Argosy All-Story Weekly, April 4, 1925 — page 90: what you’re looking at

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

880 scintillate against my old black crépe like a row of cranberries on a muddy bog. If only Levi’s sleuth eves wouldn’t ferret ’em out! Well, let him. He couldn’t do much more than bounce me, and I felt that ex- hilarated I was willing to be a rubber ball. I'd press out the old crépe neat, don the beauteous beads and let fate do her fun- niest. I slapped a summoning stroke on Miss Mendel’s door, Miss Mendel being the only guest in Mom Gilman’s house what has succeeded in preserving an iron intact from the knowing nose of that foxy terror who can sniff a burned fuse quicker’n a cat can Sardines. Miss Mendel, with her innocent look of a two-day kitten, ain’t never been Suspected of doing nothing worse than pe- rusing the marriage, birth and death notes in the Sunday Times, or holding an occa- sional petting party with her favorite hot- water bottle. I rapped twice. and she peered out, cau- tious, her pale blue kimona hugged tight against her skinny chest. ‘‘ Hey, Miss Mendel!” I commenced in a whisper. ‘‘ Can I borrow the loan of your Iron?” She looked up quick, shooting a glance down the hall and back again like a con- scientious usher before mittening a forbid- den tip, then motioned me to meander with- in, while she dove under the mattress. And as I waited I gazed careless about the room, at the funny photos of ginks that would make the Smith Brothers look like Yale freshmen—at the fussy little reading table that teetered on long legs like a new calf—at the book that laid open under the kerosene lamp. I turned the pages, idly interested, and a rose tumbled out, just a funny little old rose, brown and withered now, though it must of once been red. And the book was called *‘ Love Sonnets of an Earlier Day.” Can you match that? The world is sure getting funny. First thing you know Bull Montana ’ll be caught perusing ‘“‘ Ways to Preserve Manly Beauty ”’; Sophie Tucker ‘ll be singing ‘“Love’s Old Sweet Song,” and Mack Sen- nett ‘ll be producing films on ‘‘ The Won- der of the Human Soul.” ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. Well, well, as the proverbs put it, blun- ders will never cease! Inside a month, however, old Miss Men- del was as far from my mind as sudden murder or a real seal coat—I was an en- gaged woman! It come one May evening when spring breathed soft and warm over the city, and the tremble of the L swelled with a vibra- tion of a mighty harp. And all New York rose like one great stool where sits the Art- ist who paints the evening sky. He had come back, every day during that month, to wait at the door of the store lor me. And it smoothed away the fuss and fever and weariness to know that he’d be there. 1f the other girls elbowed me rough as they passed, what did it matter? There'd be an elbow waiting to help me home. And if the wild women shoppers give me lip—I remembered other lips that spoke kind words. So the day would pass like a short, stormy sleep, and the real day come with the evening. Il. IT was the tenth of May. The sun was dipping over the Hudson in a Turkish bath of haze as we L’d to the home door. “ Can’t I come up?” asked Dave, twist- ing his hat. ‘“T don’t know,” I murmured, shy. ‘Just for a minute?” ‘* What’s the use? A minute’s only sixty seconds.”’ * Well. it only takes ten—to put a man out.” ‘“ But you see, we ain’t got no referee— no chaperon,” I protested, allowing my brain to think deliberate. ‘“When folks love each other a chape- ron’s about as necessary as a crutch to a centipede with a broken ankle. He can get along all right without it, if he wants to.” “TI s’pose we can sit out on the fire escape.” ‘‘ Fine,” he agreed, boosting me up \lom Gilman’s brown stone steps. ‘I’d sit on a steam heater—with you.” I steered him hasty through my dinky 5 A (CO) MICLOOOL