led it
'teep,' having studied the French language among other things. 'He is a
teep indeed!' she says.

"I had to admit myself that Chester wasn't any self-starter. I saw he'd
have to be cranked by an outsider if he was going to win a place of his
own in the New Dawn. And I kept thinking wily, and the next P.M. when
Nettie and I was downtown I got my hunch. You know that music store on
Fourth Street across from the Boston Cash Emporium. It's kept by C.
Wilbur Todd, and out in front in a glass case he had a mechanical banjo
that was playing 'The Rosary' with variations when we come by. We
stopped a minute to watch the machinery picking the strings and in a
flash I says to myself, 'I got it! Eureka, California!' I says, 'it's
come to me!'

"Of course that piece don't sound so awful tender when it's done on a
banjo with variations, but I'd heard it done right and swell one time
and so I says, 'There's the song of songs to bring foolish males and
females to their just mating sense.'"

The speaker paused to drain her cup and to fashion another cigarette,
her eyes dreaming upon far vistas.

"Ain't it fierce what music does to persons," she resumed. "Right off I
remembered the first time I'd heard that piece--in New York City four
years ago, in a restaurant after the theatre one night, where I'd gone
with Mrs. W.B. Hemingway and her husband. A grand, gay place it was,
with an orchestra. I picked at some untimely food and sipped a
highball--they wouldn't let a lady smoke there--and what interested me
was the folks that come in. Folks always do interest me something
amazing. Strange ones like that, I mean, where you set and try to
figure out all about 'em, what kind of homes they got, and how they act
when they ain't in a swell restaurant, and everything. Pretty soon comes
a couple to the table next us and, say, they was just plain Mr. and Mrs.
Mad. Both of 'em stall-fed. He was a large, shiny lad, with pink jowls
barbered to death and wicked looking, like a well-known clubman or
villain. The lady was spectacular and cynical, with a cold, thin nose
and eyes like a couple of glass marbles. Her hair was several shades off
a legal yellow and she was dressed! She would have made handsome loot,
believe me--aigrette, bracelets, rings, dog collar, gold-mesh bag,
vanity case--Oh, you could see at a glance that she was one of them
Broadway social favourites you read about. And both grouchy, like I
said. He scowled till you knew he'd