Buttered Side Down | Page 9

clasped and unclasped his hands uncomfortably. "I can't figure out
why you should care how I finish."
"No reason," answered Jo. "Not a darned one. I wasn't ever in love with
your ma, like the guy on the stage; and I never owed your pa a cent. So
it ain't a guilty conscience. I guess it's just pure cussedness, and a
hankerin' for a new investment. I'm curious to know how'll you turn out.
You've got the makin's of what the newspapers call a Leading Citizen,
even if you did fall down once. If I'd ever had time to get married,
which I never will have, a first-class hotel bein' more worry and
expense than a Pittsburg steel magnate's whole harem, I'd have wanted
somebody to do the same for my kid. That sounds slushy, but it's
straight."
"I don't seem to know how to thank you," began Ted, a little husky as
to voice.
"Call around to-morrow morning," interrupted Jo Haley., briskly, "and
Minnie Wenzel will show you the ropes. You and her can work
together for a couple of months. After then she's leaving to make her
underwear, and that. I should think she'd have a bale of it by this time.
Been embroidering them shimmy things and lunch cloths back of the
desk when she thought I wasn't lookin' for the last six months."
Ted came down next morning at 8 A.M. with his nerve between his
teeth and the chip still balanced lightly on his shoulder. Five minutes
later Minnie Wenzel knocked it off. When Jo Haley introduced the two
jocularly, knowing that they had originally met in the First Reader

room, Miss Wenzel acknowledged the introduction icily by lifting her
left eyebrow slightly and drawing down the corners of her mouth. Her
air of hauteur was a triumph, considering that she was handicapped by
black sateen sleevelets.
I wonder how one could best describe Miss Wenzel? There is one of
her in every small town. Let me think (business of hand on brow). Well,
she always paid eight dollars for her corsets when most girls in a
similar position got theirs for fifty-nine cents in the basement. Nature
had been kind to her. The hair that had been a muddy brown in
Minnie's schoolgirl days it had touched with a magic red-gold wand.
Birdie Callahan always said that Minnie was working only to wear out
her old clothes.
After the introduction Miss Wenzel followed Jo Haley into the lobby.
She took no pains to lower her voice.
"Well I must say, Mr. Haley, you've got a fine nerve! If my gentleman
friend was to hear of my working with an ex-con I wouldn't be
surprised if he'd break off the engagement. I should think you'd have
some respect for the feelings of a lady with a name to keep up, and
engaged to a swell fellow like Mr. Schwartz."
"Say, listen, m' girl," replied Jo Haley. "The law don't cover all the
tricks. But if stuffing an order was a criminal offense I'll bet your swell
traveling man would be doing a life term."
Ted worked that day with his teeth set so that his jaws ached next
morning. Minnie Wenzel spoke to him only when necessary and then in
terms of dollars and cents. When dinner time came she divested herself
of the black sateen sleevelets, wriggled from the shoulders down a la
Patricia O'Brien, produced a chamois skin, and disappeared in the
direction of the washroom. Ted waited until the dining-room was
almost deserted. Then he went in to dinner alone. Some one in white
wearing an absurd little pocket handkerchief of an apron led him to a
seat in a far corner of the big room. Ted did not lift his eyes higher than
the snowy square of the apron. The Apron drew out a chair, shoved it
under Ted's knees in the way Aprons have, and thrust a printed menu at

him.
"Roast beef, medium," said Ted, without looking up.
"Bless your heart, yuh ain't changed a bit. I remember how yuh used to
jaw when it was too well done," said the Apron, fondly.
Ted's head came up with a jerk.
"So yuh will cut yer old friends, is it?" grinned Birdie Callahan. "If this
wasn't a public dining-room maybe yuh'd shake hands with a poor but
proud workin' girrul. Yer as good lookin' a divil as ever, Mister Ted."
Ted's hand shot out and grasped hers. "Birdie! I could weep on your
apron! I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Just to look at you
makes me homesick. What in Sam Hill are you doing here?"
"Waitin'. After yer ma died, seemed like I didn't care t' work fer no
other privit fam'ly, so I came