Argosy, Vol. 122, No. 1 — page 125: what you’re looking at

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

breakfast,’ - Da Supp inner> Toe B. Stilson . IGHT, Thirty! Hey! Get a move on R you with them dishes!”’ Clatter! Clink! Crash! “‘ Three turtles—Nineteen!” ‘“ Full order brown bread—Eleven!” “ Half o’ clams on the half—Fifteen!” The air quivered with the vibration of vocal edible fragments, swirled in the swish of the electric fans. Big, steaming coffee urns sizzled and hissed. ‘The cement floor- ing threw up into the din the slithering scuffle of shapeless, high-heeled shoes. Dishes rattled and crackled. In the front window the griddle spat viciously as cold batter met hot grease and hotter steel. Outside, irTwenty-Third Street, surface- cars crunched and banged, motor wagons shrieked, and heavy drays pounded. Babel and Babylon of the Twentieth Century were rising to the demands of the day’s business. Through the inner vapor of racket Mar- tha Anne Ellison walked uncertainly. She started at the sound of her own voice as she projected a meek little wireless message into the storm of sound: “A well-browned baked apple—Six!”’ Little chance for euphony in that order. From between the barred shelves of his cage, the dark-skinned counter-man shot his sweating face at her, and cursed her under his breath with Oriental fluency. “ Coma-agin, you Seex-a-girl! Say heem louder!”’ he croaked. Behind Martha Anne the raucous voice of the house-manager rose above the chaos: “Hey, Six! Six, right! Six/ You deaf? That ain’t no way to set a gentleman up! Coffee to his left! And do you expect him | to handle his knife by the blade? Experi- enced help, eh? Huh!” The withering contempt injected into the last remark brought a pink flush to the tips of Martha Anne’s pretty ears.. Uncertainly she moved back again to her “ station,” and straightened out the prandial dtsarray with fingers which trembled. There was a close analogy between the temper within her and the steaming protest of the choking coffee urns. But she forced herself to remember that she was getting a “‘ chance’; that she was only Number Six at Giles’s twenty-four- hour restaurant. She had to remember too what she was fast learning: that a ‘“ hash- house,” in common with a factory. and a department store, is one of the last places in America where the combination of beauty and goodness receives its due consideration. Beauty without may claim the insolent familiarity which passes for courtesy with floorwalker, foreman, and manager. Beauty ‘with gets the “ hook ” every time. Martha Anne Ellison was both beautiful and good—and she was feeling the hook. It was all new to. Martha Anne. There was all the difference in the world between Mrs. Colton’s cool, quiet, well-ordered little boarding-house dining-room in Kingston- on-the Hunson, and the culinary tornado which raged without cease at Giles’s. Martha Anne worked, not because of any II5 cComiclbooks.com