"Miss Madden, meet my gentleman friend." The gentleman friend shuffled his feet and emitted a raucous "Pleased tuh meet yuh."
It was the night of the first dance at the Girls' Club. Little knots of its members stood around the edges of the floor, laughing often, and loudly. The gentlemen friends seemed to spend their time deciding which foot to stand on, and then shifting to the other.
The committee of "uplift workers" rushed around wildly, doing nothing. It was notable that Cecilia was the one to whom the "gentleman friends" were introduced.
Lena Smithers came up to Cecilia. "That hat," she said, "I dunno how to thank yuh! Paw, he's talkin' alla time about them roses. They're grand!"
"I'm glad you liked it, dear," said Cecilia.
"Yes," went on Lena more shyly, "an' my gentleman friend, him who clerks at the delicatessen, he likes it too. Honest, that boy's grand to me! They ain't hardly an evening that he don't bring me a string of sausage or a hunk of ham!" Cecilia looked impressed and murmured, "Really?"
"Um hum! Gawd's truth!" said Lena.
"Mr. Ensminger," said a fat girl, towing a flaxen-haired boy with no chin. "Soda fountain clerk to the Crystal. Better kid him on, Miss Madden, mebbe he'll give yuh a soda!"
There was loud laughter at this persiflage. Suddenly Cecilia forgot it, her surroundings, the gentlemen friends, in fact everything but the cruelly fast pumping of her small heart, for across the room she saw John coming in, and by him Stuyvesant Twombly.
"How did Mr. Twombly happen to come?" Cecilia asked of John much later, when they were dancing.