Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; College graduates -- Fiction; Gangsters -- Fiction
"To eat," said Jimmy, and then prompted by the instincts of his earlier
training and without appreciable pause: "Won't you take dinner with me?"
"No," said the girl, "but you are going to take dinner with me. You're
out of a job and broke, and the chances are you've just this minute
hocked your watch, while I have plenty of money. No," she said as Jimmy
started to protest, "this is going to be on me. I never knew how much I
enjoyed talking with you at breakfast until after you had left
Feinheimer's. I've been real lonesome ever since," she admitted frankly.
"You talk to me different from what the other men do." She pressed his
arm gently. "You talk to me, kid, just like a fellow might talk to his
sister."
Jimmy didn't know just what rejoinder to make, and so he made none. As
a matter of fact, he had not realized that he had said or done anything
to win her confidence, nor could he explain his attitude toward her in
the light of what he knew of her life and vocation. There is a type of
man that respects and reveres woman-hood for those inherent virtues
which are supposed to be the natural attributes of the sex because in
their childhood they have seen them exemplified in their mothers, their
sisters and in the majority of women and girls who were parts of the
natural environment of their early lives.
It is difficult ever entirely to shatter the faith of such men, and
however they may be wronged by individuals of the opposite sex their
subjective attitude toward woman in the abstract is one of chivalrous
respect. As far as outward appearances were concerned Little Eva might
have passed readily as a paragon of all the virtues. As yet, there was
no sign nor line of dissipation marked upon her piquant face, nor in her
consociation with Jimmy was there ever the slightest reference to or
reminder of her vocation.
They chose a quiet and eminently respectable dining place, and after
they had ordered, Jimmy spread upon the table an evening paper he had
purchased upon the street.
"Help me find a job," he said to the girl, and together the two ran
through the want columns.
"Here's a bunch of them," cried the girl laughingly, "all in one ad.
Night cook, one hundred and fifty dollars; swing man, one hundred and
forty dollars; roast cook, one hundred and twenty dollars; broiler, one
hundred and twenty dollars. I'd better apply for that. Fry cook, one
hundred and ten dollars. Oh, here's something for Steve Murray: chicken
butcher, eighty dollars; here's a job I'd like," she cried, "ice-cream
man, one hundred dollars."
"Quit your kidding," said Jimmy. "I'm looking for a job, not an
acrostic."
"Well," she said, "here are two solid pages of them, but nobody seems to
want a waiter. What else can you do?" she asked smiling up at him.
"I can drive a milk-wagon," said Jimmy, "but the drivers are all on
strike."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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