Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/312

302 They groped their way through the dim loft—for it was growing dark outside—and made the stair-head. The door to the seventeenth floor opened, and they stepped forth into the lighted hallway.

"Now what?" asked Kitty, bubbling.

"The floor below, and one of the other lifts, what?"

Twenty minutes later the two of them, arm in arm, turned into Broadway.

"This, sir," began Kitty with a gesture, "is Broadway—America's backyard in the daytime and Ali Baba's cave at night. The way of the gilded youth; the funnel for papa's money; the chorus lady; the starting point of the high cost of living. We New Yorkers despise it because we can't afford it." "The lights!" gasped Hawksley.

"Wreckers' lights. Behold! Yonder is a highly nutritious whisky blinking its bloomin' farewell. Do you chew gum? Even if you don't, in a few minutes I'll give you a cud for thought. Chewing gum was invented by a man with a talkative wife. He missed the physiological point, however, that a body can chew and talk at the same time. Come on!" They went on uptown, Hawksley highly amused, exhilarated, but frequently puzzled. The pungent irony of her observations conveyed to him that under this gayety was a current of extreme bitterness.

"I say, are all American girls like you?"

"Heavens, no! Why?"