Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 74

"You'll miss it again if you don't run away, Charley-boy."

"Dare you to come along! I'll wait for the five-eighteen."

"Don't hold your breath till I do."

"Dare you to come out on the eight-eighteen! Say the word, and I'll be at the station."

"I'll see myself crazy with the blues first."

"You might as well come, kiddo, because I'll get you yet."

"Try the soft-pedal stuff about the kid and the Christmas tree on the girl at the Glendale station. Maybe she hasn't cut her eye-teeth."

A flush swept his face like quick wind. "You're a b.u.m sport, all righty."

"And you! Gee! if I was to tell you what I think you are! If I was!" She sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep it from trembling, but smiled.

"But I wouldn't take the trouble, Charley-boy--honest, I wouldn't take the trouble."

"I'll get you yet, you little vix," he insisted, his white smile flashing, and retreating into the crowd.

"You--oh--oh, you!"

She stood looking after him, head backward and hip arched forward in the pose of Carmen's immortal defiance. But behind her flashing att.i.tude her heart rose to her throat and a warm gush of blood to her face, betraying it.

When the illuminated hands of the illuminated tower clock swung to the wide angle of five o'clock, Miss Marjorie Clark and Miss Minnie Bundt, from the fancy-fruit stand opposite, cast off the brown coc.o.o.n of their workaday for the trim street finery which the American shopgirl, to the stupefaction of economists and theorists, can somehow evolve out of eight dollars a week.

In the locker-room they met, the placid sky-colored eyes of Miss Bundt meeting Miss Clark's in the wavy square of mirror.

"Snowing, ain't it?"

"Yep."

"Gee! that's a nifty little hat, Min! Where'd you get the pompon?"

"Five-and-Ten."

"If it 'ain't got the Avenue written all over it."

Silence.

"Want some my powder, Min? Pink."

"Nope."

"Want to--want to go to a movie to-night or--or b.u.m around the stores?

It's Christmas Eve."

"Can't."

"Date?"

"Yep."

Silence.

A flush rose to Miss Clark's face, darkening it. She adjusted her dyed-fur tippet and a small imitation-fur cap at just the angle which doubled its face value. Something seemed to leap out from her eyes and then retreat behind a smile and a squint.

"Say, Min, if my voice hurt me like yours does, I'd rub salve on it,"

and went out, slamming the door behind her. But a tear lay on the edge of her down-curved lashes, threatening to ricochet down her smoothly powdered cheek. She winked it in again. The station swarm was close to her, jostling, kicking her ankles in pa.s.sing, buffeting.

From out the swift tide a figure without an overcoat, and a cap vizor pulled well down over his eyes, locked her arm from the rear, so that she sprang about, releasing herself.

"For G.o.d's sake, Blink, cut the p.u.s.s.y-foot tread, will you? I've jabbed with a hat-pin for less than that."

"Merry Christmas, Marj."

"Yes, I'm merry as a crutch. What brought you around, Blink?"

"Can't a fellow drop around to pick you up?"

"Land that job?"

"Not a chance. What they want down there is a rough-neck, not a gentleman rubber-down. Say, take it from me; after a fellow has worked in the high-cla.s.s Turkish baths, Third Avenue joints ain't up to his tone no more. I got to have cla.s.s, kiddo. That's why I got such a lean toward you."

"Cut that."

"Come down to-night, Marj?"

"Where?"

"Harry's."

"Well, I guess not."

"Buy you a dinner."

"But you're flat as your hand."

He set up a jingling in his left pocket. "I am, am I?"

"Well, I'm not going."

"When you going to cut this comedy, Marj?"

"I'm not. I'm just beginning."

"Breaking into high society, eh? Fine chance."