely. The child will be different. If 'twas a woman, I'd be willin', for they leave peace behind 'em when they go."

Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm.

"Jawn," she said sentimentally, "Miss Murphy's little boy is lost. ' It's a great city for losing little boys. Six years old,

 he was. Jawn, it's the same age our little one would have been if we had had one six years ago."

"We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering on the fact. "But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan running away and being stolen in the city—nowhere at all."

"You talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. "'Tis Pat; he would be named after my old father in Cantrim."

"Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "My brother was worth a tin dozen bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him, the boy will be named." She leaned over the window sill and looked down at the hustle and bustle below.

"Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey softly, "I'm sorry I was hasty with you."

"'Twas hasty pudding, as you say," said her husband. "And hurry up turnips and get a move on your coffee. 'Twas what you could call a quick lunch, all right, and tell no lie."

Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough hand in hers.

"Listen to the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. "'Tis an awful thing for a bit of a boy to be lost in this great big city. If it were our little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breaking' my heart."

Awkwardly, Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulders of his wife.

"'Tis foolishness, of course," said he, roughly, "but I'd be cutting up some of myself if our little Pat was kidnapped or anything. But there was never any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard on you, Judy. Forget it."

They leaned together and looked down at the heart-drama being acted upon below.

They sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, and filling the air with rumors and inconsequential premises. Mrs. Murphy plowed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and went.

Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding house.

"What's up now, Judy?" asked Mr. McCaskey.

"'Tis Miss Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. "She says she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room."

Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly.

"That's your Phelan," he shouted sarcastically. "Devil a bit would Pat have done that trick if the boy we never had strayed and stole, by the powers, called him Phelan and saw him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup."

Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went toward the dish closet with the corners of her mouth drawn down.

Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he turned an ear toward McCaskey's apartment, where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece.

"By the deported snakes!" he exclaimed. "Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fighting for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds of weight. Strength to his arm."

Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.

Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.

"Between Rounds" masterfully captures the essence of urban communal living through the lens of humor and human drama. The story's conclusion, with the revelation that little Mike was merely hiding, diffuses the tension and restores a sense of normalcy. The McCaskeys' return to their domestic quarrel, viewed with a mix of amusement and resignation by Policeman Cleary, underscores the enduring and multifaceted nature of human connections. O. Henry leaves readers with a poignant reminder of the bonds that tie people together, even amidst the chaos and conflict of daily life, highlighting the resilience and quirks that define community and family dynamics.