Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/101

Rh aunt said something. He ran down the corridor to his own room, slammed the door and bolted it. He stood stiff and cold in the center of the room with his fists clenched. "I hate them. I hate them," he shouted aloud. Then gulping a dry sob he turned out the light and slipped into bed between the shiverycold sheets.

"With all the business you have, madame," Emile was saying in a singsong voice, "I should think you'd need someone to help you with the store."

"I know that I'm killing myself with work; I know that," sighed Madame Rigaud from her stool at the cashdesk. Emile was silent a long time staring at the cross section of a Westphalia ham that lay on a marble slab beside his elbow. Then he said timidly: "A woman like you, a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends."

"Ah ça I have lived too much in my time I have no more confidence Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I dont get on with women a bit!"

"History and literature " began Emile.

The bell on the top of the door jangled. A man and a woman stamped into the shop. She had yellow hair and a hat like a flowerbed.

"Now Billy dont be extravagant," she was saying.

"But Norah we got have sumpen te eat. An I'll be all jake by Saturday."

"Nutten'll be jake till you stop playin the ponies."

"Aw go long wud yer Let's have some liverwurst My that cold breast of turkey looks good"

"Piggywiggy," cooed the yellowhaired girl.

"Lay off me will ye, I'm doing this."

"Yes sir ze breast of turkee is veree goud We ave ole cheekens too, steel 'ot Emile mong ami cherchez moi uns de ces petits poulets dans la cuisin-e." Madame Rigaud spoke like an oracle without moving from her stool