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“She’s a little spitfire, sometimes, now,” said the Kid. “I hate jealousy. That’s why I’m going to the dance with Annie. It’ll teach her some sense.”

“Well, you better look a little out,” were Burke’s last words. “If Liz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with an Annie, I’d want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, all right.”

Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyes searched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then she hummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set her small, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the east side has added to language.

Liz’s skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pink plaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ring of huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at the bottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted high heels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely have passed into a flour barrel.

The “Family Entrance” of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a table she sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing for her carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voiced manner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt with a satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could order and be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of the prerogative of woman.

“Whiskey, Tommy,” she said as her sisters further uptown murmur, “Champagne, James.”

“Sure, Miss Lizzie. What’ll the chaser be?”

“Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?”

“Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven’t saw him to-day.”

Fluently came the “Miss Lizzie,” for the Kid was known to be one who required rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee.

“I’m lookin’ for ‘m, “said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered under her nose. “It’s got to me that he says he’ll take Annie Karlson to the dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I’m lookin’ for ‘m. You know me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid’s been engaged. Look at that ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to the dance. What’ll I do? I’ll cut his heart out. Another whiskey, Tommy.”

“I wouldn’t listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie,” said the waiter smoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. “Kid Mullaly’s not the guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?”

“Two years,” repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment under the magic of the distiller’s art. “I always used to play out on the street of evenin’s ’cause there was nothin’ doin’ for me at home. For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lights and the people goin’ by. And then the Kid came along one evenin’ and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The first drink he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin’ for makin’ a noise. And now–say, Tommy, you ever see this Annie Karlson? If it wasn’t for peroxide the chloroform limit would have put her out long ago. Oh, I’m lookin’ for ‘m. You tell the Kid if he comes in. Me? I’ll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Another whiskey, Tommy.”

A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Liz walked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement a curly- haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangled string. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smile on her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of a sudden.

“Let me show you how to make a cat’s-cradle, kid,” she said, tucking her green silk skirt under her rusty shoes.

And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for the dance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was the bi- monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took great pride and bestirred themselve
s huskily to further and adorn.

At 9 o’clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with a lady on his arm. As the Loreley’s was her hair golden. Her “yes” was softened to a “yah,” but its quality of assent was patent to the most Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed, and- -she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly.