"I'll meet you inside, kiddo, in five minutes. Pick out a red domino; red's my color."
"A red one? Gee! Looka; mine's got black pompons on it. Five minutes,
Charley five minutes!"
Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue hall. An orchestra played beneath an arch of them. Supper, consisting of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in their buckets, bottles of beer and soda-water, was spread on a long picnic-table running the entire length of the balcony.
The main floor, big as an armory, airless as a tomb, swarmed with dancers.
After supper a red sateen Pierrette, quivering, teeth flashing beneath a sucy half-mask, bowed to a sateen Pierrot, whose face was as slim as a satyr's and whose smile was as upturned as the eye-slits in his mask.
"Gee! Charley, you look just like a devil in that costume—all red, and your mouth squinted like that!"
"And you look just like a little red cherry, ready to bust."
And they were off in the whirl of the dance, except that the close-packed dancers hemmed them in a swaying mob; and once she fell back against his shoulder, faint.
"Ain't there a—a up-stairs somewheres, Charley, where they got air? All this jam and no windows open! Gee! ain't it hot? Let's go outside where it's cool—let's."
"There you go again! No wonder you got a cold on you—always wanting air on you! Come, Sweetness; this ain't hot. Here, lemme show you the dip I get the girls crazy with. One, two, three—dip! One, two, three—dip! Ugh!"