Part 6 (2/2)
”Well, I like that! And you never been near me to give me a chance!”
”I guess I was kind of scared you wouldn't care much for Joralemon, after New York.”
”Why, Carl, you mustn't say that to me!”
”I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, Gertie, honestly I didn't. I was just joking. I didn't think you'd take me seriously.”
”As though I could forget my old friends, even in New York!”
”I didn't think that. Straight. Please tell me about New York. That's the place, all right. Jiminy! wouldn't I like to go there!”
”I wish you could have been there, Carl. We had such fun in my school.
There weren't any boys in it, but we----”
”No boys in it? Why, how's that?”
”Why, it was just for girls.”
”I see,” he said, fatuously, completely satisfied.
”We did have the best times, Carl. I _must_ tell you about one awfully naughty thing Carrie--she was my chum in school--and I did. There was a stock company on Twenty-third Street, and we were all crazy about the actors, especially Clements Devereaux, and one afternoon Carrie told the princ.i.p.al she had a headache, and I asked if I could go home with her and read her the a.s.signments for next day (they called the lessons 'a.s.signments' there), and they thought I was such a meek little country mouse that I wouldn't ever fib, and so they let us go, and what do you think we did? She had tickets for 'The Two Orphans' at the stock company. (You've never seen 'The Two Orphans,' have you?
It's perfectly splendid. I used to weep my eyes out over it.) And afterward we went and waited outside, right near the stage entrance, and what do you think? The leading man, Clements Devereaux, went right by us as near as I am to you. Oh, _Carl_, I wish you could have seen him! Maybe he wasn't the handsomest thing! He had the blackest, curliest hair, and he wore a thumb ring.”
”I don't think much of all these hamfatters,” growled Carl. ”Actors always go broke and have to walk back to Chicago. Don't you think it 'd be better to be a civil engineer or something like that, instead of having to slick up your hair and carry a cane? They're just dudes.”
”Why! of course, Carl, you silly boy! You don't suppose I'd take Clements seriously, do you? You silly boy!”
”I'm not a boy.”
”I don't mean it that way.” She sat up, touched his shoulder, and sank back. He blushed with bliss, and the fear that some one had seen, as she continued: ”I always think of you as just as old as I am. We always will be, won't we?”
”Yes!”
”Now you must go and talk to Doris Carson. Poor thing, she always is a wall-flower.”
However much he thought of common things as he left her, beyond those common things was the miracle that Gertie had grown into the one perfect, divinely ordained woman, and that he would talk to her again.
He danced the Virginia reel. Instead of clumping sulkily through the steps, as at other parties, he heeded Adelaide Benner's lessons, and watched Gertie in the hope that she would see how well he was dancing.
He shouted a demand that they play ”Skip to Maloo,” and cried down the shy girls who giggled that they were too old for the childish party-game. He howled, without prejudice in favor of any particular key, the ancient words:
”Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two, Bats in the belfry, two by two, Rats in the sugar-bowl, two by two, Skip to Maloo, my darling.”
In the nonchalant company of the smarter young bachelors up-stairs he smoked a cigarette. But he sneaked away. He paused at the bend in the stairs. Below him was Gertie, silver-gowned, wonderful. He wanted to go down to her. He would have given up his chance for a motor-car to be able to swagger down like an Eddie Klemm. For the Carl Ericson who sailed his ice-boat over inch-thick ice was timid now. He poked into the library, and in a nausea of discomfort he conversed with Mrs.
Cowles, Mrs. Cowles doing the conversing.
”Are you going to be a Republican or a Democrat, Carl?” asked the forbidding lady.
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