"What's the matter, Angie? You ain't had one of your spells again, have you? Your voice sounds so full of breath and all."

Angie pushed a strand of black-and-white hair up under her nest-like hat. Her small, black eyes were too far back; and her face was slightly creased and yellow, like an old college diploma when it is fished out of the trunk to show the grandchildren.

"I just keeled over like a tenpin--that's all! It came on so sudden--while I was sellin' a dame a dollar-ninety-eight hipless--that even old Higgs was scared and went up to the emergency-room with me hisself."

"Oh, Angie--ain't that a shame, now!"

Tillie linked her arm in the older woman's and, with their joint umbrella slanted against the fine-ribbed rain, they plunged into the surge of the street. Wind scudded the rain along the sidewalks; electric signs, all blurred and streaky through the mist, were dimmed, like gas-light seen through tears.

"We better ride home to-night, Angie--you with one of your spells, and this weather and all."

"You must 'a' been clipping your gilt-edge bonds this afternoon instead of sellin' b.u.t.tons! It would take more'n only a bad heart and a rainstorm and a pair of thin soles to make me ride five blocks."

"I--I'll take your turn to-night for fixin' supper. You ain't feelin'

well, Angie--I'll take your turn to-night."

They turned into a high-walled, black, cross-town street. The wind turned with them and beat javelin-like against their backs and blew their skirts forward, then shifted and blew against their breathing.

"Gawd!" said the older woman, lowering their umbrella against the onslaught. "Honest, sometimes I wish I wuz dead and out of it. Whatta we get out of livin', anyway?"

"Aw, Angie!"

"I do wish it!"

They leaned into the wind.

"I--I don't mind rain much. Me and Mame and George are going to the Gem to-night--they're showing the airship pictures over there. I ain't goin'

unless you're feelin' all right, though. They've got the swellest pictures in town over there."

"It's much you care about leavin' me alone or not when you can run round nights like a--like a--"

"Don't begin, Angie. A girl's got to have fun once in a while! Gee! the way you been holding on to me! I--I ain't even met the fellows like the other girls. All you think I like to do is sit home nights and sew. Look at the other girls. Look at Mamie Plute--she's five years younger'n me--only twenty-three; and she--"

"That's the thanks I get for protectin' and watchin' and raisin' and--"

"Aw, Angie, I--"

"Don't Angie me!"

"I--I ain't a kid--the way you fuss at me!"

They turned into their apartment house. A fire-escape ran zigzag down its front, and on each side of the entrance ash-cans stood sentinel. At each landing of their four flights up a blob of gas-light filled the hallway with dim yellow fog, and from the cracks of closed doors came the heterogeneous smells of steam, hot vapors, and damp--the intermittent crying of children.

After the first and second flights Miss Angie paused and leaned against the wall. Her breath came from between her dry lips like pants from an engine, and beneath her eyes the parchment skin wrinkled and hung in small sacs like those under the eyes of a veteran pelican.

"You take your time comin', Angie. I'll go ahead and light up and put on some coffee for you--some real hot coffee."

Tillie ran lightly up the stairs. Through the opacity of the fog her small, dark face was outlined as dimly as a ghost's, with somber eyes burning in the sockets. Theirs was the last of a long hall of closed doors--drab-looking doors with perpendicular panels and white-china k.n.o.bs.

Tillie fitted in her key, groped along the shadowy mantel for a match, and lighted a side gas-bracket. Her dripping umbrella traced a wet path on the carpet. She carried it out into the kitchenette and leaned it in a corner of the sink. When Angie faltered in a moment later a blue-granite coffee-pot was already beginning to bubble on the two-burner gas-stove and the gentle sizzle of frying bacon sent a bluish haze through the rooms.

"Say, Angie, how you want your egg?"

"I don't want none."

"Sure you do! I'll fry it and bring it in to you." Angie flopped down on the davenport. Her skirt hung thick and dank about her ankles, and the back of her coat and her sleeve-tops were rain-spotted and wet-wool smelling where the umbrella had failed to protect her.

She unb.u.t.toned the coat and the front of her shirt-waist, unlaced her shoes and kicked them off her feet. In the sallow light her face, the ocher wallpaper, the light oak center-table, the matting on the floor, and the small tin trunk were of a color. She took up her shoes in one hand, her coat in the other, and slouched off to a small one-window box of a room, with an unmade cot and a straight chair two-thirds filling it.

Happy the biographers whose Desdemonas burrow damask cheeks into silken pillows, whose Prosperines limp on slim ghost-feet through Lands of Fancy! Angie limped, too; but in her flat-arched, stockinged feet, and to an unmade, tousled bed. And all the handmaids of her s.e.x--Love, Romance, and Beauty--were strangely absent; or could the most sybaritic of biographers find them out?

Only half undressed she tumbled in, pulled the coverings tight up about her neck, and turned her face to the wall. Poor Angie! Neither Prosperine, Desdemona, nor any of the Lauras, Catherines, or Juliets, had ever sold corsets, faced the soul-racking problem of eight dollars a week, or been untouched by the golden wand that transforms life into a phantasmagoria of love.

Tillie spread her little meal on the golden-oak table in the front room.

"Come on, Angie--or if you ain't feeling well I'll bring you in a bite."

"I ain't sick."

"Well, if you ain't sick, for Gawd's sake, where did you get the grouch?"

"I'm comin' in if you give me time. Where's my wrapper?"

They dined in a desultory sort of way, with Tillie up and down throughout the meal for a bread-knife, a cup of water, sugar for Angie's strong coffee.

"If you ain't feelin' good to-night I won't go, Angie."

"I'm feelin' all right--I'm used to sittin' home alone."

"If you talk like that--I won't go, then."

"Sure! You go on! Don't mind me."

"There's another corset sale advertised for to-morrow, ain't there? Gee!

They don't care how many sales they spring on the girls down there, do they? Didn't you just have your semi-annual clearin'?"

"Yes; but they got a batch of Queenly shapes--two-ninety-eight--they want to get rid of. They're goin' to discontinue the line and put in the Straight-Front Flexibles."

Angie sipped her coffee in long draughts. Her black flannel wrapper fell away at the neck to reveal her unbleached throat, with two k.n.o.bs for neck-bones.

"Let the dishes be, Angie--I'll do 'em in the morning. I wonder if it's raining yet? It's sure too cold to wear my old black. I'll have to wear my tan."

Rain beat a fine tattoo against the windows. Tillie crossed and peered anxiously out, cupping her eyes in her hand and straining through the reflecting window-pane at the undistinguishable sky; her little wren-like movements and eyes were full of nerves.

"It'll be all right with an umbrella," she urged--"eh, Angie?"

"Yes."

Tillie hurried to the little one-window room. There were two carmine spots high on her cheek-bones; as she dressed herself before a wavy mirror her lips were open and parted like a child's, and the breath came warm and fast between them.