Argosy All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1924 — page 68: what you’re looking at

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

breath in no introductions. YOUNG it in one hand and my cane in the other, under the-electric light. Sadie stood looking at me, kind of half “smiling. “Why, how very distinguished you look, Mr. Tom Hill!” she said. “ Actually you are one of the handsomest men I know.” ‘“ Oh,” says I, in a kind of a society manner, “ clothes make the man. A tailor and a barber can trim up an old hulk till it looks jike a seaworthy craft.” “Your figures of speech are very orig- inal, Mr. Tom Hill,” says Sadie. ‘“ Take this chair over here ‘and I will have Jennie bring you an ice.’ I didn’t quite get that, but it was only a kind of a thin ice cream that Jennie brought and put on the table beside me. It didn’t bother me none to absorb that. Sadie sat -down by me, and I lit a cigar, and we was quite at our ease. Pretty soon the boys and the girls began coming, and I give them a wave of the hand and a bow from where I sat. ?em all, so Sadie didn’t have to waste her That was that, but pretty soon a couple of big, shiny autos drove up and a bunch of strangers piled out. As the girls come up the steps ahead of ‘the boys, I could feel my face grow a bit warm. They was inexpensively dressed, for even if the cloth in their dresses cost a lot a yard there wasn’t enough of it to make the bill mount. And most of the boys was dressed in these here short, dinky coats with low vests that show a lot of shirt front. I thought I had it on ’em in the matter of clothes. Well, for a minute I thought the town boys and girls wasn’t going to get on very well with the strangers. The boys eyed them “ tuxes,”’ as I learnt them coats was called, and they didn’t seem to think so much ‘of them; and the girls looked kind of cold and distant when they took a peek under cover at the clothes the stranger girls wore. But that didn’t last more’n five min- utes. There was some music inside, and I looked through the window and see that Jennie was presidin’ at the phonograph with a big stack of records beside her. I seen that everything was cleaned out of I knowed © .wonder where Jimmie was. - “iy REBELS. 697 the sitting room and the dining room, and as soon as the music started the boys and girls begun to dance. I looked at the dancing for a minute and then I pulled my chair to the front of the porch and put my feet on the rail and looked up at the stars. One thing that gratified me was that Sa- die wasn’t: dancing; she was moving back and forth among her guests,-seeing that all the girls had partners and that a good time was being had by all, as our paper used to say before Royal Selden took hold of it and chopped out all that personal stuff. Hick stuff, he called it, but I had. always found it kind of int’resting. Pretty soon Sadie come out on the porch and asked-me wouldn’t Isecome in and watch the dancing. I said I had watched it through the window, but. my feet was kind of aching and I would rest them on the porch rail for a bit. “IT won’t forget you when the refresh- ments are served,” Sadie saic. “You better not, unless you want me bustin’ in there on the jump,” says TI. We talked of this and that for a while, the way folks do at parties, and then Sa- die went inside. Pretty soon a couple of them city lads come out to smoke a ciga- rette apiece, and we had a little chat.. I must say they was nice boys; they didn’t put on no airs with me. Mebbe they thought I was a business man. from the city and was just visiting at Sadie’s. After them come a couple of the strange girls, and, by golly, one of them smoked a cigarette right out in the open. She was a red haired, bob haired girl, and at first I didn’t think much of her; she made me think of a boy more’n of a girl. But before she went in, after she had finished the ciga- rette, she had laughs bubbling out of me; I was fair choked, them laughs come so fast. She was all right, that girl, in spite of some drawbacks. All folks has some drawbacks. For a time I was alone and I begun to I didn’t have time to wonder long, for pretty soon his car drew up out front and he piled out of it. He come up the front steps as straight as a soldier boy. I seen there was a kind of a hot look in his face, and I knowed then that he had fought against coming to the cCOmiclooks CO