"Sure. I feel like the devil. Been bumming round all night. My lady friend that I had with me—a regular lady friend—she was suddenly took ill. Appendicitis complicated with d.t.'s the ambulance guy said. The boys are waiting for me to come back, so's we can go on. They've got some swell rooms in a hotel up in Forty-second Street. Let's get a move on."
The bartender served the third drink and Susan paid for them, the other girl insisting on paying for the one she was having when Susan came. Susan's head was whirling. Her spirits were spiraling up and up. Her pale lips were wreathed in a reckless smile. She felt courageous for adventure—any adventure. Her capital had now sunk to three quarters and a five-cent piece. They issued forth, talking without saying anything, laughing without knowing or caring why. Life was a joke—a coarse, broad joke—but amusing if one drank enough to blunt any refinement of sensibility. And what was sensibility but a kind of snobbishness? And what more absurd than snobbishness in an outcast?
"That's good whiskey they had, back there," said Susan.
"Good? Yes—if you don't care what you say."
"If you don't want to care what you say or do," explained Susan.
"Oh, all booze is good for that," said the girl.
CHAPTER VI
THEY went through to Broadway and there stood waiting for a car, each under her own umbrella. "Holy Gee!" cried Susan's new acquaintance. "Ain't this rain a soaker?"
It was coming in sheets, bent and torn and driven horizontally by the wind. The umbrella, sheltering the head somewhat, gave a wholly false impression of protection. Both girls were soon sopping wet. But they were more than cheerful about it; the whiskey made them indifferent to external ills as they warmed themselves by its bright fire. At that time a famous and much envied, admired and respected "captain of industry," having looted the street-car systems, was preparing to loot them over again by the familiar trickery of the receivership and the reorganization. The masses of the people were too ignorant to know what was going on; the classes were too busy, each man of each of them, about his own personal schemes for graft of one kind and another. Thus, the street-car service was a joke and a disgrace. However, after four or five minutes a north-bound car appeared.
"But it won't stop," cried Susan. "It's jammed."