Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/35

Rh ing house with Myrtle. But from this day out I live with no girl like that." And I insisted on recounting the entire affair of the muff once more.

"Then what are you going to do?" asked that gallant prince who smelt of Florida water—but in those days it seemed a fit and finishing aura for such a golden hero.

"I don't know," was my listless response. Then Bud, in his lordly and masterful way, promptly took things in his own hands. He needed a good sharp girl in his work, which was that of a lock-inspector, and took him to all the biggest cities in America. And I in my innocence didn't understand what Bud's laugh stood for. So I agreed to swing in with him, and he promised that the job could end at any minute that he didn't treat me white.

Bud treated me white—and in going back to those old days, I found I couldn't keep from phrasing things in the language of that lower world. When you talk about city wild-life, you've got to use city wild-life words. Bud treated me white, with the one exception of not explaining, from the first, just what he had meant by inspector of locks. For when Bud inspected a lock it was usually done in the presence of a skeleton-key.

I was only a flapper, in those days, and there was