PAGE 6
The Claws Of The Tiger
by
“We got a little room,” he said; “you can have if Mrs. Linnevitch says so. I was going to give you more pay. We give you that room instead–eh?”
Mrs. Linnevitch gave her consent. She was a dreary, weary woman of American birth. When she was alone with her husband she never upbraided him for his infidelities, or referred to them. But later, on this particular day, having a chance to speak, she said:
“I hope you ain’t going to bother this one, Linne?”
He patted his wife’s bony back and shook his head. “The better as I know that girl, Minnie,” he said, “the sorrier I am for what I used to be doing sometimes. You and her is going to have a square deal.”
“I bin up to put her room straight,” said Mrs. Linnevitch. “She’s got a doll.”
She delivered this for what it was worth, in an uninterested, emotionless voice.
“I tell you what she ought to have got,” said her husband. “She ought to have got now a good husband, and some live dolls–eh?”
IV
New customers were not uncommon in the restaurant, but the young man who dropped in for noon dinner upon the following Friday was of a plumage gayer than any to which the waitresses and habitues of the place were accustomed. To Daisy, sitting at her high cashier’s desk, like a young queen enthroned, he seemed to have something of the nature of a prince from a far country. She watched him eat. She saw in his cuffs the glint of gold; she noted with what elegance he held his little fingers aloof from his hands. She noted the polish and cleanliness of his nails, the shortness of his recent hair-cut, the great breadth of his shoulders (they were his coat’s shoulders, but she did not know this), the narrowness of his waist, the interesting pallor of his face.
Not until the restaurant was well filled did any one have the audacity to sit at the stranger’s table. His elegance and refinement were as a barrier between him and all that was rude and coarse. If he glanced about the place, taking notes in his turn of this and that, it was covertly and quietly and without offence. His eyes passed across Daisy’s without resting or any show of interest. Once or twice he spoke quietly to the girl who waited on him, his eyebrows slightly raised, as if he were finding fault but without anger. For the first time in her life Daisy had a sensation of jealousy; but in the pale nostalgic form, rather than the yellow corrosive.
Though the interesting stranger had been one of the earliest arrivals, he ate slowly, busied himself with important-looking papers out of his coat-pockets, and was the last to go. He paid his bill, and if he looked at Daisy while she made change it was in an absent-minded, uninterested way.
She had an access of boldness. “I hope you liked your dinner,” she said.
“I?” The young man came out of the clouds. “Oh, yes. Very nice.” He thanked her as courteously for his change as if his receiving any at all was purely a matter for her discretion to decide, wished her good afternoon, and went out.
The waitresses were gathered about the one who had served the stranger. It seemed that he had made her a present of a dime. It was vaguely known that up-town, in more favored restaurants, a system of tipping prevailed; but in Linnevitch’s this was the first instance in a long history. The stranger’s stock, as they say, went up by leaps and bounds. Then, on removing the cloth from the table at which he had dined, there was discovered a heart-shaped locket that resembled gold. The girls were for opening it, and at least one ill-kept thumb-nail was painfully broken over backward in the attempt. Daisy joined the group. She was authoritative for the first time in her life.