Flo
I hadn’t seen Flo since she was about fourteen, so when I got a letter asking me to call I said I’d go. She was pretty, but the older I get the fewer girls I see that aren’t.
Of course I ought to have known. The letter was addressed with a “For” preceding my name, instead of “City” or the name of the town, Flo had written “Local.” Even a professional detective should have known then.
It was just her refined vocabulary that sent me reeling into the night. She wondered where I “resided” and how long I’d been “located” there; she had “purchased” something; she said “gowned” when she meant “dressed”; she had “gotten” tired, she said, of affectation. She said she had “retired” early the night before, and she spoke of a “boot-limber.”
And as I was leaving she said, “Don’t remain away so long this time. Er—you know—hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Belinda
I remember Belinda. She was arguing with another young woman about the car fare. “Let me pay,” said Belinda; and she paid.
“There,” I mused, “is a perfect woman, nobly planned.”
I met her shortly after that, and she came through many a test. Once I saw her go up to an elevated railroad station, hand in a nickel, and not say, “One, please.” Once I asked her about what day it was, and she said “Wednesday” without adding “All day.” She spoke once of a cultivated taste without adding “like olives,” and once said “That’s another story” without adding “as Kipling says.” And once—and that was the day I nearly begged her to be mine—when she said that something had been grossly exaggerated she failed to giggle “like the report of Mark Twain’s death.”
So you see Belinda had points. She had a dog that wasn’t more intelligent than most human beings; she wasn’t forever saying that there was no reason why a man and a woman shouldn’t be just good pals; she didn’t put me at ease, the way the others did, by looking at me for three minutes and then saying that good looks didn’t matter much to a man, after all; she didn’t, when you gave her something, take it and say coyly, “For me?” as who should say, “You dear thoughtful thing, when you might have brought it for John D. Rockefeller.” And she didn’t say that she couldn’t draw a straight line or that she had no card sense or that she couldn’t write a decent letter.