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The tray of sandwiches, piled to an apex, scarcely endured one round of passing. The fluted tin tops of bottles were pried off. Tumblers clicked. There were the sing of suds and foamy overflowings. Enter Mr. Ed Kinealy, very brown and tight of suit, very black and pomaded of hair. "Oh, Ed!" This from Miss Kinealy between large mouthfuls of sandwich and somewhat jerkily from being dandled on Mr.
The ukulele was whanging again, and a couple or two, locked cheek to cheek, were undulating in a low-lidded kind of ecstasy. Finally, Cora Kinealy and Archie Sensenbrenner, rather uglily oblivious. A youth, frantic to outdistance a rival for the dancing-hand of Miss Gertie Cobb, stumbled across Miss Schump's carefully crossed ankles. "'Scuse," he said, without glancing back.
The desire to turn back, the sudden ache for the quietude of the little halo of lamplight and the swollen finger-joints of her mother in and out at work, were almost not to be withstood. "I You you and Mr. Sensenbrenner go on, Cora. I me not knowin' Gertie Cobb and all I I feel I'm intruding. You and him go on. Please!" Miss Kinealy crossed to her, kindly at once and sobered.
Archie Sensenbrenner, bounded on the north by a checked, deep-visored cap; on the south by a very bulldogged and very tan pair of number nines; on the east by Miss Cora Kinealy, very much of the occasion in a peaked hood faced in eider-down and a gay silk bag of slippers dangling; on the west by Miss Stella Schump, a pink scarf entwining her head like a Tanagra.
Sensenbrenner's knee, "Where's your friend where's John Gilly?" "Oh, Ed!" "Naouw, Eh-ud!" "I'll give you a slap on the wrist." "Naouw, Ed!" Delivered by those present in a chorus of catcalls and falsetto impersonations of Miss Kinealy in plaintive vein. "Now tell me where is he, Ed? Shut up every body! Where is he, Ed?" Mr. Kinealy shot a pair of very striped cuffs. "That guy had sense.
Are you intoxicated or only slightly dizzy?" "He lied about Cora Kinealy. He lied that little skunk lied." "Didn't you ask him to go there with you?" "Sure; but he's no amachure." "Are you?" "What?" "An amateur?" "No, this Jane ain't." "Will you go quietly into the next room with the matron and tell her all about it? The court does not want to have to deal too harshly with a girl like you.
Very often Miss Cora Kinealy, also of the children's shoes, would rock away an evening in that halo of lamplight, her hair illuminated to copper and her hands shuttling in and out at the business of knitting. There were frank personal discussions, no wider in diameter than the little circle of light itself. Why that girl 'ain't got beaus galore well, I give up!
"Sure." "Honest, if I wasn't already tagged and spoken for, I'd set my cap for him myself." "'Mother, mother, mother, pin a rose on me!" cried Mr. Sensenbrenner, with no great pertinence. Miss Kinealy threw him a northwest glance. "Ain't he the cut-up, Stella?" "He sure is." "Br-a-a-y!" said Mr. Sensenbrenner, again none too relevantly.
But to Stella Schump, neither elected nor electing to walk in greater glory, there was that about the Cobb front room thus lighted, thus animated, that gave her a sense of function a crowding around the heart. The neck of hallway might have been a strip of purple, awninged. There were greetings that rose in crescendo and falsetto. "Cora Kinealy! Hello, Cora! How's every little thing?"
"I just don't seem to take." "'I'll be pleased to have you call of a Saturday night, Mr. So-and-so. No one could say there's anything but the genteel in that. Those are just the words I used to say to your poor father when he was courtin'." "If only I I wouldn't turn all red!" "I bet Cora Kinealy would have asked him." "I I'll ask him, ma."
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