“Yeh, I’ve got a date with him f’r eight-thirty.”
“Now there’s a guy you oughta play up to,” said Harry. “He takes down a good three hundred a week f’r that turn he does up at The Golden Mill. Joe’s as wise as they make ’em—a wise-crackin’ baby. I’m gonna stick around when he comes up here to-night. He c’n get a laugh outa me any day in the year.”
“Joe’s there, all right,” Mabel said. “I wish he wasn’t so sweet on Blanche.”
“Well, go after him, dearie, if that’s how you feel,” Blanche answered. “It won’t be breaking my heart.”
As she dressed herself for the coming engagement, Blanche had an uneven, up-in-the-air song in her blood. Another man would soon be courting her, and casting “I’d-like-to-get-you” looks at her, and deferring to her just as much as if she had been famous or wealthy, and praising her to lead up to attempted caresses, while she sat in judgment on the proceedings, with a queenly “I’ll-have-to-see-about-this” sensation, and remarks made of “slams” and retirings to put him on his mettle, and the feeling of owning the world for a few, high-keyed hours, until she returned to her bed and the more level-headed endurance-test at the cafeteria. Her head was totally empty for a time, and she sang the popular tunes of the day, in a low, contralto voice, as she fussed about with her toilette. Then glimpses of Joe Campbell appeared in her head, and she wondered whether she would ever marry him. She liked him physically, and she respected his money-making talents, but her response toward him was much stronger when he was with her. His absence seemed to remove a black-art spell, and to leave in its place doubts and confusions. Then, beneath all of his good-humors and effulgent generosities, she divined an insincerity and something that spoke of shrouded, patiently crouching intentions. What they were she did not know. Her mind was not capable of delving into this reaction, and it told her only that he wasn’t “coming out” with his real self. Her brother had introduced him to her six months previous to this night, and since then Campbell had pursued her in an irregular way, since he frequently left New York on vaudeville-bookings. She had allowed him certain physical liberties and had admonished herself afterwards for being “too easy,” but the matter had rested there, since he had never been remarkably insistent in his efforts to vanquish her.
When he came up, and airily saluted her, Harry and Mabel, who were in the living-room, greeted him effusively. They considered it an honor that this minor Broadway favorite, whose name was occasionally in electric lights, should be so willing to visit them and “step out of his class.”
“’Lo, Joe, still bringin’ down the house?” asked Mabel.
“Nothing but,” he replied. “The bulls came running into the place last night, looking for a free-for-all fight, the clapping was that loud.”
Mabel and Harry laughed, and Harry said: “C’mon, I bet you coulda heard a maxim-silencer after you got through.”
“That’s the same gun they shoot off when you get through fighting, isn’t it?” asked Campbell, with a solemn look.