Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 99: what you’re looking at

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

PRIDE “ Yes,” she sighed and snuggled her head down on my shoulder. That night, after seeing her home, I could have kicked myself three ways. What a doggoned old hypocrite I was! Til. A COUPLE weeks skidded by, me steering Poll home every night from the store, her laughing and happy, while I sulked and tried not to let on how things stood. It made me feel like a low-down skunk the way she’d take my arm with that cute little scared squeeze when we was crossing a bad street. I’m telling you this so you can help me call myself names. Then I got the idea I’d better go off for a spell and maybe she’d get over it. So I told her I was skipping out to Chicago to sell a big company these trick cigarette cases, and didn’t know when Id be back. Five weeks paraded by like a funeral march, but finally I poked around to the store. She wasn’t there. A new dame with stringy yellow hair was yelping out the jazz tunes and making the place a den of tor- ment. “ Hey, sister!” I saluted. other girl that works here?” “Oh,” she warbled, fluffing out her hair and slumping on one hip, “‘ you wanna know where the other sugar baby blowed to? What’s the matter with me, kid?” ‘Nothing, I hope,” I come back at her, “Where is she?” “That cute little parsnip with the brown bob?” ‘‘VYe-ah, where is she? Huh?” “ Whaddyuh wanna know fer?” “T’m her friend.” “ Gee, some girls get all the luck. Well, I hate to say it, but your cute little play- mate’s punched the big time clock.” “T don’t get you. Come on now, sister, no kidding,” I said, getting madder by the minute. “ Where’s the “ Well, she got run over, that’s all. Aw- ful, ain’t it?” “Run over?” I guiped. ‘“ Killed?” “Ve-ah. Ain’t it awful how folks can’t walk on the street without them taxis—” AND POLL. 725 I beat it out on the run. “Poll is dead. Poll is dead,” buzzed over and over in my ears. “ Just beginning to get some little posies in them cheeks of hers, too. And now a blamed taxi has to iron ’em all out.” It’s a wonder I didn’t get flattened out myself, tearing through traffic like a crazy man. Finally I come to Poll’s boarding house. ‘““T must see Annie,” I thought, ‘“ and have her tell me—” For a minute I stood outside the door. A queer, warm feeling come over me sudden and I knew then I loved the kid. I knocked. —- rattled the bolt and come out. It was Poll. I don’t know what I done. She must have thought I was a loon. All I know is her fingers kept stroking my hair and her heart was thumping close against my ear, “Bill!” she cried over and _ over, “What’s the matter, Bill?” But I only hugged her tighter. After a spell I shifted to low gear and she told me it was another girl that had got run over and that she had left the store for a dandy place, nice, refined and all, where the hours was much shorter, That night I took her down to a hunky little chop house on Twenty-third Street and she promised that she’d hook up with me for better or worse when I could scrape in a bit more cash. I said, too, that I was going to have her take music lessons, and some day soon she would make these opera birds hike back to the hick towns where they come from. I also hinted she’d better give up rooming with this dame Annie, now that she was pulling down bigger pay and could afford it. Time trickled by—things running pretty smooth, all in all. But somehow I couldn’t unload enough of them cigarette cases to furnish a flat decent and get a coon to chase the dust while Poll chased the keys. The ninth of May come round again— the day when I pulled the wilt thou—and we figured on having a little anniversary, going down to the same eating joint and doing the scene over again. We sure had the rehearsing down fine. EOMmMicoookxs (C@