When he sang "The Dying Cowboy's Lament" and came to the passage, "Oh, take me to the churchyard and lay the sod o-o-over me," Mrs. Brewster used to say: "Gussie, Mr. Brewster'll be down in ten minutes. You can start the eggs."
In the months of their gay life in Sixty-seventh Street, Hosey Brewster never once sang "The Dying Cowboy's Lament," nor whistled "In the Sweet By-and-By." No; he whistled not at all, or, when he did, gay bits of jazz heard at the theatre or in a restaurant the night before. He deceived no one, least of all himself. Sometimes his voice would trail off into nothingness, but he would catch the tune and toss it up again, heavily, as though it were a physical weight.
Theatres! Music! Restaurants! Teas! Shopping! The gay life!
"Enjoying yourself, Milly?" he would say.
"Time of my life, father."
She had had her hair dressed in those geometrical, undulations without which no New York audience feels itself clothed. They saw Pinky less frequently as time went on and her feeling or responsibility lessened. Besides, the magazine covers took most of her day. She gave a tea for her father and mother at her own studio, and Mrs. Brewster's hat, slippers, gown and manner equalled in line, style, cut and texture those of any other woman present, which rather surprised her until she had talked to five or six of them.
She and Hosey drifted together and compared notes.
"Say, Milly," he confided, "they're all from Wisconsin—or approximately; Michigan and Minnesota, and Iowa, and around. Far's I can make out there's only one New Yorker, really, in the whole caboodle of 'em."
"Which one?"
"That kind of plain little one over there—sensible looking, with the blue suit. I was talking to her. She was born right here in New York, but she doesn't live here—that is, not in the city. Lives in some place in the country, in a house."