"Tee-hee!"
"Believe me, Bettina, those are some goo-goos!"
"I'd be pleased to have you—come—to—"
"I told the little wifey last night, 'Angel Face, I've found a pair of goo-goos that are a close runner-up to yours.'"
Miss Schump turned to her first customer of the day, the flush receding as suddenly as it had come to scorch.
"Copper toes for the little boy? Just be seated, please."
Thus did the odor of romance lay for the merest moment upon the stale air of Miss Schump's routine.
Evenings, in the high-ceilinged, long-windowed, and inside-shuttered little flat in very West Thirteenth Street, tucked up in the top story of one of a row of made-over-into-apartments residences that boasted each a little frill of iron balcony and railed-in patch of front lawn, they would sit beside an oil-lamp with a flowered china shade, Mrs. Schump, gnarled of limb and knotted of joint, ever busy, except on the most excruciatingly rheumatic of her days, at a needlework so cruel, so fine that for fifteen years of her widowhood it had found instant market at a philanthropic Woman's Exchange.
Very often Miss Cora Kinealy, also of the children's shoes, would rock away an evening in that halo of lamplight, her hair illuminated to copper and her hands shuttling in and out at the business of knitting. There were frank personal discussions, no wider in diameter than the little circle of light itself.
MISS KINEALY (slumped in her chair so that her knee rose higher than her waist-line): I always say of Stella, she's one nut too hard for me to crack, and I've cracked a good many in my life. Why that girl 'ain't got beaus galore—well, I give up!