Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Perhaps you remember the fat boy who teased little Felice through the
gate of the rectory yard. He didn't grow up like the rest of the choir
boys, he merely expanded until he was a droll larger edition of his
small tubby self; perhaps you've heard him singing at St. Patrick's
and smiled at the bland and childlike face from which his beautiful
big round baritone pours forth--he surely can sing! And eat! It's
really rather fun to go to the Brevoort with him and watch his
pleasingly plump wife remonstrate while he orders luncheon.
"Oh Tomothy Tom!" she groaned one showery April day, "those are all
starchy, sweety, fatty things! Don't order another food! Or I'll want
to eat them too, I shouldn't have another ounce, I shouldn't!"
"Not if you're going to take that jump over the fence in the second
act," said Graemer who was lunching with them. He was her manager,
Edwina Ely was a much better known person than her fat husband. And a
good bit older, too, if you must know it, though of course she did not
look so with her almost too blonde hair coiffed elaborately under the
wicked wings of her impertinent toque and her pleasure-loving chin
nestled in her white furs.
"I hate for us to eat here, the food's so good," she murmured with the
same plaintive note that makes the audience weep at the end of the
third act of "The Juggler."
"But I had a very special reason for wanting to come here," Graemer
explained. He had to be a bit wary of the starchy things too, though
he still had a figure in spite of his weight. He was complacently vain
of his prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark
eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in
spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You
wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many
plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to
ask Edwina's husband something. The fat man laughed uneasily.
"Well, he does usually lunch here," he admitted, "and I did use to
know him rather well, but I'm not exactly the person to introduce you
if you want anything from him--he's not overly fond of me--"
"I understood from Edwina that you were boyhood friends."
The fat man smiled and deliberately and delicately chucked his wife
under her rosy little chin.
"Tattle-tale!" he taunted her.
"You were!" she persisted, "you know you were!"
"If you ever were," said Graemer earnestly, "Permit me to suggest that
you renew your youth. What I want him for is partly on Edwina's
account. "The Juggler" isn't going as well as it ought to--I haven't
anything new in sight for her and I'd like to keep this going until I
have. What we need is a press agent like Dudley Hamilt."
"He's not a press agent--" gasped the fat man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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