ft* I
j
BUTTERED
I SIDEJOWN I
EDNA FERBER
^JSSi^^-^IZZ
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"ON HER FACE WAS A NEW, STRANGE LOOK, AS OF SOME-
THING HALF FORGOTTEN"
BUTTERED SIDE
DOWN
STORIES BY
BY
EDNA FERBER
AUTHOR OF
DAWN O'HARA
N BW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
b UM United Stem of America
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1911, igia, BY
THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
COLLIER AND NAST, INC.
COPYRIGHT, ign, BY
THE CURTISS PUBLISHING COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, igix, BY
STANDARD FASHION COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, ign, BY
THE RIDGWAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, ign, BY
THE RED BOOK CORPORATION
All rights reserved
104224*
?S
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
"An d so" the story writers used to say, "they
lived happily ever after"
Um-m-m maybe. After the glamour had
worn off, and the glass slippers were worn out,
did the Prince never find Cinderella's manner
redolent of the kitchen hearth; and was it never
necessary that he remind her to be more careful
of her finger-nails and grammar? After Puss
in Boots had won wealth and a wife for his
young master did not that gentleman often fume
with chagrin because the neighbors, perhaps, re-
fused to call on the lady of the former poor mil-
ler's son?
It is a great risk to take with one's book-chil-
dren. These stories make no such promises.
They stop just short of the phrase of the old
story writers, and end truthfully, thus:
And so they lived.
E.F.
CONTENTS
PACT
I. THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE . i
II. THE MAN WHO CAME BACK . 17
III. WHAT SHE WORE 38
IV. A BUSH LEAGUE HERO . . .58
V. THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR 78
VI. ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS . . . 102
VII. MAYMEYS FROM CUBA . . .121
VIII. THE LEADING LADY .... 139
IX. THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING . .156
X. THE HOMELY HEROINE . . .176
XI. SUN DRIED 193
XII. WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT i8TH 210
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i
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
A NY one who has ever written for the
-*- * magazines (nobody could devise a more
sweeping opening; it includes the iceman who
does a humorous article on the subject of his
troubles, and the neglected wife next door, who
journalizes) knows that a story the scene of
which is not New York is merely junk. Take
Fifth Avenue as a framework, pad it out to five
thousand words, and there you have the ideal
short story.
Consequently I feel a certain timidity in con-
fessing that I do not know Fifth Avenue from
Hester Street when I see it, because I've never
seen it. It has been said that from the latter
to the former is a ten-year journey, from which
I have gathered that they lie some miles apart.
As for Forty-second Street, of which musical
comedians carol, I know not if it be a fash-
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ionable shopping thoroughfare or a factory
district.
A confession of this kind is not only good for
the soul, but for the editor. It saves him the
trouble of turning to page two.
This is a story of Chicago, which is a first
cousin of New York, although the two are not
on chummy terms. It is a story of that part of
Chicago which lies east of Dearborn Avenue
and south of Division Street, and which may be
called the Nottingham curtain district.
In the Nottingham curtain district every front
parlor window is embellished with a "Rooms
With or Without Board" sign. The curtains
themselves have mellowed from their original
department-store-basement-white to a rich, deep
tone of Chicago smoke, which has the notorious
London variety beaten by several shades. Block
after block the two-story-and-basement houses
stretch, all grimy and gritty and looking sadly
down upon the five square feet of mangy grass
forming the pitiful front yard of each. Now
and then the monotonous line of front stoops is
broken by an outjutting basement delicatessen
shop. But not often. The Nottingham curtain
district does not run heavily to delicacies.
0]
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
It is stronger on creamed cabbage and bread
pudding.
Up in the third floor back at Mis' Buck's
(elegant rooms $2.50 and up a week. Gents
preferred) Gertie was brushing her hair for the
night. One hundred strokes with a bristle
brush. Anyone who reads the beauty column
in the newspapers knows that. There was some-
thing heroic in the sight of Gertie brushing her
hair one hundred strokes before going to bed at
night. Only a woman could understand her do-
ing it.
Gertie clerked downtown on State Street, in a
gents' glove department. A gents' glove depart-
ment requires careful dressing on the part of its
clerks, and the manager, in selecting them, is par-
ticular about choosing "lookers," with especial
attention to figure, hair, and finger nails. Gertie
was a looker. Providence had taken care of
that. But you cannot leave your hair and finger
nails to Providence. They demand coaxing with
a bristle brush and an orangewood stick.
Now clerking, as Gertie would tell you, is
fierce on the feet. And when your feet are tired
you are tired all over. Gertie's feet were tired
crery night. About eight-thirty she longed to
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peel off her clothes, drop them in a heap on the
floor, and tumble, unbrushed, unwashed, un-
manicured, into bed. She never did it.
Things had been particularly trying to-night.
After washing out three handkerchiefs and past-
ing them with practised hand over the mirror,
Gertie had taken off her shoes and discovered
a hole the size of a silver quarter in the heel of
her left stocking. Gertie had a country-bred
horror of holey stockings. She darned the hole,
yawning, her aching feet pressed against the
smooth, cool leg of the iron bed. That done,
she had had the colossal courage to wash her
face, slap cold cream on it, and push back the
cuticle around her nails.
Seated huddled on the side of her thin little
iron bed, Gertie was brushing her hair bravely,
counting the strokes somewhere in her sub-con-
scious mind and thinking busily all the while of
something else. Her brush rose, fell, swept
downward, rose, fell, rhythmically.
"Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety
Oh, darn it ! What's the use !" cried Gertie,
and hurled the brush across the room with a
crack.
She sat looking after it with wide, staring eyes
[4]
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
until the brush blurred in with the faded red
roses on the carpet. When she found it doing
that she got up, wadded her hair viciously into
a hard bun in the back instead of braiding it
carefully as usual, crossed the room (it wasn't
much of a trip), picked up the brush, and stood
looking down at it, her under lip caught between
her teeth. That is the humiliating part of losing
your temper and throwing things. You have to
come down to picking them up, anyway.
Her lip still held prisoner, Gertie tossed the
brush on the bureau, fastened her nightgown at
the throat with a safety pin, turned out the gas
and crawled into bed.
Perhaps the hard bun at the back of her head
kept her awake. She lay there with her eyes
wide open and sleepless, staring into the dark-
ness.
At midnight the Kid Next Door came in whis-
tling, like one unused to boarding-house rules.
Gertie liked him for that. At the head of the
stairs he stopped whistling and came softly into
his own third floor back just next to Gertie's.
Gertie liked him for that, too.
The two rooms had been one in the fashion-
able days of the Nottingham curtain district,
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long before the advent of Mis' Buck. That
thrifty lady, on coming into possession, had
caused a flimsy partition to be run up, slicing
the room in twain and doubling its rental.
Lying there Gertie could hear the Kid Next
Door moving about getting ready for bed and
humming "Every Little Movement Has a
Meaning of Its Own" very lightly, under his
breath. He polished his shoes briskly, and
Gertie smiled there in the darkness of her own
room in sympathy. Poor kid, he had his beauty
struggles, too.
Gertie had never seen the Kid Next Door,
although he had come four months ago. But
she knew he wasn't a grouch, because he alter-
nately whistled and sang off-key tenor while
dressing in the morning. She had also discov-
ered that his bed must run along the same wall
against which her bed was pushed. Gertie told
herself that there was something almost immod-
est about being able to hear him breathing as he
slept. He had tumbled into bed with a little
grunt of weariness.
Gertie lay there another hour, staring into the
darkness. Then she began to cry softly, lying
on her face with her head between her arms*
[6]
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
The cold cream and the salt tears mingled and
formed a slippery paste. Gertie wept on be-
cause she couldn't help it. The longer she wept
the more difficult her sobs became, until
finally they bordered on the hysterical. They
filled her lungs until they ached and reached
her throat with a force that jerked her head
back.
"Rap-rap-rap !" sounded sharply from the
head of her bed.
Gertie stopped sobbing, and her heart stopped
beating. She lay tense and still, listening.
Everyone knows that spooks rap three times at
the head of one's bed. It's a regular high-sign
with them.
"Rap-rap-rap !"
Gertie's skin became goose-flesh, and cold-
water effects chased up and down her spine.
"What's your trouble in there?" demanded
an unspooky voice so near that Gertie jumped.
It was the Kid Next Door.
"N-no, I'm not sick," faltered Gertie, her
mouth close to the wall. Just then a belated
sob that had stopped halfway when the raps be-
gan hustled on to join its sisters. It took Ger-
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tie by surprise, and brought prompt response
from the other side of the wall.
"I'll bet I scared you green. I didn't mean
to, but, on the square, if you're feeling sick, a
little nip of brandy will set you up. Excuse my
mentioning it, girlie, but I'd do the same for my
sister. I hate like sin to hear a woman suffer
like, that, and, anyway, I don't know whether
your're fourteen or forty, so it's perfectly re-
spectable. I'll get the bottle and leave it out-
side your door."
"No you don't!" answered Gertie in a hollow
voice, praying meanwhile that the woman in the
room below might be sleeping. "I'm not sick,
honestly I'm not. I'm just as much obliged,
and I'm dead sorry I woke you up with my blub-
bering. I started out with the soft pedal on, but
things got away from me. Can you hear me?"
"Like a phonograph. Sure you couldn't use
a sip of brandy where it'd do the most good?"
"Sure."
"Well, then, cut out the weeps and get your
beauty sleep, kid. He ain't worth sobbing over,
anyway, believe me."
"He!" snorted Gertie indignantly. "You're
cold. There never was anything in peg-tops
[8]
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
that could make me carry on like the heroine
of the Elsie series."
"Lost your job?"
"\o such luck."
"Well, then, what in Sam Hill could make a
woman "
"Lonesome!" snapped Gertie. "And the
floorwalker got fresh to-day. And I found two
gray hairs to-night. And I'd give my next
week's pay envelope to hear *hc double click
that our front gate gives back home."
"Back home!" echoed the Kid Next Door in
a dangerously loud voice. "Say, I want to talk
to you. If you'll promise you won't get sore and
think I'm fresh, I'll ask you a favor. Slip on a
no and we'll sneak down to the front stoop
and talk it over. I'm as wide awake as a chorus
and twice as hungry. I've got two apples
a box of crackers. Are you on?"
Gertie snickered. "It isn't done in our best
sets, but I'm on. I've got a can of sardines and
an orange. I'll be ready in six minutes."
c was, too. She wiped off the cold cream
and salt tears with a dry towel, did her hair in a
schoolgirl braid and tied it with a big bow, and
dressed herself in a black skirt and a baby blue
[9]
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dressing sacque. The Kid Next Door was wait-
ing outside in the hall. His gray sweater cov-
ered a multitude of sartorial deficiencies. Gertie
stared at him, and he stared at Gertie in the
sickly blue light of the boarding-house hall, and
it took her one-half of one second to discover
that she liked his mouth, and his eyes, and the
way his hair was mussed.
"Why, you're only a kid!" whispered the Kid
Next Door, in surprise.
Gertie smothered a laugh. "You're not the
first man that's been deceived by a pig-tail braid
and a baby blue waist. I could locate those
two gray hairs for you with my eyes shut
and my feet in a sack. Come on, boy. These
Robert W. Chambers situations make me
nervous."
Many earnest young writers with a flow of
adjectives and a passion for detail have at-
tempted to describe the quiet of a great city at
night, when a few million people within it are
sleeping, or ought to be. They work in the
clang of a distant owl car, and the roar of an
occasional "L" train, and the hollow echo of the
footsteps of the late passer-by. They go elabo-
rately into description, and are strong on the
[10]
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
brooding hush, but the thing has never been done
satisfactorily.
Gertie, sitting on the front stoop at two in
the morning, with her orange in one hand and
the sardine can in the other, put it this way:
"If I was to hear a cricket chirp now, I'd
screech. This isn't really quiet. It's like wait-
ing for a cannon cracker to go off just before
the fuse is burned down. The bang isn't there
yet, but you hear it a hundred times in your mind
before it happens."
"My name's Augustus G. Eddy," announced
the Kid Next Door, solemnly. "Back home
they always called me Gus. You peel that
orange while I unroll the top of this sardine
can. I'm guilty of having interrupted you in
the middle of what the girls call a good cry,
and I know you'll have to get it out of your sys-
tem some way. Take a bite of apple and then
wade right in and tell me what you're doing in
this burg if you don't like it."
* thing ought to have slow music," be-
gan Gertie. "It's pathetic. I came to Chicago
from Bcloit, Wisconsin, because I thought that
little town was a lonesome hole for a vivacious
creature like me. Lonesome! Listen while I
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laugh a low mirthless l?"gh. I didn't know any-
thing about the three-ply, double-barreled, extra
heavy brand of lonesomeness that a big town
like this can deal out. Talk about your desert
wastes ! They're sociable and snug compared to
this. I know three-fourths of the people in
Beloit, Wisconsin, by their first names. I've lived
here six months and I'm not on informal terms
with anybody except Teddy, the landlady's dog,
and he's a trained rat-and-book-agent terrier,
and not inclined to overfriendliness. When I
clerked at the Enterprise Store in Beloit the
women used to come in and ask for some-
thing we didn't carry just for an excuse to
copy the way the lace yoke effects were planned
in my shirtwaists. You ought to see the way
those same shirtwaists stack up here. Why, boy,
the lingerie waists that the other girls in my de-
partment wear make my best hand-tucked effort
look like a simple English country blouse.
They're so dripping with Irish crochet and real
Val and Cluny insertions that it's a wonder the
girls don't get stoop-shouldered carrying 'em
around."
"Hold on a minute," commanded Gus. "This
thing is uncanny. Our cases dovetail like the de-
[12]
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
ductions in a detective story. Kneel here at my
feet, little daughter, and I'll tell you the story
of my sad young life. I'm no child of the city
streets, either. Say, I came to this town because
I thought there was a bigger field for me in
Gents' Furnishings. Joke, what?"
But Gertie didn't smile. She gazed up at Gus,
and Gus gazed down at her, and his fingers fid-
dled absently with the big bow at the end of her
braid.
"And isn't there?" asked Gertie, sympa-
thetically.
"Girlie, I haven't saved twelve dollars since
I came. I'm no tightwad, and I don't believe
in packing everything away into a white marble
mausoleum, but still a gink kind of whispers to
himself that some day he'll be furnishing up a
kitchen pantry of his own."
"Ohl" said Gertie.
"And let me mention in passing," continued
Gus, winding the ribbon bow around his finger,
"that in the last hour or so that whisper has
been swelling to a shout."
"Oh 1" said Gertie again.
"You said it. But I couldn't buy a second-
hand gas stove with what I've saved in the last
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half-year here. Back home they used to think I
was a regular little village John Drew, I was
so dressy. But here I look like a yokel on circus
day compared to the other fellows in the store.
All they need is a field glass strung over their
shoulder to make them look like a clothing ad
in the back of a popular magazine. Say, girlie,
you've got the prettiest hair I've seen since I
blew in here. Look at that braid! Thick as a
rope ! That's no relation to the piles of jute that
the Flossies here stack on their heads. And
shines ! Like satin."
"It ought to," said Gertrude, wearily. "I
brush it a hundred strokes every night. Some-
times I'm so beat that I fall asleep with my
brush in the air. The manager won't stand for
any romping curls or hooks-and-eyes that don't
connect. It keeps me so busy being beautiful,
and what the society writers call Veil groomed,'
that I don't have time to sew the buttons on my
underclothes."
"But don't you get some amusement in the
evening?" marveled Gus. "What was the mat-
ter with you and the other girls in the store?
Can't you hit it off ?"
"Me? No. I guess I was too woodsy for
THE FROG AND THE PUDDLE
them. I went out with them a couph of times.
I guess they're nice girls all right; but they've
got what you call a broader way of looking at
things than I have. Living in a little town all
your life makes you narrow. These girls!
\Yell, maybe I'll get educated up to their plane
some day, but "
"No, you don't!" hissed Gus. "Not if I can
help it."
u But you can't," replied Gertie, sweetly.
"My, ain't this a grand night! Evenings like
this I used to love to putter around the yard
after supper, sprinkling the grass and weeding
the radishes. I'm the greatest kid to fool
around with a hose. And flowers! Say, they
just grow for me. You ought to have seen my
pansies and nasturtiums last summer."
The fingers of the Kid Next Door wan-
dered until they found Gertie's. They clasped
them.
"This thing just points one way, little one.
It's just as plain as a path leaing up to a cozy
little three-room flat up here on the North Side
somewhere. See it ? With me and you married,
and playing at housekeeping in a parlor and
bedroom and kitchen? And both of us going
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down town to work in the morning just the same
as we do now. Only not the same, either."
"Wake up, little boy," said Gertie, prying
her fingers away from those other detaining
ones. "I'd fit into a three-room flat like a whale
in a kitchen sink. I'm going back to Beloit,
Wisconsin. I've learned my lesson all right.
There's a fellow there waiting for me. I used
to think he was too slow. But say, he's got
the nicest little painting and paper-hanging busi-
ness you ever saw, and making money. He's
secretary of the K. P.'s back home. They give
some swell little dances during the winter, espe-
cially for the married members. In five years
we'll own our home, with a vegetable garden
in the back. I'm a little frog, and it's me for
the puddle."
Gus stood up slowly. Gertie felt a little pang
of compunction when she saw what a boy he was.
"I don't know when I've enjoyed a talk like
this. I've heard about these dawn teas, but I
never thought I'd go to one," she said.
"Good-night, girlie," interrupted Gus, ab-
ruptly. "It's the dreamless couch for mine.
We've got a big sale on in tan and black seconds
to-morrow."
[16]
II
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
HpHERE arc mo ways of doing battle against
Disgrace. You may live it down; or you
may run away from it and hide. The first
method is heart-breaking, but sure. The second
cannot be relied upon because of the uncomfort-
able way Disgrace has of turning up at your
heels just when you think you have eluded her in
the last town but one.
Ted Terrill did not choose the first method.
He had it thrust upon him. After Ted had
served his term he came back home to visit his
mother's grave, intending to take the next train
out. He wore none of the prison pallor that
you read about in books, because he had been
shortstop on the penitentiary all-star has
team, and famed for the dexterity with which
he could grab up red-hot grounders. The
storied lock step and the clipped- hair
effect also were missing. The superintendent
of Ted's prison had been one of the reform
kind.
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You never would have picked Ted for a
criminal. He had none of those interesting
phrenological bumps and depressions that usu-
ally are shown to such frank advantage in the
Bertillon photographs. Ted had been assistant
cashier in the Citizens' National Bank. In a mad
moment he had attempted a little sleight-of-
hand act in which certain Citizens' National
funds were to be transformed into certain glit-
tering shares and back again so quickly that the
examiners couldn't follow it with their eyes.
But Ted was unaccustomed to these now-you-see-
it-and-now-you-don't feats and his hand slipped.
The trick dropped to the floor with an awful
clatter.
Ted had been a lovable young kid, six feet
high, and blonde, with a great reputation as a
dresser. He had the first yellow plush hat in
our town. It sat on his golden head like a halo.
The women all liked Ted. Mrs. Dankworth,
the dashing widow (why will widows persist in
being dashing?), said that he was the only man
in our town who knew how to wear a dress suit.
The men were forever slapping him on the back
and asking him to have a little something. Ted's
good looks and his clever tongue and a certain
[18]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
charming Irish way he had with him caused
him to be taken up by the smart set. Now, if
youVe never lived in a small town you will be
much amused at the idea of its boasting a smart
set. Which proves your ignorance. The small
town smart set is deadly serious about its smart-
ness. It likes to take six-hour runs down to the
city to fit a pair of shoes and hear Caruso. Its
clothes are as well made, and its scandals as
crisp, and its pace as hasty, and its golf club as
dull as the clothes, and scandals, and pace, and
golf club of its city cousins.
The hasty pace killed Ted. He tried to keep
step in a set of young folks whose fathers had
made our town. And all the time his pocket-
book was yelling, "Whoa !" The young people
ran largely to scarlet-upholstered touring cars,
and country-club doings, and house parties, as
small town younger generations are apt to.
When Ted went to high school half the boys in
his little clique spent their after-school hours
dashing up and down Main street in their big,
glittering cars, sitting slumped down on the mid-
dle of their spines in front of the steering wheel,
their sleeves rolled up, their hair combed a mili-
tant pompadour. One or the other of them al-
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ways took Ted along. It is fearfully easy to de-
velop a taste for that kind of thing. As he grew
older, the taste took root and became a habit.
Ted came out after serving his term, still
handsome, spite of all that story-writers may
have taught to the contrary. But we'll make this
concession to the old tradition. There was a
difference. His radiant blondeur was dimmed
in some intangible, elusive way. Birdie Calla-
han, who had worked in Ted's mother's kitchen
for years, and who had gone back to her old
job at the Haley House after her mistress's
death, put it sadly, thus:
"He was always th' han'some divil. I used to
look forward to ironin' day just for the pleasure
of pressin' his fancy shirts for him. I'm that
partial to them swell blondes. But I dinnaw,
he's changed. Doin' time has taken the edge
off his hair an' complexion. Not changed his
color, do yuh mind, but dulled it, like a gold
ring, or the like, that has tarnished."
Ted was seated in the smoker, with a chip on
his shoulder, and a sick horror of encountering
some one he knew in his heart, when Jo Haley,
of the Haley House, got on at Westport, home-
ward bound. Jo Haley is the most eligible
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
bachelor in our town, and the slipperiest. He
has made the Haley House a gem, so that trav-
eling men will cut half a dozen towns to Sun-
day there. If he should say "Jump through
this!" to any girl in our town she'd jump.
Jo Haley strolled leisurely up the car aisle to-
ward Ted. Ted saw him coming and sat very
still, waiting.
"Hello, Ted! How's Ted?" said Jo Haley,
casually. And dropped into the adjoining seat
without any more fuss.
Ted wet his lips slightly and tried to say
something. He had been a breezy talker. But
the words would not come. Jo Haley made no
effort to cover the situation with a rush of con-
versation. He did not seem to realize that there
was any situation to cover. He champed the end
of his cigar and handed one to Ted.
"Well, youVe taken your lickin', kid. What
you going to do now?"
The rawness of it made Ted wince. "Oh, I
don't know," he stammered. "I've a job half
promised in Chicago."
"What doing?"
Ted laughed a short and ugly laugh. "Driv-
ing a brewery auto truck."
[21]
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Jo Haley tossed his cigar dexterously to the
opposite corner of his mouth and squinted
thoughtfully along its bulging sides.
"Remember that Wenzel girl that's kept
books for me for the last six years ? She's leav-
ing in a couple of months to marry a New York
guy that travels for ladies' cloaks and suits.
After she goes it's nix with the lady bookkeepers
for me. Not that Minnie isn't a good, straight
girl, and honest, but no girl can keep books with
one eye on a column of figures and the other on
a traveling man in a brown suit and a red neck-
tie, unless she's cross-eyed, and you bet Minnie
ain't. The job's yours if you want it. Eighty
a month to start on, and board."
"I can't, Jo. Thanks just the same. I'm
going to try to begin all over again, somewhere
else, where nobody knows me."
"Oh yes," said Jo. "I knew a fellow that
did that. After he came out he grew a beard,
and wore eyeglasses, and changed his name.
Had a quick, crisp way of talkin', and he culti-
vated a drawl and went west and started in busi-
ness. Real estate, I think. Anyway, the second
month he was there in walks a fool he used to
know and bellows: Why if it ain't Bill! Hello,
[22]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
Bill ! I thought you was doing time yet.' That
was enough. Ted, you can black your face, and
dye your hair, and squint, and some fine day,
sooner or later, somebody'll come along and blab
the whole thing. And say, the older it gets the
worse it sounds, when it does come out. Stick
around here where you grew up, Ted."
Ted clasped and unclasped his hands uncom-
fortably. "I can't figure out why you should
care how I finish."
"No reason," answered Jo. "Not a darned
one. I wasn't ever in love with your ma, like
the guy on the stage; and I never owed your
pa a cent. So it ain't a guilty conscience. I
guess it's just pure cussedness, and a liankerin*
for a new investment. I'm curious to know
how'll you turn out. You've got the rnakin's of
what the newspapers call a Leading Citizen,
even if you did fall down once. If I'd ever had
time to get married, which I never will have,
a first-class hotel bein' more worry and expense
than a Pittsburg steel magnate's whole harem,
I'd have wanted somebody to do the same for
my kid. That sounds slushy, but it's straight."
"I don't seem to know how to thank you," be-
gan Ted, a little husky as to voice.
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Call around to-morrow morning," inter-
rupted Jo Haley, briskly, "and Minnie Wenzcl
will show you the ropes. You and her can work
together for a couple of months. After then
she's leaving to make her underwear, and that.
I should think she'd have a bale of it by this
time. Been embroidering them shimmy things
and lunch cloths back of the desk when she
thought I wasn't lookin' for the last six months."
Ted came down next morning at 8 A.M. with
his nerve between his teeth and the chip still
balanced lightly on his shoulder. Five minutes
later Minnie Wenzel knocked it off. When Jo
Haley introduced the two jocularly, knowing
that they had originally met in the First Reader
room, Miss Wenzel acknowledged the introduc-
tion icily by lifting her left eyebrow slightly and
drawing down the corners of her mouth. Her
air of hauteur was a triumph, considering
that she was handicapped by black sateen
sleevelets.
I wonder how one could best describe Miss
Wenzel? There is one of her in every small
town. Let me think (business of hand on
brow). Well, she always paid eight dollars for
her corsets when most girls in a similar position
[24]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
got theirs for fifty-nine cents in the basement.
Nature had been kind to her. The hair that
had been a muddy brown in Minnie's schoolgirl
days it had touched with a magic red-gold wand.
Birdie Callahan always said that Minnie was
working only to wear out her old clothes.
After the introduction Miss VVenzel followed
Jo Haley into the lobby. She took no pains to
lower her voice.
"Well I must say, Mr. Haley, youVe got a
fine nerve ! If my gentleman friend was to hear
of my working with an ex-con I wouldn't be sur-
prised if he'd break off the engagement. I
should think you'd have some respect for the
feelings of a lady with a name to keep up, and
engaged to a swell fellow like Mr. Schwartz."
"Say, listen, m' girl," replied Jo Haley.
"The law don't cover all the tricks. But if
stuffing an order was a criminal offense I'll bet
your swell traveling man would be doing a life
term."
Ted worked that day with his teeth set so that
his jaws ached next morning. Minnie Wenzel
spoke to him only when necessary and then in
terms of dollars and cents. When dinner time
came she divested herself of the black sateen
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
sleevelets, wriggled from the shoulders down a
la Patricia O'Brien, produced a chamois skin,
and disappeared in the direction of the wash-
room. Ted waited until the dining-room was
almost deserted. Then he went in to dinner
alone. Some one in white wearing an absurd lit-
tle pocket handkerchief of an apron led him to
a seat in a far corner of the big room. Ted did
not lift his eyes higher than the snowy square of
the apron. The Apron drew out a chair, shoved
it under Ted's knees in the way Aprons have,
and thrust a printed menu at him.
"Roast beef, medium," said Ted, without
looking up.
"Bless your heart, yuh ain't changed a bit. I
remember how yuh used to jaw when it was too
well done," said the Apron, fondly.
Ted's head came up with a jerk.
"So yuh will cut yer old friends, is it?"
grinned Birdie Callahan. "If this wasn't a pub-
lic dining-room maybe yuh'd shake hands with a
poor but proud workin' girrul. Yer as good
lookin' a divil as ever, Mister Ted."
Ted's hand shot out and grasped hers.
"Birdie ! I could weep on your apron ! I never
was so glad to see any one in my life. Just to
[26]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
look at you makes me homesick. What in Sam
Hill are you doing here?"
"Waitin'. After yer ma died, seemed like I
didn't care t 1 work fer no other privit fam'ly,
so I came back here on my old job. I'll bet I'm
the homeliest head waitress in captivity."
Ted's nervous fingers were pleating the
tablecloth. His voice sank to a whisper.
"Birdie, tell me the God's truth. Did those
three years cause her death?"
"Niver!" lied Birdie. "I was with her to the
end. It started with a cold on th' chest. Have
some French fried with yer beef, Mr. Teddy.'
They're illigent to-day."
Birdie glided off to the kitchen. Authors are
fond of the word "glide." But you can take it
literally this time. Birdie had a face that looked
like a huge mistake, but she walked like a pan-
ther, and they're said to be the last cry as gliders.
She walked with her chin up and her hips firm.
That comes from juggling trays. You have to
walk like that to keep your nose out of the soup.
After a while the walk becomes a habit. Any
Masoned dining-room girl could give lessons in
walking to the Delsarte teacher of an Eastern
finishing school.
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
From the day that Birdie Callahan served
Ted with the roast beef medium and the elegant
French fried, she appointed herself monitor
over his food and clothes and morals. I wish
I could find words to describe his bitter loneli-
ness. He did not seek companionship. The
men, although not directly avoiding him, seemed
somehow to have pressing business whenever
they happened in his vicinity. The women ig-
nored him. Mrs. Dankworth, still dashing and
still widowed, passed Ted one day and looked
fixedly at a point one inch above his head. In a
town like ours the Haley House is like a big,
hospitable clubhouse. The men drop in there
the first thing in the morning, and the last thing
at night, to hear the gossip and buy a cigar and
jolly the girl at the cigar counter. Ted spoke to
them when they spoke to him. He began to de-
velop a certain grim line about the mouth. Jo
Haley watched him from afar, and the longer
he watched the kinder and more speculative
grew the look in his eyes. And slowly and
surely there grew in the hearts of our towns-
people a certain new respect and admiration for
this boy who was fighting his fight.
Ted got into the habit of taking his meals
[28]
I
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
late, so that Birdie Callahan could take the time
to talk to him.
"Birdie," he said one day, when she brought
his soup, "do you know that you're the only de-
cent woman who'll talk to me? Do you know
what I mean when I say that I'd give the rest of
my life if I could just put my head in my
mother's lap and have her muss up my hair and
call me foolish names?"
Birdie Callahan cleared her throat and said
abruptly: "I was noticin' yesterday your gray
pants needs pressin' bad. Bring 'em down to-
morrow mornin' and I'll give 'em th' elegant
crease in the laundry."
So the first weeks went by, and the two
months of Miss Wenzel's stay came to an end.
Ted thanked his God and tried hard not to wish
that she was a man so that he could punch her
tod
The day before the time appointed for her
departure she was closeted with Jo Haley for a
long, long time. When finally she emerged a
bellboy lounged up to Ted with a message.
"Wcnzel says th' Old Man wants t' sec you.
'S in his office. Say, Mr. Tcrrill, do yuh think
they can play to-day? It's pretty wet."
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Jo Haley was sunk in the depths of his big
leather chair. He did not look up as Ted en-
tered. "Sit down," he said. Ted sat down and
waited, puzzled.
"As a wizard at figures," mused Jo Haley
at last, softly as though to himself, "I'm a frost.
A column of figures on paper makes my head
swim. But I can carry a whole regiment of 'em
in my head. I know every time the barkeeper
draws one in the dark. I've been watchin*
this thing for the last two weeks hopin'
you'd quit and come and tell me." He turned
suddenly and faced Ted. "Ted, old kid,"
he said sadly, "what'n'ell made you do it
again?"
"What's the joke?" asked Ted.
"Now, Ted," remonstrated Jo Haley, "that
way of talkin' won't help matters none. As I
said, I'm rotten at figures. But you're the first
investment that ever turned out bad, and let me
tell you I've handled some mighty bad smelling
'ones. Why, kid, if you had just come to me on
the quiet and asked for the loan of a hundred or
so why "
"What's the joke, Jo?" said Ted again,
slowly.
[30]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
"This ain't my notion of a joke," came the
terse answer. "We're three hundred short."
The last vestige of Ted Ten-ill's old-time ra-
diance seemed to flicker and die, leaving him
ashen and old.
"Short?" he repeated. Then, "My God!" in
a strangely colorless voice "My God!" He
looked down at his fingers impersonally, as
though they belonged to some one else. Then
his hand clutched Jo Haley's arm with the grip
of fear. "Jo ! Jo ! That's the thing that has
haunted me day and night, till my nerves are
raw. The fear of doing it again. Don't laugh
at me, will you? I used to lie awake nights go-
ing over that cursed business of the bank over
and over till the cold sweat would break out all
over me. I used to figure it all out again, step
by step, until Jo, could a man steal and not
know it? Could thinking of a thing like that
drive a man crazy? Because if it could if it
could then "
"I don't know," said Jo Haley, "but it sounds
darned fishy." He had a hand on Ted's shak-
ing shoulder, and was looking into the white,
drawn face. "I had great plans for you, Ted.
But Minnie Wenzel's got it all down on slips of
[3']
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
paper. I might as well call her in again, and
we'll have the whole blamed thing out."
Minnie Wenzel came. In her hand were slips
of paper, and books with figures in them, and
Ted looked and saw things written in his own
hand that should not have been there. And he
covered his shamed face with his two hands and
gave thanks that his mother was dead.
There came three sharp raps at the office door.
The tense figures within jumped nervously.
"Keep out I" called Jo Haley, "whoever you
are." Whereupon the door opened and Birdie
Callahan breezed in.
"Get out, Birdie Callahan," roared Jo.
"You're in the wrong pew."
Birdie closed the door behind her com-
posedly and came farther into the room. "Pete
th' pasthry cook just tells me that Minnie Wen-
zel told th' day clerk, who told the barkeep,
who told th' janitor, who told th* chef, who
told Pete, that Minnie had caught Ted stealin'
some three hundred dollars."
Ted took a quick step forward. "Birdie, for
Heaven's sake keep out of this. You can't make
things any better. You may believe in me,
but "
[3*]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
"Where's the money ?" asked Birdie.
Ted stared at her a moment, his mouth open
ludicrously.
44 Why I don't know," he articulated,
painfully. "I never thought of that."
Birdie snorted defiantly. "I thought so.
D'ye know," sociably, "I was visitin' with my
aunt Mis' Mulcahy last evenin'."
There was a quick rustle of silks from Minnie
Wenzel's direction.
"Say, look here " began Jo Haley, impa-
tiently.
"Shut up, Jo Haley!" snapped Birdie. "As
I was sayin', I was visitin' with my aunt Mis'
Mulcahy. She does fancy washin' an' ironin*
for the swells. An' Minnie Wenzel, there bein*
none sweller, hires her to do up her weddin'
linens. Such smears av hand embridery an*
Irish crochet she never see th' likes, Mis' Mul-
cahy says, and she's seen a lot. And as a special
treat to the poor owld soul, why Minnie Wen-
zel lets her sec some av her weddin 1 clo'es.
There never yet was a woman who cud resist
showin' her weddin' things to every other
woman she cud lay hands on. Well, Mis' Mul-
cahy, she see that grand trewsow and she said
[33]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
she never saw th' beat Dresses! Well, her
going away suit alone comes to eighty dollars,
for it's bein' made by Molkowsky, the little Po-
lish tailor. An' her weddin' dress is satin, do
yuh mind ! Oh, it was a real treat for my aunt
Mis' Mulcahy."
Birdie walked over to where Minnie Wenzel
sat, very white and still, and pointed a stubby
red finger in her face. " 'Tis the grand man-
ager ye are, Miss Wenzel, gettin' satins an'
tailor-mades on yer salary. It takes a woman,
Minnie Wenzel, to see through a woman's
thricks."
"Well I'll be dinged!" exploded Jo Haley.
"Yuh'd better be!" retorted Birdie Callahan.
Minnie Wenzel stood up, her lip caught be-
tween her teeth.
"Am I to understand, Jo Haley, that you dare
to accuse me of taking your filthy money, in-
stead of that miserable ex-con there who has
done time?"
"That'll do, Minnie," said Jo Haley, gently. 1
"That's a-plenty."
"Prove it," went on Minnie, and then looked
as though she wished she hadn't.
"A business college edjication is a grand foine
[34]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
thing," observed Birdie. "Miss Wenzel is a
graduate av wan. They teach you everything
from drawin' birds with tail feathers to plain
and fancy penmanship. In fact, they teach
everything in the writin' line except forgery, an'
I ain't so sure they haven't got a coorse in that."
"I don't care," whimpered Minnie Wenzel
suddenly, sinking in a limp heap on the floor.
"I had to do it. I'm marrying a swell fellow
and a girl's got to have some clothes that don't
look like a Bird Center dressmaker's work. He's
got three sisters. I saw their pictures and
they're coming to the wedding. They're the
kind that wear low-necked dresses in the even-
ing, and have their hair and nails done down-
town. I haven't got a thing but my looks.
Could I go to New York dressed like a rube?
On the square, Jo, I worked here six years and
never took a sou. But things got away from
me. The tailor wouldn't finish my suit unless I
paid him fifty dollars down. I only took fifty
at first, intending to pay it back. Honest to
goodness, Jo, I did."
"Cut it out," said Jo Haley, u and get up. I
was going to give you a check for your wed-
ding, though I hadn't counted on no three hun-
[35]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
dred. We'll call it square. And I hope you'll
be happy, but I don't gamble on it. You'll be
goin' through your man's pants pockets before
you're married a year. You can take your hat
and fade. I'd like to know how I'm ever going
to square this thing with Ted and Birdie."
u An' me standin' here gassin' whiie them fool
girls in the dinin'-room can't set a table decent,
and dinner in less than ten minutes," cried
Birdie, rushing off. Ted mumbled something
unintelligible and was after her.
"Birdie! I want to talk to you."
"Say it quick then," said Birdie, over her
shoulder. "The doors open in three minnits."
"I can't tell you how grateful I am. This is
no place to talk to you. Will you let me walk
home with you to-night after your work's
done?"
"Will I?" said Birdie, turning to face him.
"I will not. Th' swell mob has shook you, an*
a good thing it is. You was travelin' with a
bunch of racers, when you was only built for
medium speed. Now you're got your chance to
a fresh start and don't you ever think I'm going
to be the one to let you spoil it by beginnin' to
walk out with a dinin'-room Lizzie like me."
[36]
THE MAN WHO CAME BACK
"Don't say that, Birdie," Ted put in.
"It's the truth," affirmed Birdie. "Not that
I ain't a perfec'ly respectable girrul, and ye
know it. I'm a good slob, but folks would be
tickled for the chance to say that you had no-
body to go with but the likes av me. If I was
to let you walk home with me to-night, yuh
might be askin' to call next week. Inside half a
year, if yuh was lonesome enough, yuh'd ask me
to marry yuh. And b'gorra," she said softly,
looking down at her unlovely red hands, "I'm
dead scared I'd do it. Get back to work, Ted
Terrill, and hold yer head up high, and when
yuh say your prayers to-night, thank your lucky
stars I ain't a hussy."
I37J
ni
WHAT SHE WORE
COMEWHERE in your story you must pause
to describe your heroine's costume. It is a
ticklish task. The average reader likes his hero-
ine well dressed. He is not satisfied with know-
ing that she looked like a tall, fair lily. He
wants to be told that her gown was of green
crepe, with lace ruffles that swirled at her feet.
Writers used to go so far as to name the dress-
maker ; and it was a poor kind of a heroine who
didn't wear a red velvet by Worth. But that has
been largely abandoned in these days of com-
missions. Still, when the heroine goes out on the
terrace to spoon after dinner (a quaint old Eng-
lish custom for the origin of which see any novel
by the "Duchess," page 179) the average reader
wants to know what sort of a filmy wrap she
snatches up on the way out. He demands a de-
scription, with as many illustrations as 1 the pub-
lisher will stand for, of what she wore from the
bedroom to the street, with full stops for the
ribbons on her robe de nuit, and the buckles on
[38]
WHAT SHE WORE
her ballroom slippers. Half the poor creatures
one sees flattening their noses against the shop
windows are authors getting a line on the ad-
jvance fashions. Suppose a careless writer were
1 to dress his heroine in a full-plaited skirt only
to find, when his story is published four months
later, that full-plaited skirts have been relegated
to the dim past!
I started to read a story once. It was a good
one. There was in it not a single allusion to
brandy-and-soda, or divorce, or the stock mar-
ket. The dialogue crackled. The hero talked
like a live man. It was a shipboard story, and
the heroine was charming so long as she wore
her heavy ulster. But along toward evening she
blossomed forth in a yellow gown, with a scarlet
poinsettia at her throat. I quit her cold. No-
body ever wore a scarlet poinsettia; or if they
did, they couldn't wear it on a yellow gown. Or
if they did wear it with a yellow gown, they
didn't wear it at the throat. Scarlet poinsettias
aren't worn, anyhow. To this day I don't know
whether the heroine married the hero or jumped
overboard.
You see, one can't be too careful about cloth-
ing one's heroine.
[39]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
I hesitate to describe Sophy Epstein's dress.
You won't like it. In the first place, it was cut
too low, front and back, for a shoe clerk in a
downtown loft. It was a black dress, near-prin-
cess in style, very tight as to fit, very short as to
skirt, very sleazy as to material. It showed all
the delicate curves of Sophy's under-fed, girlish
body, and Sophy didn't care a bit. Its most ob-
jectionable feature was at the throat. Collarless
gowns were in vogue. Sophy's daring shears
had gone a snip or two farther. They had
cut a startlingly generous V. To say that
the dress was elbow-sleeved is superfluous. I
have said that Sophy clerked in a downtown
loft.
Sophy sold "sample" shoes at two-fifty a pair,
and from where you were standing you thought
they looked just like the shoes that were sold in
the regular shops for six. When Sophy sat on
one of the low benches at the feet of some cus-
tomer, tugging away at a refractory shoe for a
would-be small foot, her shameless little gown
exposed more than it should have. But few of
Sophy's customers were shocked. They were
mainly chorus girls and ladies of doubtful com-
plexion in search of cheap and ultra footgear,
[40]
WHAT SHE WORE
and to use a health term hardened by ex-
posure.
Have I told you how pretty she was? She
was so pretty that you immediately forgave her
the indecency of her pitiful little gown. She
was pretty in a daringly demure fashion, like a
wicked little Puritan, or a poverty-stricken Cleo
de Merode, with her smooth brown hair parted
in the middle, drawn severely down over her
ears, framing the lovely oval of her face and
ending in a simple coil at the neck. Some ser-
pent's wisdom had told Sophy to eschew puffs.
But I think her prettiness could have triumphed
even over those.
If Sophy's boss had been any other sort of
man he would have informed Sophy, sternly,
that black princess effects, cut low, were not au
fait in the shoe-clerk world. But Sophy's boss
had a rhombic nose, and no instep, and the tail
of his name had been amputated. He didn't
care how Sophy wore her dresses so long as she
sold shoes.
Once the boss had kissed Sophy not on the
mouth, but just where her shabby gown formed
its charming but immodest V. Sophy had
slapped him, of course. But the slap had not set
[41]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
the thing right in her mind. She could not for-
get it. It had made her uncomfortable in much
the same way as we are wildly ill at ease when
we dream of walking naked in a crowded street.
At odd moments during the day Sophy had
found herself rubbing the spot furiously with
her unlovely handkerchief, and shivering a lit-
tle. She had never told the other girls about
that kiss.
So there you have Sophy and her costume.
You may take her or leave her. I purposely
placed these defects in costuming right at the
beginning of the story, so that there should be
no false pretenses. One more detail. About
Sophy's throat was a slender, near-gold chain
from which was suspended a cheap and glitter-
ing La Valliere. Sophy had not intended it as a
sop to the conventions. It was an offering on
the shrine of Fashion, and represented many
lunchless days.
At eleven o'clock one August morning, Louie
came to Chicago from Oskaloosa, Iowa. There
was no hay in his hair. The comic papers have
long insisted that the country boy, on his first
visit to the city, is known by his greased boots
and his high-water pants. Don't you believe
WHAT SHE WORE
them. The small-town boy is as fastidious about
the height of his heels and the stripe of his shirt
and the roll of his hat-brim as are his city
brothers. He peruses the slangily worded ads
of the "classy clothes" tailors, and when scarlet
cravats are worn the small-town boy is not more
than two weeks late in acquiring one that glows
like a headlight.
Louie found a rooming-house, shoved his
suitcase under the bed, changed his collar,
washed his hands in the gritty water of the wash
bowl, and started out to look for a job.
Louie was twenty-one. For the last four
years he had been employed in the best shoe
store at home, and he knew shoe leather from
the factory to the ash barrel. It was almost a
religion with him.
Curiosity, which plays leads in so many life
dramas, led Louie to the rotunda of the tallest
;ing. It was built on the hollow center plan,
with a sheer drop from the twenty-somethingth
to the main floor. Louie stationed himself in
the center of the mosaic floor, took off his hat,
bent backward almost double and gazed, his
mouth wide open. When he brought his mus-
cles slowly back into normal position he tried
[43]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
fiard not to look impressed. He glanced about,
sheepishly, to see if any one was laughing at him,
and his eye encountered the electric-lighted glass
display case of the shoe company upstairs. The
case was filled with pink satin slippers and cun-
ning velvet boots, and the newest thing in bronze
street shoes. Louie took the next elevator up.
The shoe display had made him feel as though
some one from home had slapped him on the
back.
The God of the Jobless was with him. The
boss had fired two boys the day before.
"Oskaloosa I" grinned the boss, derisively.
"Do they wear shoes there ? What do you know
about shoes, huh boy?"
Louie told him. The boss shuffled the papers
on his desk, and chewed his cigar, and tried not
to show his surprise. Louie, quite innocently,
was teaching the boss things about the shoe busi-
ness.
When Louie had finished "Well, I try you,
anyhow," the boss grunted, grudgingly. "I
give you so-and-so much." He named a wage
that would have been ridiculous if it had not
been so pathetic.
"All right, sir," answered Louie, promptly,
[44]
WHAT SHE WORE
like the boys in the Alger series. The cost of
living problem had never bothered Louie in
Oskaloosa.
The boss hid a pleased smile.
"Miss Epstein!" he bellowed, "step this way!
Miss Epstein, kindly show this here young man
so he gets a line on the stock. He is from Oska-
loosa, loway. Look out she don't sell you a
gold brick, Louie."
But Louie was not listening. He was gazing
at the V in Sophy Epstein's dress with all his
scandalized Oskaloosa, Iowa, eyes.
Louie was no mollycoddle. But he had been
in great demand as usher at the Young Men's
Sunday Evening Club service at the Congrega-
tional church, and in his town there had been no
Sophy Epsteins in too-tight princess dresses, cut
into a careless V. But Sophy was a city product
I was about to say pure and simple, but I will
not wise, bold, young, old, underfed, over-
worked, and triumphantly pretty.
"How-do!" cooed Sophy in her best baby
tones. Louie's disapproving eyes jumped from
the objectionable V in Sophy's dress to the lure
of Sophy's face, and their expression underwent
a lightning change. There was no disapprov-
[45]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
ing Sophy's face, no matter how long one had
dwelt in Oskaloosa.
"I won't bite you," said Sophy. "I'm never
vicious on Tuesdays. We'll start here with the
misses' an' children's, and work over to the other
side."'
Whereupon Louie was introduced into the in-
tricacies of the sample shoe business. He kept
his eyes resolutely away from the V, and learned
many things. He learned how shoes that look
like six dollar values may be sold for two-fifty.
He looked on in wide-eyed horror while Sophy
fitted a No. 5 C shoe on a 6 B foot and assured
the wearer that it looked like a made-to-order
boot. He picked up a pair of dull kid shoes
and looked at them. His leather-wise eyes saw
much, and I think he would have taken his hat
off the hook, and his offended business principles
out of the shop forever if Sophy had not com-
pleted her purchase and strolled over to him at
the psychological moment.
She smiled up at him, impudently. "Well,
Pink Cheeks," she said, "how do you like our
little settlement by the lake, huh?"
"These shoes aren't worth two-fifty," said
Louie, indignation in his voice.
[46]
WHAT SHE WORE
"Well, sure," replied Sophy. "I know it
What do you think this is? A charity bazaar? 1 '
"But back home " began Louie, hotly.
"Ferget it, kid," said Sophy. "This is a big
town, but it ain't got no room for back-homers.
Don't sour on one job till you've got another
nailed. You'll find yourself cuddling down on a
park bench if you do. Say, are you honestly
from Oskaloosa?"
"I certainly am," answered Louie, with pride.
"My goodness!" ejaculated Sophy. "I never
believed there was no such place. Don't brag
about it to the other fellows."
"What time do you go out for lunch?" asked
Louie.
"What's it to you?" with the accent on the
"to."
"When I want to know a thing, I generally
ask," explained Louie, gently.
Sophy looked at him a long, keen, knowing
look. "You'll learn," she observed, thought-
fully.
Louie did learn. He learned so much in that
first week that when Sunday came it seemed as
:^h aeons had passed over his head. He
learned that the crime of murder was as noth-
[47]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
ing compared to the crime of allowing a cus-
tomer to depart shoeless; he learned that the
lunch hour was invented for the purpose of mak-
ing dates; that no one had ever heard of Oska-
loosa, Iowa ; that seven dollars a week does not
leave much margin for laundry and general reck-
lessness; that a madonna face above a V-cut
gown is apt to distract one's attention from
shoes; that a hundred-dollar nest egg is as ef-
fective in Chicago as a pine stick would be in
propping up a stone wall ; and that all the other
men clerks called Sophy "sweetheart."
Some of his newly acquired knowledge
brought pain, as knowledge is apt to do.
He saw that State Street was crowded with
Sophys during the noon hour; girls with lovely
faces under pitifully absurd hats. Girls who
aped the fashions of the dazzling creatures they
saw stepping from limousines. Girls who
starved body and soul in order to possess a set
of false curls, or a pair of black satin shoes with
mother-o'-pearl buttons. Girls whose minds
were bounded on the north by the nickel
theatres; on the east by "I sez to him"; on the
south by the gorgeous shop windows; and on
the west by u He sez t' me."
[48]
WHAT SHE WORE
Oh, I can't tell you how much Louie learned
in that first week while his eyes were getting ac-
customed to the shifting, jostling, pushing, gig-
gling, walking, talking throng. The city is
justly famed as a hot house of forced knowledge.
One thing Louie could not learn. He could
not bring himself to accept the V in Sophy's
dress. Louie's mother had been one of the old-
fashioned kind who wore a blue-and-white
checked gingham apron from 6 A.M. to 2 P.M.,
when she took it off to go downtown and help
the ladies of the church at the cake sale in the
empty window of the gas company's office, only
to don it again when she fried the potatoes for
supper. Among other things she had taught
Louie to wipe his feet before coming in, to re-
spect and help women, and to change his socks
often.
After a month of Chicago Louie forgot the
first lesson; had more difficulty than I can tell
you in reverencing a woman who only said, u Aw,
don't get fresh now!" when the other men put
their arms about her; and adhered to the third
only after a struggle, in which he had to do a
small private washing in his own wash-bowl in
the evening.
[49]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Sophy called him a stiff. His gravely courte-
ous treatment of her made her vaguely uncom-
fortable. She was past mistress in the art of
parrying insults and banter, but she had no reply
ready for Louie's boyish air of deference. It an-
gered her for some unreasonable woman-reason.
There came a day when the V-cut dress
brought them to open battle. I think Sophy
had appeared that morning minus the chain and
La Valliere. Frail and cheap as it was, it had
been the only barrier that separated Sophy from
frank shamelessness. Louie's outraged sense of
propriety asserted itself.
"Sophy," he stammered, during a quiet half-
hour, "I'll call for you and take you to the nickel
show to-night if you'll promise not to wear that
dress. What makes you wear that kind of a
get-up, anyway?"
"Dress?" queried Sophy, looking down at the
shiny front breadth of her frock. "Why? Don't
you like it?"
"Like it! No!" blurted Louie.
"Don't yuh, rully ! Deahme! Deah me! If
I'd only knew that this morning. As a gen'ral
thing I wear white duck complete down t' work,
but I'm savin' my last two clean suits f'r gawlf."
[50]
WHAT SHE WORE
Louie ran an uncomfortable finger around the
edge of his collar, but he stood his ground. "It
it shows your neck so," he objected, mis-
'erably.
Sophy opened her great eyes wide. "Well,
supposin' it does?" she inquired, coolly. "It's a
perfectly good neck, ain't it? 1 '
Louie, his face very red, took the plunge.
"I don't know. I guess so. But, Sophy, it
looks so so you know what I mean. I hate
to see the way the fellows rubber at you. Why
don't you wear those plain shirtwaist things,
with high collars, like my mother wears back
home?"
Sophy's teeth came together with a click. She
laughed a short cruel little laugh. "Say, Pink
Cheeks, did yuh ever do a washin' from seven
to twelve, after you got home from work in the
cvenin'? It's great! 'Specially when you're liv-
ing in a six-by-ten room with all the modern in-
conveniences, includin' no water except on the
third floor down. Simple! Say, a child could
work it. All you got to do, when you get home
so tired your back teeth ache, is to haul your
water, an' soak your clothes, an' then rub 'em till
your hands peel, and rinse 'em, an' boil 'em, and
[51]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
blue 'em, an' starch 'em. See? Just like that.
Nothin' to it, kid. Nothin' to it."
Louie had been twisting his fingers nervously.
Now his hands shut themselves into fists. He(
looked straight into Sophy's angry eyes.
"I do know what it is," he said, quite simply.
"There's been a lot written and said about
women's struggle with clothes. I wonder why
they've never said anything about the way a
man has to fight to keep up the thing they call
appearances. God knows it's pathetic enough
to think of a girl like you bending over a tub-
ful of clothes. But when a man has to do it,
it's a tragedy."
"That's so," agreed Sophy. "When a girl gets
shabby, and her clothes begin t' look tacky she
can take a gore or so out of her skirt where it's
the most wore, and catch it in at the bottom,
and call it a hobble. An' when her waist gets
too soiled she can cover up the front of it with
a jabot, an' if her face is pretty enough she can
carry it off that way. But when a man is seedy,
he's seedy. He can't sew no ruffles on his
pants."
"I ran short last week," continued Louie.
*That is, shorter than usual. I hadn't the fifty
[52]
WHAT SHE WORE
cents to give to the woman. You ought to see
her! A little, gray-faced thing, with wisps of
hair, and no chest to speak of, and one of those
mashed-looking black hats. Nobody could have
the nerve to ask her to wait for her money. So
I did my own washing. I haven't learned to
wear soiled clothes yet. I laughed fit to bust
while I was doing it. But I'll bet my mother
dreamed of me that night. The way they do,
you know, when something's gone wrong."
Sophy, perched on the third rung of the slid-
ing ladder, was gazing at him. Her lips were
parted slightly, and her cheeks were very pink.
On her face was a new, strange look, as of some-
thing half forgotten. It was as though the spirit
of Sophy-as-she-might-have-been were inhabit-
ing her soul for a brief moment. At Louie's
next words the look was gone.
"Can't you ew something a lace yoke or
whatever you call 'em in that dress?" he per-
sisted.
"Aw, fade!" jeered Sophy. "When a girl's
only got one dress it's got to have some tong
to it. Maybe this gown would cause a wave of
indignation in Oskaloosa, Iowa, but it don't even
make a ripple on State Street. It takes more
[53]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
than an aggravated Dutch neck to make a fel-
low look at a girl these days. In a town like
this a girl's got to make a showin' some way.
I'm my own stage manager. They look at my
dress first, an' grin. See? An* then they look
at my face. I'm like the girl in the story. Muh
face is muh fortune. It's earned me many a
square meal; an' lemme tell you, Pink Cheeks,
eatin' square meals is one of my favorite pas-
times."
"Say looka here!" bellowed the boss, wrath-
fully. "Just cut out this here Romeo and Juliet
act, will you! That there ladder ain't for no
balcony scene, understand. Here you, Louie^
you shinny up there and get down a pair of them
brown satin pumps, small size."
Sophy continued to wear the black dress. The
V-cut neck seemed more flaunting than ever.
It was two weeks later that Louie came in
from lunch, his face radiant. He was fifteen
minutes late, but he listened to the boss's ravings
with a smile.
"You grin Hke somebody handed you a ten-
case note," commented Sophy, with a woman's
curiosity. "I guess you must of met some rube
from home when you was out t' lunch."
[54]
WHAT SHE WORE
"Better than that! Who do you think I
bumped right into in the elevator going down?"
"Well, Brothah Bones," mimicked Sophy,
"who did you meet in the elevator going down?"
"I met a man named Ames. He used to
travel for a big Boston shoe house, and he made
our town every few months. We got to be good
friends. I took him home for Sunday dinner
once, and he said it was the best dinner he'd had
in months. You know how tired those travel-
ing men get of hotel grub."
"Cut out the description and get down to ac-
tion," snapped Sophy.
"Well, he knew me right away. And he
made me go out to lunch with him. A real
lunch, starting with soup. Gee! It went big.
He asked me what I was doing. I told him I
was working here, and he opened his eyes, and
then he laughed and said : 'How did you get into
that joint?' Then he took me down to a swell
little shoe shop on State Street, and it turned out
that he owns it. He introduced me all around,
and I'm going there to work next week. And
wages! Why say, it's almost a salary. A fel-
low can hold his head up in a place like that."
"When you leavin'?" asked Sophy, slowly.
[55]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Monday. Gee! it seems a year away."
Sophy was late Saturday morning. When
she came in, hurriedly, her cheeks were scarlet
and her eyes glowed. She took off her hat and
coat and fell to straightening boxes and putting
out stock without looking up. She took no part
in the talk and jest that was going on among
the other clerks. One of the men, in search of
the missing mate to the shoe in his hand, came
over to her, greeting her carelessly. Then he
stared.
"Well, what do you know about this!" he
called out to the others, and laughed coarsely,
"Look, stop, listen! Little Sophy Bright Eyes
here has pulled down the shades."
Louie turned quickly. The immodest V of
Sophy's gown was filled with a black lace yoke
that came up to the very lobes of her little pink
ears. She had got some scraps of lace from
Where do they get those bits of rusty black?
From some basement bargain counter, perhaps,
raked over during the lunch hour. There were
nine pieces in the front, and seven in the back.
She had sat up half the night putting them to-
gether so that when completed they looked like
one, if you didn't come too close. There is a
[56]
WHAT SHE WORE
certain strain of Indian patience and ingenuity
in women that no man has ever been able to un-
derstand.
Louie looked up and saw. His eyes met
Sophy's. In his there crept a certain exultant
gleam, as of one who had fought for something
great and won. Sophy saw the look. The shy
questioning in her eyes was replaced by a spark
of defiance. She tossed her head, and turned
to the man who had called attention to her cos-
tume.
"Who's loony now?" she jeered. "I always
put in a yoke when it gets along toward fall.
My lungs is delicate. And anyway, I see by the
papers yesterday that collarless gowns is slightly
passay f'r winter."
[57}
IV
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
is not a baseball story. The grand*
stand does not rise as one man and shout
itself hoarse with joy. There isn't a three-bag-
ger in the entire three thousand words, and no-
body is carried home on the shoulders of the
crowd. For that sort of thing you need not
squander fifteen cents on your favorite maga-
zine. The modest sum of one cent will make
you the possessor of a Pink J Un. There you
will find the season's games handled in masterly
fashion by a six-best-seller artist, an expert
mathematician, and an original-slang humorist
No mere short story dub may hope to compete
with these.
In the old days, before the gentry of the ring
had learned the wisdom of investing their win-
nings in solids instead of liquids, this used to be
a favorite conundrum: When is a prize-fighter
not a prize-fighter?
Chorus: When he is tending bar.
I rise to ask you Brothah Fan, when is a ball
fsJ
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
player not a ball player? Above the storm of
facetious replies I shout the answer:
When he's a shoe clerk.
Any man who can look handsome in a dirty
baseball suit is an Adonis. There is something
about the baggy pants, and the Micawber-
shaped collar, and the skull-fitting cap, and the
foot or so of tan, or blue, or pink undershirt
sleeve sticking out at the arms, that just natu-
rally kills a man's best points. Then too, a base-
ball suit requires so much in the matter of leg.
Therefore, when I say that Rudie Schlachweiler
was a dream even in his baseball uniform, with
a dirty brown streak right up the side of his
pants where he had slid for base, you may know
that the girls camped on the grounds during the
season.
During the summer months our ball park is to
us what the Grand Prix is to Paris, or Ascot
is to London. What care we that Evers gets
seven thousand a year (or is it a month?) ; or
that Chicago's new South-side ball park seats
thirty-five thousand (or is it million?). Of
what interest are such meager items compared
with the knowledge that "Pug" Coulan, who
plays short, goes with Undine Meyers, the girl
[59]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
up there in the eighth row, with the pink dress
and the red roses on her hat? When "Pug"
snatches a high one out of the firmament we yell
with delight, and even as we yell we turn side-
ways to look up and see how Undine is taking
it. Undine's shining eyes are fixed on "Pug,"
and he knows it, stoops to brush the dust
off his dirt-begrimed baseball pants, takes an
attitude of careless grace and misses the next
play.
Our grand-stand seats almost two thousand,
counting the boxes. But only the snobs, and the
girls with new hats, sit in the boxes. Box seats
are comfortable, it is true, and they cost only an
additional ten cents, but we have come to con-
sider them undemocratic, and unworthy of true
fans. Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne, who spends her
winters in Egypt and her summers at the ball
park, comes out to the game every afternoon in
her automobile, but she never occupies a box
seat; so why should we? She perches up in the
grand-stand with the rest of the enthusiasts, and
when Kelly puts one over she stands up and
clinches her fists, and waves her arms and shouts
with the best of 'em. She has even been known
to cry, "Good eye! Good eye!" when things
[60]
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
were at fever heat. The only really blase indi-
vidual in the ball park is Willie Grimes, who
peddles ice-cream cones. For that matter, I
once saw Willie turn a languid head to pipe, in
his thin voice, "Give 'em a dark one, Dutch I
Give 'em a dark one I"
Well, that will do for the firsh dash of local
color. Now for the^ story.
Ivy Keller came home June nineteenth from
Miss Shont's select school for young ladies. By
June twenty-first she was bored limp. You could
hardly see the plaits of her white tailored shirt-
waist for fraternity pins and secret society em-
blems, and her bedroom was ablaze with col-
lege banners and pennants to such an extent that
the maid gave notice every Thursday which
was upstairs cleaning day.
For two weeks after her return Ivy spent
most of her time writing letters and waiting for
them, and reading the classics on the front
porch, dressed in a middy blouse and a blue
skirt, with her hair done in a curly Greek effect
like the girls on the covers of the Ladies' Maga-
zine. She posed against the canvas bosom of
the porch chair with one foot under her, the
other swinging free, showing a tempting thing
[61]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
in beaded slipper, silk stocking, and what the
story writers call "slim ankle."
On the second Saturday after her return her
father came home for dinner at noon, found her
deep in Volume Two of "Les Miserables."
"Whew! This is a scorcher!" he exclaimed,
and dropped down on a wicker chair next to
Ivy. Ivy looked at her father with languid in-
terest, and smiled a daughterly smile. Ivy's
father was an insurance man, alderman of his
ward, president of the Civic Improvement club,
member of five lodges, and an habitual delegate.
It generally was he who introduced distinguished
guests who spoke at the opera house on Decora-
tion Day. He called Mrs. Keller "Mother,"
and he wasn't above noticing the fit of a
gown on a pretty feminine figure. He thought
Ivy was an expurgated edition of Lillian
Russell, Madame De Stae'l, and Mrs. Pank-
hurst.
"Aren't you feeling well, Ivy?" he asked.
"Looking a little pale. It's the heat, I suppose.
Gosh ! Something smells good. Run in and tell
Mother I'm here."
Ivy kept one slender finger between the leaves
of her book. "I'm perfectly well," she replied.
[62] '
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
"That must be beefsteak and onions. Ugh!"
And she shuddered, and went indoors.
Dad Keller looked after her thoughtfully.
Then he went in, washed his hands, and sat
down at table with Ivy and her mother.
"Just a sliver for me," said Ivy, "and no
onions."
Her father put down his knife and fork,
cleared his throat, and spake, thus :
"You get on your hat and meet me at the
2 145 inter-urban. You're going to the ball
game with me."
"Ball game!" repeated Ivy. "I? But
I'd "
"Yes, you do," interrupted her father.
"You've been moping around here looking a
cross between Saint Cecilia and Little Eva long
enough. I don't care if you don't know a spit-
ball from a fadeaway when you see it. You'll
be out in the air all afternoon, and there'll be
some excitement. All the girls go. You'll like
it. They're playing Marshalltown."
Ivy went, looking the sacrificial lamb. Five
minutes after the game was called she pointed
one tapering white finger in the direction of the
pitcher's mound.
[63]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Who's that?" she asked.
"Pitcher," explained Papa Keller, laconically.
Then, patiently: "He throws the ball."
"Oh," said Ivy. "What did you say his name
was?"
"I didn't say. But it's Rudie Schlachweiler.
The boys call him Dutch. Kind of a pet, Dutch
is."
"Rudie Schlachweiler I" murmured Ivy,
dreamily. "What a strong name !"
"Want some peanuts?" inquired her father.
"Does one eat peanuts at a ball game?"
"It ain't hardly legal if you don't," Pa Keller
assured her.
"Two sacks," said Ivy. "Papa, why do they
call it a diamond, and what are those brown
bags at the corners, and what does it count if
you hit the ball, and why do they rub their hands
in the dust and then er spit on them, and
what salary does a pitcher get, and why does the
red-haired man on the other side dance around
like that between the second and third brown
bag, and doesn't a pitcher do anything but pitch,
andwh ?"
"You're on," said papa.
After that Ivy didn't mi a game during all
[64]
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
the time that the team played in the home town.
She went without a new hat, and didn't care
whether Jean Valjean got away with the goods
yr not, and forgot whether you played third
hand high or low in bridge. She even became
chummy with Undine Meyers, who wasn't her
kind of a girl at all. Undine was thin in a vo-
luptuous kind of way, if such a paradox can be,
and she had red lips, and a roving eye, and she
ran around downtown without a hat more than
was strictly necessary. But Undine and Ivy had
two subjects in common. They were baseball
and love. It is queer how the limelight will
make heroes of us all.
Now "Pug" Coulan, who was red-haired, and
had shoulders like an ox, and arms that hung
down to his knees, like those of an orang-outang,
slaughtered beeves at the Chicago stockyards in
winter. In the summer he slaughtered hearts.
He wore mustard colored shirts that matched
his hair, and his baseball stockings generally had
a rip in them somewhere, but when he was on
die diamond we were almost ashamed to look
t Undine, so wholly did her heart shine in her
eyes.
Now, we'll have just another dash or two of
[65]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
local color. In a small town the chances for
hero worship are few. If it weren't for the
traveling men our girls wouldn't know whether
stripes or checks were the thing in gents' suit-
ings. When the baseball season opened the girls
swarmed on it. Those that didn't understand
baseball pretended they did. When the team
was out of town our form of greeting was
changed from, "Good-morning!" or "Howdy-
do!" to "What's the score?" Every night the
results of the games throughout the league were
posted up on the blackboard in front of Schlag-
er's hardware store, and to see the way in which
the crowd stood around it, and streamed across
the street toward it, you'd have thought they
were giving away gas stoves and hammock
couches.
Going home in the street car after the game
the girls used to gaze adoringly at the dirty
faces of their sweat-begrimed heroes, and then
they'd rush home, have supper, change their
dresses, do their hair, and rush downtown past
the Parker Hotel to mail their letters. The
baseball boys boarded over at the Griggs
House, which is third-class, but they used
their tooth-picks, and held the post-mortem of
[66]
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
the day's game out in front of the Parker
Hotel, which is our leading hostelry. The
postoffice receipts record for our town was
broken during the months of June, July, and
August.
Mrs. Freddy Van Dyne started the trouble by
having the team over to dinner, "Pug" Coulan
and all. After all, why not? No foreign and
impecunious princes penetrate as far inland as
our town. They get only as far as New York,
or Newport, where they are gobbled up by
many-moneyed matrons. If Mrs. Freddy Van
Dyne found the supply of available lions limited,
why should she not try to content herself with
a jackal or so?
Ivy was asked. Until then she had contented
herself with gazing at her hero. She had be-
come such a hardened baseball fan that she fol-
lowed the game with a score card, accurately jot-
ting down every play, and keeping her watch
open on her knee.
She sat next to Rudie at dinner. Before she
had nibbled her second salted almond, Ivy Kel-
ler and Rudie Schlachweiler understood each
other. Rudie illustrated certain plays by draw-
ing lines on the table-cloth with his knife and
[67]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Ivy gazed, wide-eyed, and allowed her soup to
grow cold.
The first night that Rudie called, Pa Keller
thought it a great joke. He sat out on the porch
with Rudie and Ivy and talked baseball, and got
up to show Rudie how he could have got the
goat of that Keokuk catcher if only he had tried
one of his famous open-faced throws. Rudie
looked politely interested, and laughed in all the
right places. But Ivy didn't need to pretend.
Rudie Schlachweiler spelled baseball to her.
She did not think of her caller as a good-looking
young man in a blue serge suit and a white shirt-
waist. Even as he sat there she saw him as a
blonde god standing on the pitcher's mound, with
the scars of battle on his baseball pants, his left
foot placed in front of him at right angles with
his right foot, his gaze fixed on first base in a
cunning effort to deceive the man at bat, in that
favorite attitude of pitchers just before they
get ready to swing their left leg and h'ist one
over.
The second time that Rudie called, Ma Keller
said:
"Ivy, I don't like that ball player coming
here to see you. The neighbors'll talk."
[68]
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
The third time Rudie called, Pa Keller said:
"What's that guy doing here again ?"
The fourth time Rudie called, Pa Keller and
Ma Keller said, in unison : "This thing has got
to stop."
But it didn't. It had had too good a start.
For the rest of the season Ivy met her knight of
the sphere around the corner. Theirs was a walk-
ing courtship. They used to roam up as far as
the State road, and down as far as the river, and
Rudie would fain have talked of love, but Ivy
talked of baseball.
"Darling," Rudie would murmur, pressing
Ivy's arm closer, "when did you first begin to
care
"Why I liked the very first game I saw when
Dad "
"I mean, when did you first begin to care for
me?"
"Oh! When you put three men out in that
game with Marshalltown when the teams were
tied in the eighth inning. Remember? Say,
Rudie dear, what was the matter with your arm
to-day? You let three men walk, and Albia's
weakest hitter got a home run out of you."
"Oh, forget baseball for a minute, Ivy 1 Let's
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
talk about something else. Let's talk about
us."
"Us? Well, you're baseball, aren't you?"
retorted Ivy. "And if you are, I am. Did you
notice the way that Ottumwa man pitched yes-
terday? He didn't do any acting for the grand-
stand. He didn't reach up above his head, and
wrap his right shoulder with his left toe, and
swing his arm three times and then throw seven
inches outside the plate. He just took the ball
in his hand, looked at it curiously for a mo-
ment, and fired it zing! like that, over the
plate. I'd get that ball if I were you."
"Isn't this a grand night?" murmured Rudie.
"But they didn't have a hitter in the bunch,"
went on Ivy. "And not a man in the team could
run. That's why they're tail-enders. Just the
same, that man on the mound was a wizard, and
if he had one decent player to give him some
support
Well, the thing came to a climax. One even-
ing, two weeks before the close of the season,
Ivy put on her hat and announced that she was
going downtown to mail her letters.
"Mail your letters in the daytime," growled
Papa Keller.
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
"I didn't have time today," answered Ivy.
"It was a thirteen inning game, and it lasted un-
til six o'clock."
It was then that Papa Keller banged the
heavy fist of decision down on the library
table.
"This thing's got to stop!" he thundered. "I
won't have any girl of mine running the streets
with a ball player, understand? Now you quit
seeing this seventy-five-dollars-a-month bush
leaguer or leave this house. I mean it."
"All right," said Ivy, with a white-hot calm.
"I'll leave. I can make the grandest kind of
angel-food with marshmallow icing, and you
know yourself my fudges can't be equaled. He'll
be playing in the major leagues in three years.
Why just yesterday there was a strange man at
the game a city man, you could tell by his hat-
band, and the way his clothes were cut. He
stayed through the whole game, and never took
his eyes off Rudie. I just know he was a scout
for the Cubs."
"Probably a hardware drummer, or a fellow
that Schlachweiler owes money to."
Ivy began to pin on her hat. A scared look
leaped into Papa Keller's eyes. He looked a
[71]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
little old, too, and drawn, at that minute. He
stretched forth a rather tremulous hand.
"Ivy girl," he said.
"What?" snapped Ivy.
"Your old father's just talking for your own
good. You're breaking your ma's heart. You
and me have been good pals, haven't we?"
"Yes," said Ivy, grudgingly, and without
looking up.
"Well now, look here. I've got a proposi-
tion to make to you. The season's over in two
more weeks. The last week they play out of
town. Then the boys'll come back for a week
or so, just to hang around town and try to get
used to the idea of leaving us. Then they'll
scatter to take up their winter jobs cutting ice,
most of 'em," he added, grimly.
"Mr. Schlachweiler is employed in a large es-
tablishment in Slatersville, Ohio," said Ivy, with
dignity. "He regards baseball as his profes-
sion, and he cannot do anything that would af-
fect his pitching arm."
Pa Keller put on the tremolo stop and
brought a misty look into his eyes.
"Ivy, you'll do one last thing for your old
father, won't you ?"
[72]
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
"Maybe/* answered Ivy, coolly.
"Don't make that fellow any promises. Now
wait a minute! Let me get through. I won't
put any crimp in your plans. I won't speak to
Schlachweile'r. Promise you won't do anything
rash until the ball season's over. Then we'll
wait just one month, see? Till along about No-
vember. Then if you feel like you want to see
him "
"But how "
"Hold on. You mustn't write to him, or see
him, or let him write to you during that time,
see? Then, if you feel the way you do now,
I'll take you to Slatersville to see him. Now
that's fair, ain't it? Only don't let him know
you're coming."
"M-m-m-yes," said Ivy.
"Shake hands on it." She did. Then she
left the room with a rush, headed in the direc-
tion of her own bedroom. Pa Keller treated
himself to a prodigious wink and went out to the
vegetable garden in search of Mother.
The team went out on the road, lost five
games, won two, and came home in fourth place.
For a week they lounged around the Parker
Hotel and held up the street corners downtown,
[73]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
took many farewell drinks, then, slowly, by ones
and twos, they left for the packing houses,
freight depots, and gents 1 furnishing stores from
whence they came.
October came in with a blaze of sumac and
oak leaves. Ivy stayed home and learned to
make veal loaf and apple pies. The worry lines
around Pa Keller's face began to deepen. Ivy
said that she didn't believe that she cared to go
back to Miss Shont's select school for young
ladies.
October thirty-first came.
"We'll take the eight-fifteen to-morrow," said
her father to Ivy.
"All right," said Ivy.
"Do you know where he works?" asked he.
"No," answered Ivy.
"That'll be all right. I took the trouble to
look him up last August."
The short November afternoon was drawing
to its close (as our best talent would put it)
when Ivy and her father walked along the streets
of Slatersville. (I can't tell you what streets,
because I don't know.) Pa Keller brought up
before a narrow little shoe shop.
"Here we are," he said, and ushered Ivy in.
[74]
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
A short, stout, proprietary figure approached
them smiling a mercantile smile.
"What can I do for you?" he inquired.
Ivy's eyes searched the shop for a tall, gold-
en-haired form in a soiled baseball suit.
"We'd like to see a gentleman named Schlach-
weiler Rudolph Schlachweiler," said Pa Kel-
ler.
"Anything very special?" inquired the pro-
prietor. "He's rather busy just now.
Wouldn't anybody else do? Of course, if "
"No," growled Keller.
The boss turned. "Hi! Schlachweiler!" he
bawled toward the rear of the dim little shop.
"Yessir," answered a muffled voice.
"Front!" yelled the boss, and withdrew to a
safe listening distance.
A vaguely troubled look lurked in the depths
of Ivy's eyes. From behind the partition of the
rear of the shop emerged a tall figure. It was
none other than our hero. He was in his shirt-
sleeves, and he struggled into his coat as he came
forward, wiping his mouth with the back of his
hand, hurriedly, and swallowing.
I have said that the shop was dim. Ivy and
her father stood at one side, their backs to the
[75]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
light. Rudie came forward, rubbing his hands
together in the manner of clerks.
"Something in shoes?" he politely inquired.
Then he saw.
"Ivy! ah Miss Keller!" he exclaimed.
Then, awkwardly: "Well, how-do, Mr. Keller.
I certainly am glad to see you both. How's the
old town ? What are you doing in Slatersville ?"
"Why Ivy " began Pa Keller, blunder-
ingly.
But Ivy clutched his arm with a warning
hand. The vaguely troubled look in her eyes
had become wildly so.
"Schlachweiler!" shouted the voice of the
boss. "Customers!" and he waved a hand in
the direction of the fitting benches.
"All right, sir," answered Rudie. "Just a
minute."
"Dad had to come on business," said Ivy, hur-
riedly. "And he brought me with him. I'm
I'm on my way to school in Cleveland, you
know. Awfully glad to have seen you again.
We must go. That lady wants her shoes, I'm
sure, and your employer is glaring at us. Come,
dad."
At the door she turned just in time to see
A BUSH LEAGUE HERO
Rudie removing the shoe from the pudgy foot
of the fat lady customer.
We'll take a jump of six months. That brings
us into the lap of April.
Pa Keller looked up from his evening paper.
Ivy. home for the Easter vacation, was at the
piano. Ma Keller was sewing.
Pa Keller cleared his throat. "I see by the
paper," he announced, "that Schlachweiler's
been sold to Des Moines. Too bad we lost him.
He was a great little pitcher, but he played in
bad luck. Whenever he was on the slab the boys
seemed to give him poor support."
"Fudge!" exclaimed Ivy, continuing to play,
but turning a spirited face toward her father.
"What piffle ! Whenever a player pitches rotten
ball you'll always hear him howling about the
support he didn't get. Schlachweiler was a bum
pitcher. Anybody could hit him with a willow
wand, on a windy day, with the sun in his eyes.'*
V
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
HHHE City was celebrating New Year's Eve.
Spelled thus, with a capital C, know it can
mean but New York. In the Pink Fountain
room of the Newest Hotel all those grand old
forms and customs handed down to us for the
occasion were being rigidly observed in all their
original quaintness. The Van Dyked man who
looked like a. Russian Grand Duke (he really
was a chiropodist) had drunk champagne out of
the pink satin slipper of the lady who behaved
like an actress (she was forelady at Schmaus'
Wholesale Millinery, eighth floor). The two
respectable married ladies there in the corner
had been kissed by each other's husbands. The
slim, Puritan-faced woman in white, with her
black hair so demurely parted and coiled in a
sleek knot, had risen suddenly from her place
and walked indolently to the edge of the plash-
ing pink fountain in'the center of the room, had
stood contemplating its shallows with a dreamy
half-smile on her lips, and then had lifted he*
[78]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
slim legs slowly and gracefully over its fern-
fringed basin and had waded into its chilling
midst, trailing her exquisite white satin and chif-
fon draperies after her, and scaring the gold-
fish into fits. The loudest scream of approba-
tion had come from the yellow-haired, loose-
lipped youth who had made the wager, and lost
it. The heavy blonde in the inevitable violet
draperies showed signs of wanting to dance on
the table. Her companion a structure made
up of layer upon layer, and fold upon fold of
flabby tissue knew all the waiters by their right
names, and insisted on singing with the orchestra
and beating time with a rye roll. The clatter
of dishes was giving way to the clink of
glasses.
In the big, bright kitchen back of the Pink
Fountain room Miss Gussie Fink sat at her desk,
calm, watchful, insolent-eyed, a goddess sitting
in judgment. On the pay roll of the Newest
Hotel Miss Gussie Fink's name appeared as
kitchen checker, but her regular job was god-
dessing. Her altar was a high desk in a corner
of the busy kitchen, and it was an altar of in-
cense, of burnt-offerings, and of showbread.
Inexorable as a goddess of the ancients was Miss
[79]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Fink, and ten times as difficult to appease. For
this is the rule of the Newest Hotel, that no
waiter may carry his laden tray restaurantward
until its contents have been viewed and duly
checked by the eye and hand of Miss Gussie
Fink, or her assistants. Flat upon the table
must go every tray, off must go each silver dish-
cover, lifted must be each napkin to disclose its
treasure of steaming corn or hot rolls. Clouds
of incense rose before Miss Gussie Fink and she
sniffed it unmoved, her eyes, beneath level brows,
regarding savory broiler or cunning ice with
equal indifference, appraising alike lobster cock-
tail or onion soup, traveling from blue points
to brie. Things a la and things glace were all
one to her. Gazing at food was Miss Gussie
Fink's occupation, and just to see the way she
regarded a boneless squab made you certain that
she never ate.
In spite of the I-don't-know-how-many (see
ads) New Year's Eve diners for whom food
was provided that night, the big, busy kitchen
was the most orderly, shining, spotless place
imaginable. But Miss Gussie Fink was the neat-
est, most immaculate object in all that great,
clean room. There was that about her which
[80]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
suggested daisies in a field, if you know what I
mean. This may have been due to the fact that
her eyes were brown while her hair was gold, or
it may have been something about the way her
collars fitted high, and tight, and smooth, or the
way her close white sleeves came down to meet
her pretty hands, or the way her shining hair
sprang from her forehead. Also the smooth
creaminess of her clear skin may have had some-
thing to do with it. But privately, I think it was
due to the way she wore her shirtwaists. Miss
Gussie Fink could wear a starched white shirt-
waist under a close-fitting winter coat, remove
the coat, run her right forefinger along her col-
lar's edge and her left thumb along the back of
her belt and disclose to the admiring world a
blouse as unwrinkled and unsullied as though it
had just come from her own skilful hands at
the ironing board. Miss Gussie Fink was so in-
nately, flagrantly, beautifully clean-looking that
well, there must be a stop to this description.
She was the kind of girl you'd like to see behind
the counter of your favorite delicatessen, know-
ing that you need not shudder as her fingers
touch your Sunday night supper slices of tongue,
and Swiss cheese, and ham. No girl had ever
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
dreamed of refusing to allow Gussie to borrow
her chamois for a second.
To-night Miss Fink had ccme on at 10 P.M.,
which was just two hours later than usual. She
knew that she was to work until 6 A.M., which
may have accounted for the fact that she dis-
played very little of what the fans call ginger
as she removed her hat and coat and hung them
on the hook behind the desk. The prospect of
that all-night, eight-hour stretch may have ac-
counted for it, I say. But privately, and entre
nous, it didn't. For here you must know of
Heiny. Heiny, alas! now Henri.
Until two weeks ago Henri had been Heiny
and Miss Fink had been Kid. When Henri had
been Heiny he had worked in the kitchen at
many things, but always with a loving eye on
Miss Gussie Fink. Then one wild night there
had been a waiters' strike wages or hours or
tips or all three. In the confusion that followed
Heiny had been pressed into service and a
chopped coat. He had fitted into both with un-
believable nicety, proving that waiters are born,
not made. Those little tricks and foibles that
are characteristic of the genus waiter seemed to
envelop him as though a fairy garment had fallen
[82]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
upon his shoulders. The folded napkin un-
der his left arm seemed to have been placed
there by nature, so perfectly did it fit into place.
The ghostly tread, the little whisking skip, the
half-simper, the deferential bend that had in it
at the same time something of insolence, all were
there; the very "Yes, miss," and "Very good,
sir, 1 ' rose automatically and correctly to hia
untrained lips. Cinderella rising resplendent
from her ash-strewn hearth was not more com-
pletely transformed than Heiny in his role
of Henri. And with the transformation Miss
Gussie Fink had been left behind her desk dis-
consolate.
Kitchens are as quick to seize upon these
things and gossip about them as drawing rooms
are. And because Miss Gussie Fink had always
worn a little air of aloofness to all except Heiny,
the kitchen was the more eager to make the most
of its morsel. Each turned it over under his
, tongue Tony, the Crook, whom Miss Fink
> had scorned; Francois, the entree cook, who
often forgot he was married; Miss Sweeney, the
bar-checker, who was jealous of Miss Fink's
complexion. Miss Fink heard, and said noth-
ing. She only knew that there would be no dear
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
figure waiting for her when the night's work
was done. For two weeks now she had put on
her hat and coat and gone her way at one o'clock
alone. She discovered that to be taken home
night after night under Heiny's tender escort
had taught her a ridiculous terror of the streets
at night now that she was without protection.
Always the short walk from the car to the flat
where Miss Fink lived with her mother had been
a glorious, star-lit, all too brief moment. Now
it was an endless and terrifying trial, a thing
of shivers and dread, fraught with horror of
passing the alley just back of Cassidey's buffet.
There had even been certain little half-serious,
half-jesting talks about the future into which
there had entered the subject of a little delicates-
sen and restaurant in a desirable neighborhood,
with Heiny in the kitchen, and a certain blonde,
neat, white-shirtwaisted person in charge of the
desk and front shop.
She and her mother had always gone through
a little formula upon Miss Fink's return fron, -
work. They never used it now. Gussie's
mother was a real mother the kind that wakes
up when you come home.
"That you, Gussie?" Ma Fink would call
[84]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
from the bedroom, at the sound of the key in thf
lock.
"It's me, ma."
"Heiny bring you home?' 1
"Sure," happily.
"There's a bit of sausage left, and some pie
if "
"Oh, I ain't hungry. We stopped at Joey's
downtown and had a cup of coffee and a ham on
rye. Did you remember to put out the milk
bottle?"
For two weeks there had been none of that.
Gussie had learned to creep silently into bed,
and her mother, being a mother, feigned sleep.
To-night at her desk Miss Gussie Fink seemed
a shade cooler, more self-contained, and daisylike
than ever. From somewhere at the back of her
head she could see that Heiny was avoiding her
desk and was using the services of the checker
at the other end of the room. And even as the
poison of this was eating into her heart she was
tapping her forefinger imperatively on the desk
before her and saying to Tony, the Crook:
"Down on the table with that tray, Tony
flat. This may be a busy little New Year's Eve,
but you can't come any of your sleight-of-hand
[85] '
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
stuff on me." For Tony had a little trick of
concealing a dollar-and-a-quarter sirloin by the
simple method of slapping the platter close to
the underside of his tray and holding it there
with long, lean fingers outspread, the entire bit
of knavery being concealed in the folds of a flow-
ing white napkin in the hand that balanced the
tray. Into Tony's eyes there came a baleful
gleam. His lean jaw jutted out threateningly.
"You're the real Weissenheimer kid, ain't
/ou?" he sneered. "Never mind. I'll get you
at recess."
"Some day," drawled Miss Fink, checking
the steak, "the house'll get wise to your stuff and
then you'll have to go back to the coal wagon.
I know* so much about you it's beginning to make
me uncomfortable. I hate to carry around a
burden of crime."
"You're a sorehead because Heiny turned you
down and now "
"Move on there!" snapped Miss Fink, "or
I'll call the steward to settle you. Maybe he'd
be interested to know that you've been counting
in the date and your waiter's number, and add-
ing 'em in at the bottom of your check."
Tony, the Crook, turned and skimmed away
[86]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
toward the dining-room, but the taste of victory
was bitter in Miss Fink's mouth.
Midnight struck. There came from the di-
rection of the Pink Fountain Room a clamor
and din which penetrated the thickness of the
padded doors that separated the dining-room
from the kitchen beyond. The sound rose and
swelled above the blare of the orchestra. Chairs
scraped on the marble floor as hundreds rose to
their feet. The sound of clinking glasses be-
came as the jangling of a hundred bells. There
came the sharp spat of hand-clapping, then
cheers, yells, huzzas. Through the swinging
doors at the end of the long passageway Miss
Fink could catch glimpses of dazzling color, of
shimmering gowns, of bare arms uplifted, of
flowers, and plumes, and jewels, with the rosy
light of the famed pink fountain casting a gra-
cious glow over all. Once she saw a tall young
fellow throw his arm about the shoulder of a
glorious creature at the next table, and though
the door swung shut before she could see it,
Miss Fink knew that he had kissed her.
There were no New Year's greetings in the
kitchen back of the Pink Fountain Room. It
was the busiest moment in all that busy night
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
The heat of the ovens was so intense that it
could be felt as far as Miss Fink's remote cor-
ner. The swinging doors between dining-room
and kitchen were never still. A steady stream
of waiters made for the steam tables before
which the white-clad chefs stood ladling, carv-
ing, basting, serving, gave their orders, received
them, stopped at the checking-desk, and sped
dining-roomward again. Tony, the Crook, was
cursing at one of the little Polish vegetable girls
who had not been quick enough about the gar-
nishing of a salad, and she was saying, over and
over again, in her thick tongue :
"Aw, shod op yur mout' I"
The thud-thud of Miss Fink's checking-stamp
kept time to flying footsteps, but even as her
practised eye swept over the tray before her she
saw the steward direct Henri toward her desk,
just as he was about to head in the direction of
the minor checking-desk. Beneath downcast
lids she saw him coming. There was about
Henri to-night a certain radiance, a sort of elec-
trical elasticity, so nimble, so tireless, so exuber-
ant was he. In the eyes of Miss Gussie Fink
he looked heart-breakingly handsome in his
waiter's uniform handsome, distinguished, re-
[88]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
mote, and infinitely desirable. And just behind
him, revenge in his eye, came Tony.
The flat surface of the desk received Henri's
Miss Fink regarded it with a cold and
business-like stare. Henri whipped his napkin
from under his left arm and began to remove
covers, dexterously. Off came the first silver,
dome-shaped top.
"Guinea hen," said Henri.
"I seen her lookin' at you when you served the
little necks," came from Tony, as though contin-
uing a conversation begun in some past moment
of pause, "and she's some lovely doll, believe
me."
Miss Fink scanned the guinea hen thoroughly,
but with a detached air, and selected the proper
stamp from the box at her elbow. Thump ! On
the broad pasteboard sheet before her appeared
the figures $1.75 after Henri's number.
"Think so?" grinned Henri, and removed
another cover. "One candied sweets."
"I bet some day we'll see you in the Sunday
papers, Heiny," went on Tony v "with a piece
about handsome waiter runnin' away with beau-
tiful s'ciety girl. Say, you're too perfect even
for a waiter
[89]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Thump ! Thirty cents.
"Quit your kiddin'," said the flattered Henri.
"One endive, French dressing."
Thump! "Next!" said Miss Fink, dispas-
sionately, yawned, and smiled fleetingly at the
entree cook who wasn't looking her way. Then,
as Tony slid his tray toward her : "How's busi-
ness, Tony? H'm? How many two-bit cigar
bands have you slipped onto your own private
collection of nickel straights and made a twenty-
cent rake-off?"
But there was a mist in the bright brown eyes
as Tony the Crook turned away with his tray.
In spite of the satisfaction of having had the
last word, Miss Fink knew in her heart that
Tony had "got her at recess," as he had said he
would.
Things were slowing up for Miss Fink. The
stream of hurrying waiters was turned in thei di-
rection of the kitchen bar now. From now on
the eating would be light, and the drinking
heavy. Miss Fink, with time hanging heavy,
found herself blinking down at the figures
stamped on the pasteboard sheet before her, and
in spite of the blinking, two marks that never
were intended for a checker's report splashed
[90]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
down just over the $1.75 after Henri's number.
A lovely doll! And she had gazed at Heiny.
1, that was to be expected. No woman could
gaze unmoved upon Heiny. "A lovely doll "
"Hi, Miss Fink!" it was the steward's voice.
"We need you over in the bar to help Miss
Sweeney check the drinks. They're coming too
swift for her. The eating will be light from
now on; just a little something salty now and
then."
So Miss Fink dabbed covertly at her eyes and
betook herself out of the atmosphere of roasting,
and broiling, and frying, and stewing; away
from the sight of great copper kettles, and glow-
ing coals and hissing pans, into a little world
fragrant with mint, breathing of orange and
lemon peel, perfumed with pineapple, redolent
of cinnamon and clove, reeking with things
spirituous. Here the splutter of the broiler was
replaced by the hiss of the siphon, and the pop-
pop of corks, and the tinkle and clink of ice
against glass.
"Hello, dearie!" cooed Miss Sweeney, in
greeting, staring hard at the suspicious redness
around Miss Fink's eyelids. "Ain't you sweet
to come over here in the headache department
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
and help me out! Here's the wine list. You'll
prob'ly need it. Say, who do you supp. se in-
vented New Year's Eve? They must of had a
imagination like a Greek 'bus boy. I'm limp as
a rag now, and it's only two-thirty. I've got a
regular cramp in my wrist from checkin' quarts.
Say, did you hear about Heiny's crowd?"
"No," said Miss Fink, evenly, and began to
study the first page of the wine list under the
heading "Champagnes of Noted Vintages."
"Well," went on Miss Sweeney's little thin,
malicious voice, "he's fell in soft. There's a
table of three, and they're drinkin' 1874 Im-
perial Crown at twelve dollars per, like it was
Waukesha ale. And every time they finish a
bottle one of the guys pays for it with a brand
new ten and a brand new five and tells Heiny to
keep the change. Can you beat it?"
"I hope," said Miss Fink, pleasantly, "that
the supply of 1874 will hold out till morning.
I'd hate to see them have to come down to ten
dollar wine. Here you, Tony! Come back
here ! I may be a new hand in this department
but I'm not so green that you can put a gold
label over on me as a yellow label. Notice that
I'm checking you another fifty cents."
[92]
THE KITCHEN SIDE .OF THE DOOR
n't he the grafter!" laughed Miss
Sweeney. She leaned toward Miss Fink and
lowered her voice discreetly. "Though I'll say
this for'm. If you let him get away with it now
an 1 then, he'll split even with you. H'm? O,
well, now, don't get so high and mighty. The
management expects it in this department.
That's why they pay starvation wages."
Ar il note of color crept into Miss
Gussie Fink's smooth cheek. It deepened and
glowed as Heiny darted around the corner and
up to the bar. There was about him an air of
suppressed excitement suppressed, because
Heiny was too perfect a waiter to display emo-
tion.
"Not another 1" chanted the bartenders, in
chorus.
"Yes," answered Henri, solemnly, and waited
while the wine cellar was made to relinquish
another rare jewel.
"O, you Heiny!" called Miss Sweeney, "tell,
us what she looks like. If I had time I'd take
a peek myself. From what Tony says she must
look something like Maxine Elliot, only
brighter
Henri turned. He saw Miss Fink. A curi-
[93]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
ous little expression came into his eyes a Heiny
look, it might have been called, as he regarded
his erstwhile sweetheart's unruffled attire, and
clear skin, and steady eye and glossy hair. She
was looking past him in that baffling, maddening
way that angry women have. Some of Henri's
poise seemed to desert him in that moment. He
appeared a shade less debonair as he received the
precious bottle from the wine man's hands. He
made for Miss Fink's desk and stood watching
her while she checked his order. At the door
he turned and looked over his shoulder at Miss
Sweeney.
"Some time," he said, deliberately, "when
there's no ladies around, I'll tell you what I
think she looks like."
And the little glow of color in Miss Gussie
Fink's smooth cheek became a crimson flood that
swept from brow to throat.
"Oh, well," snickered Miss Sweeney, to hide
her own discomfiture, "this is little Heiny's first
New Year's Eve in the dining-room. Honest,
I b'lieve he's shocked. He don't realize that
celebratin' New Year's Eve is like eatin' oranges.
You got to let go your dignity t' really enjoy
'em."
[94]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
Three times more did Henri enter and de-
mand a bottle of the famous vintage, and each
time he seemed a shade less buoyant. His ela-
tion diminished as his tips grew greater until,
as he drew up at the bar at six o'clock, he seemed
wrapped in impenetrable gloom.
"Them hawgs sousin' yet?" shrilled Miss
Sweeney. She and Miss Fink had climbed down
from their high stools, and were preparing to
leave. Henri nodded, drearily, and disappeared
in the direction of the Pink Fountain Room.
Miss Fink walked back to her own desk in
the corner near the dining-room door. She took
her hat off the hook, and stood regarding it,
thoughtfully. Then, with a little air of decision,
she turned and walked swiftly down the passage-
way that separated dining-room from kitchen.
Tillie, the scrub-woman, was down on her hands
and knees in one corner of the passage. She
was one of a small army of cleaners that had be-
gun the work of clearing away the debris of the
long night's revel. Miss Fink lifted her neat
skirts high as she tip-toed through the little
soapy pool that followed in the wake of Tillie,
the scrub-woman. She opened the swinging
doors a cautious little crack and peered in.
[95]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
What she saw was not pretty. If the words
sordid and bacchanalian had been part of Miss
Fink's vocabulary they would have risen to her
lips then. The crowd had gone. The great
room contained not more than half a dozen peo-
ple. Confetti littered the floor. Here and there
a napkin, crushed and bedraggled into an un-
recognizable ball, lay under a table. From an
overturned bottle the dregs were dripping drear-
ily. The air was stale, stifling, poisonous.
At a little table in the center of the room
Henri's three were still drinking. They were
doing it in a dreadful and businesslike way.
There were two men and one woman. The
faces of all three were mahogany colored and
expressionless. There was about them an awful
sort of stillness. Something in the sight seemed
to sicken Gussie Fink. It came to her that the
wintry air outdoors must be gloriously sweet,
and cool, and clean in contrast to this. She was
about to turn away, with a last look at Heiny
yawning behind his hand, when suddenly the
woman rose unsteadily to her feet, balancing
herself with her finger tips on the table. She
raised her head and stared across the room with
dull, unseeing eyes, and licked her lips with her
[96]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
tongue. Then she turned and walked half a
dozen paces, screamed once with horrible shrill-
ness, and crashed to the floor. She lay there in
a still, crumpled heap, the folds of her exquis-
ite gown rippling to meet a little stale pool of
wine that had splashed from some broken glass.
Then this happened. Three people ran toward
the woman on the floor, and two people ran past
her and out of the room. The two who ran
away were the men with whom she had been
drinking, and they were not seen again. The
three who ran toward her were Henri, the
waiter, Miss Gussie Fink, checker, and Tillie,
the scrub-woman. Henri and Miss Fink reached
her first. Tillie, the scrub-woman, was a close
third. Miss Gussie Fink made as though to slip
her arm under the poor bruised head, but Henri
caught her wrist fiercely (for a waiter) and
pulled her to her feet almost roughly.
"You leave her alone, Kid," he commanded.
Miss Gussie Fink stared, indignation choking
ner utterance. And as she stared the fierce light
in Henri's eyes was replaced by the light of ten-
derness.
"We'll tend to her," said Henri; "she ain't
fit for you to touch. I wouldn't let you soil
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your hands on such truck." And while Gussie
still stared he grasped the unconscious woman
by the shoulders, while another waiter grasped
her ankles, with Tillie, the scrub-woman, ar-
ranging her draperies pityingly around her, and
together they carried her out of the dining-room
to a room beyond.
Back in the kitchen Miss Gussie Fink was pre-
paring to don her hat, but she was experiencing
some difficulty because of the way in which her
fingers persisted in trembling. Her face was
turned away from the swinging doors, but she
knew when Henri came in. He stood just be-
hind her, in silence. When she turned to face
him she found Henri looking at her, and as he
looked all the Heiny in him came to the surface
and shone in his eyes. He looked long and si-
lently at Miss Gussie Fink at the sane, simple,
wholesomeness of her, at her clear brown eyes,
at her white forehead from which the shining
hair sprang away in such a delicate line, at her/
immaculately white shirtwaist, and her smooth,
snug-fitting collar that came up to the lobes of
her little pink ears, at her creamy skin, at her
trim belt. He looked as one who would rest
his eyes eyes weary of gazing upon satins, and
[98]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
jewels, and rouge, and carmine, and white arms,
and bosoms.
"Gee, Kid! You look good to me," he
said.
"Do I Heiny?" whispered Miss Fink.
"Believe me!" replied Heiny, fervently. "It
was just a case of swelled head. Forget it, will
you? Say, that gang in there to-night why,
say, that gang "
"I know," interrupted Miss Fink.
"Going home?" asked Heiny.
"Yes."
"Suppose we have a bite of something to eat
first," suggested Heiny.
Miss Fink glanced round the great, deserted
kitchen. As she gazed a little expression of dis-
gust wrinkled her pretty nose the nose that
perforce had sniffed the scent of so many rare
and exquisite dishes.
"Sure," she assented, joyously, "but not here.
Let's go around the corner to Joey's. I could
get real chummy with a cup of good hot coffee
and a ham on rye."
He helped her on with her coat, and if his
hands rested a moment on her shoulders who
was there to see it? A few sleepy, wan-eyed
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waiters and Tillie, the scrub-woman. Together
they started toward the door. Tillie, the scrub-
woman, had worked her wet way out of the pas-
sage and into the kitchen proper. She and her
pail blocked their way. She was sopping up a
soapy pool with an all-encompassing gray scrub-
rag. Heiny and Gussie stopped a moment per-
force to watch her. It was rather fascinating
to see how that artful scrub-rag craftily closed
in upon the soapy pool until it engulfed it. Tillie
sat back on her knees to wring out the water-
soaked rag. There was something pleasing in
the sight. Tillie's blue calico was faded white
in patches and at the knees it was dark with
soapy water. Her shoes were turned up ludi-
crously at the toes, as scrub-women's shoes al-
ways are. Tillie's thin hair was wadded back
into a moist knob at the back and skewered with
a gray-black hairpin. From her parboiled,
shriveled fingers to her ruddy, perspiring face
there was nothing of grace or beauty about Til-
lie. And yet Heiny found something pleasing
there. He could not have told you why, so how
can I, unless to say that it was, perhaps, for
much the same reason that we rejoice in the
wholesome, safe, reassuring feel of the gray
[100]
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
woolen blanket on our bed when we wake from
a horrid dream.
"A Happy New Year to you," said Heiny
gravely, and took his hand out of his pocket.
Tillie's moist right hand closed over some-
thing. She smiled so that one saw all her broken
black teeth.
'The same t' you," said Tillie. 'The same
t' you."
[101]
VI
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
A LL of those ladies who end their conversa-
tion with you by wearily suggesting that
you go down to the basement to find what you
seek, do not receive a meager seven dollars a
week as a reward for their efforts. Neither are
they all obliged to climb five weary flights of
stairs to reach the dismal little court room
which is their home, and there are several who
need not walk thirty-three blocks to save car-
fare, only to spend wretched evenings wash-
ing out handkerchiefs and stockings in the
cracked little washbowl, while one ear is
cocked for the stealthy tread of the Lady Who
Objects.
The earnest compiler of working girls' bud-
gets would pass Effie Bauer hurriedly by. Effie's
budget bulged here and there with such pathetic
items as hand-embroidered blouses, thick club
steaks, and parquet tickets for Maude Adams.
That you may visualize her at once I may say
that Effie looked twenty-four from the rear
[102]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
(all women do in these days of girlish simplicity
in hats and tailor-mades) ; her skirts never
sagged, her shirtwaists were marvels of plain-
ness and fit, and her switch had cost her sixteen
dollars, wholesale (a lady friend in the busi-
ness). Oh, there was nothing tragic about
Effie. She had a plump, assured style, a keen
blue eye, a gift of repartee, and a way of doing
her hair so that the gray at the sides scarcely
showed at all. Also a knowledge of corsets that
had placed her at the buying end of that impor-
tant department at Spiegel's. Effie knew to the
minute when coral beads went out and pearl
beads came in, and just by looking at her
blouses you could tell when Cluny died and
Irish was born. Meeting Effie on the street,
you would have put her down as one of the
many well-dressed, prosperous-looking women
shoppers if you hadn't looked at her feet.
Veteran clerks and policemen cannot disguise
their feet.
Effie Bauer's reason for not marrying when
a girl was the same as that of most of the ca-
pable, wise-eyed, good-looking women one finds
at the head of departments. She had not had a
chance. If Effie had been as attractive at twenty
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
as she was at there, we won't betray confi-
dences. Still, it is certain that if Effie had been
as attractive when a young girl as she was when
an old girl, she never would have been an old
girl and head of Spiegel's corset department at a
salary of something very comfortably over one
hundred and twenty-five a month (and commis-
sions). Effie had improved with the years, and
ripened with experience. She knew her value.
At twenty she had been pale, anaemic and bony,
with a startled-faun manner and bad teeth.
Years of saleswomanship had broadened her,
mentally and physically, until she possessed a
wide and varied knowledge of that great and
diversified subject known as human nature. She
knew human nature all the way from the fifty-
nine-cent girdles to the twenty-five-dollar made-
to-orders. And if the years had brought, among
other things, a certain hardness about the jaw
and a line or two at the corners of the eyes, it
was not surprising. You can't rub up against
the sharp edges of this world and expect to come
out without a scratch or so.
So much for Effie. Enter the hero. Webster
defines a hero in romance as the person who has
the principal share in the transactions related.
[104]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
He says nothing which would debar a gentleman
just because he may be a trifle bald and in the
habit of combing his hair over the thin spot, and
he raises no objections to a matter of thickness
and color in the region of the back of the neck.
Therefore Gabe I. Marks qualifies. Gabe was
the gentleman about whom Effie permitted her-
self to be guyed. He came to Chicago on busi-
ness four times a year, and he always took Effie
to the theater, and to supper afterward. On
those occasions, Effie's gown, wrap and hat were
as correct in texture, lines, and paradise aigrettes
as those of any of her non-working sisters about
her. On the morning following these excursions
into Lobsterdom, Effie would confide to her
friend, Miss Weinstein, of the lingeries and
negligees :
"I was out with my friend, Mr. Marks, last
evening. We went to Rector's after the show.
Oh, well, it takes a New Yorker to know how.
Honestly, I feel like a queen when I go out with
him. H'm? Oh, nothing like that, girlie. I
never could see that marriage thing. Just good
friends."
Gabe had been coming to Chicago four times
a year for six years. Six times four are twenty-
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four. And one is twenty-five. Gabe's last visit
made the twenty-fifth.
"Well, Effie," Gabe said when the evening's
entertainment had reached the restaurant stage,
"this is our twenty-fifth anniversary. It's our
silver wedding, without the silver and the wed-
ding. We'll have a bottle of champagne. That
makes it almost legal. And then suppose we
finish up by having the wedding. The silver
can be omitted."
Effie had been humming with the orchestra,
holding a lobster claw in one hand and wielding
the little two-pronged fork with the other. She
dropped claw, fork, and popular air to stare
open-mouthed at Gabe. Then a slow, uncertain
smile crept about her lips, although her eyes
were still unsmiling.
"Stop your joking, Gable," she said. "Some
day you'll say those things to the wrong lady,
and then you'll have a breach-of-promise suit
on your hands."
"This ain't no joke, Effie," Gabe had replied.
"Not with me it ain't. As long as my mother
sclig lived I wouldn't ever marry a Goy. It
would have broken her heart. I was a good
son to her, and good sons make good husbands,
[106]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
they say. Well, Effie, you want to try it
out?"
There was something almost solemn in Effie's
tone and expression. "Gabie," she said slowly,
"you're the first man that's ever asked me to
marry him."
"That goes double," answered Gabe.
"Thanks," said Effie. "That makes it all the
nicer/'
"Then ' : Gabe's face was radiant. But
Effie shook her head quickly.
"You're jus": twenty years late," she said.
"Late !" expostulated Gabe. "I ain't no dead
one yet."
Effie pushed her plate away with a little air
of decision, folded her plump arms on the table,
and, leaning forward, looked Gabe I. Marks
squarely in the eyes.
"Gabie," she said gently, "I'll bet you haven't
got a hundred dollars in the bank "
"But " interrupted Gabe.
"Wait a minute. I know you boys on the
road. Besides your diamond scarf pin and your
ring and watch, have you got a cent over your
salary? Nix. You carry just about enough
insurance to bury you, don't you? You're fifty
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
years old if you're a minute, Gabie, and if I ain't
mistaken you'd have a pretty hard time of it get-
ting ten thousand dollars' insurance after the
doctors got through with you. Twenty-five years
of pinochle and poker and the fat of the land
haven't added up any bumps in the old stocking
under the mattress."
"Say, looka here," objected Gabe, more red-
faced than usual, "I didn't know " was propos-
ing to no Senatorial investigating committee.
Say, you talk about them foreign noblemen be-
ing mercenary ! Why, they ain't in it with you
girls to-day. A feller is got to propose to you
with his bank book in one hand and a ounch of
life-insurance policies in the other. You're right;
I ain't saved much. But Ma selig always had
everything she wanted. Say, when a man mar-
ries it's different. He begins to save."
"There!" said Effie quickly. "That's just it.
Twenty years ago I'd have been glad and will-
ing to start like that, saving and scrimping and
loving a man, and looking forward to the time
when four figures showed up in the bank account
where but three bloomed before. I've got what
they call the home instinct. Give me a yard or
o of cretonne, and a photo of my married sister
[108]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
down in Iowa, and I can make even a boarding-
house inside bedroom look like a place where a
human being could live. If I had been as wise
at twenty as I am now, Gabie, I could have mar-
ried any man I pleased. But I was what they
call capable. And men aren't marrying capable
girls. They pick little yellow-headed, blue-eyed
idiots that don't know a lamb stew from a soup
bone when they see it. Well, Mr. Man didn't
show up, and I started in to clerk aj six per.
I'm earning as much as you are now. More.
Now, don't misunderstand me, Gabe. I'm not
throwing bouquets at myself. I'm not that kind
of a girl. But I could sell a style 743 Slimshape
to the Venus de Milo herself. The Lord knows
she needed one, with those hips of hers
worked my way up, alone. I'm used to it. I
like the excitement down at the store. I'm used
to luxuries. I guess if I was a man I'd be the
kind thy call a good provider the kind that
opens wine every time there's half an excuse foi
it, and when he dies his widow has to take in
boarders. And, Gabe, after you've worn tai-
lored suits every year for a dozen years, you
can't go back to twenty-five-dollar ready-mades
and be happy."
[ 109]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"You could if you loved a man," said Gabe
stubbornly.
The hard lines around the jaw and the ex-
perienced lines about the eyes seemed suddenly
to stand ou: on Effie's face.
"Love's young dream is all right. But youVe
reached the age when you let your cigar ash
dribble down onto your vest. Now me, IVe got
a kimono nature but a straight-front job, and it's
!iept me young. Young ! I've got to be. That's
my stock in trade. You see, Gabie, we're just
twenty years late, both of us. They're not go-
ing to boost your salary. These days they're
looking for kids on the road live wires, with a
lot of nerve and a quick come-back. They don't
want old-timers. Why, say, Gabie, if I was to
tell you what I spend in face powder and toilette
water and hairpins alone, you'd think I'd made
a mistake and given you the butcher bill instead.
And I'm no professional beauty, either. Only
it takes money to look cleaned and pressed in
this town."
In the seclusion of the cafe corner, Gabe laid
one plump, highly manicured hand on Effie's
smooth arm. "You wouldn't need to stay young
for me, Effie. I like you just as you are, with-
[no]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
out the powder, or the toilette water, or the hair-
pins."
His red, good-natured face had an expression
upon it that was touchingly near patient resigna-
tion as he looked up into Effie's sparkling counte-
nance. "You never looked so good to me as
you do this minute, old girl. And if the day
conies when you get lonesome or change your
mind or "
Effie shook her head, and started to draw on
her long white gloves. "I guess I haven't re-
fused you the way the dames in the novels do
it. Maybe it's because I've had so little prac-
tice. But I want to say this, Gabe. Thank God
I don't have to die knowing that no man ever
wanted me to be his wife. Honestly, I'm that
grateful that I'd marry you in a minute if I
didn't like you so well."
"I'll be back in three months, like always,'*
was all that Gabe said. "I ain't going to write.
When I get here we'll just take in a show, and
the younger you look the better I'll like it."
But on the occasion of Gabe's spring trip he
encountered a statuesque blonde person where
Effie had been wont to reign.
"Miss cr Bauer out of town?"
Cm]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
The statue melted a trifle in the sunshine of
Gabe's ingratiating smile.
"Miss Bauer's ill," the statue informed him,
ising a heavy Eastern accent. "Anything I can
do for you? I'm taking her place.' 1
"Why ah not exactly; no," said Gabe.
"Just a temporary indisposition, I suppose?"
"Well, you wouldn't hardly call it that, seeing
that she's been sick with typhoid for seven
weeks."
"Typhoid!" shouted Gabe.
"While I'm not in the habit of asking gentle-
men their names, I'd like to inquire if yours hap-
pens to be Marks Gabe I. Marks?"
"Sure," said Gabe. "That's me."
"Miss Bauer's nurse telephones down last
week that if a gentleman named Marks Gabe
I. Marks drops in and inquires for Miss Bauer,
I'm to tell him that she's changed her mind."
On the way from Spiegel's corset department
to the car, Gabe stopped only for a bunch of
violets. Effic's apartment house reached, he sent
up his card, the violets, and a message that the
gentleman was waiting. There came back a
reply that sent Gabie up before the violets were
relieved of their first layer of tissue paper.
[in]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
Effie was sitting in a deep chair by the win-
dow, a flowered quilt bunched about her shoul-
ders, her feet in gray knitted bedroom slip-
pers. She looked every minute of her age, and
jhe knew it, and didn't care. The hand that she
held out to Gabe was a limp, white, fleshless
thing that seemed to bear no relation to the
plump, firm member that Gabe had pressed on
so many previous occasions.
Gabe stared at this pale wraith in a moment
of alarm and dismay. Then :
"You're looking great!" he stammered.
"Great! Nobody'd believe you'd been sick a
minute. Guess you've just been stalling for a
beauty rest, what?"
Effie smiled a tired little smile, and shook her
head slowly.
"You're a good kid, Gabie, to lie like that just
to make me feel good. But my nurse left yes-
terday and I had my first real squint at myself
in the mirror. She wouldn't let me look while
she was here. After what I saw staring back at
me from that glass a whole ballroom full of
French courtiers whispering sweet nothings in
my ear couldn't make me believe that I look like
anything but a hunk of Roquefort, green spots
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
included. When I think of how my clothes
won't fit it makes me shiver."
"Oh, you'll soon be back at the store as good
as new. They fatten up something wonderful
after typhoid. Why, I had a friend "
"Did you get my message?" interrupted Effie.
"I was only talking to hide my nervousness,"
said Gabe, and started forward. But Effie
waved him away.
"Sit down," she said. "I've got something
to say." She looked thoughtfully down at one
shining finger nail. Her lower lip was caught
between her teeth. When she looked up again
her eyes were swimming in tears. Gabe started
forward again. Again Effie waved him away.
"It's all right, Gabie. I don't blubber as a
rule. This fever leaves you as weak as a rag,
and ready to cry if any one says 'Boo ! T Fve been
doing some high-pressure thinking since nursie
left. Had plenty of time to do it in, sitting here
by this window all day. My land ! I never ,
knew there was so much time. There's been
days when I haven't talked to a soul, except the
nurse and the chambermaid. Lonesome ! Say,
the amount of petting I could stand would sur-
prise you. Of course, my nurse was a perfectly
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
good nurse at twenty-five per. But I was just
a case to her. You can't expect a nurse to ooze
sympathy over an old maid with the fever. I
tell you I was dying to have some one say
'Sh-sh-sh !' when there was a noise, just to show
they were interested. Whenever I'd moan the
nurse would come over and stick a thermometer
in my mouth and write something down on a
chart. The boys and girls at the store sent
flowers. They'd have done the same if I'd died.
When the fever broke I just used to lie there
and dream, not feeling anything in particular,
and not caring much whether it was day or
night. Know what I mean?"
Gabie shook a sympathetic head.
There was a little silence. Then Effie went
on. "I used to think I was pretty smart, earn-
ing my own good living, dressing as well as the
next one, and able to spend my vacation in At-
lantic City if I wanted to. I didn't know I was
missing anything. But while I was sick I got to
wishing that there was somebody that belonged
to me. Somebody to worry about me, and to
sit up nights somebody that just naturally felt
they had to come tiptoeing into my room
every three or four minutes to see if I was
[us]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
sleeping, or had enough covers on, or wanted
a drink, or something. I got to thinking what
it would have been like if I had a hus-
band and a home. You'll think I'm daffy,
maybe."
Gable took Effie's limp white hand in his, and
stroked it gently. Effie's face was turned away
from him, toward the noisy street.
"I used to imagine how he'd come home at
six, stamping his feet, maybe, and making a lot
of noise the way men do. And then he'd re-
member, and come creaking up the steps, and
he'd stick his head in at the door in the funny,
awkward, pathetic way men have in a sick room.
And he'd say, 'How's the old girl to-night ? I'd
better not come near you now, puss, because I'll
bring the cold with me. Been lonesome for your
old man?'
"And I'd say, 'Oh, I don't care how cold you
are, dear. The nurse is downstairs, getting my
supper ready.'
"And then he'd come tiptoeing over to my
bed, and stoop down, and kiss me, and his face
would be all cold, and rough, and his mustache
would be wet, and he'd smell out-doorsy and
smoky, the way husbands do when they come in.
[116]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
And I'd reach up and pat his cheek and say,
'You need a shave, old man.'
1 'I know it,' he'd say, rubbing his cheek up
against mine.
14 'Hurry up and wash, now. Supper'll be
ready.'
44 4 Where are the kids ?' he'd ask. The house
is as quiet as the grave. Hurry up and get well,
kid. It's darn lonesome without you at the table,
and the children's manners are getting something
awful, and I never can find my shirts. Lordy,
I guess we won't celebrate when you get up!
Can't you eat a little something nourishing for
supper beefsteak, or a good plate of soup, or
something?'
"Men are like that, you know. So I'd say
then : 4 Run along, you old goose ! You'll be sug-
gesting sauerkraut and wieners next. Don't you
let Millie have any marmalade to-night. She's
got a spoiled stomach.'
44 And then he'd pound off down the hall to
wash up, and I'd shut my eyes, and smile to
myself, and everything would be all right, be-
cause he was home."
There was a long silence. Effie's eyes were
closed. But two great tears stole out from be-
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
neath each lid and coursed their slow way down
her thin cheeks. She did not raise her hand to
wipe them away.
Gabie's other hand reached over and met the
one that already clasped Effie's.
"Effie," he said, in a voice that was as hoarse
as it was gentle.
"H'm?" saidEffie.
"Will you marry me?"
"I shouldn't wonder," replied Effie, opening
her eyes. "No, don't kiss me. You might catch
something. But say, reach up and smooth my
hair away from my forehead, will you, and call
me a couple of fool names. I don't care how
clumsy you are about it. I could stand an aw-
ful fuss being made over me, without being
spoiled any."
Three weeks later Effie was back at the store.
Her skirt didn't fit in the back, and the little
hollow places in her cheeks did not take the cus-
tomary dash of rouge as well as when they had
been plumper. She held a little impromptu re-
ception that extended down as far as the lin-
geries and up as far as the rugs. The old spar-
kle came back to Effie's eye. The old assurance
and vigor seemed to return. By the time that
[118]
ONE OF THE OLD GIRLS
Miss Weinstein, of the French lingeries, arrived,
breathless, to greet her Effie was herself again.
"Well, if you're not a sight for sore eyes,
dearie," exclaimed Miss Weinstein. "My good-
ness, how grand and thin you are ! I'd be will-
ing to take a course in typhoid myself, if I
thought I could lose twenty-five pounds."
"I haven't a rag that fits me," Effie announced
proudly.
Miss Weinstein lowered her voice discreetly.
"Dearie, can you come down to my department
for a minute? We're going to have a sale on
imported lawnjerie blouses, slightly soiled, from
nine to eleven to-morrow. There's one you posi-
tively must see. Hand-embroidered, Irish mo-
tifs, and eyeleted from soup to nuts, and only
eight-fifty."
"I've got a fine chance of buying hand-made
waists, no matter how slightly soiled," Effie
made answer, "with a doctor and nurse's bill as
long as your arm."
"Oh, run along!" scoffed Miss Weinstein.
"A person would think you had a husband to get
a grouch every time you get reckless to the ex-
tent of a new waist. You're your own boss.
And you know your credit's good. Honestly,
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it would be a shame to let this chance slip.
You're not getting tight in your old age, arc
you?"
"N-no," faltered Effie, "but "
"Then come on," urged Miss Weinstein ener-
getically. "And be thankful you haven't got a
man to raise the dickens when the bill comes in."
"Do you mean that?" asked Effie slowly, fix-
ing Miss Weinstein with a thoughtful eye.
"Surest thing you know. Say, girlie, let's go
over to Klein's for lunch this noon. They have
pot roast with potato pfannkuchen on Tuesdays,
and we can split an order between us."
"Hold that waist till to-morrow, will you?"
said Effie. "I've made an arrangement with a
friend that might make new clothes impos-
sible just now. But I'm going to wire my party
that the arrangement is all off. I've changed
my mind. I ought to get an answer to-morrow.
Did you say it was a thirty-six?"
[120]
I 01 i.ss i HAVEN'T REFUSED *m nn \\ \ v TIM I.\MIS
IV I HI NOVM.S DO IT"
VII
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
T^HERE is nothing new in this. It has all
been done before. But tell me, what is
new? Does the aspiring and perspiring summer
vaudeville artist flatter himself that his stuff is
going big? Then does the stout man with the
oyster-colored eyelids in the first row, left, turn
his bullet head on his fat-creased neck to remark
huskily to his companion:
"The hook for him. R-r-r-rotten ! That last
one was an old Weber'n Fields 1 gag. They dis-
carded it back in '91. Say, the good ones is all
dead, anyhow. Take old Salvini, now, and Dan
Rice. Them was actors. Come on out and
have something."
Does the short-story writer felicitate himself
upon having discovered a rare species in hu-
manity's garden? The Blase Reader flips the
pages between his fingers, yawns, stretches, and
remarks to his wife:
"That's a clean lift from Kipling or is it
Conan Doyle? Anyway, IVe read something
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
just like it before. Say, kid, guess what these
magazine guys get for a full page ad.? Nix.
That's just like a woman. Three thousand
straight. Fact."
To anticipate the delver into the past it may
be stated that the plot of this one originally ap-
peared in the Eternal Best Seller, under the
heading, "He Asked You For Bread, and Ye
Gave Him a Stone." There may be those who
could not have traced my plagiarism to its
source.
Although the Book has had an unprecedent-
edly long run it is said to be less widely read
than of yore.
Even with this preparation I hesitate to
confess that this is the story of a hungry girl in
a big city. Well, now, wait a minute. Con-
ceding that it has been done by every scribbler
from tyro to best seller expert, you will acknowl-
edge that there is the possibility of a fresh view-
point twist what is it the sporting editors
call it? Oh, yes slant. There is the possi-
bility of getting a new slant on an old idea.
That may serve to deflect the line of the deadly
parallel.
Just off State Street there is a fruiterer and
[122]
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
importer who ought to be arrested for cruelty.
His window is the most fascinating and the most
heartless in Chicago. A line of open-mouthed,
wide-eyed gazers is always to be found before
it. Despair, wonder, envy, and rebellion smol-
der in the eyes of those gazers. No shop win-
dow show should be so diabolically set forth as
to arouse such sensations in the breast of the be-
holder. It is a work of art, that window; a
breeder of anarchism, a destroyer of content-
ment, a second feast of Tantalus. It boasts
peaches, dewy and golden, when peaches have
no right to be; plethoric, purple bunches of Eng-
lish hothouse grapes are there to taunt the ten-
dollar-a-week clerk whose sick wife should be in
the hospital; strawberries glow therein when
shortcake is a last summer's memory, and forced
cucumbers remind us that we are taking ours in
the form of dill pickles. There is, perhaps, a
choice head of cauliflower, so exquisite in its
ivory and green perfection as to be fit for a
bride's bouquet; there are apples so flawless that
if the garden of Eden grew any as perfect it is
small wonder that Eve fell for them. There are
fresh mushrooms, and jumbo cocoanuts, and
green almonds; costly things in beds of cotton
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nestle next to strange and marvelous things in
tissue wrappings. Oh, that window is no place
for the hungry, the dissatisfied, or the man out
of a job. When the air is filled with snow there
is that in the sight of muskmelons which incites
crime.
Queerly enough, the gazers before that win-
dow foot up the same, year in, and year out,
something after this fashion :
Item: One anemic little milliner's appren-
tice in coat and shoes that even her hat can't
redeem.
Item: One sandy-haired, gritty-complexioned
man, with a drooping ragged mustache, a tin
dinner bucket, and lime on his boots.
Item : One thin mail carrier with an empty
mail sack, gaunt cheeks, and an habitual droop
to his left shoulder.
Item : One errand boy troubled with a chronic
sniffle, a shrill and piping whistle, and a great
deal of shuffling foot-work.
Item: One negro wearing a spotted tan top-
coat, frayed trousers and no collar. His eyes
seem all whites as he gazes.
Enough of the window. But bear it in mind
while we turn to Jennie. Jennie's real name was
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
Janet, and she was Scotch. Canny ? Not neces-
sarily, or why should she have been hungry and
out of a job in January?
Jennie stood in the row before the window,
and stared. The longer she stared the sharper
grew the lines that fright and under-feeding had
chiseled about her nose, and mouth, and eyes.
When your last meal is an eighteen-hour-old
memory, and when that memory has only near-
coffee and a roll to dwell on, there is something
in the sight of January peaches and great straw-
berries carelessly spilling out of a tipped box,
just like they do in the fruit picture on the din-
ing-room wall, "hat is apt to carve sharp lines
in the corners of the face.
The tragic line dwindled, going about its busi-
ness. The man with the dinner pail and the
lime on his boots spat, drew the back of his hand
across his mouth, and turned away with an ugly
look. (Pork was up to $14.25, dressed.)
The errand boy's blithe whistle died down to
a mournful dirge. He was window-wishing.
His choice wavered between the juicy pears, and
the foreign-looking red things that looked like
oranges, and weren't. One hand went into his
coat pocket, extracting an apple that was to have
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formed the piece de resistance of his noonday
lunch. Now he regarded it with a sort of pity-
ing disgust, and bit into it with the middle-of-
the-morning contempt that it deserved.
The mail carrier pushed back his cap and re-
flectively scratched his head. How much over
his month's wage would that green basket piled
high with exotic fruit come to?
Jennie stood and stared after they had left,
and another line had formed. If you could have
followed her gaze with dotted lines, as they do
in the cartoons, you would have seen that it was
not the peaches, or the prickly pears, or the
strawberries, or the muskmelon or even the
grapes, that held her eye. In the center of that
wonderful window was an oddly woven basket.
In the basket were brown things that looked
like sweet potatoes. One knew that they were
not. A sign over the basket informed the
puzzled gazer that these were maymeys from
Cuba.
( Maymeys from Cuba. The humor of it
might have struck Jennie if she had not been so
Scotch, and so hungry. As it was, a slow, sullen,
heavy Scotch wrath rose in her breast. May-
meys from Cuba. The wantonness of it!
[146]
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
Peaches? Yes. Grapes, even, and pears and
cherries in snow time. But maymeys from Cuba
why, one did not even know if they were to be
eaten with butter, or with vinegar, or in the
hand, like an apple. Who wanted maymeys
from Cuba ? They had gone all those hundreds
of miles to get a fruit or vegetable thing a
thing so luxurious, so out of all reason that one
did not know whether it was to be baked, or
eaten raw. There they lay, in their foreign-
looking basket, taunting Jennie who needed a
quarter.
Have I told you how Jennie happened to be
hungry and jobless? Well, then I shaVt. It
doesn't really matter, anyway. The fact is
enough. If you really demand to know you
might inquire of Mr. Felix Klein. You will find
him in a mahogany office on the sixth floor. The
door is marked manager. It was his idea to im-
port Scotch lassies from Dunfermline for his
Scotch linen department. The idea was more
fetching than feasible.
There are people who will tell you that no
girl possessing a grain of common sense and a
little nerve need go hungry, no matter how great
the city. Don't you believe them. The city has
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heard the cry of wolf so often that it refuses to
listen when he is snarling at the door, particu-
larly when the door is next door.
Where did we leave Jennie? Still standing
on the sidewalk before the fruit and fancy goods
shop, gazing at the maymeys from Cuba. Fi-
nally her Scotch bump of curiosity could stand
it no longer. She dug her elbow into the arm of
the person standing next in line.
"What are those?" she asked.
The next in line happened to be a man. He
was a man without an overcoat, and with his
chin sunk deep into his collar, and his hands
thrust deep into his pockets. It looked as
though he were trying to crawl inside himself
for warmth.
"Those? That sign says they're maymeys
from Cuba."
"I know," persisted Jennie, "but what are
they?"
"Search me. Say, I ain't bothering about
maymeys from Cuba. A couple of hot mur-
phies from Ireland, served with a lump of but-
ter, would look good enough to me."
"Do you suppose any one buys them?" mar-
veled Jennie.
[128]
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
"Surest thing you know. Some rich dame
coming by here, wondering what she can have
for dinner to tempt the jaded palates of her
dear ones, see? She sees them Cuban maymeys.
The very thing P she says. Til have 'em served
just before the salad.' And she sails in and buys
a pound or two. I wonder, now, do you eat 'em
with a fruit knife, or with a spoon?"
Jennie took one last look at the woven basket
with its foreign contents. Then she moved on,
slowly. She had been moving on for hours
weeks.
Most people have acquired the habit of eating
three meals a day. In a city of some few mil-
lions the habit has made necessary the establish-
ing of many thousands of eating places. Jennie
would have told you that there were billions of
these. To her the world seemed composed of
one huge, glittering restaurant, with myriads of
windows through which one caught maddening
glimpses of ketchup bottles, and nickel coffee
heaters, and piles of doughnuts, and scurrying
waiters in white, and people critically studying
menu cards. She walked in a maze of restau-
rants, cafes, eating-houses. Tables and diners
loomed up at every turn, on every street, from
[I2 9 ]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Michigan Avenue's rose-shaded Louis the Some-
thingth palaces, where every waiter owns his
man, to the white tile mausoleums where every
man is his own waiter. Everywhere there were
windows full of lemon cream pies, and pans of
baked apples swimming in lakes of golden syrup,
and pots of baked beans with the pink and crispy
slices of pork just breaking through the crust.
Every dairy lunch mocked one with the sign of
"wheat cakes with maple syrup and country
sausage, 20 cents."
There are those who will say that for cases
like Jennie's there are soup kitchens, Y. W. C.
A.'s, relief associations, policemen, and things
like that. And so there are. Unfortunately,
the people who need them aren't up on them.
Try it. Plant yourself, penniless, in the middle
of State Street on a busy day, dive into the howl-
ing, scrambling, pushing maelstrom that hurls
itself against the mountainous and impregnable
form of the crossing policeman, and see what
you'll get out of it, provided you have the cour-
age.
Desperation gave Jennie a false courage. On
the strength of it she made two false starts. The
third time she reached the arm of the crossing
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
policeman, and clutched it. That imposing giant
removed the whistle from his mouth, and majes-
tically inclined his head without turning his gaze
upon Jennie, one eye being fixed on a red auto-
mobile that was showing signs of sulking at its
enforced pause, the other being busy with a curs-
ing drayman who was having an argument with
his off horse.
Jennie mumbled her question.
Said the crossing policeman:
"Getcher car on Wabash, ride to 'umpty-
second, transfer, get off at Blank Street, and
walk three blocks south."
Then he put the whistle back in his mouth,
blew two shrill blasts, and the horde of men,
women, motors, drays, trucks, cars, and horses
swept over him, through him, past him, leaving
him miraculously untouched.
Jennie landed on the opposite curbing, breath-
ing hard. What was that street? Umpty-
what? Well, it didn't matter, anyway. She
hadn't the nickel for car fare.
What did you do next? You begged from
people on the street. Jennie selected a middle-
aged, prosperous, motherly looking woman. She
framed her plea with stiff lips. Before she had
['30
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finished her sentence she found herself address-
ing empty air. The middle-aged, prosperous,
motherly looking woman had hurried on.
Well, then you tried a man. You had to be
careful there. He mustn't be the wrong kind.
There were so many wrong kinds. Just an ordi-
nary looking family man would be best. Ordi-
nary looking family men are strangely in the
minority. There are so many more bull-necked,
tan-shoed ones. Finally Jennie's eye, grown
sharp with want, saw one. Not too well dressed,
kind-faced, middle-aged. She fell into step be-
side him.
"Please, can you help me out with a shilling?"
Jennie's nose was red, and her eyes watery.
Said the middle-aged family man with the kindly
face:
"Beat it. You've had about enough I guess."
Jennie walked into a department store, picked
out the oldest and most stationary looking floor-
walker, and put it to him. The floorwalker bent
his head, caught the word "food," swung about,
and pointed over Jennie's head.
"Grocery department on the seventh floor.
Take one of those elevators up."
Any one but a floorwalker could have seen the
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
misery in Jennie's face. But to floorwalkers all
women's faces are horrible.
Jennie turned and walked blindly toward the
elevators. There was no fight left in her. If
the floorwalker had said, "Silk negligees on the
fourth floor. Take one of those elevators up,"
Jennie would have ridden up to the fourth floor,
and stupidly gazed at pink silk and val lace negli-
gees in glass cases.
Tell me, hfcve you ever visited the grocery
department of a great store on the wrong side of
State Street ? It's a mouth-watering experience.
A department store grocery is a glorified mix-
ture of delicatessen shop, meat market, and
vaudeville. Starting with the live lobsters and
crabs you work your hungry way right around
past the cheeses, and the sausages, and the hams,
and tongues, and head-cheese, past the blonde
person in white who makes marvelous and un-
eatable things out of gelatine, through a thou-
sand smells and scents smells of things smoked,
and pickled, and spiced, and baked and pre-
served, and roasted.
Jennie stepped out of the elevator, licking her
lips. She sniffed the air, eagerly, as a hound
sniffs the scent. She shut her eyes when she
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
passed the sugar-cured hams. A woman was
buying a slice from one, and the butcher was
extolling its merits. Jennie caught the words
"juicy" and "corn-fed."
That particular store prides itself on its cheese
department. It boasts that there one can get
anything in cheese from the simple cottage va-
riety to imposing mottled Stilton. There are
cheeses from France, cheeses from Switzerland,
cheeses from Holland. Brick and parmesan,
Edam and limburger perfumed the atmosphere.
Behind the counters were big, full-fed men in
white aprons, and coats. They flourished keen
bright knives. As Jennie gazed, one of them,
in a moment of idleness, cut a tiny wedge from
a rich yellow Swiss cheese and stood nibbling it
absently, his eyes wandering toward the blonde
gelatine demonstrator. Jennie swayed, and
caught the counter. She felt horribly faint and
queer. She shut her eyes for a moment. When
she opened them a woman a fat, housewifely,
comfortable looking woman was standing be-
fore the cheese counter. She spoke to the cheese
man. Once more his sharp knife descended and
he was offering the possible customer a sample.
She picked it off the knife's sharp tip, nibbled
[134]
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
thoughtfully, shook her head, and passed on.
A great, glorious world of hope opened out be-
fore Jennie.
Her cheeks grew hot, and her eyes felt dry
and bright as she approached the cheese counter.
"A bit of that," she said, pointing. "It
doesn't look just as I like it."
"Very fine, madam," the man assured her,
and turned the knife point toward her, with the
infinitesimal wedge of cheese reposing on its
blade. Jennie tried to keep her hand steady as
she delicately picked it off, nibbled as she had
seen that other woman do it, her head on one
side, before it shook a slow negative. The ef-
fort necessary to keep from cramming the entire
piece into her mouth at once left her weak and
trembling. She passed on as the other woman
had done, around the corner, and into a world
of sausages. Great rosy mounds of them filled
counters and cases. Sausage! Sneer, you pate
de foies grasers! But may you know the day
when hunger will have you. And on that day
may you run into linked temptation in the form
of Braunschweiger Metwurst. May you know
the longing that causes the eyes to glaze at the
sight of Thuringer sausage, and the mouth to
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
water at the scent of Cervelat wurst, and the
fingers to tremble at the nearness of smoked
liver.
Jennie stumbled on, through the smells and
the sights. That nibble of cheese had been like
a drop of human blood to a man-eating tiger.
It made her bold, cunning, even while it mad-
dened. She stopped at this counter and de-
manded a slice of summer sausage. It was
paper-thin, but delicious beyond belief. At the
next counter there was corned beef, streaked fat
and lean. Jennie longed to bury her teeth in the
succulent meat and get one great, soul-satisfying
mouthful. She had to be content with her ju-
dicious nibbling. To pass the golden-brown,
breaded pig's feet was torture. To look at the
codfish balls was agony. And so Jennie went
on, sampling, tasting, the scraps of food acting
only as an aggravation. Up one aisle, and down
the next she went. And then, just around the
corner, she brought up before the grocery de-
partment's pride and boast, the Scotch bakery.
It is the store's star vaudeville feature. All day
long the gaping crowd stands before it, watch-
ing David the Scone Man, as with sleeves rolled
high above his big arms, he kneads, and slaps,
MAYMEYS FROM CUBA
and molds, and thumps and shapes the dough
into toothsome Scotch confections. There was
a crowd around the white counters now, and the
flat baking surface of the gas stove was just hot
enough, and David the Scone Man (he called
them Scuns) was whipping about here and there,
turning the baking oat cakes, filling the shelf
above the stove when they were done to a turn,
rolling out fresh ones, waiting on customers.
His nut-cracker face almost allowed itself a
pleased expression but not quite. David, the
Scone Man, was Scotch (I was going to add,
d'ye ken, but I will not).
Jennie wondered if she really saw those
things. Mutton pies! Scones 1 Scotch short
bread! Oat cakes! She edged closer, wrig-
tgling her way through the little crowd until she
stood at the counter's edge. David, the Scone
Man, his back to the crowd, was turning the last
batch of oat cakes. Jennie felt strangely light-
headed, and unsteady, and airy. She stared
straight ahead, a half-smile on her lips, while
a hand that she knew was her own, and that yet
seemed no part of her, stole out, very, very
slowly, and cunningly, and extracted a hot scone
from the pile that lay in the tray on the counter.
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
That hand began to steal back, more quickly
now. But not quickly enough. Another hand
grasped her wrist. A woman's high, shrill voice
(why will women do these things to each
other?) said, excitedly:
"Say, Scone Man ! Scone Man ! This girl is
stealing something!"
A buzz of exclamations from the crowd a
closing in upon her a whirl of faces, and coun-
ter, and trays, and gas stove. Jennie dropped
with a crash, the warm scone still grasped in her
fingers.
Just before the ambulance came it was the
blonde lady of the impossible gelatines who
caught the murmur that came from Jennie's
white lips. The blonde lady bent her head closer.
Closer still. When she raised her face to those
other faces crowded near, her eyes were round
with surprise.
1 'S far's I can make out, she says her name's
Mamie, and she's from Cuba. Well, wouldn't
that eat you! I always thought they was dark
complected."
VIII
THE LEADING LADY
/ T S HE leading lady lay on her bed and wept.
Not as you have seen leading ladies weep,
becomingly, with eyebrows pathetically V--
shaped, mouth quivering, sequined bosom heav-
ing. The leading lady lay on her bed in a red-
and-blue-striped kimono and wept as a woman
weeps, her head burrowing into the depths
of the lumpy hotel pillow, her teeth biting
the pillow-case to choke back the sounds so
that the grouch in the next room might not
hear.
Presently the leading lady's right hand began
to grope about on the bedspread for her hand-
kerchief. Failing to find it, she sat up wearily,
raising herself on one elbow and pushing her
hair back from her forehead not as you have
seen a leading lady pass a lily hand across her
alabaster brow, but as a heart-sick woman does
it. Her tears and sniffles had formed a little
oasis of moisture on the pillow's white bosom
so that the ugly stripe of the ticking showed
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through. She gazed down at the damp circle
with smarting, swollen eyes, and another lump
came up into her throat.
Then she sat up resolutely, and looked about
her. The leading lady had a large and saving
sense of humor. But there is nothing that blunts
the sense of humor more quickly than a few
months of one-night stands. Even O. Henry
could have seen nothing funny about that
room.
The bed was of green enamel, with fly-specked
gold trimmings. It looked like a huge frog.
The wall-paper was a crime. It represented an
army of tan mustard plasters climbing up a
chocolate-fudge wall. The leading lady was
conscious of a feeling of nausea as she gazed
at it. So she got up and walked to the window.
The room faced west, and the hot afternoon
sun smote full on her poor swollen eyes. Across
the street the red brick walls of the engine-house
caught the glare and sent it back. The firemen,
in their blue shirt-sleeves, were seated in the
shade before the door, their chairs tipped at an
angle of sixty. The leading lady stared down
into the sun-baked street, turned abruptly and
made as though to fall upon the bed again, with
[140]
THE LEADING LADY
a view to forming another little damp oasis
on the pillow. But when she reached the
center of the stifling little bedroom her eye
chanced on the electric call-button near the door.
Above the electric bell was tacked a printed
placard giving information on the subjects of
laundry, ice-water, bell-boys and dining-room
hours.
The leading lady stood staring at it a moment
thoughtfully. Then with a sudden swift move-
ment she applied her forefinger to the button
and held it there for a long half-minute. Then
she sat down on the edge of the bed, her kimono
folded about her, and waited.
She waited until a lank bell-boy, in a brown
uniform that was some sizes too small for him,
had ceased to take any interest in the game of
chess which Bauer and Merkle, the champion
firemen chess-players, were contesting on the
walk before the open doorway of the engine-
house. The proprietor of the Burke House had
originally intended that the brown uniform be
worn by a diminutive bell-boy, such as one sees
in musical comedies. But the available supply
of stage size bell-boys in our town is somewhat
limited and was soon exhausted. There fol-
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lowed a succession of lank bell-boys, with arms
and legs sticking ungracefully out of sleeves and
trousers.
"Come !" called the leading lady quickly, in
answer to the lank youth's footsteps, and before
he had had time to knock.
"Ring?" asked the boy, stepping into the tor-
rid little room.
The leading lady did not reply immediately.
She swallowed something in her throat and
pushed back the hair from her moist forehead
again. The brown uniform repeated his ques-
tion, a trifle irritably. Whereupon the leading
lady spoke, desperately:
"Is there a woman around this place? I
don't mean dining-room girls, or the person be-
hind the cigar-counter."
Since falling heir to the brown uniform the
lank youth had heard some strange requests. He
had been interviewed by various ladies in vari-
colored kimonos relative to liquid refreshment,
'jlaundry and the cost of hiring a horse and rig
for a couple of hours. One had even summoned
him to ask if there was a Bible in the house.
But thir, latest question was a new one. He
stared, leaning against the door and thrusting
THE LEADING LADY
one hand into the depths of his very tight
breeches pocket.
"Why, there's Pearlie Schultz," he said at
last, with a grin.
"Who's she?" The leading lady sat up ex-
pectantly.
"Steno."
The expectant figure drooped. "Blonde?
And Irish crochet collar with a black velvet bow
on her chest?"
44 Who? Pearlie? Naw. You mustn't get
Pearlie mixed with the common or garden va-
riety of stenos. Pearlie is fat, and she wears
specs and she's got a double chin. Her hair is
skimpy and she don't wear no rat. W'y no
traveling man has ever tried to flirt with Pearlie
yet. Pearlie's what you'd call a woman, all
right. You wouldn't never make a mistake and
think she'd escaped from the first row in the
chorus."
The leading lady rose from the bed, reached
out for her pocket-book, extracted a dime, and
held it out to the bell-boy.
"Here. Will you ask her to come up here to
me? Tell her I said please"
After he had gone she seated herself on the
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edge of the bed again, with a look in her eyes
like that which you have seen in the eyes of a
dog that is waiting for a door to be opened.
Fifteen minutes passed. The look in the eyes
of the leading lady began to fade. Then a foot-
step sounded down the hall. The leading lady
cocked her head to catch it, and smiled blissfully.
It was a heavy, comfortable footstep, under
which a board or two creaked. There came a
big, sensible thump-thump-thump at the door,
with stout knuckles. The leading lady flew to
answer it. She flung the door wide and stood
there, clutching her kimono at the throat and
looking up into a red, good-natured face.
Pearlie Schultz looked down at the leading
lady kindly and benignantly, as a mastiff might
look at a terrier.
"Lonesome for a bosom to cry on?" asked
she, and stepped into the room, walked to the
west windows, and jerked down the shades with
a zip-zip, shutting off the yellow glare. She
ime back to where the leading lady was stand-
- and patted her on the cheek, lightly.
Tou tell me all about it," said she,
.ling.
The leading lady opened her lips, gulped,
[144]
THE LEADING LADY
tried again, gulped again Pearlie Ochultz
shook a sympathetic head.
"Ain't had a decent, close-to-nature posvwow
with a woman for weeks and weeks, have you ?"
"How did you know?" cried the leading lady.
"You've got that hungry look. There was a
lady drummer here last winter, and she had the
same expression. She was so dead sick of eat-
ing her supper and then going up to her ugly
room and reading and sewing all evening that
it was a wonder she'd stayed good. She said it
was easy enough for the men. They could
smoke, and play pool, and go to a show, and talk
to any one that looked good to 'em. But if she
tried to amuse herself everybody'd say she was
tough. She cottoned to me like a burr to a wool
skirt. She traveled for a perfumery house, and
she said she hadn't talked to a woman, except
the dry-goods clerks who were nice to her trying
to work her for her perfume samples, for weeks
an' weeks. Why, that woman made crochet by
the bolt, and mended her clothes evenings
whether they needed it or not, and read till her
eyes come near going back on her."
The leading lady seized Pearlie's hand
squeezed it.
[145]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"That's it! Why, I haven't talked really
talked to a real woman since the company
went out on the road. I'm leading lady of the
'Second Wife' company, you know. It's one of
those small cast plays, with only five people in
it. I play the wife, and I'm the only woman
in the cast. It's terrible. I ought to be thank-
ful to get the part these days. And I was, too.
But I didn't know it would be like this. I'm go-
ing crazy. The men in the company are good
kids, but I can't go trailing around after them
all day. Besides, it wouldn't be right. They're
all married, except Billy, who plays the kid, and
he's busy writing a vawdeville skit that he thinks
the New York managers are going to fight for
when he gets back home. We were to play
Athens, Wisconsin, to-night, but the house
burned down night before last, and that left us
with an open date. When I heard the news
you'd have thought I had lost my mother. It's
bad enough having a whole day to kill, but when
I think of to-night," the leading lady's voice
took on a note of hysteria, "it seems as though
I'd "
"Say," Pearlie interrupted, abruptly, "you
ain't got a real good corset-cover pattern, have
[146]
THE LEADING LADY
you? One that fits smooth over the bust and
don't slip off the shoulders? I don't seem able
to get my hands on the kind I want."
"Have I!" yelled the leading lady. And
made a flying leap from the bed to the floor.
She flapped back the cover of a big suit-case
and began burrowing into its depths, strewing
the floor with lingerie, newspaper clippings,
blouses, photographs and Dutch collars. Pearlie
came over and sat down on the floor in the midst
of the litter. The leading lady dived once more,
fished about in the bottom of the suit-case and
brought a crumpled piece of paper triumph-
antly to the surface.
"This is it. It only takes a yard and five-
eighths. And fits! Like Anna Held's skirts.
Comes down in a V front and back like this.
See? And no fulness. Wait a minute. I'll
show you my princess slip. I made it all by
hand, too. I'll bet you couldn't buy it under
fifteen dollars, and it cost me four dollars and
eighty cents, with the lace and all."
Before an hour had passed, the lead-
ing lady had displayed all her treasures, from
the photograph of her baby that died to her new
Blanche Ring curl cluster, and was calling
EH?]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
Pearlie by her first name. When a 6ell some-
where boomed six o'clock Pearlie was being in-
structed in a new exercise calculated to reduce
the hips an inch a month.
"My land!" cried Pearlie, aghast, and scram-
bled to her feet as nimbly as any woman can
who weighs two hundred pounds "Supper-
time, and I've got a bunch of letters an inch
thick to get out! I'd better reduce that some
before I begin on my hips. But say, I've had a
lovely time."
The leading lady clung to her. "You've
saved my life. Why, I forgot all about being
hot and lonely and a couple of thousand miles
from New York. Must you go ?"
"Got to. But if you'll promise you won't
laugh, I'll make a date for this evening that'll
give you a new sensation anyway. There's go-
ing to be a strawberry social on the lawn of the
parsonage of our church. I've got a booth.
You shed that kimono, and put on a thin
dress and those curls and some powder, and I'll
introduce you as my friend, Miss Evans. You
don't look Evans, but this is a Methodist
church strawberry festival, and if I was to
tell them that you are leading lady of the
THE LEADING LADY
'Second Wife* company they'd excommunicate
my booth."
"A strawberry social!" gasped the leading
lady. "Do they still have them?" She did not
laugh. "Why, I used to go to strawberry festi-
vals when I was a little q;irl in "
"Careful! You'll be giving awr.y your age,
and, anyway, you don't look it. Fashions in
strawberry socials ain't changed much. Better
bathe your eyes in eau de cologne or whatever
it is they're always dabbing on 7 em in books.
See you at eight."
At eight o'clock PearlieV thump-thump
sounded again, and the leading lady sprang to
the door as before. Pearlie stared. This Tas
no tear-stained, heat-bedraggled creature in r.n
unbecoming red-striped kimono. It was a re-
markably pretty woman in ?. white lingerie
gown over a pink slip. The leading lady
knew a thing or two about the gentle art of
making-up !
"That just goes to show," remarked Pearlie,
"that you must never judge a woman in a ki-
mono or a bathing suit. You look nineteen.
Say, I forgot something down-stairs. Just get
your handkerchief and chamois together and
[149]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
meet in my cubby-hole next to the lobby, will
you? I'll be ready for you."
Down-stairs she summoned the lank bell-boy.
"You go outside and tell Sid Strang I want to
see him, will you? He's on the bench with the
baseball bunch."
Pearlie had not seen Sid Strang outside. She
did not need to. She knew he was there. In
our town all the young men dress up in their
pale gray suits and lavender-striped shirts after
supper on summer evenings. Then they stroll
down to the Burke House, buy a cigar and sit
down on the benches in front of the hotel to talk
baseball and watch the girls go by. It is aston-
ishing to note the number of our girls who have
letters to mail after supper. One would think
that they must drive their pens fiercely all the
afternoon in order to get out such a mass of cor-
respondence.
The obedient Sid reached the door of
Pearlie's little office just off the lobby as the lead-
ing lady came down the stairs with a spangled
scarf trailing over her arm. It was an effective
entrance.
"Why, hello!" said Pearlie, looking up from
her typewriter as though Sid Strang were the
[150]
THE LEADING LADY
last person in the world she expected to see.
"What do you want here? Ethel, this is my
friend, Mr. Sid Strang, one of our rising young
lawyers. His neckties always match his socks.
Sid, this is my friend, Miss Ethel Evans, of
New York. We're going over to the strawberry
social at the M. E. parsonage. I don't suppose
you'd care about going?"
Mr. Sid Strang gazed at the leading lady in
the white lingerie dress with the pink slip, and
the V-shaped neck, and the spangled scarf, and
turned to Pearlie.
"Why, Pearlie Schultz!" he said reproach-
fully. "How can you ask? You know what a
strawberry social means to mel I haven't
missed one in years!"
"I know it," replied Pearlie, with a grin.
"You feel the same way about Thursday even-
ing prayer-meeting too, don't you? You can
walk over with us if you want to. We're going
now. Miss Evans and I have got a booth."
Sid walked. Pearlie led them determinedly
past the rows of gray suits and lavender and pink
shirts on the benches in front of the hotel. And
as the leading lady came into view the gray suits
stopped talking baseball and sat up and took
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
notice. Pearlie had known all those young men
inside of the swagger suits in the days when their
summer costume consisted of a pair of dad's
pants cut down to a doubtful fit, and a nonde-
script shirt damp from the swimming-hole. So
she called out, cheerily:
"We're going over to the strawberry festival.
I expect to see all you boys there to contribute
your mite to the church carpet."
The leading lady turned to look at them, and
smiled. They were such a dapper, pink-cheeked,
clean-looking lot of boys, she thought. At that
the benches rose to a man and announced that
they might as well stroll over right now.
Whenever a new girl comes to visit in our town
our boys make a concerted rush at her, and de-
velop a "case" immediately, and the girl goes
home when her visit is over with her head swim-
ming, and forever after bores the girls of her
home town with tales of her conquests.
The ladies of the First M. E. Church still
talk of the money they garnered at the straw-
berry festival. Pearlie's out-of-town friend was
garnerer-in-chief. You take a cross-eyed, pock-
marked girl and put her in a white dress, with a
pink slip, on a green lawn under a string of rose-
THE LEADING LADY
colored Japanese lanterns, and she'll develop
an almost Oriental beauty. It is an ideal set-
ting. The leading lady was not cross-eyed or
pock-marked. She stood at the lantern-illumined
booth, with Pearlie in the background, and dis-
pensed an unbelievable amount of strawberries.
Sid Strang and the hotel bench brigade assisted.
They made engagements to take Pearlie and her
friend down river next day, and to the ball
game, and planned innumerable picnics, gazing
meanwhile into the leading lady's eyes. There
grew in the cheeks of the leading lady a flush
that was not brought about by the pink slip, or
the Japanese lanterns, or the skillful application
of rouge.
By nine o'clock the strawberry supply was ex-
hausted, and the president of the Foreign Mis-
sionary Society was sending wildly down-town
for more ice-cream.
"I call it an outrage," puffed Pearlie happily,
ladling ice-cream like mad. "Making a poor
working girl like me slave all evening! How
many was that last order? Four? My land!
that's the third dish of ice-cream Ed White's
had ! You'll have something to tell the villagers
about when you get back to New York."
[153]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
The leading lady turned a flushed face toward
Pearlie. "This is more fun than the Actors'
Fair. I had the photograph booth last year,
and I took in nearly as much as Lil Russell; and
goodness knows, all she needs to do at a fair is
to wear her diamond-and-pearl stomacher and
her set-piece smile, and the men just swarm
around her like the pictures of a crowd In a Mc-
Cutcheon cartoon."
When the last Japanese lantern had guttered
out, Pearlie Schultz and the leading lady pre-
pared to go home. Before they left, the M. E.
ladies came over to Pearlie's booth and person-
ally congratulated the leading lady, and thanked
her for the interest she had taken in the cause,
and the secretary of the Epworth League asked
her to come to the tea that was to be held at her
home the following Tuesday. The leading lady
thanked her and said she'd come if she could.
Escorted by a bodyguard of gray suits and
lavender-striped shirts Pearlie and her friend,
iMiss Evans, walked toward the hotel. The at-
tentive bodyguard confessed itself puzzled.
"Aren't you staying at Pearlie's house?"
asked Sid tenderly, when they reached the Burke
House. The leading lady glanced up at the
[154]
THE LEADING LADY
windows of the stifling little room that faced
west.
"No," answered she, and paused at the foot
of the steps to the ladies' entrance. The light
from the electric globe over the doorway shone
on her hair and sparkled in the folds of her.
spangled scarf.
"I'm not staying at Pearlie's because my name
isn't Ethel Evans. It's Aimee Fox, with a little
French accent mark over the double E. I'm
leading lady of the 'Second Wife' company and
old enough to be well, your aunty, anyway.
We go out at one-thirty to-morrow morning."
[155]
IX
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
all have our ambitions. Mine is to sit
in a rocking-chair on the sidewalk at the
corner of Clark and Randolph Streets, and
watch the crowds go by. South Clark Street is
one of the most interesting and cosmopolitan
thoroughfares in the world (New Yorkers
please sniff). If you are from Paris, France,
or Paris, Illinois, and should chance to be in that
neighborhood, you will stop at Tony's news
stand to buy your home-town paper. Don't mis-
take the nature of this story. There is nothing
of the shivering-newsboy-waif about Tony. He
has the voice of a fog-horn, the purple-striped
shirt of a sport, the diamond scarf-pin of a race-
track tout, and the savoir falre of the gutter-
bred. You'd never pick him for a newsboy if it
weren't for his chapped hands and the eternal
cold-sore on the upper left corner of his
mouth.
It is a fascinating thing, Tony's stand. A
high wooden structure rising tier on tier, con-
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
taining papers from every corner of the world.
I'll defy you to name a paper that Tony doesn't
handle, from Timbuctoo to Tarrytown, from
South Bend to South Africa. A paper marked
Christiania, Norway, nestles next to a sheet from
Kalamazoo, Michigan. You can get the War
Cry, or Le Figaro. With one hand, Tony will
give you the Berlin Tageblatt, and with the
other the Times from Neenah, Wisconsin.
Take your choice between the Bulletin from Syd-
ney, Australia, or the Bee from Omaha.
But perhaps you know South Clark Street.
It is honeycombed with good copy man-size
stuff. South Clark Street reminds one of a slat-
ternly woman, brave in silks and velvets on the
surface, but ragged, and rumpled and none too
clean as to nether garments. It begins with a
tenement so vile, so filthy, so repulsive, that the
municipal authorities deny its very existence. It
ends with a brand-new hotel, all red brick, and
white tiling, and Louise Quinze furniture, and
sour-cream colored marble lobby, and oriental
rugs lavishly scattered under the feet of the un-
appreciative guest from Kansas City. It is a
street of signs, is South Clark. They vary all
the way from "Banca Italiana" done in fat, fly-
[157]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
specked letters of gold, to "Sang Yuen" scrawled
in Chinese red and black. Spaghetti and chop
suey and dairy lunches nestle side by side. Here
an electric sign blazons forth the tempting an-
'nouncement of lunch. Just across the way, deli-
cately suggesting a means of availing one's self
of the invitation, is another which announces
"Loans." South Clark Street can transform a
winter overcoat into hamburger and onions so
quickly that the eye can't follow the hand.
Do you gather from this that you are being
taken slumming? Not at all. For the passer-by
on Clark Street varies as to color, nationality,
raiment, finger-nails, and hair-cut according to
the locality in which you find him.
At the tenement end the feminine passer-by is
apt to be shawled, swarthy, down-at-the-heel,
and dragging a dark-eyed, fretting baby in her
wake. At the hotel end you will find her blonde
of hair, velvet of boot, plumed of head-gear,
and prone to have at her heels a white, woolly,
< pink-eyed dog.
The masculine Clark Streeter? I throw up
my hands. Pray remember that South Clark
Street embraces the dime lodging house, pawn-
shop, hotel, theater, chop-suey and railway office
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
district, all within a few blocks. From the side-
walk in front of his groggery, "Bath House
John" can see the City Hall. The trim, khaki-
garbed enlistment officer rubs elbows with the
lodging house bum. The masculine Clark
Streeter may be of the kind that begs a dime
for a bed, or he may loll in manicured luxury at
the marble-lined hotel. South Clark Street is
so splendidly indifferent.
Copy-hunting, I approached Tony with hope
in my heart, a smile on my lips, and a nickel in
my hand.
"Philadelphia er Inquirer?" I asked,
those being the city and paper which fire my
imagination least.
Tony whipped it out, dexterously.
I looked at his keen blue eye, his lean brown
face, and his punishing jaw, and I knew that no
airy persiflage would deceive him. Boldly I
waded in.
"I write for the magazines," said I.
"Do they know it?" grinned Tony.
"Just beginning to be faintly aware. Your
stand looks like a story to me. Tell me, does
one ever come your way? For instance, don't
they come here asking for their home-town paper
[159]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
sobs in their voice grasp the sheet with trem-
bling hands type swims in a misty haze before
their eyes turn aside to brush away a tear
all that kind of stuff, you know?"
Tony's grin threatened his cold-sore. You
can't stand on the corner of Clark and Randolph
all those years without getting wise to every-
thing there is.
"I'm on," said he, "but I'm afraid I can't ac-
commodate, girlie. I guess my ear ain't attuned
to that sob stuff. What's that? Yessir. Nossir,
fifteen cents. Well, I can't help that; fifteen's
the reg'lar price of foreign papers. Thanks.
There, did you see that? I bet that gink give
up fifteen of his last two bits to get that paper.
O, well, sometimes they look happy, and then
again sometimes they Yes'm. Mississippi?
Five cents. Los Vegas Optic right here. Heh
there! You're forgettin' your change!
an* then again sometimes they look all to
the doleful. Say, stick around. Maybe
somebody'll start something. You can't never
tell."
And then this happened.
A man approached Tony's news stand from
the north, and a woman approached Tony's
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
news stand from the south. They brought my
story with them.
The woman reeked of the city. I hope you
know what I mean. She bore the stamp, and seal,
and imprint of it. It had ground its heel down
on her face. At the front of her coat she wore
a huge bunch of violets, with a fleshly tuberose
rising from its center. Her furs were volumi-
nous. Her hat was hidden beneath the cascades
of a green willow plume. A green willow plume
would make Edna May look sophisticated. She
walked with that humping hip movement which
city women acquire. She carried a jangling
handful of useless gold trinkets. Her heels were
too high, and her hair too yellow, and her lips
too red, and her nose too white, and her cheeks
too pink. Everything about her was "too,"
from the black stitching on her white gloves to
the buckle of brilliants in her hat. The city
had her, body and soul, and had fashioned her
in its metallic cast. You would have sworn
that she had never seen flowers growing in a
field.
Said she to Tony:
"Got a Kewaskum Courier? 19
As she said it the man stopped at the stand
[161]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
and put his question. To present this thing
properly I ought to be able to describe them both
at the same time, like a juggler keeping two
balls in the air at once. Kindly carry the lady/
in your mind's eye. The man was tall and raw-
boned, with very white teeth, very blue eyes and
an open-faced collar that allowed full play to an
objectionably apparent Adam's apple. His hair
and mustache were sandy, his gait loping. His
manner, clothes, and complexion breathed of
Waco, Texas (or is it Arizona?)
Said he to Tony:
"Let me have the London Times"
Well, there you are. I turned an accusing
eye on Tony.
"And you said no stories came your way," I
murmured, reproachfully.
"Help yourself," said Tony.
The blonde lady grasped the Kewaskum
Courier. Her green plume appeared to be un-
duly agitated as she searched its columns. The^
sheet rattled. There was no breeze. The'
hands in the too-black stitched gloves were
trembling.
I turned from her to the man just in time to
see the Adam's apple leaping about unpleasantly
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
and convulsively. Whereupon I jumped to two
conclusions.
Conclusion one : Any woman whose hands can
tremble over the Kewaskum Courier is home-
sick.
Conclusion two : Any man, any part of whose
anatomy can become convulsed over the London
Times is homesick.
She looked up from her Courier. He glanced
away from his Times. As the novelists have
it, their eyes met. And there, in each pair of
eyes there swam that misty haze about which
I had so earnestly consulted Tony. The Green
Plume took an involuntary step forward. The
Adam's Apple did the same. They spoke simul-
taneously.
"They're going to pave Main Street," said
the Green Plume, u and Mrs. Wilcox, that was
Jen Meyers, has got another baby girl, and the
ladies of the First M. E. made seven dollars and
sixty-nine cents on their needle-work bazaar and
missionary tea. I ain't been home in eleven
years."
"Hallem is trying for Parliament in West-
chester and the King is back at Windsor. My
mother wears a lace cap down to breakfast, and
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
the place is famous for its tapestries and yew
trees and family ghost. I haven't been home in
twelve years."
The great, soft light of fellow feeling and,
sympathy glowed in the eyes of each. The
Green Plume took still another step forward
and laid her hand on his arm (as is the way of
Green Plumes the world over) .
"Why don't you go, kid?" she inquired,
softly.
Adam's Apple gnawed at his mustache end.
"I'm the black sheep. Why don't you?"
The blonde lady looked down at her glove
tips. Her lower lip was caught between her
teeth.
"What's the feminine for black sheep? I'm
that. Anyway, I'd be afraid to go home for
fear it would be too much of a shock for them
when they saw my hair. They wasn't in on the
intermediate stages when it was chestnut, au-
burn, Titian, gold, and orange colored. I want
to spare their feelings. The last time they saw
me it was just plain brown. Where I come from
a woman who dyes her hair when it is beginning
to turn gray is considered as good as lost.
Funny, ain't it? And yet I remember the minis-
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
ter's wife used to wear false teeth the kind that
clicks. But hair is different."
"Dear lady," said the blue-eyed man, "it
would make no difference to your own people. I
know they would be happy to see you, hair and
all. One's own people "
"My folks? That's just it. If the Prodigal
Son had been a daughter they'd probably have
handed her one of her sister's mother hubbards,
and put her to work washing dishes in the
kitchen. You see, after Ma died my brother
married, and I went to live with him and Lil.
I was an ugly little mug, and it looked all to the
Cinderella for me, with the coach, and four, and
prince left out. Lil was the village beauty when
my brother married her, and she kind of got into
the habit of leaving the heavy role to me, and
confining herself to thinking parts. One day I
took twenty dollars and came to the city. Oh,
I paid it back long ago, but I've never been home
since. But say, do you know every time I get
near a news stand like this I grab the home-town
paper. I'll bet I've kept track every time my
sister-in-law's sewing circle has met for the last
ten years, and the spring the paper said they
built a new porch I was just dying to write and
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
ask 'em what they did with the Virginia creeper
that used to cover the whole front and sides of
the old porch."
"Look here," said the man, very abruptly
"if it's money you need, why "
"Me! Do I look like a touch? Now
you "
"Finest stock farm and ranch in seven coun-
ties. I come to Chicago once a year to sell. I've
got just thirteen thousand nestling next to my
left floating rib this minute."
The eyes of the woman with the green plume
narrowed down to two glittering slits. A new
look came into her face a look that matched
her hat, and heels and gloves and complexion
and hair.
"Thirteen thousand! Thirteen thous
Say, isn't it chilly on this corner, h'm? I know
a kind of a restaurant just around the corner
where "
"It's no use," said the sandy-haired man,;
gently. "And I wouldn't have said that, if I
were you. I was going back to-day on the 5 125,
but I'm sick of it all. So are you, or you
wouldn't have said what you just said. Listen.
Let's go back home, you and I. The sight of
[z66]
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
a Navajo blanket nauseates me. The thought
of those prairies makes my eyes ache. I know
that if I have to eat one more meal cooked by
>hat Chink of mine I'll hang him by his own pig-
tail. Those rangy western ponies aren't horse-
flesh, fit for a man to ride. Why, back home
our stables were Look here. I want to see a
silver tea-service, with a coat-of-arms on it. I
want to dress for dinner, and take in a girl with
a white gown and smooth white shoulders. My
sister clips roses in the morning, before break-
fast, in a pink ruffled dress and garden gloves.
Would you believe that, here, on Clark Street,
with a whiskey sign overhead, and the stock-
yard smells undernose? O, helll I'm going
home."
"Home?" repeated the blonde lady.
"Home?" The sagging lines about her flaccid
chin took on a new look of firmness and resolve.
The light of determination glowed in her eyes.
"I'll beat you to it," she said. "I'm going
home, too. I'll be there to-morrow. I'm dead
sick of this. Who cares whether I live or die?
It's just one darned round of grease paint, and
sky blue tights, and new boarding houses and
humping over to the theater every night, going
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
on, and humping back to the room again. I want
to wash up some supper dishes with egg on 'cm,
and set some yeast for bread, and pop a dishpan
full of corn, and put a shawl over my head and
run over to Millie Krause's to get her kimono
sleeve pattern. I'm sour on this dirt and noise.
I want to spend the rest of my life in a place so
that when I die they'll put a column in the paper,
with a verse at the top, and all the neighbors'll
come in and help bake up. Here why, here
I'd just be two lines on the want ad page, with
fifty cents extra for 'Kewaskum paper please
copy.' "
The man held out his hand. "Good-bye," he
said, "and please excuse me if I say God bless
you. I've never really wanted to say it before,
so it's quite extraordinary. My name's Guy
Peel."
The white glove, with its too-conspicuous
black stitching, disappeared within his palm.
"Mine's Mercedes Meron, late of the Morn-
ing Glory Burlesquers, but from now on Sadie
Hayes, of Kewaskum, Wisconsin. Good-bye
and well God bless you, too. Say, I hope
you don't think I'm in the habit of talking to
strange gents like this."
[168]
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
"I am quite sure you are not," said Guy Peel,
very gravely, and bowed slightly before he
went south on Clark Street, and she went
north.
Dear Reader, will you take my hand while I
assist you to make a one year's leap. Whoop-la !
There you are.
A man and a woman approached Tony's
news stand. You are quite right. But her wil-
low plume was purple this time. A purple
willow plume would make Mario Doro look
sophisticated. The man was sandy-haired, raw-
boned, with a loping gait, very blue eyes, very
white teeth, and an objectionably apparent
Adam's apple. He came from the north, and
she from the south.
In story books, and on the stage, when two
people meet unexpectedly after a long separation
they always stop short, bring one hand up to
their breast, 'and say: "You!" Sometimes,
especially in the case where the heroine chances
on the villain, they say, simultaneously: "You!
Here!" I have seen people reunited under sur-
prising circumstances, but they never said,
"You!" They said something quite unmelodra-
matic, and commonplace, such as: "Well, look
[169]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
who's here!" or, "My land! If it ain't Ed!
How's Ed ?"
So it was that the Purple Willow Plume and
:he Adam's Apple stopped, shook hands, and
viewed one another while the Plume said, "I
kind of thought I'd bump into you. Felt it in
my bones." And the Adam's Apple said:
"Then you're not living in Kewaskum er
Wisconsin ?"
"Not any," responded she, briskly. "How
do you happen to be straying away from the
tapestries, and the yew trees and the ghost, and
the pink roses, and the garden gloves, and the
silver tea-service with the coat-of-arms on it?"
A slow, grim smile overspread the features
of the man. "You tell yours first," he said.
"Well," began she, "in the first place, my
name's Mercedes Meron, of the Morning Glory
Burlesquers, formerly Sadie Hayes of Kewas-
kum, Wisconsin. I went home next day, like I
said I would. Say, Mr. Peel (you said Peel,
didn't you? Guy Peel. Nice, neat name), to
this day, when I eat lobster late at night, and
have dreams, it's always about that visit home."
"How long did you stay?"
"I'm coming to that. Or maybe you can fig-
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
ure it out yourself when I tell you I've been
back eleven months. I wired the folks I was
coming, and then I came before they had a
chance to answer. When the train reached
Kewaskum I stepped off into the arms of a dowd
in a home-made-made-over-year-before-last suit,
and a hat that would have been funny if it
hadn't been so pathetic. I grabbed her by the
shoulders, and I held her off, and looked
looked at the wrinkles, and the sallow complex-
ion, and the coat with the sleeves in wrong, and
the mashed hat (I told you Lil used to be the
village peach, didn't I?) and I says:
* 'For Gawd's sakes, Lil, does your husband
beat you?'
1 'Steve !' she shrieks, 'beat me ! You must be
crazy!'
" 'Well, if he don't, he ought to. Those
clothes are grounds for divorce,' I says.
"Mr. Guy Peel, it took me just four weeks
to get wise to the fact that the way to cure home-
sickness is to go home. I spent those four weeks
trying to revolutionize my sister-in-law's house,
dress, kids, husband, wall paper and parlor car-
pet. I took all the doilies from under the orna-
ments and spoke my mind on the subject of the
[171]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
hand-painted lamp, and Lil hates me for it yet,
and will to her dying day. I fitted three dresses
for her, and made her get some corsets that
she'll never wear. They have roast pork for
dinner on Sundays, and they never go to the
theater, and they like bread pudding, and they're
happy. I wasn't. They treated me fine, and it
was home, all right, but not my home. It was
the same, but I was different. Eleven years
away from anything makes it shrink, if you
know what I mean. I guess maybe you do. I
remember that I used to think that the Grand
View Hotel was a regular little oriental palace
that was almost too luxurious to be respectable,
and that the traveling men who stopped there
were gods, and just to prance past the hotel after
supper had the Atlantic City board walk looking
like a back alley on a rainy night. Well, every-
thing had sort of shriveled up just like that.
The popcorn gave me indigestion, and I burned
the skin off my nose popping it. Kneading
bread gave me the backache, and the blamed
stuff wouldn't raise right. I got so I was crazy
to hear the roar of an L train, and the sound
of a crossing policeman's whistle. I got to
thinking how Michigan Avenue looks, down-
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
town, with the lights shining down on the as-
phalt, and all those people eating in the swell
hotels, and the autos, and the theater crowds
and the windows, and well, I'm back. Glad I
went? You said it. Because it made me so
darned glad to get back. IVe found out one
thing, and it's a great little lesson when you get
it learned. Most of us are where we are because
we belong there, and if we didn't, we wouldn't
be. Say, that does sound mixed, don't it? But
it's straight. Now you tell yours."
"I think you've said it all," began Guy Peel.
"It's queer, isn't it, how twelve years of
America will spoil one for afternoon tea, and
yew trees, and tapestries, and lace caps, and
roses. The mater was glad to see me, but she
said I smelled woolly. They think a Navajo
blanket is a thing the Indians wear on the war
path, and they don't know whether Texas is a
state, or a mineral water. It was slow slow.
About the time they were taking afternoon tea,
I'd be reckoning how the boys would be round-
ing up the cattle for the night, and about the
time we'd sit down to dinner something seemed
to whisk the dinner table, and the flowers, and
the men and women in evening clothes right ou<:
[173]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
of sight, like magic, and I could see the boys
stretched out in front of the bunk house after
their supper of bacon, and beans, and biscuit,
and coffee. They'd be smoking their pipes that
smelled to Heaven, and further, and Wing
would be squealing one of his creepy old Chink
songs out in the kitchen, and the sky would be
say, Miss Meron, did you ever see the night sky,
out West? Purple, you know, and soft as soap-
suds, and so near that you want to reach up and
touch it with your hand. Toward the end my
mother used to take me off in a corner and tell
me that I hadn't spoken a word to the little girl
that I had taken in to dinner, and that if I
couldn't forget my uncouth western ways for an
hour or two, at least, perhaps I'd better not try
to mingle with civilized people. I discovered
that home isn't always the place where you were
born and bred. Home is the place where your
everyday clothes are, and where somebody, or
something needs you. They didn't need me over
there in England. Lord no ! I was sick for the
sight of a Navajo blanket. My shack's glowing
svith them. And my books needed me, and the
boys, and the critters, and Kate."
"Kate?" repeated Miss Meron, quickly.
[174]
THAT HOME-TOWN FEELING
"Kate's my horse. I'm going back on the
5:25 to-night. This is my regular trip, you
know. I came around here to buy a paper, be-
cause it has become a habit. And then, too, I
sort of felt well, something told me that
you "
"You're a nice boy," said Miss Meron. "By
the way, did I tell you that I married the man-
ager of the show the week after I got back? We
go to Bloomington to-night, and then we jump
to St. Paul. I came around here just as usual,
because well because "
Tony's gift for remembering faces and facts
amounts to genius. With two deft movements
he whisked two papers from among the many
in the rack, and held them out.
"Kewaskum Courier?" he suggested.
"Nix," said Mercedes Meron, "I'll take
Chicago Scream"
"London Times?" said Tony.
"No," replied Guy Peel. "Give me the San
Antonio Express"
[175]
X
THE HOMELY HEROINE
ILLIE WHITCOMB, of the fancy goods
and notions, beckoned me with her finger.
I had been standing at Kate O'Malley's counter,
pretending to admire her new basket-weave suit-
ings, but in reality reveling in her droll account
of how, in the train coming up from Chicago,
Mrs. Judge Porterfield had worn the negro por-
ter's coat over her chilly shoulders in mistake
for her husband's. Kate O'Malley can tell a
funny story in a way to make the after-dinner
pleasantries of a Washington diplomat sound
like the clumsy jests told around the village gro-
cery stove.
"I wanted to tell you that I read that last
story of yours," said Millie, sociably, when I
had strolled over to her counter, "and I liked
it, all but the heroine. She had an 'adorable
throat* and hair that 'waved away from her
white brow,' and eyes that 'now were blue and
now gray.' Say, why don't you write a story
about an ugly girl?"
THE HOMELY HEROINE
"My land!" protested I. "It's bad enough
trying to make them accept my stories as it is.
That last heroine was a raving beauty, but she
came back eleven times before the editor of
Blakely's succumbed to her charms."
Millie's fingers were busy straightening the
contents of a tray of combs and imitation jet
barrettes. Millie's fingers were not intended for
that task. They are slender, tapering fingers,
pink-tipped and sensitive.
"I should think," mused she, rubbing a cloudy
piece of jet with a bit of soft cloth, "that they'd
welcome a homely one with relief. These god-
desses are so cloying."
Millie Whitcomb's black hair is touched with
soft mists of gray, and she wears lavender shirt-
waists and white stocks edged with lavender.
There is a Colonial air about her that has noth-
ing to do with celluloid combs and imitation jet
barrettes. It breathes of dim old rooms, rich
with the tones of mahogany and old brass, and
Millie in the midst of it, gray-gowned, a soft
white fichu crossed upon her breast.
In our town the clerks are not the pert and
gum-chewing young persons that story-writers
arc wont to describe. The girls at Bascom's are
[177]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
institutions. They know us all by our first
names, and our lives are as an open book to
them. Kate O'Malley, who has been at Bas-
com's for so many years that she is rumored to
have stock in the company, may be said to gov-
ern the fashions of our town. She is wont to
say, when we express a fancy for gray as the
color of our new spring suit:
"Oh, now, Nellie, don't get gray again. You
had it year before last, and don't you think it
was just the least leetle bit trying ? Let me show
you that green that came in yesterday. I said
the minute I clapped my eyes on it that it was
just the color for you, with your brown hair and
all."
And we end by deciding on the green.
The girls at Bascom's are not gossips they
are too busy for that but they may be said to
be delightfully well informed. How could they
be otherwise when we go to Bascom's for our
wedding dresses and party favors and baby flan-
nels? There is news at Bascom's that our daily
paper never hears of, and wouldn't dare print
if it did.
So when Millie Whitcomb, of the fancy goods
and notions, expressed her hunger for a homely
THE HOMELY HEROINE
heroine, I did not resent the suggestion. On the
contrary, it sent me home in thoughtful mood,
for Millie Whitcomb has acquired a knowledge
of human nature in the dispensing of her fancy
goods and notions. It set me casting about for
a really homely heroine.
There never has been a really ugly heroine in
fiction. Authors have started bravely out to
write of an unlovely woman, but they never have
had the courage to allow her to remain plain.
On Page 237 she puts on a black lace dress and
red roses, and the combination brings out unex-
pected tawny lights in her hair, and olive tints
in her cheeks, and there she is, the same old
beautiful heroine. Even in the "Duchess" books
one finds the simple Irish girl, on donning a
green corduroy gown cut square at the neck,
transformed into a wild-rose beauty, at sight of x
whom a ball-room is hushed into admiring awe.
There's the case of Jane Eyre, too. She is con-
stantly described as plain and mouse-like, but
there are covert hints as to her gray eyes and
slender figure and clear skin, and we have a
sneaking notion that she wasn't such a fright
after all.
Therefore, when I tell you that I am choos-
[179]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
ing Pearlie Schultz as my leading lady you are
to understand that she is ugly, not only when
the story opens, but to the bitter end. In the
first place, Pearlie is fat. Not plump, or
rounded, or dimpled, or deliciously curved, but
FAT. She bulges in all the wrong places, in-
cluding her chin. (Sister, who has a way of
snooping over my desk in my absence, says that
I may as well drop this now, because nobody
would ever read it, anyway, least of all any sane
editor. I protest when I discover that Sis has
been over my papers. It bothers me. But she
says you have to do these things when you have
a genius in the house, and cites the case of Kip-
ling's "Recessional," which was rescued from
the depths of his wastebasket by his wife.)
Pearlie Schultz used to sit on the front porch
summer evenings and watch the couples stroll
by, and weep in her heart. A fat girl with a
fat girl's soul is a comedy. But a fat girl with a
thin girl's soul is a tragedy. Pearlie, in spite of
her two hundred pounds, had the soul of a wil-
low wand.
The walk in front of Pearlie's house was
guarded by a row of big trees that cast kindly
shadows. The strolling couples used to step
[i so]
THE HOMELY HEROINE
gratefully into the embrace of these shadows,
and from them into other embraces. Pearlie,
sitting on the porch, could see them dimly, al-
though they could not see her. She could not
help remarking that these strolling couples were
strangely lacking in sprightly conversation.
Their remarks were but fragmentary, disjointed
affairs, spoken in low tones with a queer, tremu-
lous note in them. When they reached the deep-
est, blackest, kindliest shadow, which fell just
before the end of the row of trees, the strolling
couples almost always stopped, and then there
came a quick movement, and a little smothered
cry from the girl, and then a sound, and then a
silence. Pearlie, sitting alone on the porch in
the dark, listened to these things and blushed
furiously. Pearlie had never strolled into the
kindly shadows with a little beating of the heart,
and she had never been surprised with a quick
arm about her and eager lips pressed warmly
against her own.
In the daytime Pearlie worked as public ste-
nographer at the Burke Hotel. She rose at
seven in the morning, and rolled for fifteen min-
utes, and lay on her back and elevated her heels
in the air, and stood stiff-kneed while she
[181]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
touched the floor with her finger tips one hun-
dred times, and went without her breakfast. At
the end of each month she usually found that
she weighed three pounds more than she had the
month before.
The folks at home never joked with Pearlie
about her weight. Even one's family has some
respect for a life sorrow. Whenever Pearlie
asked that inevitable question of the fat woman :
"Am I as fat as she is?" her mother always an-
swered: "You! Well, I should hope notJ
You're looking real peaked lately, Pearlie. And
your blue skirt just ripples in the back, it's get-
ting so big for you."
Of such blessed stuff are mothers made.
But if the gods had denied Pearlie all charms
of face or form, they had been decent enough
to bestow on her one gift. Pearlie could cook
like an angel; no, better than an angel, for no
angel could be a really clever cook and wear
those flowing kimono-like sleeves. They'd get
into the soup. Pearlie could take a piece of
rump and some suet and an onion and a cup or
so of water, and evolve a pot roast that you could
cut with a fork. She could turn out a surpris-
ingly good cake with surprisingly few eggs, all
THE HOMELY HEROINE
covered with white icing, and bearing cunning
little jelly figures on its snowy bosom. She could
beat up biscuits that fell apart at the lightest
pressure, revealing little pools of golden butter
within. Oh, Pearlie could cook!
On week days Pearlie rattled the typewriter
keys, but on Sundays she shooed her mother out
of the kitchen. Her mother went, protesting
faintly:
"Now, Pearlie, don't fuss so for dinner. You
ought to get your rest on Sunday instead of
stewing over a hot stove all morning."
"Hot fiddlesticks, ma," Pearlie would say,
cheerily. "It ain't hot, because it's a gas stove.
And I'll only get fat if I sit around. You put
on your black-and-white and go to church. Call
me when you've got as far as your corsets, and
I'll puff your hair for you in the back."
In her capacity of public stenographer at the
Burke Hotel, it was Pearlie's duty to take letters
dictated by traveling men and beginning:
4 Yours of the loth at hand. In reply would
say. . . ." or: "Enclosed please find, etc." As
clinching proof of her plainness it may be stated
that none of the traveling men, not even Max
Baum, who was so fresh that the girl at the
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
cigar counter actually had to squelch him, ever
called Pearlie "baby doll," or tried to make a
date with her. Not that Pearlie would ever have
allowed them to. But she never had had to re-
prove them. During pauses in dictation she
had a way of peering near-sightedly over her
glasses at the dapper, well-dressed traveling
salesman who was rolling off the items on his
sale bill. That is a trick which would make
the prettiest kind of a girl look owlish.
On the night that Sam Miller strolled up to
talk to her, Pearlie was working late. She had
promised to get out a long and intricate bill for
Max Baum, who travels for Kuhn and Kling-
man, so that he might take the nine o'clock even-
ing train. The irrepressible Max had departed
With much eclat and clatter, and Pearlie was pre-
paring to go home when Sam approached her.
Sam had just come in from the Gayety
Theater across the street, whither he had gone
in a vain search for amusement after supper.
He had come away in disgust. A soiled sou-
brette with orange-colored hair and baby socks
had swept her practiced eye over the audience,
and, attracted by Sam's good-looking blond
head in the second row, had selected him as the
THE HOMELY HEROINE
target of her song. She had run up to the ex-
treme edge of the footlights at the risk of tee-
tering over, and had informed Sam through the
medium of song to the huge delight of the au-
dience, and to Sam's red-faced discomfiture
that she liked his smile, and he was just her style,
and just as cute as he could be, and just the boy
for her. On reaching the chorus she had
whipped out a small, round mirror and, assisted
by the calcium-light man in the rear, had thrown
a wretched little spotlight on Sam's head.
Ordinarily, Sam would not have minded it.
But that evening, in the vest pocket just over
the place where he supposed his heart to be re-
posed his girl's daily letter. They were to be
married on Sam's return to New York from his
first long trip. In the letter near his heart she
had written prettily and seriously about travel-
ing men, and traveling men's wives, and her lit-
tle code for both. The fragrant, girlish, grave
little letter had caused Sam to sour on the efforts
of the soiled soubrette.
As soon as possible he had fled up the aisle
and across the street to the hotel writing-room.
There he had spied Pearlie's good-humored,
homely face, and its contrast with the silly, red-
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
and-white countenance of the unlaundered sou-
brette had attracted his homesick heart.
Pearlie had taken some letters from him
earlier in the day. Now, in his hunger for com-
panionship, he strolled up to her desk, just as
she was putting her typewriter to bed.
"Gee! This is a lonesome town!" said Sam,
smiling down at her.
Pearlie glanced up at him, over her glasses.
"I guess you must be from New York," she said.
"I've heard a real New Yorker can get bored
in Paris. In New York the sky is bluer, and the
grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and
the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are
higher, and the streets are wider, and the air
is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls,
or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the
world. Ain't they?"
"Oh, now," protested Sam, "quit kiddin' me!
You'd be lonesome for the little old town, too,
if you'd been born and dragged up in it, and
nadn't seen it for four months."
"New to the road, aren't you?" asked Pearlie.
Sam blushed a little. '"How did you know?"
"Well, you generally can tell. They don't
know what to do with themselves evenings, and
THE HOMELY HEROINE
they look rebellious when they go into the din-
ing-room. The old-timers just look resigned."
"You've picked up a thing or two around
here, haven't you? I wonder if the time will
ever come when I'll look resigned to a hotel din-
ner, after four months of 'em. Why, girl, I've
got so I just eat the things that are covered up
like baked potatoes in the shell, and soft boiled
eggs, and baked apples, and oranges that I can
peel, and nuts."
"Why, you poor kid," breathed Pearlie, her
pale eyes fixed on him in motherly pity. "You
oughtn't to do that. You'll get so thin your girl
won't know you."
Sam looked up quickly. "How in thunder-
ation did you know ?"
Pearlie was pinning on her hat, and she spoke
succinctly, her hatpins between her teeth:
"You've been here two days now, and I notice
y^u dictate all your letters except the longest
one, and you write that one off in a corner of the
writing-room all by yourself, with your cigar
just glowing like a live coal, and you squint up
through the smoke, and grin to yourself."
"Say, would you mind if I walked home with
you?" asked Sam.
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
If Pcarlie was surprised, she was woman
enough not to show it. She picked up her gloves
and hand bag, locked her drawer with a click,
and smiled her acquiescence. And when Pearlie
smiled she was awful.
It was a glorious evening in the early sum-
mer, moonless, velvety, and warm. As they
strolled homeward, Sam told her all about the
Girl, as is the way of traveling men the world
over. He told her about the tiny apartment
they had taken, and how he would be on the
road only a couple of years more, as this was
just a try-out that the firm always insisted on.
And they stopped under an arc light while Sam
showed her the picture in his watch, as is also
the way of traveling men since time immemorial.
Pearlie made an excellent listener. He was
so boyish, and so much in love, and so pathet-
ically eager to make good with the firm, and so
happy to have some one in whom to confide.
"But it's a dog's life, after all," reflected
Sam, again after the fashion of all traveling
men. "Any fellow on the road earns his salary
these days, you bet. I used to think it was all
getting up when you felt like it, and sitting in the
big front window of the hotel, smoking a cigar
THE HOMELY HEROINE
and watching the pretty girls go by. I wasn't
wise to the packing, and the unpacking, and the
rotten train service, and the grouchy customers,
and the canceled bills, and the grub. n
Pearlie nodded understandingly. "A man
told me once that twice a week regularly he
dreamed of the way his wife cooked noodle-
soup."
"My folks are German," explained Sam.
"And my mother can she cook! Well, I just
don't seem able to get her potato pancakes out
of my mind. And her roast beef tasted and
looked like roast beef, and not like a wet red
flannel rag."
At this moment Pearlie was seized with a
brilliant idea. "To-morrow's Sunday. You're
going to Sunday here, aren't you? Come over
and cat your dinner with us. If you have for-
gotten the taste of real food, I can give you a
dinner that'll jog your memory."
"Oh, really," protested Sam. "You're aw-
fully good, but I couldn't think of it. I "
"You needn't be afraid. I'm not letting you
in for anything. I may be homelier than an
English suffragette, and I know my lines are all
bumps, but there's one thing you can't take away
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
from me, and that's my cooking hand. I can
cook, boy, in a way to make your mother's Sun-
day dinner, with company expected, look like
Mrs. Newlywed's first attempt at 'riz' biscuits.
And I don't mean any disrespect to your mother
when I say it. I'm going to have noodle-soup,
and fried chicken, and hot biscuits, and creamed
beans from our own garden, and strawberry
shortcake with real "
"Hush!" shouted Sam. "If I ain't there,
you'll know that I passed away during the night,
and you can telephone the clerk to break in my
door."
The Grim Reaper spared him, and Sam
came, and was introduced to the family, and ate.
He put himself in a class with Dr. Johnson, and
Ben Brust, and Gargantua, only that his table
manners were better. He almost forgot to talk
during the soup, and he came back three times
for chicken, and by the time the strawberry
shortcake was half consumed he was looking at
Pearlie with a sort of awe in his eyes.
That night he came over to say good-bye be-
fore taking his train out for Ishpeming. He
and Pearlie strolled down as far as the park and
back again.
[190]
THE HOMELY HEROINE
"I didn't eat any supper," said Sam. "It
would have been sacrilege, after that dinner of
yours. Honestly, I don't know how to thank
you, being so good to a stranger like me. When
I come back next trip, I expect to have the Kid
with me, and I want her to meet you, by George I
She's a winner and a pippin, but she wouldn't
know whether a porterhouse was stewed or
f rapped. I'll tell her about you, you bet. In
the meantime, if there's anything I can do for
you, I'm yours to command."
Pearlie turned to him suddenly. "You see
that clump of thick shadows ahead of us, where
those big trees stand in front of our house?"
"Sure," replied Sam.
"Well, when we step into that deepest, black-
est shadow, right in front of our porch, I want
you to reach up, and put your arm around me
and kiss me on the mouth, just once. And when
you get back to New York you can tell your girl
I asked you to."
There broke from him a little involuntary ex-
clamation. It might have been of pity, and it
might have been of surprise. It had in it some-
thing of both, but nothing of mirth. And as
they stepped into the depths of the soft black
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
shadows he took off his smart straw sailor, which
was so different from the sailors that the boys in
our town wear. And there wai in the gesture
something of reverence.
Millie Whitcomb didn't like the story of
the homely heroine, after all. She says that a
steady diet of such literary fare would give her
blue indigestion. Also she objects on the ground
that no one got married that is, the heroine
didn't. And she says that a heroine who does
not get married isn't a heroine at all. She
thinks she prefers the pink-cheeked, goddess
kind, in the end.
[192]
XI
SUN DRIED
JT^HERE come those times in the life of every
woman when she feels that she must wash
her hair at once. And then she does it. The
feeling may come upon her suddenly, without
warning, at any hour of the day or night; or its
approach may be slow and insidious, so that the
victim does not at first realize what it is that fills
her with that sensation of unrest. But once in
the clutches of the idea she knows no happiness,
no peace, until she has donned a kimono, gath-
ered up two bath towels, a spray, and the green
soap, and ihe breathes again only when, head
dripping, she makes for the back yard, the sit-
ting-room radiator, or the side porch (depend-
ing on her place of residence, and the time of
year).
Mary Louise was seized with the feeling at
ten o'clock on a joyous June morning. She tried
to fight it off because she had got to that stage
in the construction of her story where her hero
wai beginning to talk and act a little more like a
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
real live man, and a little less like a clothing
store dummy. (By the way, they don't seem to
be using those pink-and-white, black-mustachioed
figures any more. Another good simile gone.)
Mary Louise had been battling with that hero
for a week. He wouldn't make love to the hero-
ine. In vain had Mary Louise striven to in-
still red blood into his watery veins. He and
the beauteous heroine were as far apart as they
had been on Page One of the typewritten manu-
script. Mary Louise was developing nerves
over him. She had bitten her finger nails, and
twisted her hair into corkscrews over him. She
had risen every morning at the chaste hour of
seven, breakfasted hurriedly, tidied the tiny two-
room apartment, and sat down in the unroman-
tic morning light to wrestle with her stick of a
hero. She had made her heroine a creature of
grace, wit, and loveliness, but thus far the hero
had not once clasped her to him fiercely, or
pressed his lips to her hair, her eyes, her
cheeks. Nay (as the story-writers would put
it) , he hadn't even devoured her with his
gaze.
This morning, however, he had begun to show
some signs of life. He was developing poasi-
[194]
SUN DRIED
bilities. Whereupon, at this critical stage in the
story- writing game, the hair-washing mania
seized Mary Louise. She tried to dismiss the
idea. She pushed it out of her mind, and
slammed the door. It only popped in again.
Her fingers wandered to her hair. Her eyes
wandered to the June sunshine outside. The
hero was left poised, arms outstretched, and un-
quenchable love-light burning in his eyes, while
Mary Louise mused, thus:
"It certainly feels sticky. It's been six weeks,
at least. And I could sit here by the window
in the sun and dry it "
With a jerk she brought her straying fingers
away from her hair, and her wandering eyes
away from the sunshine, and her runaway
thoughts back to the typewritten page. For
three minutes the snap of the little disks crackled
through the stillness of the tiny apartment.
Then, suddenly, as though succumbing to an ir-
resistible force, Mary Louise rose, walked
across the room (a matter of six steps), remov-
ing hairpins as she went, and shoved aside the
screen which hid the stationary wash-bowl by
day.
Mary Louise turned on a faucet and held her
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
finger under it, while an agonized expression
of doubt and suspense overspread her features.
Slowly the look of suspense gave way to a smile
of beatific content. A sigh deep, soul-filling,
satisfied welled up from Mary Louise's breast.
The water was hot.
Half an hour later, head swathed turban fash-
ion in a towel, Mary Louise strolled over to the
window. Then she stopped, aghast. In that
half hour the sun had slipped just around the
corner, and was now beating brightly and use-
lessly against the brick wall a few inches away.
Slowly Mary Louise unwound the towel, bent
double in the contortionistic attitude that women
assume on such occasions, and watched with
melancholy eyes while the drops trickled down
to the ends of her hair, and fell, unsunned, to
the floor.
"If only," thought Mary Louise, bitterly,
"there was such a thing as a back yard in this
city a back yard where I could squat on the
grass, in the sunshine and the breeze Maybe
there is. I'll ask the janitor."
She bound her hair in the turban again, and
opened the door. At the far end of the long,
dim hallway Charlie, the janitor, was doing
SUN DRIED
something to the floor with a mop and a great
deal of sloppy water, whistling the while with
a shrill abandon that had announced his presence
to Mary Louise.
"Oh, Charlie!' 1 called Mary Louise. "Char-
lee! Can you come here just a minute?"
"You bet I" answered Charlie, with the accent
on the you; and came.
"Charlie, is there a back yard, or something,
where the sun is, you know some nice, grassy
place where I can sit, and dry my hair, and let
the breezes blow it?"
"Back yard !" grinned Charlie. "I guess
you're new to N* York, all right, with ground
costin' a million or so a foot. Not much they
ain't no back yard, unless you'd give that name
to an ash-barrel, and a dump heap or so, and a
crop of tin cans. I wouldn't invite a goat to set
in it."
Disappointment curved Mary Louise's mouth.
It was a lovely enough mouth at any time, but
when it curved in disappointment well, jani-
tors are but human, after all.
"Tell you what, though," said Charlie. "I'll
let you up on the roof. It ain't long on grassy
spots up there, but say, breeze ! Like a summer
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
resort. On a clear day you can see way over 's
far 's Eight' Avenoo. Only for the love of
Mike don't blab it to the other women folks
in the buildin', or I'll have the whole works of
'em usin' the roof for a general sun, massage,
an' beauty parlor. Come on."
"I'll never breathe it to a soul," promised
Mary Louise, solemnly. u Oh, wait a minute."
She turned back into her room, appearing
again in a moment with something green in her
hand.
"What's that?" asked Charlie, suspiciously.
Mary Louise, speeding down the narrow hall-
way after Charlie, blushed a little. "It it's
parsley," she faltered.
"Parsley!" exploded Charlie. "Well, what
the "
"Well, you see. I'm from the country," ex-
plained Mary Louise, "and in the country, at
this time of year, when you dry your hair in the
back yard, you get the most wonderful scent of
green and growing things not only of flowers,
you know, but of the new things just coming
up in the vegetable garden, and and well,
this parsley happens to be the only really gar-
deny thing I have, so I thought I'd bring it
SUN DRIED
along and sniff it once in a while, and make be-
lieve it's the country, up there on the roof."
Half-way up the perilous little flight of stairs
that led to the roof, Charlie, the janitor, turned
to gaze down at Mary Louise, who was just be-
hind, and keeping fearfully out of the way of
Charlie's heels.
"Wimmin," observed Charlie, the janitor, "is
nothin' but little girls in long skirts, and their
hair done up."
"I know it," giggled Mary Louise, and
sprang up on the roof, looking, with her towel-
swathed head, like a lady Aladdin leaping from
her underground grotto.
The two stood there a moment, looking up at
the blue sky, and all about at the June sunshine.
"If you go up high enough," observed Mary
Louise, "the sunshine is almost the same as it is
in the country, isn't it?"
*4 shouldn't wonder," said Charlie, "though
Calvary cemetery is about as near's I'll ever get
'to the country. Say, you can set here on this
soap box and let your feet hang down. The
last janitor's wife used to hang her washin' up
here, I guess. I'll leave this door open, see?"
"You're so kind," smiled Mary Louise.
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Kin you blame me?" retorted the gallant
Charles. And vanished.
Mary Louise, perched on the soap box, un-
wound her turban, draped the damp towel over
her shoulders, and shook out the wet masses of
her hair. Now the average girl shaking out
the wet masses of her hair looks like a drowned
rat. But Nature had been kind to Mary Louise.
She had given her hair that curled in little ring-
lets when wet, and that waved in all the right
places when dry. Just now it hung in damp,
shining strands on either side of her face, so that
she looked most remarkably like one of those
oval-faced, great-eyed, red-lipped women that
the old Italian artists were so fond of painting.
Below her, blazing in the sun, lay the great
stone and iron city. Mary Louise shook out
her hair idly, with one hand, sniffed her parsley,
shut her eyes, threw back her head, and began
to sing, beating time with her heel against the
soap box, and forgetting all about the letter that
had come that morning, stating that it was not
from any lack of merit, etc. She sang, and
sniffed her parsley, and waggled her hair in the
breeze, and beat time, idly, with the heel of her
little boot, when
[200]
SUN DRIED
"Holy Cats!" exclaimed a man's voice
"What is this, anyway? A Coney Island con
cession gone wrong?"
Mary Louise's eyes unclosed in a flash,
Mary Louise gazed upon an irate-loo
youngish man, who wore shabby slippers, and
no collar with a full dress air.
"I presume that you are the janitor's beauti-
ful daughter," growled the collarless man.
"Well, not precisely," answered Mary Louise,
sweetly. "Are you the scrub-lady's stalwart
son?""
"Ha!" exploded the man. "But then, all
women look alike with their hair down. I ask
your pardon, though."
"Not at all," replied Mary Louise. "For
that matter, all men look like picked chickens
with their collars off."
At that the collarless man, who until now had
been standing on the top step that led up to the
roof, came slowly forward, stepped languidly
over a skylight or two, draped his handkerchief
over a convenient chimney and sat down, hug-
ging his long, lean legs to him.
"Nice up here, isn't it?" he remarked.
"It was," said Mary Louise.
[201]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Ha !" exploded he, again. Then, "Where's
your mirror?" he demanded.
"Mirror?" echoed Mary Louise.
"Certainly. You have the hair, the comb, the
attitude, and the general Lorelei effect. Also
your singing lured me to your shores."
"You didn't look lured," retorted Mary
Louise. "You looked lurid."
"What's that stuff in your hand?" next de-
manded he. He really was a most astonish-
ingly rude young man.
"Parsley."
"Parsley!" shouted he, much as Charlie had
done. "Well, what the "
"Back home," elucidated Mary Louise once
more, patiently, "after you've washed your hair
you dry it in the back yard, sitting on the grass,
in the sunshine and the breeze. And the garden
smells come to you the nasturtiums, and the
pansies, and the geraniums, you know, and even
that clean grass smell, and the pungent vege-
table odor, and there are ants, and bees, and
butterflies "
"Go on," urged the young man, eagerly.
"And Mrs. Next Door comes out to hang up
a few stockings, and a jabot or so, and a couple
[202]
SUN DRIED
of baby dresses that she has just rubbed through,
and she calls out to you:
" 'Washed your hair 7
'Yes,' you say. 'It was something awful,
and I wanted it nice for Tuesday night. But I
suppose I won't be able to do a thing with it. 1
"And then Mrs. Next Door stands there a
minute on the clothes-reel platform, with the
wind whipping her skirts about her, and the
fresh smell of the growing things coming to her.
And suddenly she says: *I guess I'll wash mine
too, while the baby's asleep. 1 '
The collarless young man rose from his chim-
ney, picked up his handkerchief, and moved to
the chimney just next to Mary Louise's soap box.
"Live here?" he asked, in his impolite way.
"If I did not, do you think that I would
choose this as the one spot in all New York in
which to dry my hair?"
"When I said, 'Live here,' I didn't mean just
that. I meant who are you, and why are you
here, and where do you come from, and do you
sign your real name to your stuff, or use a nom
de plume?"
"Why how did you know?" gasped Mary
Louise.
[203]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Give me five minutes more,' 1 grinned the
keen-eyed young man, "and I'll tell you what
make your typewriter is, and where the last re-
jection slip came from."
"Oh !" said Mary Louise again. "Then you
are the scrub-lady's stalwart son, and youVe
been ransacking my waste-basket."
Quite unheeding, the collarless man went on,
"And so you thought you could write, and you
came on to New York (you know one doesn't
just travel to New York, or ride to it, or come
to it; one 'comes on' to New York), and now
you're not so sure about the writing, h'm? And
back home what did you do?"
"Back home I taught school and hated it.
But I kept on teaching until I'd saved five hun-
dred dollars. Every other school ma'am in the
world teaches until she has saved five hundred
dollars, and then she packs two suit-cases, and
goes to Europe from June until September. But
I saved my five hundred for New York. I've
been here six months now, and the five hundred
has shrunk to almost nothing, and if I don't
break into the magazines pretty soon "
"Then?"
"Then," said Mary Louise, with a quaver in
[204]
SUN DRIED
her voice, 'Til have to go back and teach thirty-
seven young devils that six times five is thirty,
put down the naught and carry six, and that the
French are a gay people, fond of dancing and
light wines. But I'll scrimp on everything from
hairpins to shoes, and back again, including
pretty collars, and gloves, and hats, until IVe
saved up another five hundred, and then I'll try
it all over again, because I can write."
From the depths of one capacious pocket the
inquiring man took a small black pipe, from an-
other a bag of tobacco, from another a match.
The long, deft fingers made a brief task of it.
"I didn't ask you," he said, after the first puff,
"because I could see that you weren't the fool
kind that objects." Then, with amazing sud-
denness, "Know any of the editors?"
"Know them!" cried Mary Louise. "Know
them! If camping on their doorsteps, and
haunting the office buildings, and cajoling, and
fighting with secretaries and office boys, and as-
sistants and things constitutes knowing them,
then we're chums."
"What makes you think you can write?"
sneered the thin man.
Mary Louise gathered up her brush, and
[205]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
comb, and towel, and parsley, and jumped
off the soap box. She pointed belligerently
at her tormentor with the hand that held the
brush.
"Being the scrub-lady's stalwart son, you
wouldn't understand. But I can write. I sha'n't
go under. I'm going to make this town count
me in as the four million and oneth. Sometimes
I get so tired of being nobody at all, with not
even enough cleverness in me to wrest a living
from this big city, that I long to stand out at the
edge of the curbing, and take off my hat, and
wave it, and shout, 'Say, you four million uncar-
ing people, I'm Mary Louise Moss, from Esca-
naba, Michigan, and I like your town, and I
want to stay here. Won't you please pay some
slight attention to me. No one knows I'm here
except myself, and the rent collector.' '
"And I," put in the rude young man.
"O, you," sneered Mary Louise, equally rude,
"you don't count."
The collarlcss young man in the shabby slip-
pers smiled a curious little twisted smile. "You
never can tell," he grinned, "I might." Then,
quite suddenly, he stood up, knocked the ash out
of his pipe, and came over to Mary Louise, who
[206]
SUN DRIED
was preparing to descend the steep little flight of
stairs.
"Look here, Mary Louise Moss, from Esca-
naba, Michigan, you stop trying to write the slop
you're writing now. Stop it. Drop the love
tales that are like the stuff that everybody else
writes. Stop trying to write about New York,
You don't know anything about it. Listen.
You get back to work, and \K*ite about Mrs.
Next Door, and the hair-washing, and the vege-
table garden, and bees, and the back yard, un-
derstand? You write the way you talked to
me, and then you send your stuff in to Cecil
Reeves."
"Reeves!" mocked Mary Louise. "Cecil
Reeves, of The Earth? He wouldn't dream of
looking at my stuff. And anyway, it really isn't
your affair." And began to descend the stairs.
"Well, you know you brought me up here,
kicking with your heels, and singing at the top
of your voice. I couldn't work. So it's really
your fault." Then, just as Mary Louise had al-
most disappeared down the stairway he put his
last astonishing question.
"How often do you wash your hair?" he de-
manded.
[207]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Well, back home,'* confessed Mary Louise,
"every six weeks or so was enough, but "
"Not here," put in the rude young man,
briskly. "Never. That's all very well for the
country, but it won't do in the city. Once a
week, at least, and on the roof. Cleanliness de-
mands it."
"But if I'm going back to the country," re-
plied Mary Louise, "it won't be necessary."
"But you're not," calmly said the collarless
young man, just as Mary Louise vanished from
sight.
Down at the other end of the hallway on
Mary Louise's floor Charlie, the janitor, was do-
ing something to the windows now, with a rag,
and a pail of water.
"Get it dry?" he called out, sociably.
"Yes, thank you," answered Mary Louise,
and turned to enter her own little apartment.
Then, hesitatingly, she came back to Charlie's
window.
"There there was a man up there a very
tall, very thin, very rude, very that is, rather
n-ce youngish oldish man, in slippers, and no
collar. I wonder "
"Oh, him I" snorted Charlie. "He don't
[208]
SUN DRIED
show himself onct in a blue moon. None of the
other tenants knows he's up there. Has the
whole top floor to himself, and shuts himself up
there for weeks at a time, writin 1 books, or
some such truck. That guy, he owns the build-
ing."
"Owns the building!*' said Mary Louise,
faintly. "Why he looked he looked "
"Sure," grinned Charlie. "That's him.
Name's Reeves Cecil Reeves. Say, ain't that
a divil of a name?"
[209]
XII
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
^T^HIS will be a homing pigeon story. Though
I send it ever so far though its destina-
tion be the office of a home-and-fireside
magazine or one of the kind with a French
story in the back, it will return to me.
After each flight its feathers will be a little
more rumpled, its wings more weary, its
course more wavering, until, battered, spent,
broken, it will flutter to rest in the waste
basket.
And yet, though its message may never be de-
livered, it must be sent, because -well, be-
You know where the car turns at Eighteenth ?
There you see a glaringly attractive billboard
poster. It depicts groups of smiling, white-clad
men standing on tropical shores, with waving
palms overhead, and a glimpse of blue sea in the
distance. The wording beneath the picture runs
something like this:
" Young men wanted. An unusual oppor-
[210]
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
tunity for travel, education, and advancement.
Good pay. No expenses."
When the car turns at Eighteenth, and I see
that, I remember Eddie Houghton back home.
And when I remember Eddie Houghton I see
red.
The day after Eddie Houghton finished high
school he went to work. In our town we don't
take a job. We accept a position. Our paper
had it that "Edwin Houghton had accepted a
position as clerk and assistant chemist at the
Kunz drug store, where he would take up his
new duties Monday."
His new duties seemed, at first, to consist of
opening the store in the morning, sweeping out,
and whizzing about town on a bicycle with an
unnecessarily insistent bell, delivering prescrip-
tions which had been telephoned for. But by
the time the summer had really set in Eddie was
installed back of the soda fountain.
There never was anything better looking than
Eddie Houghton in his white duck coat. He was
one of those misleadingly gold and pink and
white men. I say misleadingly because you usu*
ally associate pink-and-whiteness with such words
as sissy and mollycoddle. Eddie was neither.
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
He had played quarter-back every year from his
freshman year, and he could putt the shot and
cut classes with the best of 'em. But in that
white duck coat with the braiding and frogs he
had any musical-comedy, white-flannel tenor lieu-
tenant whose duty it is to march down to the
edge of the footlights, snatch out his sword, and
warble about his country's flag, looking like a
flat-nosed, blue-gummed Igorrote. Kunz's soda
water receipts swelled to double their usual size,
and the girls' complexions were something awful
that summer. I've known Nellie Donovan to
take as many as three ice cream sodas and two
phosphates a day when Eddie was mixing. He
had a way of throwing in a good-natured smile,
and an easy flow of conversation with every
drink. While indulging in a little airy persiflage
the girls had a great little trick of pursing their
mouths into rosebud shapes over their soda
straws, and casting their eyes upward at Eddie.
They all knew the trick, and its value, so that
at night Eddie's dreams were haunted by whole
rows of rosily pursed lips, and seas of upturned,
adoring eyes. Of course we all noticed that on
those rare occasions when Josie Morehouse came
into Kunz's her glass was heaped higher with
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WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
ice cream than that of any of the other girls, and
that Eddie's usually easy flow of talk was inter-
spersed with certain stammerings and stutter-
ings. But Josie didn't come in often. She had
a lot of dignity for a girl of eighteen. Besides,
she was taking the teachers* examinations that
summer, when the other girls were playing ten-
nis and drinking sodas.
Eddie really hated the soda water end of the
business, as every soda clerk in the world does.
But he went about it good-naturedly. He really
wanted to learn the drug business, but the boss
knew he had a drawing card, and insisted that
Eddie go right on concocting faerie queens and
strawberry sundaes, and nectars and Kunz's spe-
cials. One Saturday, when he happened to have
on hand an over-supply of bananas that would
have spoiled over Sunday, he invented a mess
and called it the Eddie Extra, and the girls
swarmed on it like flies around a honey pot.
That kind of thing would have spoiled most
boys. But Eddie had a sensible mother. On
those nights when he used to come home nause-
ated with dealing out chop suey sundaes and
orangeades, and saying that there was no future
for a fellow in our dead little hole, his mother
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
would give him something rather special for
supper, and set him hoeing and watering the
garden.
So Eddie stuck to his job, and waited, and
all the time he was saying, with a melting look,
to the last silly little girl who was 'drinking her
third soda, "Somebody looks mighty sweet in
pink to-day," or while he was doping to-mor-
row's ball game with one of the boys who
dropped in for a cigar, he was thinking of big-
ger things, and longing for a man-size job.
The man-size job loomed up before Eddie's
dazzled eyes when he least expected it. It was
at the close of a particularly hot day when it
seemed to Eddie that every one in town had had
everything from birch beer to peach ice cream.
On his way home to supper he stopped at the
postoffice with a handful of letters that old man
Kunz had given him to mail. His mother had
told him that they would have corn out of their
own garden for supper that night, and Eddie
was in something of a hurry. He and his mother
were great pals.
In one corner of the dim little postoffice lobby
a man was busily tacking up posters. The white-
washed walls bloomed with them. They were
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
gay, attractive-looking posters, done in red and
blue and green, and after Eddie had dumped his
mail into the slot, and had called out, "Hello,
Jake I" to the stamp clerk, whose back was turned
to the window, he strolled idly over to where
the man was putting the finishing touches to his
work. The man was dressed in a sailor suit of
blue, with a picturesque silk scarf knotted at his
hairy chest. He went right on tacking posters.
They certainly were attractive pictures. Some
showed groups of stalwart, immaculately clad
young gods lolling indolently on tropical shores,
with a splendor of palms overhead, and a spark-
ling blue sea in the distance. Others depicted
a group of white-clad men wading knee-deep in
the surf as they laughingly landed a cutter on
the sandy beach. There was a particularly fasci-
nating one showing two barefooted young chaps
on a wave-swept raft engaged in that delight-
fully perilous task known as signaling. An-
other showed the keen-eyed gunners busy about
the big guns.
Eddie studied them all.
The man finished his task and looked up, quite
casually.
"Hello, kid," he said.
[215]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
"Hello," answered Eddie. Then "That's
some picture gallery you're giving us."
The man in the sailor suit fell back a pace or
two and surveyed his work with a critical but
satisfied eye.
"Pitchers," he said, "don't do it justice.
We've opened a recruiting office here. Looking
for young men with brains, and muscle, and am-
bition. It's a great chance. We don't get to
these here little towns much."
He placed a handbill in Eddie's hand. Eddie
glanced down at it sheepishly.
"I've heard," he said, "that it's a hard life."
The man in the sailor suit threw back his head
and laughed, displaying a great deal of hairy
throat and chest. "Hard!" he jeered, and
slapped one of the gay-colored posters with the
back of his hand. "You see that ! Well, it ain't
a bit exaggerated. Not a bit. I ought to know.
It's the only life for a young man, especially for
a guy in a little town. There's no chance here
for a bright young man, and if he goes to the
city, what does he get? The city's jam full of
kids that flock there in the spring and fall, look-
ing for jobs, and thinking the city's sittin' up
waitin' for 'em. And where do they land? In
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
the dime lodging houses, that's where. In the
navy you see the world, and it don't cost you
a cent. A guy is a fool to bury himself alive
in a hole like this. You could be seeing the
world, traveling by sea from port to port, from
country to country, from ocean to ocean, amid
ever-changing scenery and climatic conditions,
to see and study the habits and conditions of the
strange races "
It rolled off his tongue with fascinating glib-
ness. Eddie glanced at the folder in his
hand.
"I always did like the water," he said.
"Sure," agreed the hairy man, heartily.
"What young feller don't? I'll tell you what.
Come on over to the office with me and I'll show
you some real stuff."
"It's my supper time," hesitated Eddie. "I
guess I'd better not "
"Oh, supper," laughed the man. "You come
on and have supper with me, kid."
Eddie's pink cheeks went three shades pinker.
"Gee! That'd be great. But my mother-
that is she "
The man in the sailor suit laughed again
a laugh with a sting in it. "A great big feller
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
like you ain't tied to your ma's apron strings are
you?"
"Not much I'm not!" retorted Eddie. "I'll
telephone her when I get to your hotel, that's
what I'll do."
But they were such fascinating things, those
new booklets, and the man had such marvelous
tales to tell, that Eddie forgot trifles like supper
and waiting mothers. There were pictures taken
on board ship, showing frolics, and ball games,
and minstrel shows and glee clubs, and the men
at mess, and each sailor sleeping snug as a bug
in his hammock. There were other pictures
showing foreign scenes and strange ports. Ed-
die's tea grew cold, and his apple pie and cheese
lay untasted on his plate.
"Now me," said the recruiting officer, "I'm .
married man. But my wife, she wouldn't have
it no other way. No, sir ! She'll be in the navy
herself, I'll bet, when women vote. Why, be-
fore I joined the navy I didn't know whether
Guam was a vegetable or an island, and Culebra
wasn't in my geography. Now? Why, now I'm
as much at home in Porto Rico as I am in San
Francisco. I'm as well acquainted in Valpa-
raiso as I am in Vermont, and I've run around
[218!
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
Cairo, Egypt, until I know it better than Cairo,
Illinois. It's the only way to see the world.
You travel by sea from port to port, from coun-
try to country, from ocean to ocean, amid ever-
changing scenery and climatic conditions, to see
and study the "
And Eddie forgot that it was Wednesday
night, which was the prescription clerk's night
off; forgot that the boss was awaiting his return
that he might go home to his own supper; for-
got his mother, and her little treat of green corn
out of the garden; forgot everything in the won-
der of this man's tales of people and scenes such
as he never dreamed could exist outside of a
Jack London story. Now and then Eddie in-
terrupted with a, "Yes, but " that grew
more and more infrequent, until finally they
ceased altogether. Eddie's man-size job had
come.
When we heard the news we all dropped in
at the drug store to joke with him about it. We
had a good deal to say about rolling gaits, and
bell-shaped trousers, and anchors and sea ser-
pents tattooed on the arm. One of the boys
scored a hit by slapping his dime down on the
soda fountain marble and bellowing for rum and
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BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
salt horse. Some one started to tease the little
Morehouse girl about sailors having sweethearts
in every port, but when they saw the look in her
eyes they changed their mind, and stopped. It's
funny how a girl of twenty is a woman, when a
man of twenty is a boy.
Eddie dished out the last of his chocolate ice
cream sodas and cherry phosphates and root
beers, while the girls laughingly begged him to
bring them back kimonos from China, and
scarves from the Orient, and Eddie promised,
laughing, too, but with a far-off, eager look in
his eyes.
When the time came for him to go there was
quite a little bodyguard of us ready to escort him
down to the depot. We picked up two or three
more outside O'Rourke's pool room, and a cou-
ple more from the benches outside the hotel.
Eddie walked ahead with his mother. I have
said that Mrs. Houghton was a sensible woman.
She was never more so than now. Any other
mother would have gone into hysterics and
begged the recruiting officer to let her boy off.
But she knew better. Still, I think Eddie felt
some uncomfortable pangs when he looked at
her set face. On the way to the depot we had
[220]
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
to pass the Agassiz School, where Josie More-
house was substituting second reader for the
Wilson girl, who was sick. She was standing in
the window as we passed. Eddie took off his
cap and waved to her, and she returned the wave
as well as she could without having the children
sec her. That would never have done, seeing
that she was the teacher, and substituting at
that. But when we turned the corner we noticed
that she was still standing at the window and
leaning out just a bit, even at the risk of being
indiscreet.
When the 10:15 pulled out Eddie stood on
the bottom step, with his cap off, looking I can't
tell you how boyish, and straight, and clean, and
handsome, with his lips parted, and his eyes very
bright. The hairy-chested recruiting officer
stood just beside him, and suffered by contrast.
There was a bedlam of good-byes, and last
messages, and good-natured badinage, but
Eddie's mother's eyes never left his face until
the train disappeared around the curve in the
track.
Well, they got a new boy at Kunz's a sandy-
haired youth, with pimples, and no knack at
mixing, and we got out of the habit of dropping
[221]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
in there, although those fall months were un-
usually warm.
It wasn't long before we began to get post-
cards pictures of the naval training station,
and the gymnasium, and of model camps and of
drills, and of Eddie in his uniform. His mother
insisted on calling it his sailor suit, as though he
were a little boy. One day Josie Morehouse
came over to Mrs. Houghton's with a group
picture in her hand. She handed it to Eddie's
mother without comment. Mrs. Houghton
looked at it eagerly, her eye selecting her own
boy from the group as unerringly as a mother
bird finds her nest in the forest.
"Oh, Eddie's better looking than that!" she
cried, with a tremulous little laugh. "How
funny those pants make them look, don't they?
And his mouth isn't that way, at all. Eddie al-
ways had the sweetest mouth, from the time he
was a baby. Let's see some of these other boys.
Why why "
Then she fell silent, scanning those other
faces. Presently Josie bent over her and looked
too, and the brows of both women knitted in
perplexity. They looked for a long, long min-
ute, and the longer they looked the more no-
[222]
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
ticeable became the cluster of fine little wrinkles
that had begun to form about Mrs. Houghton's
eyes.
When finally they looked up it was to gaze at
one another questioningly.
"Those other boys," faltered Eddie's mother,
"they they don't look like Eddie, do they? I
mean "
"No, they don't," agreed Josie. "They look
older, and they have such queer-looking eyes,
and jaws, and foreheads. But then," she finished,
with mock cheerfulness, "you can never tell in
those silly kodak pictures."
Eddie's mother studied the card again, and
sighed gently. "I hope," she said, "that Eddie
won't get into bad company."
After that our postal cards ceased. I wish
that there was some way of telling this story
so that the end wouldn't come in the middle.
But there is none. In our town we know the
news before the paper comes out, and we only
read it to verify what we have heard. So that
long before the paper came out in the middle of
the afternoon we had been horrified by the news
of Eddie Houghton's desertion and suicide. We
stopped one another on Main Street to talk
["3]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
about it, and recall how boyish and handsome
he had looked in his white duck coat, and on that
last day just as the 10:15 pulled out. "It don't
seem hardly possible, does it?" we demanded of
each other.
But when Eddie's mother brought out the let-
ters that had come after our postal cards had
ceased, we understood. And when they brought
him home, and we saw him for the last time, all
those of us who had gone to school with him,
and to dances, and sleigh rides, and hayrack par-
ties, and picnics, and when we saw the look on
his face the look of one who, walking in a
sunny path has stumbled upon something hor-
rible and unclean we forgave him his neglect
of us, we forgave him desertion, forgave him the
taking of his own life, forgave him the look
that he had brought into his mother's eyes.
There had never been anything extraordinary
about Eddie Houghton. He had had his faults
and virtues, and good and bad sides just like
other boys of his age. He oh, I am using too
many words, when one slang phrase will express
it. Eddie had been just a nice young kid. I
think the worst thing he had ever said was
"Damnl" perhaps. If he had sworn, it was
[224]
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
with clean oaths, calculated to relieve the mind
and feelings.
But the men that he shipped with during
that year or more I am sure that he had never
dreamed that such men were. He had never
stood on the curbing outside a recruiting office
on South State Street, in the old levee district,
and watched that tragic panorama move by
those nightmare faces, drink-marred, vice-
scarred, ruined. I know that he had never seen
such faces in all his clean, hard-working young
boy's life, spent in our prosperous little country
town. I am certain that he had never heard such
words as came from the lips of his fellow sea-
men great mouth-filling, soul-searing words
words unclean, nauseating, unspeakable, and yet
spoken.
I don't say that Eddie Houghton had not
taken his drink now and^hen. There were cer-
tain dark rumors in our town to the effect that
favored ones who dropped into Kunz's more
often than seemed needful were privileged to
have a thimbleful of something choice in the pre-
scription room, back of the partition at the rear
of the drug store. But that was the most devil-
ish thing that Eddie had ever done.
[225]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
I don't say that all crews are like that one.
Perhaps he was unfortunate in falling in with
that one. But it was an Eastern trip, and every
port was a Port Said. Eddie Houghton's
thoughts were not these men's thoughts; his
actions were not their actions, his practices were
not their practices. To Eddie Houghton, a
Chinese woman in a sampan on the water front
at Shanghai was something picturesque; some-
thing about which to write home to his mother
and to Josie. To those other men she was pos-
sible prey.
Those other men saw that he was different,
and they pestered him. They ill-treated him
when they could, and made his life a hellish
thing. Men do those things, and people do not
speak of it. I don't know all the things that he
suffered. But in his mind, day by day, grew
the great, overwhelming desire to get away from
it all from this horrible life that was such a
dreadful mistake. I think that during the long
night watches his mind was filled with thoughts
of our decent little town of his mother's
kitchen, with its Wednesday and Saturday scent
of new-made bread of the shady front porch,
with its purple clematis- of the smooth front
[226]
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
yard which it was his Saturday duty to mow that
it might be trim and sightly for Sunday of the
boys and girls who used to drop in at the drug
store those clear-eyed, innocently coquettish,
giggling* blushing girls in their middy blouses
and white skirts, their slender arms and throats
browned from tennis and boating, their eyes
smiling into his as they sat perched at the foun-
tain after a hot set of tennis those slim, clean
young boys, sun-browned, laughing, their talk
all of swimming, and boating, and tennis, and
girls.
He did not realize that it was desertion
that thought that grew and grew in his mind.
In it there was nothing of faithlessness to his
country. He was only trying to be true to him-
self, and to the things that his mother had
taught him. He only knew that he was deadly
sick of these sights of disease, and vice. He
only knew that he wanted to get away back to
his own decent life with the decent people to
whom he belonged. And he went. He went,
as a child runs home when it had tripped and
fallen in the mud, not dreaming of wrong-doing
or punishment.
The first few hundred miles on the train were
[227]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
a dream. But finally Eddie found himself talk-
ing to a man a big, lean, blue-eyed western
man, who regarded Eddie with kindly, puzzled
eyes. Eddie found himself telling his story in a
disjointed, breathless sort of way. When he had
finished the man uncrossed his long lean legs,
took his pipe out of his mouth, and sat up.
There was something of horror in his eyes as he
sat, looking at Eddie.
"Why, kid," he said, at last. "You're de-
serting! You'll get the pen, don't you know
that, if they catch you? Where you going?"
"Going!" repeated Eddie. "Going! Why,
I'm going home, of course."
"Then I don't see what you're gaining," said
the man, "because they'll sure get you there."
Eddie sat staring at the man for a dreadful
minute. In that minute the last of his glorious
youth, and ambition, and zest of life departed
from him.
He got off the train at the next town, and the
western man offered him some money, which
Eddie declined with all his old-time sweetness
of manner. It was rather a large town, with a
great many busy people in it. Eddie went to a
cheap hotel, and took a room, and sat on the
[228]
WHERE THE CAR TURNS AT 18TH
edge of the thin little bed and stared at the car-
pet. It was a dusty red carpet. In front of the
bureau many feet had worn a hole, so that the
bare boards showed through, with a tuft of
ragged red fringe edging them. Eddie Hough-
ton sat and stared at the worn place with a curi-
ously blank look on his face. He sat and stared
and saw many things. He saw his mother, for
one thing, sitting on the porch with a gingham
apron over her light dress, waiting for him to
come home to supper; he saw his own room
a typical boy's room, with camera pictures and
blue prints stuck in the sides of the dresser mir-
ror, and the boxing gloves on the wall, and his
tennis racquet with one string broken (he had
always meant to have that racquet re-strung)
and his track shoes, relics of high school days,
flung in one corner, and his gay-colored school
pennants draped to form a fresco, and the cush-
ion that Josie Morehouse had made for him two
years ago, at Christmas time, and the dainty
white bedspread that he had always fussed about
because he said it was too sissy for a boy's room
oh, I can't tell you what he saw as he sat and
stared at that worn place in the carpet. But
pretty soon it began to grow dark, and at last he
[229]
BUTTERED SIDE DOWN
rose, keeping his fascinated eyes still on the bare
spot, walked to the door, opened it, and backed
out queerly, still keeping his eyes on the spot.
He was back again in fifteen minutes, with a
bottle in his hand. He should have known bet-
ter than to choose carbolic, being a druggist, but
all men are a little mad at such times. He lay
down at the edge of the thin little bed that was
little more than a pallet, and he turned his face
toward the bare spot that could just be seen in
the gathering gloom. And when he raised the
bottle to his lips the old-time sweetness of his
smile illumined his face.
Where the car turns at Eighteenth Street
there is a big, glaring billboard poster, showing
a group of stalwart young men in white ducks
lolling on shores of tropical splendor, with
palms waving overhead, and a glimpse of blue
sea in the distance. The wording beneath it
runs something like this:
"Young men wanted. An unusual oppor-
tunity for travel, education and advancement.
Good pay. No expenses. 1 *
When I see that sign I think of Eddie
Houghton back home. And when I think of
Eddie Houghton I see red.
[230]
"The Books You Like to Read
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There Are Two Sides
to Everything
including the wrapper which covers
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Can a woman love two men at the same time ?
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Jill, a poor little typist, marries the great Henry Sturgess
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GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK
Ferber, Edna
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