and steak-and-onions at seven and a pipe and an evenin’ paper back there in the court, and I’ll not trouble Lillian Russell herself to wink at me, if you please.”
Mademoiselle pouted.
“Candy man,” she said, softly and deeply, “yet you shall say that I am beautiful. All men say so and so shall you.”
The candy man laughed and pulled out his pipe.
“Well,” said he, “I must be goin’ in. There is a story in the evenin’ paper that I am readin’. Men are divin’ in the seas for a treasure, and pirates are watchin’ them from behind a reef. And there ain’t a woman on land or water or in the air. Good-evenin’.” And he trundled his pushcart down the alley and back to the musty court where he lived.
Incredibly to him who has not learned woman, Mademoiselle sat at the window each day and spread her nets for the ignominious game. Once she kept a grand cavalier waiting in her reception chamber for half an hour while she battered in vain the candy man’s tough philosophy. His rough laugh chafed her vanity to its core. Daily he sat on his cart in the breeze of the alley while her hair was being ministered to, and daily the shafts of her beauty rebounded from his dull bosom pointless and ineffectual. Unworthy pique brightened her eyes. Pride-hurt she glowed upon
[121]
