Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/19

 Without reasonable excuse or preamble, Eddie suddenly pulled her close to him and kissed her. She was not surprised or angry, and he had known that she would not be. He liked her. The routine leading up to the kiss had been different with her. She had not insisted on a conversation replete with double entendres. It was not delicacy in Eddie that made him welcome the change, just that he was tired of the other.

There was no embarrassment between them now. Nothing in their words, facial expressions, or actions suggested that they had kissed.

Edna, the lady friend of Dorothy's brother, left off staring at the river and shifted her gaze to them. It was frankly inquisitive, but not unkind.

"Think she saw us?" Eddie whispered.

"Don't care if she did," Dot responded blithely. "She won't tell my brother. She says you can't watch a girl hard enough to keep her good, if she don't want to be."

Eddie nodded gravely. That sounded like brilliant summing up of a situation to him. He surveyed Edna interestedly. "She looks kind of young," he decided at last.

"Oh, no," Dot said, smiling faintly at the blindness of man. "Edna's twenty-eight. She's got a kid four years old. His name's Floyd. Her husband was killed on the railroad two months before the kid was born. She got ten thousand dollars for his death."

"That's fine for your brother," Eddie remarked.

Dot laughed shortly to show her appreciation of his sally and hurried on. "Oh, my brother isn't after her money. He gets seventy-five dollars a week himself. He won't let me put a penny in the house. Some brother I got."

"I'll say," Eddie agreed. "Where do you work?"

"On Twenty-third Street."

"Stenographer?"

"No, just a typist." Her lashes, soft and silky, fluttered