Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/59

Rh through that Italian settlement," acknowledged Uncle Chandler. "And it was quite a penetrating aura."

"But you're only croaking out of a swamp of prejudices," contended Teddie. "You don 't understand our ways of living or looking at life. You try to gauge Greenwich Village, which was once good enough for Poe and Masefield, by Fifth Avenue standards, and you get your numbers mixed." She looked up at him with a more commiserative light in her earnest young eyes. "But if you want to see us as we are, why not take chow with me at the Blue Pigeon to-night?"

"Not muchee!" averred Uncle Chandler, with great alacrity. "I've altogether too much respect for my Fifth-Avenuey Little Mary. I've seen 'em before, those futuristic smoke-boxes with a tinned sardine rolled up in a pimento-skin and Mimis from Waterbury and up-State Villons who muss their hair and get mixed up on the garlic and free-verse. So, much as I love you, Teddie, I'll toddle along to my benighted old Nasturtium Club and deaden my soul