In consequence, Mabel Vance was in
possession of the reception parlor.
Mrs. Vance was plump, pink-and-blonde, credulous and vulgar, but
at all times of the utmost good humor. Her admiration for Vera
was equaled only by her awe of her. On this particular
afternoon, although it already was after five o'clock, Mrs.
Vance still wore a short dressing sack, open at the throat, and
heavy with somewhat soiled lace. But her blonde hair was freshly
"marcelled," and her nails pink and shining. In the absence of
Vera, she was making a surreptitious and guilty use of the
telephone. From the fact that in her left hand she held the
morning telegraph open at the "previous performances" of the
horses, and that the page had been cruelly lacerated by a hat
pin, it was fair to suppose that whoever was at the other end of
the wire, was tempting her with the closing odds at the races.
In her speculations, she was interrupted by "Mannie" Day, who
entered softy through the door from the hall.
"Mannie" Day was a youth of twenty-four. It was his heart's
desire to be a "Broadwayard." He wanted to know all of those,
and to be known only by those, who moved between the giant
pillars that New York threw into the sky to mark her progress
North.
He knew the soiled White Way as the oldest inhabitant knows the
single street of the village. He knew it from the Rathskellers
underground, to the roof gardens in the sky; in his firmament
the stars were the electric advertisements over Long Acre
Square, his mother earth was asphalt, the breath of his nostrils
gasolene, the telegraph was his Bible.
Pages:
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63