Page:Minnie Flynn (1925).pdf/53

 He seemed to think sisters had to be regular prudes and old maids.

The wail and the crash of the orchestra! The shuffle of hundreds of feet upon the floor! The hysteria of the voices beat upon Minnie's ears until her senses were deadened to everything but the impulse to spring into the heterogeneous mass and become a part of it.

"Billy, for the love o' Mike, hold me and let's get into the dance. I've never been so excited in all my life. Feel as if I was just goin' to blow up!"

They whirled onto the floor and he swung her around and around in dizzying circles to the pulsing rhythm of a waltz.

The cymbals clashed, the drums beat a furious challenge. Encore. Then a shout and a scramble for the benches slapped up against the sides of the dance hall.

Four hours of this procedure passed before the real adventure of the evening came to Minnie Flynn. She was introduced to Al Kessler by Jimmy. "Al," he whispered, "is a movie actor."

Movie actor!

It seemed to Minnie that when Al shook her hand, holding it in both of his, squeezing it, that every girl in the Harlem Dance Hall was looking at her enviously.

"I am certainly pleased to meet the Kid's little sister. I am certainly pleased to meet her," he was saying.

It wasn't what he said but how he said it that made Minnie's hand tremble in his. He had such a low, well-modulated voice, and he laid such stress upon his inflections that it gave the words a personal, caressing quality.

"And some little peach, if you don't object to me speaking out my mind, Miss Flynn. That's the kind of a fellow I am, little girl, I can't hide anything. Frank and aboveboard, no