The Petticoats were one of the oldest and pride-fullest of New England
families. So that settles the status of the Petticoats. A couple of them
came over in the _Mayflower_, with the highboys and cradles and things,
and they founded the branch of Connecticut Petticoats--than which, of
course, there is nothing more so.
Of course, the Petticoats were not in the very upper circles of society,
not in the Dress Circle, so to speak, but they formed a very necessary
foundation, they stood for propriety and decency, and the Petticoats
were stiff enough to stand alone.
Another fine old New England family, the Cottons.
Intermarriage linked the two, and the Cotton-Petticoats crowded all
other ancient and honorable names off the map of Connecticut and nodded
condescendingly to the Saltonwells and Hallistalls. Abbotts and Cabots
tried to patronize them, but the plain unruffled Cotton-Petticoats held
their peace and their position.
The present scion, Dr. Petticoat, was called Big Bill, not because of
his name or stature, but because of the size of his bills. He presented
them quarterly, and though his medicine was optional--the patient could
take it or leave it--the bills had to be paid.
Wherefore Dr. Petticoat was at the head of his profession financially.
Also by reputation and achievement, for he had the big idea.
He was a specialist, and, better yet, a specialist in Ptomaine
Poisoning.
Rigidly did he adhere to his chosen line, never swerving to right or
left. People might die on one side of him from water on the brain and on
the other side from water on the palate, not a prescription could they
get out of Big Bill Petticoat unless they could put up unmistakable
symptoms of ptomaine poisoning.
And he was famous. People brought their ptomaines to him from the
far places, his patients included the idlest rich, the bloatedest
aristocrats, the most profitable of the profiteers. His Big Bill system
worked well, and he was rich beyond the most Freudian dreams of avarice.
As to appearance, Petticoat was very pretty, with that fresh rosy
beauty that is so attractive. His walnut hair was fine and silky, but
a permanent wave made it fuzz forth in a bushy crinkle that was
distractingly lovely. His tweezed eyebrows were arched to a perfect span
and his finger nails showed a piano polish.
His features were cold-chiseled and his coloring was exquisite. In fact,
his coloring was too good to be true, and no wonder, for it came out of
a very modern and up-to-date six-cylinder makeup box.
His lips looked as if they were used to giving orders in restaurants,
and he wore clothes which you could never quite forget.
Warble edged toward the stranger, and murmured nothing in particular,
but somehow he drifted into the last and only vacant seat at her table.
She whisked him a 2 x 2 napkin, dumped a clatter of flatware at him, and
stood, awaiting his order.
The pause becoming lengthy, she murmured with her engaging smile,
“Whatcha want to eat?”
“Pleased to eat you,” he responded, looking at her as though she was an
agreeable discovery.
Small wonder, for Warble was so peachy and creamy, so sweet and
delectable that she was a far more appetizing sight than most viands
are. She smiled again--engagingly this time, too.
Thus in the Painted Vale of Huneker, Vamp and Victim beguiled the hours.
Thus, and not in treacled cadences, intrigued Mariar and Sir Thomas in
the back alley.
“Do you like it here?” asked the doctor.
“Yop. But sometimes I feel wasted--”
“You don't look wasted--”
“No--” after a hasty glance in the wall mirror.
“Don't you get sick of the sight of food?”
“Here, oh, no! I don't know any lovelier sight than our kitchens--yes,
yes, sir, I'll get your pied frotatoes at oneth.”
When Warble was a bit frustrated or embarrassed, she often inverted her
initials and lisped. It was one of her ways.
The other clients at her table had no intention of being neglected while
their Pickfordian waitress smiled engagingly on a newcomer.
It was the iceman who had hollered. He seemed to be merely a red-faced
inanimate object, that worked by strange and compound levers.
Next him was a hat-check girl, a queenly person who communed with
something set in the lid of her vanity case, and fed on chicken à la
king.
Then there was a newsboy, whose all-observant eyes darted about
everywhere, the while he absorbed baked beans and ketchup.
An old maid shopper. She merely brooded over her worn and pencil-scored
memorandum, and muttered of fringe and buttons as she spilled tea on her
samples of Navy blue foulard.
A blind man. Of no interest save that he had a calm and gentle demeanor
and was the only one who didn't spill things. His face wore a grieved
but resigned look, as if something had died in his scrambled eggs. The
iceman, who had the hard, set jaw of a prize fighter was successfully
eating steak, and he welcomed the incoming fried potatoes, as one greets
a new instalment of a serial.
It was a fat and pink and lovely Warble who at last trotted back with
Petticoat's order.
The great specialist had an unbridled passion for pie, and throwing
restraint to the winds he had ordered three kinds. The wedges
Warble brought were the very widest she could wheedle from the head
pie-cutter--and Warble was some wheedler, especially when she coaxed
prettily for a big pieth of cuthtard.
Petticoat looked at her again as she came, pie-laden.
Her cap was a bit askew, but her eyes weren't. In her white linen dress
and apron and white cap, her little pink face looked to Petticoat's
appraising glance like a postage stamp on an expanse of white linen
envelope.
Little did he think, as he took his custard pie that he was about to put
his foot in it. Yet he did.
“May I see you again sometime?” he said, ignoring the hat-check girl's
ogling and the iceman's cold stare.
Warble made a face at him. It was one of her ways.
“What's your address?” he asked. “You can ask the Boss--if you really
want to know.”
“Want to know! Say, you waitress!”
Of the love-making of Warble and Big Bill Petticoat there is nothing to
be reported which may not be read in any Satevepost serial, which may
not be heard at any summer resort, in any winter garden. They were
zoology and history. Their speech was free silver and their silence was
golden.
It was a non-stop courtship. All the plump beauty of youth and all the
assured complacence of a well-to-do married man kept them up in the air.
Petticoat wasn't a married man, but he had their technique.
They took a walk, and followed a roundabout way. Then they sat on a
bank, and his arm followed a roundabout way.
She seemed more young and tender than ever, in a simple white muslin
frock and blue sash. Her broad-leafed hat was decked with a few pink
roses, and roll-top white socks added a good deal to the picture.
Petticoat was charmed.
“Golly, but I love you, Warble!” he cried.
She did not answer, but she touched the upper edge of the wallet in his
breast pocket with an exploring gesture.
“You think I'm too darn aesthetic! Well, you're not, and so we ought to
mate. We're complementary to one another, like air and sunshine or light
and shade.”
“Or pork and beans, or pie and cheese.”
“Yes, or like stout and porter--I'll be the porter, oh--what's the use
of talking? Let my lips talk to you!”
He kissed her cheek, imprinting thereon a Cupid's bow, by reason of his
own addiction to the lipstick.
Warble rubbed it off with the back of her hand, and said, “Oh,
pleathe--pleathe.”
She wondered if she ought to have said thank you, but it was only a
drifting thought and she turned the other cheek. Then she smiled her
engaging smile and they were engaged.
Later in the game, she said, with pretty diffidence, “I would like to
thee Butterfly Thenter.” And she blushed like the inside of those pink
meat melons.
“I knew it!” and Petticoat produced a pile of Sunday Picture
Supplements.
Her cheek nested in his permanent wave, Warble studied the pictures.
They were the last word in artistic architecture. Truly, Butterfly
Center, where Petticoat lived, was a veritable Utopia, Arcadia, Spotless
Town and Happy Valley all rolled into one. Broad streets, arching
trees, sublimated houses, glorified shops--it seemed to Warble like a
flitter-work Christmas card from the drug-store.
“How'd you like to scoot up there with me in a fast aeroplane?” he
jollied her.
“It might be--a lark--” she dubioused.
“But here's the picture!” and proudly he exhibited a full length view of
his own home.
“Ptomaine Haul,” he exploited, proudly. “Built every inch of it from the
busy little ptomaines. Coral insects nothing on that, eh? And here's
the sort of people I practice on. Old Leathersham, now--he has a corking
château--French Renaissance. And Mrs. Charity Givens--she has a Georgian
shack. And, oh, yes, here's Iva Payne. She's one of my most profitable
patients--sick all the time.”
Warble studied the pictures.
“What expensive people,” she said, “dear--so dear.”
“Yes, great people. You'd love 'em. They're just layin' for you. Come
on, Warble, will you?”
“Yop,” she murmured, from his coat pocket, “Sweet, so sweet.”