Amnesiacs -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Trials -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Why, you hound!" he shrieked. "Who are you to say that, you
moving-picture Polly. I insult 'em, do I? What did you do, you rotter?
You brought that infernal gold tank of yours and this sick stuff; you
knew those girls couldn't--couldn't--" Suddenly Dunstan, with long arm,
reached forward to the seat by Gertrude. Snatching the candy box he
tossed it into the creek, all its remaining chocolate-covered contents
avalanching forth. He turned on the aghast Troop. "Aw," he breathed,
"aw, you worsted monkey, you'll not bring candy like that again to nice
girls. When you come here again leave your cute candy with the Chinks
where it belongs."
But Tawny was now aroused. This was an attack on a sensitive point.
Getting all his jewelry straight, pulling down his monogrammed white
sweater, he rose, as one towering on the rostrum and stood feet planted
wide apart in the wobbling craft. He met Dunstan's scorn with answering
derision. "Yah--nice girls?" he queried in his turn. "Nice, what?
Oh, come on! Nice girls, I'll say!" mimicked the sarcastic Tawny. He
regarded his suave finger-nails and over them cast one eye on the
recumbent Cinny, the other on the snake-wreathed Gertrude. He sneered
back at his antagonist. "Nice girls; root for 'em by your lonesome.
Nobody else'll help you. Nice girls, nothing!"
This was too much for Dunstan. The trip for him had been miserable
anyway. He had found the party which he had entered with a slight
measure of distrust to be entirely dominated by the Exquisite, and
the subsequent unwholesome revelations of Cinny the lackadaisical,
and Gertrude the importunate, had beguiled him into that dubious
activity known as "being a good sport." Dunstan, out of a very
clean straightforward heritage, felt somehow vulgarized, degraded.
Perspiring, he waited like a crouching panther for the other man to
meet him on shore.
"Cinny!" shrieked Gertrude, with her hard laugh. "Wake up, Honey,
here's something worth while! Dunstan, the great chewing-gum champion,
is going to meet Tawny Troop, the cutest little evader in the
Hackensack Backwaters. Who holds the odds?" Cinny put up an indifferent
hand to her fair hair, one of the cushions fell overboard, also a
ukulele. Gertrude, with an exclamation, paddled over and rescued these;
she leaned over to Cinny, saying sharply:
"What's the matter with you? Why can't you sit up and behave? Don't you
realize that Sard and Minga are around here somewhere?" Gertrude leaned
close over to the other girl, whispering very distinctly. "Cinny, we'll
have to see that we are not any sportier than they are. Of course, no
one knows what they've been doing. Dunce is really mad, and if he gets
talking--you know that Minga is engaged to Tawny." But she spoke to
deaf ears.
"Leave me alone," murmured Cinny.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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