Torchy as a Pa | Page 4

do that sort of thing, I
understand."
"But she's rather a nice looking girl," insists Vee. "And see, she's half
smiling. I'm going to speak to her." Which she does, right off the bat. "I
hope you don't mind the onion perfume?" says Vee.
The strange young lady doesn't slam down the window and go off
tossin' her head, indignant, so she can't be a real New Yorker. Instead
she smiles and shows a couple of cheek dimples. "It smells mighty
good," says she. "I was just wondering what it could be."
"Won't you come over and find out?" says Vee, smilin' back.
"Yes, do come and join us," puts in Lucy Lee. "I'll open the hall door
for you."
"Why, I--I'd love to if--if I may," says the young lady.
And that's how, half an hour or so later, when all that was left of this
rinktum-diddy trick was some brown smears on five empty plates, we
begun hearin' the story of the face at the window. She's young Mrs.
William Fairfield, and she's been that exactly three months. Before that
she had been Miss Esther Hartley, of Turkey Run, Md., and Kaio Chow,
China. Papa Hartley had been a medical missionary and Esther, after
she got through at Wellesley, had joined him as a nurse and
kindergarten teacher. She'd been living in Kaio Chow for three years
and the mission outfit was getting along fine when some kind of a
Boxer mess broke out and they all had to leave. Coming back on an
Italian steamer from Genoa she met Bill, who'd been in aviation, and
there'd been some lovely moonlight nights and--well, Bill had
persuaded her that teaching young Chinks to learn c-a-t, cat, wouldn't
be half as nice as being Mrs. William Hartley. Besides, he had a good
position waiting for him in a big wholesale leather house right in New
York, and it would be such fun living among regular people.

"I suppose it is fun, too," says Esther, "but somehow I can't seem to get
used to it. Everyone here gives you such, cold, suspicious looks; even
the folks you meet in the hallways and elevator, as though they meant
to say, 'Don't you dare speak to me. I don't know who or what you are,
so don't come near.' They're like that, you know. Why, the street
gamins of Kaio Chow were not much worse when I first went there.
Yes, they did throw stones at me a few times, but in less than a month
they were calling me the Doctor Lady and letting me tell them how
wrong it was to spend so much time gambling around the food carts. Of
course, they kept right on gambling for fried fish and rice cakes, but
they would grin friendly when they saw me. Up to tonight no one in
New York has even smiled at me.
"It's such a wonderful place, too; and so big, you would almost think
there was enough to share with, strangers. But they seem to resent my
being here at all, so I go out very little now when I am alone. And as
Bill is away all day, and sometimes has to work evenings as well, I am
alone a great deal. About the only place I can see the sky from and
other people is this little kitchen window. So I stay there a lot, and I am
sorry to say that often I'm foolish enough to wish myself back at the
mission among all those familiar yellow faces, where I could stand on
the bamboo shaded galleries and hear the hubbub in the compound, and
watch the coolies wading about in the distant rice fields. Isn't that silly?
There must be something queer about me."
"Not so awfully queer," says Vee. "You're lonesome, that's all."
"No more than I am, I'm sure," says Lucy Lee. "I wonder if there are
many others?"
"Only two or three million more," says I. "That's why the cabarets and
movie shows are so popular."
That starts us talking over what there was for folks to do in New York
evenings, and while we can dope out quite a lot of different ways of
passin' the time between 8 p. m. and midnight, nearly every one is so
expensive that the average young couple can't afford to tackle 'em
more'n once a week or so. The other evenings they sit at home in the

flat.
"And yet," says young Mrs. Fairfield, "hardly any of them but could
find a congenial group of people if--if they only knew where to look
and how to get acquainted with each other. Why, right in this block I've
noticed ever so many who I'm sure are rather nice. But there seems to
be no way