He paused so long that she urged him on. “You didn’t stay cold long.”
“No—and why? Because the next thing I know you stop dancin’ right in the middle of a step and look at him like you didn’t know anybody’s breath could smell so bad—”
“Oh!—”
“But it don’ worry Mr. Patmore none. He jes’ pushes his face on out at y’, and makes another crack. That’s the one I want to know about, because that’s the time you jerks away from him like as if he burnt your fingers. Meantime the kacks is closin’ in and you can’t make a quick getaway. And when I come to, I’m down on the floor haulin’ it through the crowd.”
“There’s an empty bench under that tree,” discovered Linda. They sat down, deep in the shadow of foliage, and during a moment’s silence, looked out over the river. Directly opposite loomed the Palisades, like a wide and gloomy black fortress, clear-limned against a sky dimly pale with an adolescent moon. Below, the dark water glittered a smile that derided the callow moon’s wooing.
“Well, I don’ know jes’ what happens then,” Shine presently continued, “but when I reach for Pat, he’s breezed. Never see a man catch so much air so fas’. Then you looked like you was gonna cry and said you wanted to go home or some place—so I took you.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying.”
“I did.”
“Seen ’im since?” she asked.
“No. That’s why I want the dope. When I crown ’im I want to tell ’im exactly what he’s king of.”
“You mustn’t bother ’im—let ’im alone.”
“I got a picture o’ myself lettin’ any guy alone that gets fly with my girl.”
“Your what?”
“You ain’ blind.”
“Well of all the nerve!”
“Hit me,” he invited contritely, exposing a rugged cheek.
“Your—” She was overcome. “Well what do you know about that?”
He answered her literally. “Nothin’, but I’m willin’ to learn.”
She averted her face to hide her smile. “I couldn’t have been your—anything—anyway, then. Didn’t even know your name.”
“Well,” he said with elaborate innuendo, “maybe I was jes’ a little bit previous.”
“What do you mean!”
“Nothin’ lady—nothin’. Don’t get so excited. I jes’ mean to say, you know my name now, thass all.”
“Well, you needn’t think—”
“And now that storm is over, how ’bout the dope?”
“What dope?”
“What ’d Pat say?”
She was silent a long time. The lights of a homeward bound excursion boat broke through the river’s moonlit smile, but when the ship had passed, the smile was still ironically there. Wraiths of music and laughter drifted shoreward.
“If you promise not to get in trouble over it—”
“Promise anything. Spill it.”
“You know he had said there were prizes for the best costumes.”
“Yea—and he was a judge.”
“Yes. Well, I believed it. When he came back for the second dance, he was lit. I’d asked some other folks about it—”
“The Sunday School boys you was dancin’ with?”
“No! The girls I came with. I asked them about the prizes and nobody knew anything about ’em. But I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to offend him if he was telling the truth. So instead of asking him right out, I said, ‘I thought you told me there were going to be prizes,’ just as if I’d already found out there wasn’t. And all he did was to grin with all those brass teeth of his. That made me mad, and I told him what I thought of anybody that would do anything like that—and—”
“Yea?”
“Well, finally when I saw he really had been lying, I stopped dancing and tried to walk off but he held me and people began to look. Then he said—”
“Said what?”
“He said—I needn’t act so disappointed over losin’ twenty-five dollars—that he was a judge, all right—and—”
Her voice became low and hard. Unconsciously they drew closer together. “And what?” he said after a moment.
“Well—he offered me twenty-five dollars.”
Silence enfolded them, deeper than the shadow. It seemed an endless period before someone laughed in the darkness a distance away. Thereupon the leaves of the tree overhead heaved a gentle, prolonged sigh.
They sat for a long time wordless, looking across the sardonic Hudson.
XV
It happened the next morning that Linda ran out of sugar, discovering her predicament only a few minutes before Miss Cramp’s breakfast was to be served. There were, of course, no grocery stores within three blocks of exclusive Court Avenue, and while ordinarily Miss Cramp would have waited without complaint till the errand was run, today the situation was awkward: Miss Cramp had company, a lady from Baltimore, Maryland; a friend, to be sure, but a friend whose breakfast must not be delayed by the delinquencies of a colored maid.
Linda, therefore, following professional tradition, resolved to borrow sufficient from her next-door neighbor to tide over the temporary lack, and was already on the kitchen-porch going to the Irish girl next door, when she saw a Negro woman beating rugs in the back yard of the second house. She had her own curiosity about that particular house, because she had overheard Miss Cramp and the present guest discussing it, and she decided that this was her chance at an opening that would satisfy that curiosity. She would borrow the sugar from the colored woman.
It was thus that she made the acquaintance of Fred Merrit’s housekeeper, Mrs. Arabella Fuller.
“Drop in any time,” invited Mrs. Fuller, who was a genial, lonesome soul, not too insistent on the social distinctions between housekeepers and maids, and who would apparently have had more to say had Linda been less obviously pressed for time.
“Thanks,” smiled Linda. “This afternoon. My folks are going to
