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If it hadn't been for the odd shade of hair and the eyes I wouldn't have remembered her at all for the stringy, sloppy dressed flapper I used to see going in and out with the growler or helping with the sweepin'. Mame Stribble had bloomed out, for a fact. Also she'd learned how to use a lip-stick and an eyebrow pencil. I couldn't say whether she'd touched up her complexion or not.
"Then perhaps Marie will explain to me later. For the present, M'sieur, I leave you." "Sorry if I've put you in bad, Miss Stribble," says I, as the Madame sweeps out. "Oh, that's all right," says Mame, tossin' her chin. "She'll get over it. And, anyway, I was takin' a chance." "So I noticed," says I. "What was the big idea, though?" "Just sizin' up the people who pass by," says Mame.
"Stribble?" says I. "Oh, yes, the poddy old party who did all the hard sitting around while his wife did the work. What reminded you of them?" "I'm sure I don't know," says Vee. "But a month or so ago I saw the name printed in an army list of returned casualty cases there was a boy, you know, and a girl and I thought then that we ought to look them up and find out.
"Gawd knows where she is. I don't." "Why, what do you mean?" asks Vee. "She she hasn't left home, has she?" "Oh, she sleeps here," goes on Ma Stribble, "and comes home for some of her meals, but the rest of the time " Here she hunches her shoulders. "Huh!" grunts Pa Stribble. "If you could see the way she togs herself out like some chorus girl.
"Where?" asks Vee, going to the point, as usual. Miss Stribble glances accusin' at paw and maw. "Oh, they've been roastin' me, have they?" she demands. "Well, I can't help it. What they want to know is how much I'm gettin' so I'll have to give up more. But it don't work. See! I pay my board good board, at that and I'm not goin' to have paw snoopin' around my place tryin' to queer me.
It seems Ma Stribble was still shovelin' most of the ashes and scrubbin' the halls as well; while Pa Stribble, fatter than ever and in the same greasy old togs, continues to camp in a rickety arm chair by the front window, with a pail of suds at his right elbow. Yes, the one mentioned in the casualty list was their Jimmy. Only he hadn't come back a trench hero, exactly.
I don't know where she gets all them flossy things and she won't tell. Paint on her face, too. It's bringin' shame on us, I tell her." Mrs. Stribble sighs heavy. "And we was tryin' to bring her up decent," says she. "I got her a job, waitin' in a lunch room up on' the Circle. But she was too good for that. Oh, my, yes! Chucked it after the first week.
And here only yesterday Crosby comes crashin' into the Corrugated general offices, pounds me enthusiastic on the back, and announces that I'm the best friend he's got in the world. "Meanin', I expect," says I, "that Miss Stribble and you have been gettin' on?" "Old man," says Crosby, his mild blue eyes sparklin', "she's a wonderful girl wonderful! And within a week she's going to be Mrs.
With that she calls up an assistant, shoos me into a back parlor and asks me to wait a moment, leavin' Crosby out front with his mouth open. And two minutes later in breezes the Madame leadin' Mame Stribble by the arm. The lady boss seems somewhat peeved, too. "Tell me," she demands, "is this the street dress which you observed in the window?" "That's the very one," says I. "Hah!" says she.
"And yet when he was livin' in one of our apartments he passed me every day without seein' me at all." "Oh, ho!" says I. "You took notice of him, though, did you?" Miss Stribble pinks up at that. "Yes, I did," says she. "He struck me as a reg'lar feller, one of the kind you could tie to. And when he'd almost step over me without noticin' well, I'll admit that sort of hurt.
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