Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/459

 "Don't pay any attention to me. I just had a fight with a friend," she told the stranger and laughed, feeling better than she had in weeks.

Chapter 37

"I HAVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY"

drew its tortoise head into the shell of its overcoat and skidded, shivering, on the glacial streets of the sooty snow-crusted refuse-strewn city.

"It seems to me," Lucy criticized, returning home to Vida's apartment blue-cold on a late afternoon in December, "that Jimmy Walker would do something to clean up the town, he's such a dandy about himself."

"Yes, New York is a shambles," Vida agreed. "I just got in too, so let's have a nice cup of tea."

"With rum."

"With rum. And if you're going to be home for dinner we'll have baked potato and lamb chops."

"That sounds good. I feel like a quiet evening at home for a change."

"What happened?" Lucy's mood variations were as obvious as do re mi fa sol.

"Nothing," Lucy replied, which meant something. "Noonan is mad at me because I won't let him talk to Beman. I told him 'You don't know Beman, and I do. You won't get anywhere. Beman has to think it's his idea to have someone in a show. If you ask for a part, it's curtains. Beman is a prima donna and anything he doesn't think of himself first is no good. Even if he does think of it but someone suggests it before he gets round to doing anything there is nothing doing.' And I told Noonan, 'If it's a question of only a specialty for Beman I'd rather work for Joe Samuels. He doesn't care whose idea it is.' But Joe is having Georgina again because she was a hit in his last revue. I don't blame him because she is very good at acrobatics. I could never jazz bent-kneed on toes for a whole Rh