Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/109

 Likewise I was a bit steamed up about her for making my popular sex ridiculous by going boy-crazy at fifty. She specialized in advice to the lovelorn, inviting the confidences of the other girls at the board and listening as breathlessly as a chambermaid at a keyhole to their alleged adventures and difficulties with their Johns. Realizing that Abby got quite a kick out of this stuff, these impish young ladies took the brakes off their lively imaginations, enjoying her eager attention just as much as she enjoyed their cuckoo stories—which was ample! Old enough to be their grandmother, Abby always addressed the bunch as "we girls," and when I bawled 'em out for kidding Old Mother Goose with their fairy tales they told me to tend to my own activities, because it was all fun and Abigail was a find that they didn't intend to lose now that they had her all built up. They could always put the bee on her for pin money between pay days, and an especially good love story in which one of 'em played the wronged victim would bring a hat or a gown from the champion listener of the world. Terrible, weren't they?

Being twice as flirtatious as Potiphar's wife, Abigail knew where the sterner sex gathered and honestly she lingered around the switchboard like the odor of boiled cabbage in a Sixth Avenue kitchenette. She vamped one and all, featuring coy glances and kittenish snickers, to the great entertainment of the males. But as I