"That's all right, then. Mind, I'm not saying I blame her; if she can get away with it, all right. But I wouldn't have the face myself to talk to a girl with boy's pants on; I wouldn't know where to look. You can have my parlor to sit in."
"You must come in too," said Greg. "I want you to know her. She needs a woman friend."
"But you said she was a high-toned lady. What would she want with the likes of me?"
"Well, I don't know, if it comes to that, you're pretty high-toned yourself."
"Go along with you!"
Bessie's parlor was the front room over the grocery store. The room was the secret pride of her heart, though, poor soul, she had little enough occasion to use it. So carefully was it kept that it looked as spick and span as when it had first been created, perhaps twenty-five years before. There was a Brussels carpet on the floor with a design of bunches of red roses on a green ground, and there was a green plush "parlor suit." In the center of the room stood a marble-topped table with wonderfully curly legs, and upon it there was a plush album, and two piles of "gift-books" placed criss-cross. On the mantel-piece was an imitation onyx clock flanked by a superb pair of near-bronze Vikings with battle-axes which you could take out of their hands if you wished.
Over the mantel hung a crayon portrait of Bessie's second husband, the late Mr. Bickle, fresh from the barber's. He occupied the place of honor presumably because he was the more recent. He was faced from across the room by Mr. Daniel Creavy, his predecessor. Mr. Creavy was cross-eyed and the crayon artist, evidently a grim realist, had disdained to modify his squint by a jot. There were several other pictures colored and representing sentimental situations entitled: "Parted," "The Tiff," and "The Green-eyed Monster."
As the time drew near when Hickey might be supposed to return with his passenger, Greg and Bessie waited in the parlor. Bessie in a stiff, rustling black taffeta was magnificent and very high-toned indeed. She had adopted a manner to match, and sat in awful silence with her hands in her lap, while Greg fidgeted. He found himself endlessly computing the number of yards that had gone to make that voluminous costume. The word had gone round the yard below that Greg's friend, the little South American Princess (as reported by Hickey), was coming that night, and one by one they all found some excuse for dropping in on the chance of seeing her: Bull Tandy, Blossom, Ginger McAfee; only Pa Simmons was missing.
They heard the machine-gun when she first turned the corner from Houston Street, and Greg sprang down the stairs. Hickey had been instructed to bring his passenger to the front door of course. Bessie waited in monumental dignity at the top of the stairs. When Amy alighted from the flivver Greg, had he not known it must be she, must have looked twice before recognizing her. In her comical tight little jacket and elaborate cheap hat she was the belle of the service entrance to the life. Amy, it appeared, was an incorrigible comedienne; though there was no need for her to play her part just then, she could not help bridling, ogling and flirting her skirts like the coquette of below stairs. Greg chuckled and Hickey roared.
But by the time she reached the head of the stairs she had sobered down. From Bessie's imposing port she gathered, no doubt, that the landlady was not a person to be trifled with. Her abrupt transition to demureness caused Greg a fresh chuckle.