"Aw, Dee Dee, who ever heard of wearing fur on a hat in April? I gotta stick a red bow on my last summer's sailor, Dee Dee."
Miss Edith Worte stiffened so that the muscles sprang out in the crook of her arm and the cords in her long, yellowing neck. Years had dried on her face, leaving ravages, and through her high-power spectacles her pale eyes might have been staring through film and straining to see.
"Please, Dee Dee!"
Miss Barnet held backward, a little singsong note of appeal running through her voice.
Miss Worte jerked forward toward the open door. April dusk, the color of cold dish-water, showed through it. Dusk in the city comes sadly, crowding into narrow streets and riddled with an immediate quick-shot of electric bulbs.
"'Ain't you got no sense a-tall? 'Ain't you got no sense in that curly head of yourn but ruination notions?"
"Aw, Dee Dee!"
They were in the flood tide which bursts through the dam at six o'clock like a human torrent flooding the streets, then spreading, thinning, and finally seeping into homes, hall bedrooms, and Harlem flats.
Miss Edith Worte turned her sparse face toward the down-town tide and against a light wind that tasted of rain and napped her skirts around her thin legs.
"Watch out, Dee Dee! Step down; there's a curb."