"Lock up the wardrobe and clear out, will you?" said Kelly, frigidly. "I can do the rest myself."
"Here's your hat, what's your hurry," she muttered to herself. But she stayed and continued to put things to rights.
Mazie had changed greatly since the palmy days of the Lorillard tenements. She looked ill and haggard, a mere shadow of the jaunty "Follies" girl of old. Her willowy posture had degenerated into an undisguised slouch, her hair was frowsy, and her dress was slung together.
But her tongue had not lost its stab.
She closed the wardrobe door with an unintentional slam that caused Harry Kelly to jump up in his seat.
"Damn!" he said, in that mild voice of his.
It was as if Vesuvius had emitted a puff of tobacco smoke.
The metamorphosis of the "Harlem Gorilla" into the husband of Madame Paulette was astoundingly complete. Harry Kelly's Van Dyke beard and fashionably tailored clothes alone would have effected a radical change in his appearance. Kelly was transformed not only physically but psychically. His muscles were still the muscles of a Titan, but his nerves had become the nerves of a fanciful man or a delicate woman.
Mazie, who was no student of spiritual transformations, went up to the desk at which Kelly sat and began to tidy it. She whisked away stray papers and envelopes that lay near his hands with much the same air that a waiter lashes the crumbs off a table to speed the lingering guest.
He grew more and more fidgety, but she showed him no mercy.