Page:Love and Learn (1924).pdf/45

 "Who d'ye wish to drive you for a buck and a half—Barney Oldfield?" he sneers.

"Listen!" I says. "Save that cross-fire patter for the garage. Call me a taxi with a motor in it and make it snappy!"

The chauffeur scowls at me.

"You certainly like to arg, don't you?" he says. "All right, I'll git you a cab. Gimme the one fifty what's on the clock for haulin' you this far."

I reached in my hand bag and then, honestly, I thought I'd swoon! In my mad rush to get out of my apartment and down to the hotel I had forgotten my purse—can you imagine that?

"I—it seems I have left my money at home," I began to stammer, my face as red as his ungainly nose. "If you"

"Apple sauce!" butts in this charming gentleman of the old school. "Don't try to kid me, cutey. That stuff might git you by in them out of town slabs, but I was born and dragged up on Second Avenoo and I have met you gyppers before! I wouldn't care if you was so good lookin' you'd make a goldfish forgit to keep openin' and closin' its mouth, I'm blonde-proof. You don't shove off from here till I git my jack and that's that!"

Ain't we got fun?

Well, an interested knot of innocent bystanders be-