Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/28

 Chapter 3

THE BISON BALL

the store windows on both sides of the street and inspected their changes of display with the interest of a chronic shopper. With, or without, a few cents left from her noon milk money, she often wandered through the shops pricing articles, or sniffed along the toiletries counters seemingly oblivious to the watchfulness of the clerks. Sometimes a fallen sachet packet or dangling paper of pins called for rescue. It would have been wasteful not to pick them up. Finders, keepers. Mother just loved sachet and agreed it was a lucky find.

Two blocks from the Empire a fascinating rhythmic noise stopped her. It came from the fifth floor of the dark red brick, turreted Lode Building. This structure's first occupants had been mining magnates, engineers, assayers, lawyers, and stock manipulators. The turret once had been a symbolic crown overlooking their endless empire of gold, silver, and copper. But on this May 1919 day the luster had faded. The broad white marble staircase, still spotted at well-spaced strategic points with brass spittoons, was worn and dirty. Once spacious offices now were divided into cluttered cubicles of frenetic day-to-day schemings in pursuit of uncertain daily bread.

A black-meshed iron cage rattled up and down, and up on the top floor, at the lowest rent in the building's history, was the dance studio of Miss Ilona Klemper—"Formerly with Fokine."

"One two, one two," raindropped into Lucy's enchanted ears. She bobbed her head in accented rhythm, looked up to discover the source of the pitapat, and saw the lettering on the window.

"Well, I never," she said aloud, and took the elevator to see what made that fascinating noise.

Through the windowed door she saw an enormous room with a wall of mirrors and, reflected in the mirrors, some girls holding on to a long pole against one wall. They wore straight cheesecloth dresses which hung below their calves and were confined at their 16