Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/102

 heat. Local news traveled slowly because it was too cold to stop and gossip. That Claudel girl was hardly ever seen on Twelfth Street because she did not come home right after school like nice girls. Mrs. Bertrand's cackle spread the tsk-tsk tidings that Lucy was posing for an artist. That nutty feller from Pawnee Street who had his picture in the paper when he came back from Paris France. That's where he and she belong—Paris France—quacked Twelfth Street; heads like dummies on sticks nodded.

Mr. Bertrand washed in the men's washroom at the factory and plastered down dank hair the color of the inside of a wall. Not a bad-looking feller, better than the nutty limper with a beard, he approved his image in the mirror. After two quick ones at the speakeasy he proceeded homeward. The gin and the intense early night saturated him in erotic reverie.

What that chippie wants is a man, a real man who knows what's what and how, not a pimply schoolboy. He went up the steps and along the walk to the back door of his home soundlessly, bug-eyes glued to the window of Lucy's bedroom. Maybe they would still have the shade up and she would be in that thing again they called a shimmy.

I'd just like to see how she poses for that artist. You can't tell me what Mabel told the Missus, that she just poses in a dance costume. But the shade was drawn.

The old overfed fox terrier sniffed querulously as Mr. Bertrand entered the kitchen.

"Seems to me you're getting awfully sporty lately," croaked Mrs. Bertrand, observing the plastered hair.

"Thought you always complain because I dirty your towels after work."

Mr. Bertrand yanked off sweaty shoes, put reeking feet on the supper table, hid the sight of his wife with the evening paper, and read what his opinions of the Bolsheviki and sterling President Harding would be tomorrow.

It would be a beautiful picture, hinted Mrs. Brush, pointing to the powdered-sugar snowdrifts as they ate buckwheat cakes, com syrup and pork sausage in her scrubbed hay-colored kitchen. Clem chuckled. Ma never gave up. He ought to paint her a snow scene, like a Christmas card, just for the fun of it. Only trouble was she'd show it to the neighbors and they'd think he was a chromo painter. 90