The Voice of the City | Page 8

him," said the young lady. "I think you are awfully
mean not to let me have that St. Bernard. I sent Armand for Walter. I
was so angry with you."
"Be sensible, Bess," said the young man, taking her arm. "That dog isn't
safe. He has bitten two or three people around the kennels. Come now,
let's go tell auntie we are in good humor again."
Arm in arm, they moved away.
John Hopkins walked to his flat. The janitor's five-year-old daughter
was playing on the steps' Hopkins gave her a nice, red rose and walked
up- stairs.
Mrs. Hopkins was philandering with curl-papers.
"Get your cigar?" she asked, disinterestedly.
"Sure," said Hopkins, "and I knocked around a while outside. It's a nice
night."
He sat upon the hornblende sofa, took out the stump of his cigar,
lighted it, and gazed at the grace- ful figures in "The Storm" on the

opposite wall.
"I was telling you," said he, "about Mr. Whipple's suit. It's a gray, with
an invisible check, and it looks fine."

A LICKPENNY LOVER
There, were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them.
She was eighteen and a selleslady in the gents' gloves. Here she became
versed in two varieties of human beings - the kind of gents who buy
their gloves in department stores and the kind of women who buy
gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the
human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened
to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in
a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Per-
haps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had
mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as
she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the other
animals with cunning.
For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm
poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind
her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your band over the
tape-line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you
looked again you wondered how she had come by Minerva's eyes.
When the floorwalker was not looking Masie chewed tutti frutti; when
he was looking she gazed up as if at the clouds and smiled wistfully.
That is the shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to shun it unless you are
well fortified with callosity of the heart, caramels and a congeniality for
the capers of Cupid. This smile belonged to Masie's recreation hours
and not to the store; but the floorwalker must have his own. He is the
Shylock of the stores. When be comes nosing around the bridge of his
nose is a toll-bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or "git" when be looks toward a
pretty girl. Of course not all floor- walkers are thus. Only a few days
ago the papers printed news of one over eighty years of age.
One day Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, trav- eller, poet,
automobilist, happened to enter the Big- gest Store. It is due to him to
add that his visit was not voluntary. Filial duty took him by the collar
and dragged him inside, while his mother philandered among the
bronze and terra-cotta statuettes.

Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order to shoot a few
minutes on the wing. His need for gloves was genuine; be had forgotten
to bring a pair with him. But his action hardly calls for apology, be-
cause be had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.
As he neared the vicinity of his fate be hesitated, suddenly conscious of
this unknown phase of Cupid's less worthy profession.
Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over the
counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling
girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of
coquetry. Carter would have re- treated, but he had gone too far. Masie
confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as
coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an
iceberg drifting in Southern seas.
And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., felt a warm flush rise
to his aristocratically pale face. But not from diffidence. The blush was
intellectual in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood in the ranks
of the ready-made youths who wooed the gig- gling girls at other
counters. Himself leaned against the oaken trysting place of a cockney
Cupid with a desire in his heart for the favor of a glove salesgirl. He
was no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And then be felt a sudden
tolerance for them, and an elating, courageous