Page:Manhattan Transfer (John Dos Passos, 1925).djvu/173

Rh "Now Morris you promised," she whined.

"Oh I just meant sodawater, dont get nervous." "Oh that'd be lovely. I'd just love a soda."

"Then we'll go for a walk in the Park."

She let the lashes fall over her eyes "Allwight Morris," she whispered without looking at him. She put her hand a little tremulously through his arm.

"If only I wasn't so goddam broke."

"I dont care Morris."

"I do by God."

At Columbus Circle they went into a drugstore. Girls in green, violet, pink summer dresses, young men in straw hats were three deep along the sodafountain. She stood back and admiringly watched him shove his way through. A man was leaning across the table behind her talking to a girl; their faces were hidden by their hatbrims.

"You juss tie that bull outside, I said to him, then I resigned."

"You mean you were fired."

"No honest I resigned before he had a chance He's a stinker d'you know it? I wont take no more of his lip. When I was walkin outa the office he called after me Young man lemme tell ye sumpen. You wont never make good till you learn who's boss around this town, till you learn that it aint you." Morris was holding out a vanilla icecream soda to her.

"Dreamin' again Cassie; anybody'd think you was a snow-bird." Smiling brighteyed, she took the soda; he was drinking coca-cola. "Thank you," she said. She sucked with pouting lips at a spoonful of icecream. "Ou Morris it's delicious."

The path between round splashes of arclights ducked into darkness. Through slant lights and nudging shadows came a smell of dusty leaves and trampled grass and occasionally a rift of cool fragrance from damp earth under shrubberies.

"Oh I love it in the Park," chanted Cassie. She stifled a belch. "D'you know Morris I oughnt to have eaten that ice-cream. It always gives me gas."