Jennie felt a little faint, but no one noticed it, because Gussie threw back the ball.
"Tell him to come up and speak to me. Any afternoon at half past five, when I leave Corinne's."
"Say, Gus," Gladys giggled; "wouldn't you like a guy with all that wad waitin' for you every day when Corinne shuts down the lid? My! The ice-cream sodas he could blow you to!"
Lizzie was pained. It seemed to her that the process of Americanization which her children were undergoing lay chiefly in the degradation of their speech.
"Gladys darling, can't you find proper words to—"
"Oh, momma dear," Gladys complained, "do put a can on all that. If you're a cash girl, you've got to talk English, or the other girls'll whizzy you round the lot."
"Young Coll is going to South America," Teddy informed the party. "Sails with Huntley on Monday. Gosh! Wouldn't I like to be going, too! Say, dad, why do some fellows come into the world with the way all smoothed for them and their bread buttered in advance?"
"Because," Gussie declared, loftily, "they're clever and can get ahead, like Fred Inglis. I'll bet that if his father wanted his taxes and the interest on a mortgage, he wouldn't have to raise the wind among his old friends. Fred'd be Johnny-on-the-spot with the greenbacks."
Teddy could only gulp, hang his head over his plate, and choke himself with hash, as he muttered to his soul; "God! I'll shoot that Fred Inglis if I ever get a gun."
And just as if she knew that Teddy needed comforting, Pansy sprang upon his knees, pushing her face up along his breast till she could lick his chin.