Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/247

 almost hopelessly, her big gray eyes caressed his face as she listened. ..

He was sitting in the lobby of the Biltmore, waiting for Bill Olmstead, who had vowed he would be there at four sharp but who at four-thirty had not arrived. Bill was now employed in a New York bank, where, according to him, he "filled inkwells," and he and Jock met now and then to lay new fuel on the embers of their campus intimacy. Today they were thoroughly to investigate an unconfirmed report that there was genuine Bacardi to be had at a drug store on Forty-fifth Street, by the simple expedient of asking for Mr. Wilson, giving Mr. Wilson certain moneys, and observing that Mr. Mercer (articulate clearly or all's lost) sent you to him.

The afternoon was Friday, the month November, and the Biltmore lobby swarmed with chattering humans who later in the day, or early the next day, would hie them down to Princeton for the gridiron classic. Spruce long-legged boys, big-eyed girls, portly dowagers, in endless panorama. Jock watched interestedly, making mental comments, "Gee, pretty! No, she isn't, not near to. Lotta girls disappoint you that way. One thing about Yvonne, she doesn't. . . . Don't see a soul I know. Funny, how soon you lose touch. . . . That lad's pretty well oiled. They'll have to wake him for the touchdowns tomorrow if he keeps that up. . . . Twenty bucks' worth of orchids and a dime's worth of woman—who went crazy there, I wonder? . . . Why do girls shriek so? 'Hello, people' at the top of her lungs. Could say 'Hello, Brooklyn'