Page:Bad Girl (1929).pdf/96

 would not be happier. Not if she had to spend her days wandering about Harlem looking for something to do.

Once Dot took a 'bus ride downtown, but she didn't like it very much. The mashers couldn't be handled like the ambitious youth of One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. Up there a girl could always say, "Run along," or "Who are you talking to?" or something like that. In the days when she had gone to work, she had encountered practically no flirtatious gentlemen because there had not been the aimless, timefree air which had accompanied her on her one sally into the Fifth Avenue shopping district.

A man had spoken to her right outside of Russek's. A particularly gorgeous wrap was on display, and Dot had been picturing herself inside it when the man spoke.

"It is beautiful enough," he remarked, "for a bootlegger's mistress."

Dot turned her most crushing gaze upon him.

Undaunted, he continued, "You're not by any chance a bootlegger's mistress, are you?"

"No," replied Dot, "I'm not." And she moved down the street.

The man followed her. "Don't be angry," he pled, "some of our best people are."

"Are what?"

"Bootlegger's mistresses, of course."

"Run along," said Dot, using a bit of magic which she had brought from Harlem.

It failed. He did not vanish.

"I shall run along presently," he said. "I shall run home and write ten thousand words."

That, Dot considered, was a strange remark. That had to be investigated. "Ten thousand words about what?" she asked.

"Bootleggers' mistresses."

"You're crazy," said Dot.