pointed out her foot, velvet-slippered with high Cuban heels, and slightly lifted the tight black skirt, exposing a trim ankle and delicate swell of calf, the white flesh gleaming through the thinnest and flimsiest of fifty-cent black silk stockings. She was slender, not tall, yet the due round lines of womanhood were hers. On her white shirtwaist was a pleated jabot of cheap lace, caught with a large novelty pin of imitation coral. Over the shirtwaist was a natty jacket, elbow-sleeved, and to the elbows she wore gloves of imitation suede. The one essentially natural touch about her appearance was the few curls, strangers to curling-irons, that escaped from under the little naughty hat of black velvet pulled low over the eyes.
Mary's dark eyes flashed with joy at the sight, and with a swift little run she caught the other girl in her arms and kissed her in a breast-crushing embrace. She released her, blushing at her own extravagance.
“You look good to me,” she cried, in extenuation. “If I was a man I couldn't keep my hands off you. I'd eat you, I sure would.”
They went out of the pavilion hand in hand, and on through the sunshine they strolled, swinging hands gaily, reacting exuberantly from the week of deadening toil. They hung over the railing of the bear-pit, shivering at the huge and lonely denizen, and passed quickly on to ten minutes of laughter at the monkey cage. Crossing the grounds, they looked down into the little race track on the bed of a natural amphitheater where the early afternoon games were to take place. After that they explored the woods, threaded by countless paths, ever opening out in new surprises of green-painted rustic tables and benches in leafy nooks, many of which were already pre-empted by family parties. On a grassy slope, tree-surrounded, they spread a newspaper and sat down on the short grass already tawny-dry under the California sun. Half were they minded to do this because of the grateful indolence after six days of insistent motion, half in conservation for the hours of dancing to come.
“Bert Wanhope'll be sure to come,” Mary chattered. “An' he said he was going to bring Billy Roberts—'Big Bill,' all the fellows call him. He's just a big boy, but he's awfully tough. He's a prizefighter, an' all the girls run after him. I'm afraid of him. He ain't quick in talkin'. He's more like that big bear we saw. Brr-rf! Brr-rf!—bite your head off, just like that. He ain't really a prize-fighter. He's a teamster—belongs to the union. Drives for Coberly and Morrison. But sometimes he fights in the clubs. Most of the fellows are scared of him. He's got a bad temper, an' he'd just as soon hit a fellow as eat, just like that. You won't like him, but he's a swell dancer. He's heavy, you know, an' he just slides and glides around. You wanta have a dance with'm anyway. He's a good spender, too. Never pinches. But my!—he's got one temper.”
The talk wandered on, a monologue on Mary's part, that centered always on Bert Wanhope.
“You and he are pretty thick,” Saxon ventured.
“I'd marry'm to-morrow,” Mary flashed out impulsively. Then her face went bleakly forlorn, hard almost in its helpless pathos. “Only, he never asks me. He's …” Her pause was broken by sudden passion. “You watch out for him, Saxon, if he ever comes foolin' around you. He's no good. Just the same, I'd marry him to-morrow. He'll never get me any other way.” Her mouth opened, but instead of speaking she drew a long sigh. “It's a funny world, ain't it?” she added. “More like a scream. And all the stars are worlds, too. I wonder where God hides. Bert Wanhope says there ain't no God. But he's just terrible. He says the most terrible things. I believe in God. Don't you? What do you think about God, Saxon?”
Saxon shrugged her shoulders and laughed.
“But if we do wrong we get ours, don't we?” Mary persisted. “That's what they all say, except Bert. He says he don't care what he does, he'll never get his, because when he dies he's dead, an' when he's dead he'd like to see any one put anything across on him that'd wake him up. Ain't he terrible, though? But it's all so funny. Sometimes I get scared when I think God's keepin' an eye on me all the time. Do you think he knows what I'm sayin' now? What do you think he looks like, anyway?”
“I don't know,” Saxon answered. “He's just a funny proposition.”
“Oh!” the other gasped.
“He IS, just the same, from what all people say of him,” Saxon went on stoutly. “My brother thinks he looks like Abraham Lincoln. Sarah thinks he has whiskers.”
“An' I never think of him with his hair parted,” Mary confessed, daring the thought and shivering with apprehension. “He just couldn't have his hair parted. THAT'D be funny.”
“You know that little, wrinkly Mexican that sells wire puzzles?” Saxon queried. “Well, God somehow always reminds me of him.”
Mary laughed outright.
“Now that IS funny. I never thought of him like that. How do you make it out?”
“Well, just like the little Mexican, he seems to spend his time peddling puzzles. He passes a puzzle out to everybody, and they spend all their lives tryin' to work it out. They all get stuck. I can't work mine out. I don't know where to start. And look at the puzzle he passed Sarah. And she's part of Tom's puzzle, and she only makes his worse. And they all, an' everybody I know—you, too—are part of my puzzle.”
“Mebbe the puzzles is all right,” Mary considered. “But God don't look like that yellow little Greaser. THAT I won't fall for. God don't look like anybody. Don't you remember on the wall at the Salvation Army it says 'God is a spirit'?”
“That's another one of his puzzles, I guess, because nobody knows what a spirit looks like.”
“That's right, too.” Mary shuddered with reminiscent fear. “Whenever I try to think of God as a spirit, I can see Hen Miller all wrapped up in a sheet an' runnin' us girls. We didn't know, an' it scared the life out of us. Little Maggie Murphy fainted dead away, and Beatrice Peralta fell an' scratched her face horrible. When I think of a spirit all I can see is a white sheet runnin' in the dark. Just the same, God don't look like a Mexican, an' he don't wear his hair parted.”
A strain of music from the dancing pavilion brought both girls scrambling to their feet.
“We can get a couple of dances in before we eat,” Mary proposed. “An' then it'll be afternoon an' all the fellows 'll be here. Most of them are pinchers—that's why they don't come early, so as to get out of taking the girls to dinner. But Bert's free with his money, an' so is Billy. If we can beat the other girls to it, they'll take us to the restaurant. Come on, hurry, Saxon.”
There were few couples on the floor when they arrived at the pavilion, and the two girls essayed the first waltz together.
“There's Bert now,” Saxon whispered, as they came around the second time.
“Don't take any notice of them,” Mary whispered back. “We'll just keep on goin'. They needn't think we're chasin' after them.”
But Saxon noted the heightened color in the other's cheek, and felt her quicker breathing.
“Did you see that other one?” Mary asked, as she backed Saxon in a long slide across the far end of the pavilion. “That was Billy Roberts. Bert said he'd come. He'll take you to dinner, and Bert'll take me. It's goin' to be a swell day, you'll see. My! I only wish the music'll hold out till we can get back to the other end.”
Down the floor they danced, on man-trapping and dinner-getting intent, two fresh young things that undeniably danced well and that were delightfully surprised when the music stranded them perilously near to their desire.
Bert
