Cicely shook her head. “I’m the cat that walks by herself,” she said lightly. “Not a man will bother with me—but, as to that, none will bother me going home, so it works good and bad!”
“Yes, I guess so!” her neighbor derisively replied. “Pity ’bout you! Us girls are on to you, Miss Adair! The fellers’d tumble for you if you didn’t jack ’em up!”
“Fiddlesticks! But I won’t have anyone calling for me; puts you under obligations,” said Cis impatiently.
“You said a mouthful!” the girl endorsed her, then added significantly: “I got one comin’ after me, but I don’t get off till one, Q. T. Dang’rous goin’ alone at that littlest hour!”
The girl laughed and Cis looked disgusted, drawing away with a slight, involuntary movement before she recalled herself. Then she said:
“One is a lot later than ten, more than the four hours later. Glad you’ve someone to see you safe, Mimi.”
Cicely turned back to her switchboard, refusing to share the humor of Mimi’s being escorted home, and as she did so she received a call.
“I’d like to get 12, the Boulevard, if you please,” a voice said.
Cicely said sharply: “What number did you say?”
She recognized the voice and the peculiar form of its call. It was the oily, yet sub-acid voice which Cis had said was like maple syrup beginning to ferment, the voice which she distrusted, the voice of sweet Jeanette Lucas’ betrothed, to whom her marriage was imminent.