Cheerful-By Request Part 27

"Hook off here," said Julia. "Shall I sew it?"

"Pin it!" snapped Two-eighteen.

Julia's tidy nature revolted.

"It'll take just a minute to catch it with thread--"

Two-eighteen whirled about in one of the sudden hot rages of her kind:

"Pin it, you fool! Pin it! I told you I was late!"

Julia paused a moment, the red surging into her face. Then in silence she knelt and wove a pin deftly in and out. When she rose from her knees her face was quite white.

"There, that's the girl!" said Two-eighteen blithely, her rage forgotten. "Just pat this over my shoulders."

She handed a powder-puff to Julia and turned her back to the broad mirror, holding a hand-gla.s.s high as she watched the powder-laden puff leaving a snowy coat on the neck and shoulders and back so generously displayed in the cherry-coloured gown. Julia's face was set and hard.

"Oh, now, don't sulk!" coaxed Two-eighteen good-naturedly, all of a sudden. "I hate sulky girls. I like people to be cheerful round me."

"I'm not used to being yelled at," Julia said resentfully.

Two-eighteen patted her cheek lightly. "You come out with me to-morrow and I'll buy you something pretty. Don't you like pretty clothes?"

"Yes; but--"

"Of course you do. Every girl does--especially pretty ones like you. How do you like this dress? Don't you think it smart?"

She turned squarely to face Julia, trying on her the tricks she had practised in the mirror. A little cruel look came into Julia's face.

"Last year's, isn't it?" she asked coolly.

"This!" cried Two-eighteen, stiffening. "Last year's! I got it yesterday on Fifth Avenue, and paid two hundred and fifty for it. What do you--"

"Oh, I believe you," drawled Julia. "They can tell a New Yorker from an out-of-towner every time. You know the really new thing is the Bulgarian effect!"

"Well, of all the nerve!" began Two-eighteen, turning to the mirror in a sort of fright. "Of all the--"

What she saw there seemed to rea.s.sure. She raised one hand to push the gown a little more off the left shoulder.

"Will there be anything else?" inquired Julia, standing aloof.

Two-eighteen turned reluctantly from the mirror and picked up a jewelled gold-mesh bag that lay on the bed. From it she extracted a coin and held it out to Julia. It was a generous coin. Julia looked at it. Her smouldering wrath burst into flame.

"Keep it!" she said savagely, and was out of the room and down the hall.

Sadie Corn, at her desk, looked up quickly as Julia turned the corner.

Julia, her head held high, kept her eyes resolutely away from Sadie.

"Oh, Julia, I want to talk to you!" said Sadie Corn as Julia reached the stairway. Julia began to descend the stairs, unheeding. Sadie Corn rose and leaned over the railing, her face puckered with anxiety. "Now, Julia, girl, don't hold that up against me! I didn't mean it. You know that. You wouldn't be mad at a poor old woman that's half crazy with neuralgy!" Julia hesitated, one foot poised to take the next step. "Come on up," coaxed Sadie Corn, "and tell me what Two-eighteen's wearing this evening. I'm that lonesome, with nothing to do but sit here and watch the letter-ghosts go flippering down the mailchute! Come on!"

"What made you say you'd report me?" demanded Julia bitterly.

"I'd have said the same thing to my own daughter if I had one. You know yourself I'd bite my tongue out first!"

"Well!" said Julia slowly, and relented. She came up the stairs almost shyly. "Neuralgy any better?"

"Worse!" said Sadie Corn cheerfully.

Julia leaned against the desk sociably and glanced down the hall.

"Would you believe it," she snickered, "she's wearing red! With that hair! She asked me if I didn't think she looked too pale. I wanted to tell her that if she had any more colour, with that dress, they'd be likely to use the chemical sprinklers on her when she struck the Alley."

"Sh-sh-s.h.!.+" breathed Sadie in warning. Two-eighteen, in her s.h.i.+mmering, flame-coloured costume, was coming down the hall toward the elevators.

She walked with the absurd and stumbling step that her scant skirt necessitated. With each pace the slashed silken skirt parted to reveal a shameless glimpse of cerise silk stocking. In her wake came Venner, of Two-twenty-three--a strange contrast in his black and white.

Sadie and Julia watched them from the corner nook. Opposite the desk Two-eighteen stopped and turned to Julia.

"Just run into my room and pick things up and hang them away, will you?"

she said. "I didn't have time--and I hate things all about when I come in dead tired."

The little formula of service rose automatically to Julia's lips.

"Very well, madam," she said.

Her eyes and Sadie's followed the two figures until they had stepped into the cream-and-gold elevator and had vanished. Sadie, peppermint bottle at nose, spoke first:

"She makes one of those sandwich men with a bell, on Sixth Avenue, look like a shrinking violet!"

Julia's lower lip was caught between her teeth. The scent that had enveloped Two-eighteen as she pa.s.sed was still in the air. Julia's nostrils dilated as she sniffed it. Her breath came a little quickly.

Sadie Corn sat very still, watching her.

"Look at her!" said Julia, her voice vibrant. "Look at her! Old and homely, and all made up! I powdered her neck. Her skin's like tripe.

"Now Julia--" remonstrated Sadie Corn soothingly.

"I don't care," went on Julia with a rush. "I'm young. And I'm pretty too. And I like pretty things. It ain't fair! That was one reason why I broke with Jo. It wasn't only his mother. I told him he couldn't ever give me the things I want anyway. You can't help wanting 'em--seeing them all round every day on women that aren't half as good-looking as you are! I want low-cut dresses too. My neck's like milk. I want silk underneath, and fur coming up on my coat collar to make my cheeks look pink. I'm sick of hooking other women up. I want to stand in front of a mirror, looking at myself, polis.h.i.+ng my pink nails with a silver thing and having somebody else hook me up!"

In Sadie Corn's eyes there was a mist that could not be traced to neuralgia or peppermint.

"Julia, girl," said Sadie Corn, "ever since the world began there's been hookers and hooked. And there always will be. I was born a hooker. So were you. Time was when I used to cry out against it too. But shucks! I know better now. I wouldn't change places. Being a hooker gives you such an all-round experience like of mankind. The hooked only get a front view. They only see faces and arms and chests. But the hookers--they see the necks and shoulderblades of this world, as well as faces. It's mighty broadening--being a hooker. It's the hookers that keep this world together, Julia, and fastened up right. It wouldn't amount to much if it had to depend on such as that!" She nodded her head in the direction the cerise figure had taken. "The height of her ambition is to get the cuticle of her nails trained back so perfectly that it won't have to be cut; and she don't feel decently dressed to be seen in public unless she's wearing one of those breastplates of orchids. Envy her! Why, Julia, don't you know that as you were standing here in your black dress as she pa.s.sed she was envying you!"

"Envying me!" said Julia, and laughed a short laugh that had little of mirth in it. "You don't understand, Sadie!"

Sadie Corn smiled a rather sad little smile.

"Oh, yes, I do understand. Don't think because a woman's homely, and always has been, that she doesn't have the same heartaches that a pretty woman has. She's built just the same inside."

Julia turned her head to stare at her wide-eyed. It was a long and trying stare, as though she now saw Sadie Corn for the first time.