Just Around the Corner Part 65

"It _is_ rainin' like sixty, ain't it? Say, can you beat it? Watch the old man put Myrtle out in the aisle at the mackintosh-table--there!

Didn't I tell you! Gee! I bet she could chew a diamond, she's so mad."

"She ain't as mad as me; but I'm going to wear my tan if it gets soaked."

Tillie sold a packet of needles and regarded the patch of window with a worried pucker on her small, wren-like face.

"Honest, ain't it a joke, Til?--you havin' the nerve to answer that ad and all! You better be pretty white to me, or I'll snitch! I'll tell Angie you're writin' pink notes to Box 25, _Evenin' News_--Mr. Box 25!

Say, can you beat it!"

Mame laughed in her throat, smoothed her frizzed blonde hair, sold a paper of pins and an emery heart.

"Like fun you'll tell Angie! I got it all fixed to tell her I'm going to the picture-show with you and George to-night."

"Before I'd let a old grouch like her lord it over me! It ain't like she was your sister or relation, or something--but just because you live together. Nix on that for mine."

"She don't think a girl's got a right to be young or nothin'! Look at me--a regular stick-at-home. Gee! a girl's got to have something."

"Sure she does! Ain't that what I've been tryin' to preach to you ever since we've been chumming together? You ain't a real old maid yet--you got real takin' ways about you and all; you ought to be havin' a steady of your own."

"Don't I know it?"

"Look how you got to do now--just because she never lets you go to dances or nothin' with us girls."

"She ain't never had it, and she don't want me to have it."

"Say, tell it to the Danes! She ain't got them snappy black eyes of hers for nothin'. Whatta you live with her for? There ain't a girl up in the corsets that's got any use for her."

"She's been pretty white to me, just the samey--raised me and all when I didn't have no one. She's got her faults; but I kinda got the habit of livin' with her now--I got to stick."

"Gee! even a stepmother like Carrie's'll let her have fun once in a while. It's Angie's own fault that you got to meet 'em in drug stores and take chances on ads and all."

"I'm just answerin' that ad for fun--I ain't in earnest."

"I've always been afraid of matrimonial ads and things like that. You know I was the first one to preach your gettin' out and gettin'

spry--that's me all over! I believe in bein' spry; but I always used to say to maw before I was keepin' steady with George, 'Ads ain't safe.'"

"I ain't afraid."

"Lola Flint, over in the jewelry, answered one once--'Respectable young man would like to make the acquaintance of a genteel young lady; red hair preferred.' And when she seen him he had only one eye, and his left arm shot off."

"I ain't afraid. Say, if Effie Jones Lipkind can answer one, with her behind-the-counter stoop and squint, and get away with it, there ain't no reason why there ain't more grand fellows like Gus Lipkind writin'

ads."

"Come out of the dark room, Til! Effie had two hundred saved up."

"I ain't ashamed of not havin' any steadies. Where's a straight-walkin'

girl like me goin' to get 'em? Look at that rain, will you!--and me tellin' him I'd be there in tan, with red ribbon on the lapel!"

"Paper says rain for three days, too. Angie's a old devil, all-righty, or you could meet him in your flat."

"He's going to wear a white carnation and a piece of fern on his left coat lapel; and if he don't look good I ain't going up."

"What did he call hisself--'a bachelor of refined and retiring habits'?

Thank Gawd!--if I do say it--George is refined, but he ain't over-retirin'. It's the retirin' kind that like to sit at home in their carpet slippers instead of goin' to a picture-show. Straighten that bin of pearl b.u.t.tons, will you, Til? Say, how my feet do burn to-night! It's the weather--I might 'a' known it was goin' to rain."

Tillie ran a nervous finger down inside her collar; there was a tremolo in her quail-like voice.

"A fellow that writes a grand little letter like him can't be so bad--and it's better to have 'em retirin'-like than too fresh. Listen!

It's real poetry-like: 'Meet me in the Sixth Avenue Drug Store, Miss 27.

I'll have a white carnation and a piece of fern in my left b.u.t.tonhole, and a smile that won't come off; and when I spy the yellow jacket I'm comin' up and say, "h.e.l.lo!" And if I look good I want you to say "h.e.l.lo!" back.' ... The invisible hair-pins only come by the box, ma'am.

Umbrellas across the aisle, ma'am.... That ain't so bad for a start, is it, Mame?... Ten cents a box, ma'am."

"You got your nerve, all-righty, Til--but, gee! I glory in your s.p.u.n.k.

If I was tied to a old devil like Angie I'd try it, too. Is the back of my collar all right, Til? Look at Myrtle out there, will you--how she's lovin' that mackintosh sale!"

"Water spots tan, don't it?" said Tillie, balancing her cash-book.

At six o'clock the store finished its last lap with a hysterical singing of electric bells, grillingly intense and too loud, like a woman who laughs with a sob in her throat.

Tillie untied her black alpaca ap.r.o.n, snapped a rubber band about her cash-book, concealed it beneath the notion-shelves, and brushed her black-serge skirt with a whisk-broom borrowed from stock.

"Good night, Mame! I guess you're waitin' for George, ain't you? See you in the morning. I'll have lots to tell you, too."

"Good night, Til! Remember, if he turns out to be a model for a cla.s.sy-clothes haberdashery, it was me put you on to the idea."

Tillie pressed a black-felt sailor tight down on her head until only a rim of brown hair remained, slid into her black jacket, and hurried out with an army of workers treading at her slightly run-down heels and nerves.

Youth, even the f.a.g-end of Youth, is like a red-blooded geranium that fights to bloom though transplanted from a garden bed to a tin can in a cellar window. A faint-as-dawn pink persisted in flowing underneath the indoor white of Miss Prokes's cheeks--the last rosy shadow of a maltreated girlhood, which too long had defied the hair-line wrinkles, the notion-counter with the not-to-be-used stool behind it, nine hours of arc-light subst.i.tute for the suns.h.i.+ne on the hillside and the green shade of the dell.

At the doors a taupe-colored dusk and a cold November rain closed round her like a wet blanket. She shrank back against the building and let the army tramp past her. They dissolved into the stream like a garden hose spraying the ocean.

Broadway was black and s.h.i.+ning as polished gunmetal, with reflections of its million lights staggering down into the wet asphalt. Umbrellas hurried and bobbed as if an army of giant mushrooms had suddenly insurrected; cabs skidded, honked, dodged, and doubled their rates; home-going New York bought evening papers, paid as it entered, and strap-hung its way to Bronx and Harlem firesides.

The fireside of the Bronx is the steam-radiator. Its lullabies are sung before a gilded three-coil heater; its shaving-water and kettle are heated on that same contrivance. It is as much of an epic in apartment living as condensed milk and folding-davenports.

All of which has little enough to do with Miss Tillie Prokes, except that in her lifetime she had hammered probably a caskful of nails into the tops of condensed-milk cans. Also she could unfold her own red-velours davenport; cold-cream her face; sugar-water her hair and put it up in kids; climb into bed and fall asleep with a despatch that might have made more than one potentate, counting sheep in his hair-mattressed four-poster, aguish with envy.

Miss Prokes yawned as she waited and regarded a brilliantly illuminated display window of curve-fingered ladies in exquisite waxen att.i.tudes and nineteen-fifty crepe-de-Chine gowns. Her breath clouded the plate-gla.s.s, and she drew her initials in the circle and yawned again.

With the last driblet of employees from the store a woman cut diagonally through a group and hurried toward Miss Prokes.

"Come on, Tillie!"

"Gee! I was afraid you wouldn't have a umbrella, Angie. What made you so late? The rest of the corsets have gone long ago."

"Oh, I just stopped a minute to take a milk-and- rose-leaves bath--they're doin' it in our best families this year."

Tillie glanced at her companion sharply.