Tales of the Jazz Age | Page 5

I get the feel of a pair of dice they just roll for me."
Clark grinned appreciatively,
"I never could learn to set 'em so's they'd do what I wanted. Wish you'd

shoot with Nancy Lamar some day and take all her money away from
her. She will roll 'em with the boys and she loses more than her daddy
can afford to give her. I happen to know she sold a good ring last
month to pay a debt."
The Jelly-bean was noncommittal.
"The white house on Elm Street still belong to you?"
Jim shook his head.
"Sold. Got a pretty good price, seein' it wasn't in a good part of town no
more. Lawyer told me to put it into Liberty bonds. But Aunt Mamie got
so she didn't have no sense, so it takes all the interest to keep her up at
Great Farms Sanitarium.
"Hm."
"I got an old uncle up-state an' I reckin I kin go up there if ever I get
sure enough pore. Nice farm, but not enough niggers around to work it.
He's asked me to come up and help him, but I don't guess I'd take much
to it. Too doggone lonesome--" He broke off suddenly. "Clark, I want
to tell you I'm much obliged to you for askin' me out, but I'd be a lot
happier if you'd just stop the car right here an' let me walk back into
town."
"Shucks!" Clark grunted. "Do you good to step out. You don't have to
dance--just get out there on the floor and shake."
"Hold on," exclaimed. Jim uneasily, "Don't you go leadin' me up to any
girls and leavin' me there so I'll have to dance with 'em."
Clark laughed.
"'Cause," continued Jim desperately, "without you swear you won't do
that I'm agoin' to get out right here an' my good legs goin' carry me
back to Jackson street."
They agreed after some argument that Jim, unmolested by females, was

to view the spectacle from a secluded settee in the corner where Clark
would join him whenever he wasn't dancing.
So ten o'clock found the Jelly-bean with his legs crossed and his arms
conservatively folded, trying to look casually at home and politely
uninterested in the dancers. At heart he was torn between
overwhelming self-consciousness and an intense curiosity as to all that
went on around him. He saw the girls emerge one by one from the
dressing-room, stretching and pluming themselves like bright birds,
smiling over their powdered shoulders at the chaperones, casting a
quick glance around to take in the room and, simultaneously, the
room's reaction to their entrance--and then, again like birds, alighting
and nestling in the sober arms of their waiting escorts. Sally Carrol
Hopper, blonde and lazy-eyed, appeared clad in her favorite pink and
blinking like an awakened rose. Marjorie Haight, Marylyn Wade,
Harriet Cary, all the girls he had seen loitering down Jackson Street by
noon, now, curled and brilliantined and delicately tinted for the
overhead lights, were miraculously strange Dresden figures of pink and
blue and red and gold, fresh from the shop and not yet fully dried.
He had been there half an hour, totally uncheered by Clark's jovial
visits which were each one accompanied by a "Hello, old boy, how you
making out?" and a slap at his knee. A dozen males had spoken to him
or stopped for a moment beside him, but he knew that they were each
one surprised at finding him there and fancied that one or two were
even slightly resentful. But at half past ten his embarrassment suddenly
left him and a pull of breathless interest took him completely out of
himself--Nancy Lamar had come out of the dressing-room.
She was dressed in yellow organdie, a costume of a hundred cool
corners, with three tiers of ruffles and a big bow in back until she shed
black and yellow around her in a sort of phosphorescent lustre. The
Jelly-bean's eyes opened wide and a lump arose in his throat. For she
stood beside the door until her partner hurried up. Jim recognized him
as the stranger who had been with her in Joe Ewing's car that afternoon.
He saw her set her arms akimbo and say something in a low voice, and
laugh. The man laughed too and Jim experienced the quick pang of a

weird new kind of pain. Some ray had passed between the pair, a shaft
of beauty from that sun that had warmed him a moment since. The
Jelly-bean felt suddenly like a weed in a shadow.
A minute later Clark approached him, bright-eyed and glowing.
"Hi, old man" he cried with some lack of originality. "How you making
out?"
Jim replied that he was making out as well as could be expected.
"You