"Gertie, this is my girl friend, Stella, from the shoes, I brought. Y'know? I told you about her. Ed's bringing down a gentleman friend for her."
Miss Gertie Cobb, so blond, so small, so titillating that she resembled nothing so much as one of those Dresden table-candelabra under a pink glass-fringed shade with the fringe always atinkle, laughed upward in a voice eons too old.
"Make yourself right at home. At our house, it's what you don't see ask for. Skin-nay Flint, if you don't stop! Make him quit, Cora; he's been ticklin' me something awful with that little old feather duster he brought along. Whatta you think this is—Coney Island? E-e-e-e-e-e!"
There ensued a scramble down the length of the room, Miss Cobb with her thin, bare little arms flung up over her head, Miss Kinealy tugging and then riding in high buffoonery over the bare floor, firmly secured to Mr. Flint's coattails.
"Leggo!"
"Quit—ouch—e-e-e-e-e! That's right; give it to him! Cora—go to it—e-e-e-e-e—"
Lips lifted to belie a sinkage of heart, Miss Schump, left standing, backed finally, sinking down to one of the camp-chairs against the wall. The little glittering mustache had come out again, and, sitting there, her smile so insistently lifted, the pink pearls at her throat rose and fell. The ukulele was whanging again, and a couple or two, locked cheek to cheek, were undulating in a low-lidded kind of ecstasy. Finally, Cora Kinealy and Archie Sensenbrenner, rather uglily oblivious.
A youth, frantic to outdistance a rival for the dancing-hand of Miss
Gertie Cobb, stumbled across Miss Schump's carefully crossed ankles.
"'Scuse," he said, without glancing back.
"Certainly," said Miss Schump, through aching tonsils.