“You said it”—Blanche’s voice was low and depressed.
“Well, I’m only a steno myself,” Margaret answered, “but I’m taking a course in short-story writing at Herbert College—three nights a week. I want to tear off the old veils and tell what people do to each other.”
“Say, maybe I could join it, too,” Blanche replied, eagerly. “I’m not so strong on grammar, though—stopped in my first year at high and went to work.”
“Oh, you can pound that part of it into you. The main thing’s whether you have something to say—something that’s not just ordinary and hackneyed.”
“I think I have, but ... how do I know,” Blanche asked, uncertainly.
They had stopped in front of a tearoom with a multicolored wooden sign under an electric light.
“Here’s Clara’s—one of my hangouts,” Margaret said. “I’m going in to meet my blond-haired devastator. Won’t you come along?”
“Perhaps I’ll be in the way.”
“Nothing of the kind—I’ll introduce you to some of the people I know.”
They entered the place, which occupied the first floor of a two-storey, attic-topped, brick house. Kitchen tables and chairs painted pale green and vermilion lined the walls. Paintings and drawings were hung everywhere—cubistic plagiarisms, slovenly sketches, and illustrations meant for the average magazine’s check book but not quite reaching it—and a semidim light came from stained-glass bowls hung from the low ceiling. Some fifteen men and women were scattered around the two rooms, and a portable phonograph in the corner was whining one of the latest fox-trot insinuations—“He Never Gets Tired of Me, No, Boy, Just Never Gets Tired of Me-ee.”