Just Around the Corner Romance en casserole

Excerpt

IN the Knockerbeck Hotel there are various parlors; Pompeian rooms lined in marble and pillared in chaste fluted columns; Louis Quinze corners, gold-leafed and pink-brocaded, principally furnished with a spindly-legged Vernis-Martin cabinet and a large French clock in the form of a celestial sphere surmounted by a gold cupid.

There are high-ceilinged rendezvous rooms, with six arm and two straight chairs chased after the manner of Gouthière, and a series of small inlaid writing-desks, generously equipped for an avidious public to whom the crest-embossed stationery of a four-dollar-a-day-up hotel suggests long-forgotten friends back home.

Just off the lobby is the Oriental room, thick with arabesque hangings and incense and distinguished by the famous pair of Chinese famille rose mandarin jars, fifty-three inches high and enameled with Hoho birds and flowers. In careful contrast the adjoining room, a Colonial parlor paneled in black walnut and designed by a notorious architect, is ten degrees lower in temperature and lighted by large rectangular windows, through whose leaded panes a checkered patch of sunshine filters across the floor for half an hour each forenoon.

Then there is the manicure parlor, done in white tile, and stationary wash-stands by the Herman Casky Hygienic Company, Eighth Avenue.

The oracle of this particular Delphi was Miss Gertrude Sprunt, white-shirtwaisted, smooth-haired, and cool-fingered. Miss Sprunt could tell, almost as soon as you stepped out of the elevator opposite the parlors, the shortest cut to your hand and heart; she could glance at a pair of cuffs and give the finger-nails a correspondingly high or domestic finish, and could cater to the manicurial whims of Fifth Avenue and Four Corners alike. After one digital treat at her clever hands you enlisted as one of Miss Sprunt's regulars.

This fact was not lost upon her sister worker, Miss Ethyl Mooney. "Say, Gertie"—Miss Mooney tied a perky little apron about her trim waist and patted a bow into place—"is there ever a mornin' that you ain't booked clear through the day?"

Miss Sprunt hung her flat sailor hat and blue jacket behind the door, placed her hands on her hips, glanced down the length of her svelte figure, yawned, and patted her mouth with her hand.

"Not so you could notice it," she replied, in gapey tones. "I'm booked from nine to quitting just six days of the week; and, believe me, it's not like taking the rest cure."

"I guess if I was a jollier like you, Gert, I'd have a waitin'-list, too, I wish I could get on to your system."

"Maybe I give tradin'-stamps," observed Miss Sprunt, flippantly.

"You give 'em some sort of laughing-gas; but me, I'm of a retiring disposition, and I never could force myself on nobody."

Miss Gertrude flecked at herself with a whisk-broom.

"Don't feel bad about it, Ethyl; just keep on trying."

Miss Ethyl flushed angrily.

"Smarty!" she said.

"I wasn't trying to be nasty, Ethyl—you're welcome to an appointment every twenty minutes so far as I'm concerned."

Miss Ethyl appeared appeased.

"You know yourself, Gert, you gotta way about you. A dollar tip ain't nothin' for you. But look at me—I've forgot there's anything bigger'n a quarter in circulation."

"There's a great deal in knowing human nature. Why, I can almost tell a fellow's first name by looking at his half-moons."

"Believe me, Gert, it ain't your glossy finish that makes the hit; it's a way you've got of making a fellow think he's the whole show."

"I do try to make myself agreeable," admitted Miss Sprunt....