Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/36

 a slim, dapper youth who wore a dark suit with a light gray vest smiling through.

"Yeh, that's him. His name is Ted Monroe. He bets on horses and he always wins, Maude told me."

Eddie laughed a little. "He's in a class by himself," he remarked.

"Well, I guess he's a clever fellow, Eddie. Maude's going to marry him. She told me she would have married him the first week she met him, only he didn't have enough money."

"No horses running that week?"

"I don't know. Maybe— Oh, Maude sees me. She's coming over."

Eddie kept his seat. If a coach of social etiquette had been there and said, "Eddie, why don't you arise?" he would have promptly replied, "Why? I ain't goin' no place."

Maude greeted Dot effusively and turned a careful appraising smile upon Eddie.

"How do you do," she said.

Eddie didn't know whether to shout "How do you do" right back at her challengingly or to say "I'm feeling well"; so he said nothing, which was quite all right, as Miss McLaughlin's interest in him had already flagged.

She was very different from Dot. Eddie felt the difference. She wore a large yellowish diamond and a dress with heavy sophisticated folds of satin.

"Why, Honey, I haven't seen you in ages. You should have come over to the house, you dear kid. You knew I'd always be glad to see you."

Her flood of affability embarrassed Dot. She floundered. "I— I supposed that you were always busy."

Maude smiled importantly. "Of course there's always a crowd around, but they're just a lot of hangers-on that don't mean much. You should have come over, Dot. Ted