" Whenever he dared, Skip skipped
the change. He could always slip her an extra titbit.
On that account she had to be a little extra gracious to him when
he took her to the movies. Holding hands didn't hurt.
Not a week had gone before Skip had rivals. He caught Kedzie in
deceptions. She kept him guessing, and the poor fool suffered
the torments and thrills of jealousy. A flip young fellow named Hoke,
agent for a jobber in ice-cream cones, and a tubby old codger named
Kalteyer, who facetiously claimed to own a chewing-gum mine, were
added competitors for Kedzie's smiles, while Skip teetered between
homicide and suicide.
Skip was wretched, and Kedzie was enthralled by her own success.
She had conquered New York. She had a job in a candy-store, a room
in a flat with the family of a delicatessen merchant; she had as
many flirtations as she could carry, and an increasing waiting-list.
What more could woman ask?
And all this was in far upper Third Avenue. She had not yet been
down to First Street. In fact, she was in New York two weeks before
she got as far south as 100th Street. She had almost forgotten that
she had ever dwelt elsewhere than in New York. Her imitative instinct
was already exchanging her Western burr for a New York purr.
Her father and mother would hardly have known her voice if they
had heard it. And they would hardly meet her, since they had
given her up and gone back home, far sadder, no wiser, much poorer.
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