Say, don't let on to Vee, but that's where I got hugged. It seems Bonnie does want to have one glimpse of New York with the lights on; wants it the worst way. For when she'd come up from Rio her one idea was to get back to the old farm, fix it up regardless of expense, and camp down there quiet for the rest of her days. She'd had a bully time doin' it, too, for three or four months. She'd enjoyed havin' people around her who could talk English, and watchin' the white clouds sail over the green hills, and seein' her cattle and sheep browsin' about the fields. It had rested her eyes and her soul.
And then, all of a sudden, she had this hunch that maybe she was missin' something. Not that she thought she could come back reg'lar, or break into the old life where she left off. She says she wasn't so foolish in the head as all that. Her notion was that she might be happier and more contented if she just looked on from the side-lines.
"I wanted to hear music," says she, "and see the lights, and watch gay and beautiful young people doing the things I used to do. It might—Well, it might shake off some of my years. Who knows?"
"Sure! That's the dope," says I. "Course, a lot of their old-time joints ain't runnin' now—Koster & Bial's, Harrigan's, the Café Martinbut maybe some you remember are still open."
"Silly!" says she, shakin' a pudgy forefinger at me. "That isn't what I want at all. Not the old, but the new; the very newest and most fashionable. I'm not trying to go back, but trying to keep up."
"Oh!" says I. "In that case it'll be easy. How about startin' in with the tea dance at the Admiral, just opened? Begins at 4:15."
"Tell me, Torchy," says she, "did you ever see anyone as—as huge as I am at a tea dance? No, I think we'll not start with that."
"Then suppose we hop off with dinner on the Plutoria roof?" I suggests. "The Tortonis are doing a dancin' turn there and they have the swellest jazz band in town."
"It sounds exciting," says Bonnie. "I will try to be ready by 7:30. And you surely are a nice boy. Now if you will help me out to the elevator——"
And it's while I'm tryin' to steady her on one side as she goes rollin' waddly through the main office that I gets a little hint of what's comin' to me. Maybe you've seen a tug-boat bobbin' alongside a big liner in a heavy sea. I expect we must have looked something like that. Even so, that flossy bunch of lady typists showed poor taste in cuttin' loose with the smothered snickers as we wobbles past.