She first came into public notice by giving (unsolicited) a most scandalous and spirited imitation of old Madame Tallafferr, aforetime of the Southern aristocracy, in the act of rebuking her landlord, the insecticidal Boggs (“Boggs Kills Bugs” in his patent of nobility), for eating peanuts on his own front steps. She then (earnestly solicited by a growing audience) put on impromptu sketches of the Little Red Doctor diagnosing internal complications in a doodle-bug; of MacLachan (drunk) singing “The Cork Leg” and MacLachan (sober) repenting thereof; of Bartholomew Storrs offering samples of his mortuary poesy to a bereaved second-cousin; and, having decked out her chin in cotton-batten whiskers (limb of Satan!), of myself proffering sage counsel and pious admonitions to Our Square at large. Having concluded, she sat down on a bench and coughed. And the Little Red Doctor, who, from the shelter of a shrub had observed her presentation of his little idiosyncrasies, drew nearer and looked at her hard. For he disliked the sound of that cough. He suspected that his old friend and opponent, Death, with whom he fought an interminable campaign, was mocking him from ambush. It wasn’t quite fair play, either, for the foe to use the particular weapon indicated by the cough on a mere child. With her lustrous hair loose and floating, and her small, eager, flushed face, she looked far short of the mature and self-reliant seventeen which was the tally of her experienced years.
“Hello,” greeted the Little Red Doctor, speaking with the brusque informality of one assured of his place as a local celebrity. “I don’t know you, do I?”
Mayme lifted her eyes. “If you don’t,” she drawled, “it ain’t for lack of tryin’. Is your hat glued on?”
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the Little Red Doctor indignantly. “Do you think I’m trying to flirt with you? Why, you’re only a kid.”
“Get up to date,” advised Mayme. “I’m old enough to be your steady. Only, I’m too lucky.”
“That’s a bad cough you’ve got,” said the Little Red Doctor hastily.
“I’ve got a better one at home. Like to hear it some day?”
“Bring it over to my office and let’s look at the thing,” suggested the Little Red Doctor, smiling.
As Mayme McCartney observed that smile with the shrewd judgment of men which comes early, in self-protection, to girls of her environment, the suspicion and impudence died out of her face, which became wistful.
“D’you think it means anything?” she asked.