"Who the devil cares?" said Martin to himself, and he followed the girl up the narrow, ill-lighted staircase covered with shabby carpet. Two or three inches of white stockings gleamed above the drab uppers of her high-heeled boots. Outside the open door of a room on the first floor there was a line of milk bottles, and Martin sighted a man in shirt sleeves, cooking sausages on a small gas jet in a cubby-hole. He looked up, and a cheery smile broke out on his clean-shaven face. There was brown grease paint on his collar. "Hello, Tootles," he called out.
"Hello, Laddy," she said. "How'd it go to-night?"
"Fine. Best second night in the history of the theater. Come in and have a bite."
"Can't. Got company."
And up they went, the aroma following.
A young woman in a sky-blue peignoir scuttled across the next landing, carrying a bottle of beer in each hand. There was a smell of onions and hot cheese. "What ho, Tootles," she said.
"What ho, Irene. Is it true they've put your notice up?"
"Yep, the dirty dogs! Twelve weeks' rehearsals and eight nights' playing! Me for the novelties at Gimbel's, if this goes on."
A phonograph in another room ground out an air from "Boheme."
They mounted again. "Here's me," said Miss Capper, waving her hand to a man in a dirty dressing gown who was standing on the threshold of the front apartment, probably to achieve air. The room behind him was foggy with tobacco smoke which rose from four men playing cards. He himself was conspicuously drunk and would have spoken if he had been able. As it was, he nodded owlishly and waggled his fingers.