Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 100: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

890 So we rehearsed a while, and it was hot like I was telling you, and we got tired, and the stage manager he give us a rest for a minute, and this girl Marie—course I didn’t know her name was Marie then, because I never seen her before, never even heard about her or nothing like that—she come right over to me where I was sitting, and she sat down right alongside of me and she says tome: ‘‘ My God, my feet hurt!” Ain’t that fumny? I mean, she didn’t know me, and there was a lot of girls there that she didn’t know either, because she didn’t know any of them. Wouldn’t you think she might just as well have gone and sat down alongside of some one of the oth- ers and said how her feet hurt her instead of sitting down alongside of me? It’s fun- ny, ain’t it? It’s Fate, that’s what I think! I believe in Fate. I don’t know much about it, but I believe in it. So I says to her, I guess her feet don’t hurt no worse than mine, and she asked me did I ever try Pettie’s Pink Powder for them, and I asked her did she ever try soakin’ ’em in brine? The kind of water that comes off pickles, you know. Because once a fellow I knew who was a prize fight- er told me he done that to make his hands tough, and I says to him I bet it would make your feet tough, wouldn’t it? And he says he didn’t know if it would, but why didn’t I try it? And I was going to, but 1 didn’t. I don’t know why, but I just never got around to it. So me and Marie we got to talking, and she says to me, didn’t I think it was a measly show and probably wouldn’t run more than a week and one thing and an- other, and I says to her: ‘What do you think of this director we sot? Ain’t he the limit?” And she says, ‘‘ Deary,” she says, “ how does men like that that ought to be driving a truck get such jobs?” And then we talked about some of the girls that was sitting around that we didn’t know, but I didn’t like their looks, and she didn’t like their looks either. Wasn’t that funny? If I didn’t like something, she didn’t like it either, and it was just the same way if she didn’t like something I didn’t like it either. ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. And then she says to me: “ Who you rooming with, honey?” Now, can you beat that? I wasn’t rooming with nobody, and just before she said that I was thinking myself if this girl ain’t broke or she ain’t rooming with some- body maybe we could room together. So I looked at her and says, “ Well, what do you know about that?” I says. ‘“ You can’t tell me that there ain’t something in this mind reading. I was just thinking about that same thing.” Then I says to her, “I ain’t rooming with nobody,” I says, and she looked at me kind of funny and she says, ‘“ Well, what do you know about that?” And then we looked at each other, and she says, “ You know, it’s Fate.” That’s what she says. ‘“‘It’s Fate!” Can you beat that? Made me feel kind of queer meeting somebody like her because she thought just the way I did. ‘“ Do you believe in Fate?” I says to her; and she says did she! And she told me about a lot of things that had happened to her that she couldn’t make heads or tails out of unless it was Fate; and we started rooming together. The first night we started rooming to- gether it was hot. And we went out with a couple of fellows and thought maybe we would have.a good time and go to a roof some place, but they was pikers and we went to a movie show, and then they said: ‘What do you say we go into Childs’s and have a cup of coffee or something?” And we shook ’em and went home and took off our things and sat by the window to try and get cool, and Marie says to me, ‘“Deary,” she says, “if I could only go back!” And I says: ‘‘ Back where?” And she says: “‘ Back to the country.” You know what? ‘Till then everything she said I knew what she was going to say before she said it. It was the limit the way we thought alike. But when she says that about wanting to go back to the coun- try I didn’t understand so good; so I asked her what did she mean, and she told me. You know what? She was a hick! I don’t mean she was a hick then. She had EOMCOOOKS2EO