Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/16

 circle around Minnie. Cheap, tawdry ballads Minnie had heard in the vaudeville houses on Ninth Avenue seemed sparkling with fresh vitality when sung in her nasal falsetto. She always accompanied these songs with amazing gyrations of her lithe body, and gestures, pert and meaningful. Her favorite imitation was of a little Chinese girl learning to speak English, which she called "The Chink Act." She tapered her eyes, stuffed cotton in her nose to widen her nostrils, and made a fan out of the comic section of a Sunday paper. She sang, "Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, sabe washee clo'es," over and over, executing a stiff, formal cakewalk, the finger of her left hand pointing to the ceiling, her right hand fluttering the paper fan.

After "The Chink Act," Minnie, with a pretense of self-consciousness, announced: "The next on the program, ladies and girls, will be a brand new take-off."

Shrills of laughter and applause echoed through the long close locker room. Girls scurried from all corners to watch Minnie, eager for the relaxation of laughter, for the day had been a long, trying one under the first onslaught of late autumn sales.

Minnie drew into a shadowed recess. There was a sharp command from Elsie Bicker that absolute silence was to prevail. Then after a dramatic pause, from out of the darkness came a long, rasping, wheezing sound.

There were shrieks of laughter. "Jeeps!" came hysterically from a dozen voices.

When Elsie had again silenced them, Minnie, still wheezing, emerged from the shadows. "Jeeps!" rose the cry again.

To the girls it was a perfect imitation of Mortimer Jeeps, the floorwalker of the basement: his splay-footed walk, his sheeplike expression, his asthmatic wheeze. They laughed