"I don't know," says he. "She has a wonderful complexion—like old ivory. Her hair is wonderful, too, sort of a pale gold. But her eyebrows are quite dark, and her eyes—Ah, they're the kind you couldn't forget—sort of a deep violet, I think; maybe you'd call 'em plum colored."
"Listens too fancy to be true," says I. "But they do get 'em up that way for the trade."
There's no jarrin' Crosby loose from his idea, though, and he's just proposin' that I meet him there at twelve-thirty next day when Vee drifts out and I has to break away. "I'll let you know if I can," says I as I walks off.
Course, Vee wants to know who my friend is and all about it, and when I've sketched out the plot of the piece she's quite thrilled. "How interesting!" says she. "I do hope he finds out it's a real girl Some of those models are simply stunning, you know. And there is such a thing as a face haunting you. Oh, by the way! Do you remember the Stribbles?"
"Should I?" I asks.
"The janitor's family in that apartment building where we used to live," explains Vee.
"Stribble?" says I. "Oh, yes, the poddy old party who did all the hard sitting around while his wife did the work. What reminded you of them?"
"I'm sure I don't know," says Vee. "But a month or so ago I saw the name printed in an army list of returned casualty cases—there was a boy, you know, and a girl—and I thought then that we ought to look them up and find out. Then I forgot all about it until just a few moments ago. Let's go there, Torchy, before we go out home tonight?"
I must say I couldn't get very much excited over the Stribbles, but on the chance that Vee would forget again I promised, and let her tow me into one of those cute little tea rooms where we had a perfectly punk lunch at a dollar ten per each. But even after a three hour session among the white goods sales Vee still remembered the Stribbles, so about five o'clock we finds ourselves divin' into a basement that's none too clean and are being received by a tall, skinny female with a tously mop of sandy hair bobbed up on her head.
It seems Ma Stribble was still shovelin' most of the ashes and scrubbin' the halls as well; while Pa Stribble, fatter than ever and in the same greasy old togs, continues to camp in a rickety arm chair by the front window, with a pail of suds at his right elbow. Yes, the one mentioned in the casualty list was their Jimmy. Only he hadn't come back a trench hero, exactly. He'd collected his blighty ticket without being at the front at all—by gettin' mixed up with a steel girder in some construction work. A mashed foot was the total damage, and he was having a real good time at the base hospital; would be as good as new in a week or so.