Well, when Guy came back from overseas he got a welcome from the St. Moe staff that would have tickled a political boss. Honestly, he brought something back for everybody! What he brought back for me was some perfectly gorgeous Venetian lace and his sixty-fifth request that I renounce the frivolous pleasures of the telephone switchboard and enter matrimony.
I accepted the lace, which drove my girl friend, Hazel Killian, wild with envy, but on the wedding bells I claimed exemption. I like Guy, but I'm by no means in love with him—or with anyone else! From what I've been able to observe on my perch at the St. Moe switchboard, there's a bit too much "moan" in matrimony, and, really, I get no more thrill out of contemplating marriage than Noah would get out of contemplating Niagara Falls. I've seen too much of it! I do get a kick, though, out of my daily struggle to remain a campfire girl and still keep from dying of too little fun. The swarming lobby of any costly Gotham hotel is the favorite hunting grounds of snips that pass in the night, always looking for the best of it—lounge lizards, synthetic sheiks of all ages and others too humorous to mention. Any young, well dressed member of my much advertised sex who doesn't resemble a gorilla is their legitimate prey, and trying to discourage 'em is like trying to discourage the anti-drys. But I got their number—being a phone girl, that's my job, isn't it? I meet five hundred representatives of the sillier sex every day, and it's a hobby of mine to treat 'em all with equal chilly politeness till they get out of line. Then I turn off the politeness, just giving 'em the chill, and honest, when I want to be cold—which is generally—I'd turn a four-alarm fire into an iceberg with a glance!
However, there are a lot of yawns connected with plugging a telephone switchboard day by day in every way, and now and then a male will come along sufficiently interesting for little Gladys to accept temporarily as an accomplice in the assassination of time.
Dinners, dances, theaters, this and that—nothing my mother and I couldn't laugh over, so don't curl your lip!
Well, Guy Tower hadn't been back in the St. Moe a week when he began showering attentions on me from the point where he left off before he sailed away. Honestly, he dinnered and theatered me silly! Hazel Killian watched me carelessly toy with this good-looking young gold mine with unconcealed feelings of covetousness. She simply couldn't understand why I didn't grab this boon from Heaven and marry him while he was stupefied with my charms. Hazel, who is an artists' model and no eyesore herself, is suffering from a lifelong ambition to become a bird in a gilded cage. She craves a millionaire, and in desperation she offered to match coins with me for Guy, but I indignantly refused. I know Hazel—she's a dear, but she'd have Rockefeller penniless in a month and every shop on Fifth Avenue sporting a "Closed to Restock" sign. She's just a pretty baby who loves to go buy and she makes 'em give till it hurts, don't think she doesn't!
Another person who got upset over Guy's inability to keep away from me was Jerry Murphy, house sleuth at the St. Moe. Jerry's so big that if he had numbers on him he'd look like a box car, and he's just another male I can get all dizzied up with a properly manipulated eye and smile. Really, he's not a bad fellow, but as a detective he's a blank cartridge. He couldn't catch pneumonia if it was against the law not to have it. Jerry don't know what it's all about and never will, because he's too thick between the ears to ask and nobody will tell him. He hangs around my switchboard like a hungry collie around a kitchen and he's just as eager; but I'm not collecting losers, so Jerry's meaningless to me. My bounding around with Guy fills Jerry with pain and alarm and he keeps me supplied with laughs by constantly warning me of the pitfalls and temptations that surround a little telephone girl who steps out with a millionaire. "If 'at big mock orange makes one out-of-the-way crack to you, cutey, just tip me off and I'll ruin him!" says Jerry with a menacing growl. "I can't cuddle up to the idea of you goin' out with him all the time. Don't let him go to work and lure you somewheres away from easy callin' distance of help!"
"Cut yourself a piece of cake!" I says. "Mister Tower is a perfect gentleman, Jerry, and it would be impossible for him to act like anything else if he and I were alone on an island in the middle of the Pacific."
"Say, listen, cutey,'" says Jerry, wincing, "don't mention 'at alone-on-a-island stuff in my presence! 'At's what I been dreamin' about me and you for a year. If we ever get on a ship together, I'll wreck it as sure as you're born!"
Now, isn't he a scream?
Well, at one of our dinner dates about a month after his return, Guy shows up haggard and wan and apparently all in. Generally a fellow who couldn't do enough for his stomach, he ordered this night with the enthusiasm of a steak fiend week-ending at a vegetarian friend's. When the nourishment arrived, Guy just dallied and toyed with it. Afterwards we favored the dance floor with a visit, and instead of tripping his usual wicked ballroom he acted like he had an anvil in each of his pumps. A dozen times during the evening he had to tap back a yawn, and really I began to get steamed up. I'm not used to seeing my boy friends pass out on me!