"It"s worse," gulped a choky voice. Then the head lifted again. "Who are you?" it demanded.
"I"m your big sister," said Mayme rea.s.suringly. "Tell a feller about it."
The response was neither polite nor explanatory. "D---n sisters!" said the bencher.
"Oh, tutt-_tutt_ and naughty-naughty!" rebuked Mayme. "Somebody"s sister been puttin" somethin" over on poor little w.i.l.l.y?"
"My own sister has." He was in that state of semi-hysterical exhaustion in which revelation of one"s intimate troubles to the first comer seems natural. "She"s gone and got arrested," he wailed.
Mayme"s face became grave and practical.
"That"s different," said she. "What"s her lay?"
"Lay? I don"t know--"
"What"s her line? What"s she done to get pinched?"
"Shoplifting. At the special night sale of the Emporium."
"You"re tellin" me! In the silks, huh?"
"What do you know about it? My G.o.d! Is it in the papers already?"
"Keep your hair on, Buddy. I work there, and I heard about that pinch.
Swell young married lady. Say," she added, after a thoughtful pause: "has she got somethin" comin"?"
"Something coming? How? What?"
"Don"t be dumb. A kid."
He stared. She was looking at him with unabashed frankness. Those who live in the close, rough intimacy of the slums do not cherish false shame about the major facts of life.
"Suppose she has?" queried the youth sulkily.
"Why, that"ll be all right, you poor b.o.o.b," returned the kindly Mayme.
"The judge"ll let her off with a warning."
"How do you know?"
"They always do. Those cases are common. Dolan ought to be canned for makin" a pinch of a lady in the fam"ly way."
"What if they do let her off?" lamented the youth. "It"ll be in all the papers and I"ll be ruined. My life"s spoiled. I might as well leave the city."
"Ah, don"t do a mean trick like that to the old town!" besought the sardonic Mayme. "Where do you come in to get hurt?"
He burst into the hectic grievances of the pampered and spoiled child.
His family was just getting a foothold in Society (with an almost holy emphasis on the word) and now they were disgraced. All was up. Their new, precariously held acquaintances would drop them. In his petulant grief he did an amazing thing; he produced a bunch of clippings from the local society columns, setting forth, in the printed company of the Shining Ones, the doings (mostly charitable) of Mrs. Samuel Berthelin, her daughter, Mrs. Harris, and her son, David, referred to glowingly as "the scion of the wealth and position of the late lamented financier."
Mayme was impressed. Like most shop-girls she was a fervent reader of society news. (If shop-girls did not read this fine flower of American democracy, n.o.body would, except those who wait eagerly and anxiously for their names to appear.) She perceived--not knowing that the advertising leverage of the Berthelin Loan Agency had forced those insecure portals of print for the entry of Mrs. Berthelin and her progeny--that she was in the presence of the Great. Capacity for awe was not in Mayme"s independent soul. But she was interested and sympathetic. Here was a career worth saving!
"Let"s go over to the station-house," said she. "I know some of the cops."
To the white building with the green lanterns they went. The shoplifting case, it appeared, had already been bailed out. Furthermore, everything would be all right and there was little fear of publicity; the store itself would see to that. Vastly relieved and refreshed in spirit, David Berthelin began to take stock of his companion with growing interest.
She was decidedly not pretty. Just as decidedly she was quaint and piquant and quite new to his jejune but also somewhat bored experience.
From the opening pa.s.sage of their first conversation he deduced, lacking the insight to discriminate between honest frankness and immodesty, that she was a "fly kid." On that theory he invited her to breakfast with him. Mayme accepted. They went to Thomson"s elite Restaurant, on the corner, where David roused mingled awe and misgivings in the breast of Polyglot Elsa, the cashier, by ordering champagne, and Mayme rea.s.sured her by declining it.
Thus began an acquaintanceship which swiftly ripened into a queer sort of intimacy, more than a little disturbing to us of Our Square who were interested in Mayme. Young Berthelin"s over-ornate roadster lingered in our quiet precincts more often than appeared to us suitable or safe, and black-eyed Mayme, looking demure and a little exalted, was whirled away to unknown worlds, always returning, however, at respectable hours. When the Little Red Doctor remonstrated with her ostensibly on the score of her health, she reminded him in one breath that he hadn"t been invited to censor her behavior which was entirely her own affair, and in the next--with his hand caught between hers and her voice low and caressing--declared that he was the best little old Doc in the world and there was nothing to worry about, either as to health or conduct.
Indeed, her condition seemed to be improving. I dare say young Mr.
Berthelin"s expensive food was one of the things she needed.
Furthermore, she ceased to be the raggle-taggle, hoydenishly clad Mayme of the cash department, and, having been promoted to saleswoman, quite went in for dress. On this point she sought the advice of the Bonnie La.s.sie. The result went far to justify my prophecy that Mayme"s queer little face might yet make its share of trouble in an impressionable world. But the Bonnie La.s.sie shook her bonnie head privately and said that the fine-feathers development was a bad sign, and that if young Berthelin would obligingly run his seventeen-jeweled roadster off the Williamsburgh Bridge, with himself in it, much trouble might be saved for all concerned.
If little Mayme were headed for trouble, she went to meet it with a smiling face. Never had she seemed so joyous, so filled with the desire of life. This much was to be counted on the credit side, the Little Red Doctor said. On the debit side--well, to me was deputed the unwelcome task of conveying the solemn, and, as it were, official protest and warning of Our Square. Of course I did it at the worst possible moment.
It was early one morning, when Mayme, on her bench, was looking a little hollow-eyed and disillusioned. I essayed the light and jocular approach to the subject:
"Well, Mayme; how is the ardent swain?"
She turned to me with the old flash in her big, shadowed eyes: "Did you say swain or swine, Dominie?"
"Ah!" said I. "Has he changed his role?"
"He"s given himself away, if that"s what you mean."
"I thought that would come."
"He--he wanted me to take a trip to Boston with him."
I considered this bit of information, which was not as surprising or unexpected as Mayme appeared to deem it. "Have you told the Little Red Doctor?"
"Doc"d kill him," said Mayme simply.
"What better reason for telling?"
"Oh, the poor kid: he don"t know any better."
"Doesn"t he? In any case I trust that you know better, after this, than to have anything more to do with him."
"Yep. I"ve cut him out," replied Mayme listlessly. "I figured you and Doc were right, Dominie. It"s no good, his kind of game. Not for girls like me." She looked up at me with limpid eyes, in which there was courage and determination and suffering.
"My dear," I murmured, "I hope it isn"t going to be too hard."
"He"s so pretty," said Mayme McCartney wistfully.
So he was, now that I came to think of it. With his clear, dark color, his wavy hair, his languishing brown eyes, his almost girlishly graceful figure, and his beautiful clothes, he was pretty enough to fascinate any inexperienced imagination. But I cannot say that he looked pretty when, a few days later, he invaded Our Square in search of a Mayme who had vanished beyond his ken (she had kept her tenement domicile a secret from him), and, addressing me as "you white-whiskered old goat," accused me of having come between him and the girl upon whom he had deigned to bestow his lordly favor. Unfortunately for him, the Little Red Doctor chanced along just then and inquired, none too deferentially, what the Scion of Wealth and Position was doing in that quarter.
"What business is it of yours, Red-Head?" countered the offended visitor.
He then listened with distaste, but perforce (for what else could he do in the grasp of a man of twice his power?), to a brilliant and convincing summary of his character, terminating in a withering sketch of his personal and sartorial appearance.
"I didn"t mean the kid any harm," argued the Scion suavely. "I--I came back to apologize."