They mounted again. "Here's me," said Miss Capper, waving her hand to a
man in a dirty dressing gown who was standing on the threshold of the
front apartment, probably to achieve air. The room behind him was foggy
with tobacco smoke which rose from four men playing cards. He himself
was conspicuously drunk and would have spoken if he had been able. As
it was, he nodded owlishly and waggled his fingers.
The girl threw open her door and turned up the light. "England, Home
and Beauty," she said. "Excuse me while I dress the ship."
Seizing a pair of corsets that sprawled loosely on the center table,
she rammed them under a not very pristine cushion on the sofa.
Martin burst out laughing. The Crystal Room wine was still in his head.
"Very nippy!" he said.
"Have to be nippy in this life, believe me. Give me a minute to powder
my nose and murmur a prayer of thanksgivin', and then I'll set the
festive board and show you how we used to scramble eggs in Shaftesbury
Avenue."
"Right," said Martin, getting out of his overcoat. How about it? Was
this one way of making the little old earth spin?
Susie Capper went into a bedroom even smaller than the sitting room,
turned up the light over her dressing table and took off her little
white hat. From where Martin stood, he could see in the looking-glass
the girl's golden bobbed hair, pretty oval face with too red lips and
round white neck. There, it was obvious, stood a little person feminine
from the curls around her ears to the hole in one of her stockings, and
as highly and gladly sexed as a purring cat.
"Buck up, Tootles," cried Martin. "Where do you keep the frying pan?"
She turned and gave him another searching look, this time of marked
approval. "My word, what a kid you look in the light!" she said. "No
one would take you for a blooming road-hog. Well, who knows? You and I
may have been brought together like this to work out one of Fate's
little games. This may be the beginning of a side-street romance, eh?"
And she chuckled at the word and turned her nose into a small
snow-capped hill.