First Aid To Cupid
by
The floor manager had just called out that it was “ladies’ choice,” and Happy Jack, his eyes glued in rapturous apprehension upon the thin, expressionless face of Annie Pilgreen, backed diffidently into a corner. He hoped and he feared that she would discover him and lead him out to dance; she had done that once, at the Labor Day ball, and he had not slept soundly for several nights after.
Someone laid proprietary hand upon his cinnamon-brown coat sleeve, and he jumped and blushed; it was only the schoolma’am, however, smiling up at him ingratiatingly in a manner wholly bewildering to a simple minded fellow like Happy Jack. She led him into another corner, plumped gracefully and with much decision down upon a bench, drew her skirts aside to make room for him and announced that she was tired and wanted a nice long talk with him. Happy Jack, sending a troubled glance after Annie, who was leading Joe Meeker out to dance, sighed a bit and sat down obediently–and thereby walked straight into the loop which the schoolma’am had spread for his unwary feet.
The schoolma’am was sitting out an astonishing number of dances–for a girl who could dance from dark to dawn and never turn a hair–and the women were wondering why. If she had sat them out with Weary Davidson they would have smiled knowingly and thought no more of it; but she did not. For every dance she had a different companion, and in every case it ended in that particular young man looking rather scared and unhappy. After five minutes of low-toned monologue on the part of the schoolma’am, Happy Jack went the way of his predecessors and also became scared and unhappy.
“Aw, say! Miss Satterly, I can’t act,” he protested in a panic.
“Oh, yes, you could,” declared the schoolma’am, with sweet assurance, “if you only thought so.”
“Aw, I couldn’t get up before a crowd and say a piece, not if–“
“I’m not sure I want you to. There are other things to an entertainment besides reciting things. I only want you to promise that you will help me out. You will, won’t you?” The schoolma’am’s eyes, besides being pretty, were often disconcertingly direct in their gaze.
Happy Jack wriggled and looked toward the door, which suddenly seemed a very long way off. “I–I’ve got to go up to the Falls, along about Christmas,” he stuttered feebly, avoiding her eyes. “I–I can’t get off any other time, and I’ve–I’ve got a tooth–“
“You’re the fifth Flying-U man who has ‘a tooth,'” the schoolma’am interrupted impatiently. “A dentist ought to locate in Dry Lake; from what I have heard confidentially to-night, there’s a fortune to be made off the teeth of the Happy Family alone.”
Every drop of blood in Happy’s body seemed to stand then in his face. “I–I’ll pull the curtain for yuh,” he volunteered, meekly.
“You’re the seventh applicant for that place.” The schoolma’am was crushingly calm. “Every fellow I’ve spoken to has evinced a morbid craving for curtain-pulling.”
Happy Jack crumpled under her sarcasm and perspired, and tried to think of something, with his brain quite paralyzed and useless.
The schoolma’am continued inexorably; plainly, her brain was not paralyzed. “I’ve promised the neighborhood that I would give a Christmas tree and entertainment–and when a school-teacher promises anything to a neighborhood, nothing short of death or smallpox will be accepted as an excuse for failing to keep the promise; and I’ve seven tongue-tied kids to work with!” (The schoolma’am was only spasmodically given to irreproachable English.) “Of course, I relied upon my friends to help me out. But when I come to calling the roll, I–I don’t seem to have any friends.” The schoolma’am was twirling the Montana sapphire ring which Weary had given her last spring, and her voice was trembly and made Happy Jack feel vaguely that he was a low-down cur and ought to be killed.