“For pity’s sake,” cried one of them, “I ain’t seen you for a month of Sundays!”
“Addie Brown!” said the other. “And you haven’t been back here to see us old friends since I don’t know when.”
“Addie Cameron now, if you please,” and the new-comer bridled a little as she gave herself her married name. “An’ I was comin’ in last Saturday, but I had to have my teeth fixed first, and I went to dentist after dentist and they were all full, and I was tired out.”
“Well, it’s Addie, any way you fix it,” responded one of the salesladies, “and we’re glad to see you back, even if we did think you’d shook us for keeps. Is this gettin’ married all it’s cracked up to be?”
“It’s fine,” the bride replied, “an’ I wouldn’t never come back here on no account. Not but what things ain’t what I’d like altogether. I went to the Girls’ Friendly last night, and there was that Miss Van Antwerp that runs our class, and she was so interested, for all she’s one of the Four Hundred. An’ she wanted to know about Sam, an’ I told her he was a good man an’ none better, an’ I was perfectly satisfied. ‘But, Miss Van Antwerp,’ I says to her, I says, ‘don’t you never marry a policeman—their hours are so inconvenient. You can’t never tell when he’s comin’ home.’s That’s what I told her, for she’s always interested.”
The other two salesladies laughed, and one of them asked, “What did Miss Van Antwerp say to that?”
“She just said that she wasn’t thinkin’ of gettin' married, but she’d remember my advice.”
“I ain’t thinkin’ of gettin’ married, either,” said one of the salesladies, the one with the gentler voice, “but I’ve had a dream an’ it may come true. I dreamed there was a young feller, handsome he was, too, and the son of a charge customer. You’ve seen her, the old stiff with those furs and the big diamond ear-rings, that’s so fussy always and so partic’lar, for all she belongs to the Consumers’ League.”
“I know who you mean; horrid old thing she is, too,” interrupted the other; “but I didn’t know she had a son.”
“I don’t know it, either,” was the reply. “But that’s what I dreamed—and I dreamed it three nights runnin’, too. Fierce, wasn’t it? An’ he kept hangin’ round and wantin’ to make a date to take me to the opera. Said he could talk French an’ he’d tell me what it was all about. An'—”