stray hair
net, or the plans and specifications for buildin' a spiced layer cake
with only two eggs. Anyway, right in the middle of the hunt she cuts
loose with the staccato stuff, indicatin' surprise, remorse, sudden
grief and other emotions.
"Eh?" says I. "Is it a woman-eatin' mouse, or did you grab a hatpin by
the business end?"
"Silly!" says she. "Look what I ran across, Torchy." And she flips an
engraved card at me.
I picks it on the fly, reads the neat script on it, and then hunches my
shoulders. "Well, well!" says I. "At home after September 15, 309 West
Hundred and Umpty Umpt street. How interestin'! But who is this Mr. and
Mrs. Hamilton Porter Blake, anyway?"
"Why, don't you remember?" says Vee. "We sent them that darling
urn-shaped candy jar. That is Lucy Lee and her dear Captain."
"Oh, then she got him, did she?" says I. "I knew he was a goner when she
went after him so strong. And now I expect they're livin' happy ever
after?"
Maybe you don't remember my tellin' you about Lucy Lee, the Virginia
butterfly we took in over the week-end once and how I had to scratch
around one Saturday to find some male dinner mate for her, and picked
this hard-boiled egg from the bond room, one of these buddin' John D.'s
who keeps an expense account and shudders every time he passes a
millinery store or thinks what two orchestra seats and a double taxi
fare would set him back. And, the female being the more expensive of the
species, he has trained himself to be girl proof. That's what he lets on
to me beforehand, but inside of forty-eight minutes by the watch, or
between his first spoonful of tomato soup and his last sip of cafe noir,
this Lucy Lee party had him so dizzy in the head he didn't know whether
he was gazin' into her lovely eyes or being run down by a truck. Honest,
some of these babidolls with high voltage lamps like that ought to be
made to use dimmers. For look! Just as she's got him all wound up in the
net, what does Lucy Lee do but flit sudden off to the Berkshires, where
a noble young S. O. S. captain has just come back from the war and the
next we know they're engaged, while in the bond room of the Corrugated
Trust is one more broken heart, or what passes for the same among them
young hicks.
And now here is Lucy Lee, flaggin' as young Mrs. Blake, livin' right in
the same town with him.
"How stupid of me to forget!" says Vee. "We must run in and call on them
right away, Torchy."
"We?" says
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