but excitable, and they found a little extra money useful for red slippers and nut-center chocolates.
"Juanita — what a lil darling — she understands a fellow's troubles," said Elmer, as they balanced down the slushy steps at the grimy stone station of Cato.
When Elmer, as a Freshman just arrived from the pool-halls and frame high school of Paris, Kansas, had begun to learn the decorum of amour, he had been a boisterous lout who looked shamefaced in the presence of gay ladies, who blundered against tables, who shouted and desired to let the world know how valiantly vicious he was being. He was still rather noisy and proud of wickedness when he was in a state of liquor, but in three and a quarter years of college he had learned how to approach girls. He was confident, he was easy, he was almost quiet; he could look them in the eye with fondness and amusement.
Juanita and Nellie lived with Nellie's widow aunt — she was a moral lady, but she knew how to keep out of the way — in three rooms over a corner grocery. They had just returned from work when Elmer and Jim stamped up the rickety outside wooden steps. Juanita was lounging on a divan which even a noble Oriental red and yellow cover (displaying a bearded Wazir, three dancing ladies in chiffon trousers, a narghile, and a mosque slightly larger than the narghile) could never cause to look like anything except a disguised bed. She was curled up, pinching her ankle with one tired and nervous hand, and reading a stimulating chapter of Laura Jean Libbey. Her shirt-waist was open at the throat, and down her slim stocking was a grievous run. She was so un-Juanita-like — an ash-blonde, pale and lovely, with an ill-restrained passion in her blue eyes.
Nellie, a buxom jolly child, dark as a Jewess, was wearing a frowsy dressing-gown. She was making coffee and narrating her grievances against her employer, the pious dressmaker, while Juanita paid no attention whatever. The young men crept into the room without knocking. "You devils — sneaking in like this, and us not dressed!" yelped Nellie.
Jim sidled up to her, dragged her plump hand away from the handle of the granite-ware coffee-pot, and giggled, "But aren't you glad to see us?"
"I don't know whether I am or not! Now you quit! You behave, will you?"
Rarely did Elmer seem more deft than Jim Lefferts. But now he was feeling his command over women — certain sorts of women. Silent, yearning at Juanita, commanding her with hot eyes, he sank on the temporarily Oriental couch, touched her pale hand with his broad finger-tips, and murmured, "Why you poor kid, you look so tired!"
"I am and — You hadn't ought to come here this afternoon. Nell's aunt threw a conniption fit the last time you were here."
"Hurray for aunty! But you're glad to see me?"
She would not answer.
"Aren't you?"
Bold eyes on hers that turned uneasily away, looked back, and sought the safety of the blank wall.
"Aren't you?"
She would not answer.
"Juanita! And I've longed for you something fierce, ever since I saw you!" His fingers touched her throat, but softly. "Aren't you a little glad?"
As she turned her head, for a second she looked at him with embarrassed confession. She sharply whispered, "No — don't!" as he caught her hand, but she moved nearer to him, leaned against his shoulder.
"You're so big and strong," she sighed.
"But, golly, you don't know how I need you! The president, old Quarles — quarrels is right, by golly, ha, ha, ha! — 'member I was telling you about him? — he's laying for me because he thinks it was me and Jim that let the bats loose in chapel. And I get so sick of that gosh-awful Weekly Bible Study — all about these holy old gazebos. And then I think about you, and gosh, if you were just sitting on the other side of the stove from me in my room there, with your cute lil red slippers cocked up on the nickel rail — gee, how happy I'd be! You don't think I'm just a bonehead, do you?"
Jim and Nellie were at the stage now of nudging each other and bawling, "Hey, quit, will yuh!" as they stood over the coffee.
"Say, you girls change your shirts and come on out and we'll blow you to dinner, and maybe we'll dance a little," proclaimed Jim.
"We can't," said Nellie. "Aunty's sore as a pup because we was up late at a dance night before last. We got to stay home, and you boys got to beat it before she comes in."
"Aw, come on!"
"No, we can't!"
"Yuh, fat chance you girls staying home and knitting! You got some fellows coming in and you want to get rid of us, that's what's the trouble."
"It is not, Mr. James Lefferts, and it wouldn't be any of your business if it was!"
While Jim and Nellie squabbled, Elmer slipped his hand about Juanita's shoulder, slowly pressed her against him. He believed with terrible conviction that she was beautiful, that she was glorious, that she was life. There was heaven in the softness of her curving shoulder, and her pale flesh was living silk.
"Come on in the other room," he pleaded.
"Oh — no — not now."
He gripped her arm.
"Well — don't come in for a minute," she fluttered. Aloud, to the others, "I'm going to do my hair. Looks just ter-ble!"
She slipped into the room beyond. A certain mature self-reliance dropped from Elmer's face, and he was like a round-faced big baby, somewhat frightened. With efforts to appear careless, he fumbled about the room and dusted a pink and gilt vase with his large crumpled handkerchief. He was near the inner door.
He peeped at Jim and Nellie. They were holding hands, while the coffee-pot was cheerfully boiling over. Elmer's heart thumped. He slipped through the door and closed it, whimpering, as in terror:
"Oh — Juanita — "
6
They were gone, Elmer and Jim, before the return of Nellie's aunt. As they were not entertaining the girls, they dined on pork chops, coffee, and apple pie at the Maginnis Lunch.
It has already been narrated that afterward, in the Old Home Sample Room, Elmer became philosophical and misogynistic as he reflected that Juanita was unworthy of his generous attention; it has been admitted that he became drunk and pugnacious.
As he wavered through the sidewalk slush, on Jim's arm, as his head cleared, his rage increased against the bully who was about to be encouraged to insult his goo' frien' and roommate. His shoulders straightened, his fists clenched, and he began to look for the scoundrel among the evening crowd of mechanics and coal-miners.
They came to the chief corner of the town. A little way down the street, beside the red brick wall of the Congress Hotel, some one was talking from the elevation of a box, surrounded by a jeering gang.
"What they picking on that fella that's talking for? They better let him alone!" rejoiced Elmer, throwing off Jim's restraining hand, dashing down the side street and into the crowd. He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain — unrighteous violence in a righteous cause. He pushed through the audience, jabbed his elbow into the belly of a small weak man, and guffawed at the cluck of distress. Then he came to a halt, unhappy and
