Every Soul Hath Its Song Part 12

"Hand me the shoe-b.u.t.toner, Phonzie. The doctor says stooping is bad for my hair-pins."

Their laughter, light as foam, met and mingled.

"Oh, you nervy Gertie!"

"What's your hurry, Phonzie dearie?"

"I don't see you stopping me."

"Fine chance, with her crouching over there, ready to spring."

"Hang around, sweetness. Maybe I'm not on duty, and I'll take you to supper if you've not got a date with one of your million-dollar Charlies."

"Soft pedal, Phonzie! You know I'd break a date with any one of 'em any day in the week for a sixty-cent table d'hote with you!"

"Hang around then, sweetness."

"Hang around! Gawd, if I hang around you any more than I have been doing in the last five years, following you from one establishment to the other, they'll have to kill me to put me out of my misery."

"You're all right, Gert. And when you haven't any of the greenback boys around to fill in, you can always fall back on me."

"You're a nice old boy, Phonzie, and I like the kink in your hair, but--but sometimes when I get blue, like to-night, I--I just wish I had never clapped eyes on you."

"How she hates me."

"I wish to G.o.d I did."

"Cut the tragedy, Gert."

"That's the trouble; I been cutting it for the mock comedy all my life."

"You, the highest little flyer in the flock!"

"Yeh, because I've never found anybody who even cares enough about me to clip my wings." Her laughter was short and with a blunt edge.

"Whew! Such a spill for you, Gert!"

"It's the spring gets on my nerves, I guess. Blow me to a table d'hote to-night, Phonzie. I got a red-ink thirst on me and I'm as blue as indigo."

"Hang around, Gert, and if I'm not on duty I--"

"Honest, you're the greatest kid to squirm when you think a girl is going to pin you down. You let me get about as serious as a musical comedy with you and then you put up the barbed wire."

"Yes, I do not!"

"Fine chance I've got of ever pinning you down! You care about as much for me as--as anybody else does, and that ain't saying much."

"Aw, Gert, you got the dumps--"

"Look at her over there. I can see by her profile she's hanging around to buy you your dinner to-night. Whatta you bet she springs the appointment-book yarn on you and you fall for it?"

A laugh flitted beneath Mr. Michelson's blond hedge of mustache. "Can I help it that I got such hypnotizing, mesmerizing ways?"

She smiled beneath her rouge, and wanly. "No, darling," she said.

Across the room Madam Moores regarded them from beside the pile of sheeny silks, her fingers plucking nervously at the fabrics.

"Hurry up over there, Phonzie. I told her the black lace was on the way."

Miss Dobriner daubed at her red lips with a lacy fribble of handkerchief, her voice sotto behind it.

"Don't let her pin you, Phonzie. Have a heart and take me to supper when I'm blue as indigo."

He leaned to impale a pin upon his lapel. "She's so white to me, Gert, how can I squirm if she asks me to go over the appointment-book with her to-night?"

"Tell her your grandmother's dead."

He leaned for another pin. "Stick around down in Seligman's. If I dust my hat with my handkerchief when I pa.s.s, I'm nailed for the evening. If I can wriggle I'll blow you to Churchey's for supper."

"I--"

"'Sh-h-h-h."

He retreated behind the mauve-colored swinging-door. The two remaining sibyls, hatted and coated to crane the neck of the pa.s.ser-by, hurried arm-in-arm out into the spring evening. An errand girl, who had dropped her skirt and put up her hair so that the eye of the law might wink at her stigma of youth, hung the s.h.i.+mmering gowns away for another day's display. Gertie Dobriner patted her ringed fingers against her mouth to press back a yawn and trailed across the room, adjusting her hat before a full-length mirror. In the light from a single electric bulb her hair showed three colors--yellow gold, green gold, and, toward the roots, the dark gold of old bronze.

"You can go now, Gert."

"Yes, madam."

Miss Dobriner adjusted a spray of curls. Through the mirror she could observe the mauve-colored swinging-door.

"Did--did Du Ga.s.s order that fish-tail model, madam?"

Madam Moores dallied with her appointment-book. Through the mirror she could observe the mauve-colored swinging-door.

"Yes, in green."

"If I had her complexion I'd wear sandpaper to match it."

"We haven't all of us got the looks, Gert, that'll get us four-carat stones to wear down to a twenty-dollar-a-week job."

Miss Dobriner's hand flew to her throat and the gem that gleamed there.

"I--I guess I can buy a stone on time for myself without--without any insinuations."

"You can wear the stone, all right, Gert, but you can't get past the insinuations."

"I--I ain't so stuck on this place, madam, that I got to stand for your insinuations."