He followed him across the room to a corner, where a girl stood talking to two other girls. O’Connor touched her on the shoulder: “Just a minute, Kate—I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
She turned, and Howard was looking at one of the prettiest girls he had ever seen. Her beauty was neither statuesque nor dainty and refined; it was something quite different. Just a saucy, Irish face, with dark blue roguish eyes, white and pink skin, a little turned-up nose, and bobbed, black curls.
“Miss Walsh, meet Mr. Benton.” O’Connor performed the introductions.
“Happy to know you, Mr. Benton!” She smiled at him, revealing two rows of dazzling white teeth.
“I’m very glad to meet you, Miss Walsh!” Howard bowed. “How about this dance?” as the “specially engaged jazz-band” began to play “Mammy.”
“Sorry,” she answered. “Just promised it to a guy. But will you meet me here for the next, if you ain’t got it taken?”
He met her for the next, and the next, and the next. By the time the dance was over, he had been her partner eight times, and had gained her consent to see her home.
She lived just three blocks from his own home, and a distance of twenty blocks from the hall. But they walked slowly home in the moonlight, she clinging to his arm and looking up into his face as she talked. They hadn’t gone ten blocks before she had told him her life’s history—how her mother had been married three times, and of all the children in the family, real brothers and sisters, half brothers and sisters, and step-brothers and sisters. She possessed real Irish wit, and her way of telling these things was most amusing. Howard found himself laughing heartily. Through it all, she told him she was perfectly independent, as she had been self-supporting since she was ten years old.
“I ain’t never had much chance to go to school,” she said. “Just picked up what learnin’ I could now and then. I never seen my real father—he died when I was just a little thing, and step-fathers ain’t much for lookin’ after other people’s kids. So I just had to work and take care of myself.”
“You deserve a lot of credit for it, Miss Walsh,” Howard said admiringly. “It’s pretty hard for a man to battle with the world, but it must be mighty tough on a woman, especially a slip of a girl—like you.”