Part 32 (1/2)
An immediate flush stung her face.
”Well, of all the darn conceit! Can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?”
”I got to hand it you, Loo; when you walk down this street, you make every girl in town look warmed over.”
”Do you like it, Charley? It's that checked jacket I bought at Hamlin's sale last year made over.”
”Say, it's cla.s.sy! You look like all the money in the world, honey.”
”Huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and Ida Bell's last year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five.”
”You're the show-piece of the town, all right. Come on; let's pick up a crowd and muss-up Claxton Road a little.”
”I meant what I said, Charley. After the cuttings-up of last night and the night before I'm quits. Maybe Charley c.o.x can afford to get himself talked about because he's Charley c.o.x, but a girl like me with a job to hold down, and the way ma and Ida Bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green around the gills, when I got home last night--nix! I'm getting myself talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, Charley.”
”I'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of me. A fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with him than ask her to marry him--now can he? If I'd have had my way last night, I'd--”
”You was drunk when you asked me, Charley.”
”You mean you got cold feet?”
”Thank G.o.d, I did!”
”I don't blame you, girl. You might do worse--but not much.”
”That's what you'd need for your finis.h.i.+ng-touch, a girl like me dragging you down.”
”You mean pulling me up.”
”Yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent.”
”I'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. You 'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. You're the kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and I wish it to you.”
”Lots you know.”
”Come on; let me ride you around the block, then.”
”If--if you like my company so much, can't you just take a walk with me or come out and sit on our steps awhile?”
”Lord, girl, Flamm Avenue is hot enough to fry my soul to-night!”
”We can't all have fathers that live in thirty-room houses out in Kingsmoreland Place.”
”Thank G.o.d for that! I sneaked home this morning to change my clothes, and thought maybe I'd got into somebody's mausoleum by mistake.”
”Was--was your papa around, Charley?”
”In the library, shut up with old man Brookes.”
”Did he--did he see the morning papers? You know what he said last time, Charley, when the motor-cycle cop chased you down an embankment.”