Argosy All-Story Weekly, Vol. 124, No. 3 — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

mental condition by garbing his great girth and height in a something less than a child’s portion of cinnamon red shoddy of a pattern not more than forty-five minutes from Broadway and Forty-Second Street. The coat was pinch-backed, and its tight little arms swelled hke the skins of over- stuffed bologna sausage as Ray’s muscles flexed beneath. But each arm terminated in perfectly cunning flaring cuffs sporting three buttons each. Trousers were a painful subject of which the least said the better. Their economy of construction made of the finely propor- tioned limbs of the big logger something almost indecent. Nor was this all. Ray had a silk shirt—a shirt of pink and green alternating stripes, and a college-boy col- lar with long, drooping points, from which bulged a chaste bright blue cravat. And he wore a new, white Panama type hat en- circled by a wide band of Roman stnipe, and white canvas shoes on his large and sinewy feet. Needless to say he had lost all that free, splendid carriage of a real man, and add to that that Wally Newell’s open-mouthed astonishment was not reassuring and you can guess the embarrassment with which he advanced to meet his friend. Bruce Ray essayed an easy wave of the hand and blushed redder as he mumbled a greeting to his friend. Wally Newell did not respond. : He merely stared grimly. Though Newell did not come quite to the big fellow’s shoulder, and was trained thin as a pike pole besides, his dominance over Bruce Ray was seldom questioned. For instance, on this occasion Ray began to shift uneasily from one foot to the other. He essayed to laugh off his embarrassment, but the laugh was only a weak giggle. His face sobered quickly, and he asked with a show of anger, ““ Why don’t you talk English? I ain’t no deaf mute.”’ Still Newell said nothing. | Ray coughed nervously, and revolved slowly on one foot, displaying the atrocities in detail. With a complete view of the pinched-in back with its narrowed shoul- ders sfraining their seams, and the snappy coat skirt fluttering like a ballet-dancer’s ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY. ruffles, the stern critic gasped, but held tongue. Ray said humbly, “Don’t you like it, Wally?” Newell answered, There ain’t nobody about the front porch —luckily.”” He led the way. — ‘What the crimson brimstone blazes d’you mean by that?” paw on his friend’s shoulder, halting him in his tracks. But Newell was not to be bluffed out of his firmness. ‘“ I mean I got a spare pair of pants you can cover up your: shame with, and I guess Old Man Burke won’t give a darn if you eat your meals in your shirt-sleeves for a couple days, till you can get you a coat from town.” “ Coat! I got a coat.” “You got a what?” “You heard me.” “Look here, Bruce Ray, you mean to tell me you're goin’ to wear that fancy- dress-ball get-up regular—at your age?” ‘““'What’s wrong with it—and my age?” “'What’s wrong? Suffering torment, what’s wrong? What’s— Here, you come with me, up to my room. We got to have some words, that’s all. Let’s have ’em - where the whole hotel can’t hear us.” Newell led his friend to comparative se- clusion. In his room, with the door locked, he ordered sternly: ‘‘ Now, lay off that damn—launjeree—as much as you decent- ly can. My stomach ain’t right skookum this morning anyhow. Then you can tell me how it happened.” | Ray divested himself of the cinnamon- hued coat with a gingerly care lest he split it. He ripped off the linen collar and the new, tight shoes, and loosened his waist- band. “She does kind of bind,” he admitted with a sigh. ‘“ But that’s the newest thing, Wally—the darn-near cry, as the fellow says in French. And me, well, I don’t see “Come with me. - Ray laid a huge. who’s goin’ to stop me if I want to spend my own money trying to look like some- thing, instead—”’ “Yes, you look like —something,” Nevy- ell cut in with a nasty emphasis. ‘* How’s that—something?”’ ‘“In them clothes you look like a cheap ecomiclooolks (CO