J. Poindexter, ColoredCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
J. Poindexter, Colored
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
African Americans -- Fiction; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
Well, all day Sunday is just like Saturday evening was, only if
anything, more so; and late Sunday night the party busts up and scatters
and we starts back to town. Mr. Dallas he elects for to ride back in the
runabout with Miss Bill-Lee so that throws Miss O'Brien, the one which
they calls Pat for short, into the big car with the rest of our crowd.
Starting off she quarrels right peart with Mrs. Gaylord. I gathers that
they was partners at the bridging game part of the time and they can't
get reconciled with one another over the way each one of 'em handled her
cards. The more they scandalizes about it the more onreconciled they
gets, too. It seems like each one thinks the other don't scarcely know
how to deal, let alone play the hands after she gets 'em. Setting there
listening to 'em carrying on I thinks to myself these here Northern
white folks must hate to lose even a little bit of money. I knows these
two ladies couldn't a-lost much neither--I heard Mr. Raynor saying
beforehand they was going to play five cents a point. But to overhear
'em debating now, you'd a-thought it had been a real stiff game, like
dollar-limit poker, say, or set-back at six bits a corner.
After awhile Miss Pat she quits argufying and drops off to sleep and Mr.
Bellows he likewise drifts off into a doze and that leaves Mrs. Gaylord
and Mr. Raynor talking together in the back seat kind of confidential.
But the hood of the car being over 'em it seems like it throws their
voices forward, and setting up with the chauffeur I can't keep from
eavesdropping on part of what they is confabbing about.
Presently I hears Mr. Raynor saying:
"Well, you never can guess in advance what a sap will like, can you? You
would have thought he'd fall for a kiddo with a good, strong up-to-date
tomboy line, like little Patsy here. But no--not at all! He takes one
look into those languishing eyes of our other friend and goes down and
out for the count. Funny--eh, what? Well, it only goes to show that
while the vamp stuff is getting a trifle old-fashioned it still pays
dividends--if only you pick the right customer."
Then I hears Mrs. Gaylord saying:
"Her system may be a bit _passé_ but you can't say she doesn't work fast
once she gets under way. Clever, I call it."
"Clever?" he says, "you bet! She works fast and she works clean, tidying
up as she goes along and burying her own dead. I always did say for her
that when it came to being a gold-digger she had the original
Forty-niners looking like inmates of the Bide-a-Wee Home. Fast? I'll say
so!"
"She has need to be fast, working opposition to you, Herby, dear," says
Mrs. Gaylord. "Speaking of expert blood-suckers, I shouldn't exactly
call you a vegetarian."
"Hush, honey," he says, "let's not talk shop out of business hours. And
anyhow," he says, "I don't mind a little healthy competition on the
side. It stimulates trade under the main tent--if it's done in
moderation."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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