Buttered Side Down | Page 6

your mind before it happens."
"My name's Augustus G. Eddy," announced the Kid Next Door,
solemnly. "Back home they always called me Gus. You peel that
orange while I unroll the top of this sardine can. I'm guilty of having
interrupted you in the middle of what the girls call a good cry, and I
know you'll have to get it out of your system some way. Take a bite of
apple and then wade right in and tell me what you're doing in this burg
if you don't like it."
"This thing ought to have slow music," began Gertie. "It's pathetic. I
came to Chicago from Beloit, Wisconsin, because I thought that little
town was a lonesome hole for a vivacious creature like me. Lonesome!
Listen while I laugh a low mirthless laugh. I didn't know anything

about the three-ply, double-barreled, extra heavy brand of
lonesomeness that a big town like this can deal out. Talk about your
desert wastes! They're sociable and snug compared to this. I know
three-fourths of the people in Beloit, Wisconsin, by their first names.
I've lived here six months and I'm not on informal terms with anybody
except Teddy, the landlady's dog, and he's a trained rat-and-book-agent
terrier, and not inclined to overfriendliness. When I clerked at the
Enterprise Store in Beloit the women used to come in and ask for
something we didn't carry just for an excuse to copy the way the lace
yoke effects were planned in my shirtwaists. You ought to see the way
those same shirtwaist stack up here. Why, boy, the lingerie waists that
the other girls in my department wear make my best hand-tucked effort
look like a simple English country blouse. They're so dripping with
Irish crochet and real Val and Cluny insertions that it's a wonder the
girls don't get stoop-shouldered carrying 'em around."
"Hold on a minute," commanded Gus. "This thing is uncanny. Our
cases dovetail like the deductions in a detective story. Kneel here at my
feet, little daughter, and I'll tell you the story of my sad young life. I'm
no child of the city streets, either. Say, I came to this town because I
thought there was a bigger field for me in Gents' Furnishings. Joke,
what?"
But Gertie didn't smile. She gazed up at Gus, and Gus gazed down at
her, and his fingers fiddled absently with the big bow at the end of her
braid.
"And isn't there?" asked Gertie, sympathetically.
"Girlie, I haven't saved twelve dollars since I came. I'm no tightwad,
and I don't believe in packing everything away into a white marble
mausoleum, but still a gink kind of whispers to himself that some day
he'll be furnishing up a kitchen pantry of his own."
"Oh!" said Gertie.
"And let me mention in passing," continued Gus, winding the ribbon
bow around his finger, "that in the last hour or so that whisper has been

swelling to a shout."
"Oh!" said Gertie again.
"You said it. But I couldn't buy a secondhand gas stove with what I've
saved in the last half-year here. Back home they used to think I was a
regular little village John Drew, I was so dressy. But here I look like a
yokel on circus day compared to the other fellows in the store. All they
need is a field glass strung over their shoulder to make them look like a
clothing ad in the back of a popular magazine. Say, girlie, you've got
the prettiest hair I've seen since I blew in here. Look at that braid!
Thick as a rope! That's no relation to the piles of jute that the Flossies
here stack on their heads. And shines! Like satin."
"It ought to," said Gertrude, wearily. "I brush it a hundred strokes every
night. Sometimes I'm so beat that I fall asleep with my brush in the air.
The manager won't stand for any romping curls or hooks-and-eyes that
don't connect. It keeps me so busy being beautiful, and what the society
writers call `well groomed,' that I don't have time to sew the buttons on
my underclothes."
"But don't you get some amusement in the evening?" marveled Gus.
"What was the matter with you and the other girls in the store? Can't
you hit it off?"
"Me? No. I guess I was too woodsy for them. I went out with them a
couple of times. I guess they're nice girls all right; but they've got what
you call a broader way of looking at things than I have. Living in a
little town all your life makes you narrow. These girls!--Well, maybe
I'll get educated up to their plane some day, but----"
"No, you don't!" hissed Gus. "Not if I can help it."
"But you can't," replied Gertie, sweetly. "My,