Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/297

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another's probable faithlessness. Two more occupied the piano bench and played intermittent ragtime, the girl with both hands, the boy with a somewhat erratic forefinger on the upper end of the keyboard. The host, Johnny, was performing calisthenics with a cocktail shaker. And Mrs. Johnny, in a voluminous blue-checked apron and with a smudge on the tip of her extraordinary nose, was flying back and forth between kitchen and living room demanding whether or not anybody wanted her to make coffee—"If anybody says yes I'll crown them——"

On one of these trips she paused by her husband's side to say, "What's happened to Jock and Yvonne, do you 'spose?"

"He's not bringing Yvonne," Johnny answered, opening a fresh bottle of gin and sniffing into it with the usual post-Volstead distrust. "He's bringing some other girl. Told me so yesterday. Forgot to tell you about it."

"He is?"

"He is."

"Why, what's that mean?" Peg marveled.

"I don't know," said Johnny, "but I know what I hope."

"Me, too. I don't like her either."

"Oh, I liked her all right enough," Johnny contradicted. "But not for old Jock. Wrong kind entirely. Listen! There he is now."

Outside in the street was heard an automobile horn braying a little refrain. "Honk—honky-honk-honk—honk honnnk!"

Peg and Johnny with one accord went to a window and threw it open, drenching their protesting guests with zero air. They hung out. Four stories below they could see Jock's roadster, and Jock assisting to