"I'm all right, Eddie. Gee! With Addie treating me like I was a queen in a gilt crown, and you skidding round me like a tire, I feel like cream!"
Eddie regarded her with eyes that were soft as rose-colored lamps at dusk.
"You poor little kid!"
Addie hobbled in from the kitchen.
"I got something you'll like, Goldie. It's hot and good for you, too."
God alone knew the secret of Addie. He had fashioned her in clay and water, even as you and me—from the same earthy compound from which is sprung ward politicians and magic-throated divas, editors and plumbers, poet laureates and Polish immigrants, kings and French ballet dancers, propagandists and piece-workers, single-taxers and suffragettes.
He fashioned her in clay; and it was as if she came from under the teeth of a Ninth Avenue street-car fender—broken, but remolded in alabaster, and with the white light of her stanch spirit shining through—Addie, whose side, up as high as her ribs, was a flaming furnace and whose smile was sunshine on dew.
"You wouldn't eat no supper; so I made you some chicken broth, Goldie. You remember when we was studying shorthand at night school how we used to send Jimmie over to White's lunch-room for chickenette broth and a slab of milk chocolate?"
"Do I? Gee! You were the greatest kid, Addie!"
"Eat, Goldie—gwan."