"Think of the wonder of it! Camel trains, and caravans, merchant ships
on all the seas, trains, and electric trucks, all bringing the booty of
the world to this great, shining bazaar for you and me. It's thrilling."
"So it is," he agreed. "I hope you mark the proportion of shops for
men--dresses, hats, jewels, furs, motor clothes, tea rooms, candy shops,
corsetières, florists, bootmakers, all for women. Motor cars are full of
women. Are there no men in this menagerie?"
"No. They are all cliff-dwellers downtown. They probably wear loin
cloths of a fashionable cut," she laughed back at him.
"They all look just alike--so many manikins on parade. I suppose there
are distinctions in class. There must be some shopgirls in this crowd.
Can you distinguish them?" he asked.
"Oh, yes. Not by cut, for the general line is the same for 'Judy O'Grady
and the Captain's Lady,' but there is a subtle difference to the
feminine eye."
"But you don't look like all the rest of them."
"No, alas, I look distinctly suburban. All I need is a package to make
the disguise complete. Oh, Jarvis, do let's hurry and make much red
gold, so I can look like these finished things that trip up
Fifth Avenue."
"You want to be like them--like those dolls?" he scorned, with a
magnificent gesture.
"Yes. I'd like to be so putrid with wealth that I could have rows of
wardrobe trunks, with full sets of clothes for every me."
"How many of you are there?"
"Oh, lots. I've never counted myself. Some days I'd dress up like a
Broadway siren, some days I'd be a Fifth Avenue lady, or a suburbanite,
or a reformer, or a ballet dancer, or a visitor from Boston."
"What would I be doing while you were all these?"
"Oh, you'd be married to all of us. We'd keep you busy."
"The idea is appalling. A harem of misfits."
"We'd be good for your character."
"And death to my work."
"You'd know more about life when you had taken a course of us."
"Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing," he remarked. "Shall we get
off and go into the Library?"
"Not to-day. That's part of your day. I want just people and things in
mine."
"What are you to-day?" he inquired.
"An houri, a soulless houri," she retorted.
As they approached the University Club, Jarvis recognized it with scorn.
"Monument to the stupidity of modern education, probably full this
minute of provincials from Harvard and Yale, all smugly resting in the
assurance that they are men of culture."
"I adore the way you demolish worlds," Bambi sparkled up at him.
"Another monument," he remarked, indicating a new church lifting its
spires among the money-changers' booths.
"_Hic jacet,_ education and religion. Look at that slim white lady
called the Plaza."
"You ought to name her 'Miss New York.'"
"Good, Jarvis. In time you will learn to play with me."
He frowned slightly.
"I know," she added, "I am scheduled under _Interruptions_ in that
famous notebook. Unless you play with me occasionally I shall become
actively interruptive."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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